The archbishop of Rheims, accompanied by six of his suffragans, and several deputies from the metropolitan chapters, went to Melun to present the petition, or rather the summary of the council, to the young king. "Seigneur," said the bishops, "we entreat you to lend the Church of Rheims succour against the burghers by whom it is oppressed." The king replied that he would deliberate upon it maturely with the people of his council, and fixed a month's delay previous to making his intentions known. But the plaintiffs, little satisfied with this reply, again met in council at Compiégne, and determined to make more pressing demands upon the king.

It was at St. Denis that the second interview took place between Louis IX. and the bishops of the Rhemish provinces, but as he gave them no definite reply, the council was transferred to Senlis, and came to the following resotion:

Seeing that the lord king has not obeyed the monitions that have been given him, we place an interdict upon all the lands of his domain situated in the province, always permitting, however, that baptism and extreme unction may be administered there. We will excommunicate, moreover, all those bishops who shall not observe the present interdict, and who shall fail to have it published and observed in their dioceses.

King Louis IX. became of age at this time. Being now master of his own conduct, he showed himself much more disposed to yield to the demands of the bishops. To be on good terms with them and make peace, he did not wait for further messages or visits on their part, but repaired in person into the province which was about to be placed under interdict. A good understanding was soon re-established between the royal power and the ecclesiastical power, but the consequences of this reconciliation were anything but favourable to the liberty of the burghers of Rheims; in fact, all that they had gained during their insurrection was taken away from them. All the losses caused by the civil war fell back upon them, and even their ancient municipal rights were restricted, in many cases, by the decisions of the king's court, which determined the greater part of

the questions in dispute in favour of the archbishop. According to a royal ordinance intimated to the aldermen of Rheims, Henri de Braine was to be put in peaceful possession of his castle of Porte-Mars, the breaches made in the walls and outworks were to be repaired at the expense of the town, the burghers were to rebuild the houses demolished or injured during the outbreak-to raze the fortifications built by them, and to replace with expiatory ceremonies the tombstones and sepulchral monuments. In future, whosoever should have a suit at law must go to the episcopal palace to plead. No one was any longer allowed to use any part of the town revenues, nor to assess new taxes, without the archbishop's consent; and lastly, the burghers were condemned to pay him, as reparation for his losses of all kinds, an indemnity of 10,000 livres of Paris. Saint Louis, so renowned in his time for his equity, did not put the privileges of the corporation and those of the lords, of the ecclesiastical lords especially, on the same level. He acted therefore according to his conscience in placing the burghers of Rheims in a worse condition than that in which they were when the discord arose between the court and the bishops. But while he was mild towards individuals he was at the same time inflexible in his ideas of order and law. He wished the archbishop to promise in writing that he would treat the burghers mercifully, and not to interpret too rigorously the terms of the ordinance which re-established him in his rights. This writing was sent to the aldermen, to be preserved as an authentic document in the archives of the corporation. But the archbishop showed, almost immediately, the little importance he placed on a promise which was vague and without guarantee.

Two royal commissioners came to Rheims to terminate by arbitration all the little disputes arising from the past quarrel. At the outset of their discussions, the archbishop began by contesting the right of the burghers to use a seal, which amounted to denying them all right of jurisdiction, and all legal existence as a political association. The commissioners feared that the disturbances might be renewed if

such questions were agitated, and to elude the difficulty, they inserted these words in the sentence:-"As to the seal we will make known our opinions concerning it, by causing the parties to be summoned as soon as it shall be lawful so to do." They took their departure a few days afterwards, and the affair remained undecided, that is to say, abandoned, as formerly, to the chances of popular energy and seignorial ambition.

The excommunication directed against the inhabitants of Rheims was removed with the usual ceremonies. The churchyards were re-opened, and the bodies of those persons were carried there who had died under the anathema, and who before dying had shown some signs of repentance and submission to the church. A general absolution was pronounced upon those who, strangers to the town, had aided the burghers in their revolt, worked for their wages, traded with them, or discharged engagements and debts to their advantage. The town which had been so disturbed for three years now enjoyed a calm, but it was that sad calm which follows a revolution whose issue has been unfortunate. The merchants and artisans worked to repair the losses which they had sustained from political distractions, interruptions to commerce, and in addition the sentence which doomed them to defray all the costs of the civil

war.

The indemnity of 10,000 livres was to be paid at several times. The first had been discharged without opposition or violence; but in the year 1238, the archbishop Henri, being pressed for money, wished to have the rest of the sum all at one time. He placed a tax upon the whole town equivalent to it, and established commissioners, whose business it was to make the subdivision and levying of it in every quarter. These officers conducted themselves with excessive rigour, refusing to grant any delay, and threatening imprisonment. Their severity occasioned a disturbance among the inferior class of burghers, who maltreated the collectors and the bailiff of the archbishop. The latter summoned the aldermen, by an imperious message, to do him immediate justice;

but, the municipal magistrates having replied to this summons with remonstrances, the archbishop assembled, at the castle of the Porte-Mars, all the knights who held fiefs of the county of Rheims, and entered the town at their head. After having placed guards at each gate, he caused the aldermen and a certain number of the chief burghers to be arrested in their houses. They were brought before the episcopal court, which, without information or inquiry, imprisoned some, banished others, and totally demolished the houses of the most obstinate. A sentence of excommunication was again launched against the town, and all the churches were placed under interdict.

