He was riding back toward Paris from Lyons one day – an unseasonably cold day in March – when he encountered a column of three score men shuffling toward him. Their heads were shaved and they were dressed in dirty rags – though most had elected to tear up whatever clothes they had, and wrap them around their bleeding feet. Their arms were bound behind their backs and so it was easy to see their protruding ribs, mottled with sores and whip-marks. They were accompanied by some half-dozen mounted archers who could easily pick off stragglers or runaways.