re was
peace at home, for private wars and feuds ceased. The barons, moreover,
needed money to continue their sojourn in the army of Christ; and we
hear that in the splendor of the preparations for that Crusade in which
Eleanor took part the nobles of France vied with each other till they
were almost ruined. To get this money they sold freedom to their slaves,
immunity from vexatious feudal rights to their serfs, privileges and
charters to their burgesses. While they themselves were spending their
money and acquiring expensive tastes and refined ideas in contact with
the Greeks and Saracens, their subjects were acquiring a greater degree
of freedom, and their king, if he were a wise one, was consolidating his
kingdom and girding up his loins for more effective resistance to their
turbulence. The strength of the monarchy increased as the power of the
independent baronage decreased, and the strength of the monarchy meant
greater tranquillity, greater respect for law, and the fostering of
conditions favorable to the growth of commerce.

Manners were still rough and cruel, for the Crusades had not tamed the
ferocity of the European heroes. We hear that, when Saladin refused to
pay the enormous ransom demanded for the town of Acre, Richard Coeur de
Lion put to death the two thousand six hundred captives whom he held as
hostages, and the Duke of Burgundy did likewise with his captives. But
in France there was getting to be less and less opportunity for the
display of wanton cruelty toward the lower orders of society. The
seigneur still believed in the truth of the old proverb:

"Oignez vilain, il vous poindra;
Poignez vilain, il vous oindra."

(Stroke a villain, and he will sting you; sting a villain, and he will
stroke you); but the number of serfs was constantly diminishing. The
great communal movement emancipated the bourgeois of the towns; whole
villages bought their freedom; the monarchy favored enfranchisement and
gave the example in freeing serfs here and there, till, in 1315, all the
serfs of the royal domain were set free, and the great doctrine was
proclaimed: _Selon le droit de nature, chacun doit nattre
franc_--"according to the law of nature, everyone should be born free."

The general improvement in conditions affected more visibly the
bourgeois class. We find, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, that
the members of this class are beginning to build large, solid houses of
stone, with ogi