Quotation from: Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period

Written by: Paul Lacroix


Brantome relates that King Charles IX. had the curiosity to wish to "know
how the cut-purses performed their arts with so much skill and dexterity,"
and begged Captain La Chambre to introduce to him, on the occasion of a
banquet and a ball, the cleverest cut-purses, giving them full liberty to
exhibit their skill. The captain went to the Cours des Miracles and
fetched ten of the most expert of these thieves, whom he presented to the
King. Charles, "after the dinner and the ball had taken place, wished to
see all the plunder, and found that they had absolutely earned three
thousand ecus, either in money from purses, or in precious stones, pearls,
or other jewels; some of the guests even lost their cloaks, at which the
King thought he should die of laughter." The King allowed them to keep
what they had thus earned at the expense of his guests; but he forbad them
"to continue this sort of life," under penalty of being hung, and he had
them enrolled in the army, in order to recompense them for their clever
feats. We may safely assert that they made but indifferent soldiers.

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