The burghers of Rheims remained under the pressure of this sentence, and the disorder consequent upon it, until the death of Henri de Braine in 1240. There then ensued a vacancy of the see for four years, during which the corporation, as usual on such occasions, again took the lead, and obtained from the metropolitan chapter not only the revocation of the ecclesiastical sentences, but a remission of the indemnities that remained to be paid.

In this perpetual struggle between two rival powers in the heart of the same town, the slightest concession, made, willingly or by force, by one of them, always produced a reaction in favour of the other. Thus it constantly occurred that the great questions solved in one way could be deliberated anew and solved in a contrary way.

Recovering by degrees its ancient energy, the corporation of Rheims was not long before it excited the anxiety of the next archbishop. The principal source of this disquietude was the or ganization of companies of burgher militia, which the municipal magistrates were occupied in regulating. These companies, commanded by constables, kept guard night and day at the gates of the town and in the different quarters, practised frequently the use of arms, and sometimes came to blows, by a sort of military bravado, with the archbishop's soldiers, when the seignorial banner passed before that of the corporation.

Under the pretext of establishing the safety and tranquillity of the town in a more complete manner, the burghers put iron chains and barricades at the extremitics of every street, the real object of which was to prevent the garrison of the castle from distributing themselves over the city without permission from the magistrates.

These fresh attempts of the corporation to fortify themselves and prepare a complete restoration of their privileges, gave rise, in 1257, to a second intervention on the part of king Louis IX.

The episcopal see was then occupied by the same Thomas de Beaumetz of whom we have before made mention; a man less audacious than Henri de Braine, but as little favourable to the liberties of the burghers. Encouraged by the king's conduct in the great quarrel of 1235, he begged him to come to Rheims to hear his complaints against the corporation and to aid him. The king, yielding to the archbishop's prayers, went to Rheims, and, after having heard the appeals of both parties, he pronounced as arbiter a sentence analogous to the one he had given twenty-two years before.

The aldermen in vain represented that the town of Rheims was a corporate and statute town; that its burghers were associated together in companies and colleges; that on this account they had the right of raising armed men, of giving them captains, and of having the keys and the fortifications of the town in their own keeping.

The king referred them on all these points to the archbishop. The companies of militia were placed under the control of the latter; the keys of the gates were given up to him, and the destruction of the barricades was ordered.

The history of the corporation of Rheims during the latter half of the thirteenth century, and the greater part of the fourteenth, presents a repetition of the same disputes, but with scenes less varied, because the royal authority then intervened in a uniform manner, by appeals to parliament. This struggle of seignorial privileges against the liberties of the burghers, so energetic at first and full of vitality, thus appears to be transformed into a lawsuit between two parties, in which the

characters of plaintiff and defendant are filled, alternately, by the archbishop and the magistrates of the corporation. Litigants irreconcileable and always at issue, they carried into this new kind of warfare an animosity which recalled, under other forms, the hostilities of the armed hand.

The archbishop and the supporters of his power called their adversaries "vile people" (chétives gens); "nonentities" (gens de néant); and when the latter presented their petition, sealed with the seal of the corporation, "it is a false document," said the opposite party, "and of no value in law, for the aldermen of Rheims have no right to have a seal."

In the year 1362, the advocates of the metropolitan church came to the following conclusions

That the functions of the aldermen be abolished; that all jurisdiction, civil and criminal, be placed in the hands of the archbishop. That the king shall destroy the corporation, as an illicit association, dangerous and unauthorised by his predecessors; that the archbishop conduct the government of the town according to his pleasure, arm or disarm the inhabitants, raise companies, and nominate constables and commanders, without being accountable to any one.

The decree of parliament took no notice either of these demands, or of the complaints of the corporation respecting the tyrannies and usurpations of the clergy, but it sanctioned the pretensions of a third power, which then arose to the detriment of the other two. "The protection and government of the town," said the decree, "belong to the king, and to such as he shall please to nominate."

In the fourteenth century the corporation of Rheims ceases entirely to play any political part. It was not abolished, but extinguished, without violence, and without show, under the pressure of the royal authority. The office of alderman existed until a recent period, like the ghost of the ancient republican life, and the sign of a liberty which no longer existed. During the centuries of peaceful subordination which succeeded the tumults of the Middle Ages, oblivion arose, like a barrier, between the burghers of modern times and those ancient burghers, so proud, and so independent. The