Enguerrand de Boves, lord of Coucy, who passed, says Suger, for his father, joined those who declared war against him in the name of Church and King. Louis the Fat took the field in person against him. "Men-at-arms, and in very small numbers, too," says Guibert of Nogent, were with difficulty induced to second the king and did not do so heartily; but the light-armed infantry made up a considerable force, and the archbishop of Rheims and the bishops had summoned all the people to this expedition, whilst offering to all absolution from their sins. Thomas de Marle, though at that time helpless and stretched upon his bed, was not sparing of scoffs and insults towards his assailants; and at first he absolutely refused to listen to the king's summons." But Louis persisted without wavering in his enterprise, exposing himself freely and in person leading his infantry to the attack when the men-atarms did not come on or bore themselves slackly. He carried successively the castles of Crecy and Nogent, domains belonging to Thomas de Marle, and at last reduced him to the necessity of buying himself off at a heavy ransom, indemnifying the churches he had spoiled, giving guarantees for future behavior, and earnestly praying for re-admission to the communion of the faithful. As for those folks of Laon, perpetrators of or accomplices in the murder of Bishop Gaudri, who had sought refuge with Thomas de Marle, the king showed them no mercy. "He ordered them," says Suger, "to be strung up to the gibbet, and left for food to the voracity of kites and crows and vultures." There are certain discrepancies between the two accounts, both contemporaneous, which we possess of this incident in the earliest years of the twelfth century, one in the Life of Louis the Fat, by Suger, and the other in the Life of Guibert of Nogent, by himself. They will be easily recognized on comparing what was said, after Suger, in Vol. I. of this history (chap. xviii.), with what has just been said here after Guibert. But these discrepancies are of no historical importance, for they make no difference in respect of the essential facts characteristic of social condition at the period and of the behavior and position of the actors. Louis the Fat, after his victory over Thomas de Marle and the fugitives from Laon, went to Laon with the archbishop of Rheims; and the presence of the king, whilst restoring power to the foes of the commune, inspired them no doubt with a little of the spirit of moderation, for there was an interval of peace, during which no attention was paid to any thing but expiatory ceremonies and the restoration of the churches which had been a prey to the flames. The archbishop celebrated a solemn mass for the repose of the souls of those who had perished during the disturbances, and he preached a sermon exhorting serfs to submit themselves to their masters, and warning them on pain of anathema from resisting by force. The burghers of Laon, however, did not consider every sort of resistance forbidden, and the lords had no doubt been taught not to provoke it, for in 1128, sixteen years after the murder of Bishop Gaudri, fear of a fresh insurrection deterImined his successor to consent to the institution of a new commune, the charter of which was ratified by Louis the Fat in an assembly held at Compiègne. Only the name of commune did not recur in this charter; it was replaced by that of Peace-establishment; the territorial boundaries of the commune were called peace-boundaries, and to designate its members recourse was had to the formula, All those who have signed this peace. The preamble of the charter runs, "In the name of the holy and indivisible Trinity, we Louis, by the grace of God king of the French, do make known to all our lieges present and to come that, with the consent of the barons of our kingdom and the inhabitants of the city of Laon, we have set up, in the said city, a peace-establishment." And after having enumerated the limits, forms and rules of it, the charter concludes with this declaration of amnesty: "All former trespasses and offences committed before the ratification of the present treaty are wholly pardoned. If any one, banished for having trespassed in past time, desire to return to the town, he shall be admitted and shall recover possession of his property. Excepted from pardon, however, are the thirteen whose names do follow;" and then come the names of the thirteen excepted from the amnesty and still under banishment. "Perhaps," says M. Augustin Thierry, "these thirteen under banishment, shut out forever from their native town at the very moment it became free, had been distinguished amongst all the burghers of Laon by their opposition to the power of the lords; perhaps they had sullied by deeds of violence this patriotic opposition; perhaps they had been taken at hap-hazard to suffer alone for the crimes of their fellow-citizens. 99 The second hypothesis appears the most probable; for that deeds of violence and cruelty had been committed alternately by the burghers and their foes is an ascer tained fact, and that the charter of 1128 was really a work of liberal pacification is proved by its contents and wording. After such struggles and at the moment of their subsidence some of the most violent actors always bear the burden of the past, and amongst the most violent some are often the most sincere. For forty-seven years after the charter of Louis the Fat the town of Laon enjoyed the internal peace and the communal liberties it had thus achieved; but in 1175 a new bishop, Roger de Rosoy, a man of high birth and related to several of the great lords his neighbors, took upon himself to disregard the regimen of freedom established at Laon. The burghers of Laon, taught by experience, applied to the king, Louis the Young, and offered him a sum of money to grant them a charter of commune. Bishop Roger, "by himself and through his friends," says a chronicler, a canon of Laon, "implored the king to have pity on his Church, and abolish the serfs' commune; but the king, clinging to the promise he had received of money, would not listen to the bishop or his friends," and in 1177 gave the burghers of Laon a charter which confirmed their peace-establishment of 1128. Bishop Roger, however, did not hold himself beaten. He claimed the help of the lords his neighbors and renewed the war against the burghers of Laon, who on their side asked and obtained the aid of several communes in the vicinity. In an access of democratic rashness, instead of awaiting within their walls the attack of their enemies, they marched out without cavalry to the encounter, ravaging as they went the lands of the lords whom they suspected of being ill-disposed towards them; but on arriving in front of the bishop's allies, "all this rustic multitude," says the canon-chronicler, "terror-stricken at the bare names of the knights they found assembled, took suddenly to flight, and a great number of the burghers were massacred before reaching their city." Louis the Young then took the field to help them; but Baldwin, count of Hainault, went to the aid of the bishop of Laon with seven hundred knights and several thousand infantry. King Louis, after having occupied and for some time held in sequestration the lands of the bishop, thought it advisable to make peace rather than continue so troublesome a war, and at the intercession of the pope and the count of Hainault he restored to Roger de Rosoy his lands and his bishopric on condition of living in peace with the commune. And so long as Louis VII. lived, the bishop |