moved should thenceforth be called belfry-tower.

[Illustration: The Cathedral of Laon----233]

The history of the commune of Laon is that of the majority of the towns
which, in Northern and Central France, struggled from the eleventh to the
fourteenth century to release themselves from feudal oppression and
violence. Cambrai, Beauvais, Amiens, Soissons, Rheims, Vezelay, and
several other towns displayed at this period a great deal of energy and
perseverance in bringing their lords to recognize the most natural and
the most necessary rights of every human creature and community. But
within their walls dissensions were carried to extremity, and existence
was ceaselessly tempestuous and troublous; the burghers were hasty,
brutal, and barbaric,--as barbaric as the lords against whom they were
defending their liberties. Amongst those mayors, sheriffs, jurats, and
magistrates of different degrees and with different titles, set up in the
communes, many came before very long to exercise dominion arbitrarily,
violently, and in their own personal interests. The lower orders were in
an habitual state of jealousy and sedition of a ruffianly kind towards
the rich, the heads of the labor market, the controllers of capital and
of work. This reciprocal violence, this anarchy, these internal evils
and dangers, with their incessant renewals, called incessantly for
intervention from without; and when, after releasing themselves from
oppression and iniquity coming from above, the burghers fell a prey to
pillage and massacre coming from below, they sought for a fresh protector
to save them from this fresh evil. Hence that frequent recourse to the
king, the great suzerain whose authority could keep down the bad
magistrates of the commune or reduce the mob to order; and hence also,
before long, the progressive downfall, or, at any rate, the utter
enfeeblement of those communal liberties so painfully won. France was at
that stage of existence and of civilization at which security can hardly
be purchased save at the price of liberty. We have a phenomenon peculiar
to modern times in the provident and persistent effort to reconcile
security with liberty, and the bold development of individual powers with
the regular maintenance of public order. This admirable solution of the
social problem, still so imperfect and unstable in our time, was unknown
in the middle ages; liberty was then so stormy and so fearful, that
people conceived before