In a French community, the sergeant of the guard, hoping to reap a small fortune from the throngs of citizens attending a distant fair, ordered the town’s bell rung a half-hour early, with tardy souls forced either to pay a penny or remain abroad all evening. Such was the mad crush of panicked crowds as they neared the gate that more than one hundred persons perished, most trampled in the stampede, others pushed from the drawbridge, including a coach and six horses. For his rapacity, the guardsman was broken upon the wheel.
Notebandi.
