The war began in this way:  At the time of the vintage, the shepherds of Grangousier’s country were set to guard the vines and hinder the starlings from eating the grapes.  Seeing some cake-bakers of Lerne passing down the highway with ten or twelve loads of cakes, the shepherds courteously asked them to sell some of their wares at the market price.  The cake-bakers, however, were in no way inclinable to the request of the shepherds; and, what is worse, they insulted them hugely, calling them babblers, broken-mouths, carrot-pates, tunbellies, fly-catchers, sneakbies, joltheads, slabberdegullion druggels, and other defamatory epithets.  And when one honest shepherd came forward with the money to buy some of the cakes, a rude cake-baker struck him a rude lash with a whip.  Thereupon some farmers and their men, who were watching their walnuts close by, ran up with their great poles and long staves, and thrashed the cake-bakers as if they had been green rye.

When they were returned to Lerne, the cake-makers complained to their king, Picrochole, saying that all the mischief was done by the shepherds of Grangousier.  Picrochole incontinently grew angry and furious, and without making any further question, he had it cried throughout his country that every man, under pain of hanging, should assemble in arms at noon before his castle.  Thereupon, without order or measure, his men took the field, ravaging and wasting everything wherever they passed through.  All that they said to any man that cried them mercy, was:  “We will teach you to eat cakes!”

Having pillaged the town of Seuille, they went on with the horrible tumult to an abbey.  Finding it well barred and made fast, seven companies of foot and two hundred lances broke down the walls of the close, and began to lay waste the vineyard.  The poor devils of monks did not know to what saint to pray in their extremity, and they made processions and said litanies against their foes.  But in the abbey at that time was a cloister-monk named Friar John of the Trenchermen, young, gallant, frisky, lusty, nimble, quick, active, bold, resolute, tall, wide-mouthed, and long-nosed; a fine mumbler of matins, a fair runner through masses, and a great scourer of vigils—­to put it short, a true monk, if ever there was one since the monking world monked a monkery.  This monk, hearing the noise that the enemy made in the vineyard, went to see what they were doing, and perceiving that they were gathering the grapes out of which next year’s drink of the abbey ought to be made, he grew mighty angry.  “The devil take me,” he cried, “if they have not already chopped our vines so that we shall have no drink for years to come!  Did not St. Thomas of England die for the goods of the church?  If I died in the same cause should I not be a saint likewise?  However, I shall not die for them, but make other men to do so.”