would obtain and maintain certain rights.  They rebelled about 1070, and forced the count and his noble vassals to grant them the freedom which they had sworn to obtain, though William of Normandy very soon restored the rebel city to order, and dissolved the presumptuous community.  However, the example soon bore fruit.  Cambrai rose in its turn and proclaimed the “Commune,” and although its bishop, aided by treason and by the Count of Hainault, reduced it to obedience, it only seemed to succumb for a time, to renew the struggle with greater success at a subsequent period.

[Illustration:  Fig. 36.—­Civic Guard of Ghent (Brotherhood of St. Sebastian), from a painting on the Wall of the Chapel of St. John and St. Paul, Ghent, near the Gate of Bruges.]

We have just mentioned the Commune; but we must not mistake the true meaning of this word, which, under a Latin form (communitas), expresses originally a Germanic idea, and in its new form a Christian mode of living.  Societies of mutual defence, guilds, &c., had never disappeared from Germanic and Celtic countries; and, indeed, knighthood itself was but a brotherhood of Christian warriors.  The societies of the Paix de Dieu, and of the Treve de Dieu, were encouraged by the clergy in order to stop the bloody quarrels of the nobility, and formed in reality great religious guilds.  This idea of a body of persons taking some common oath to one another, of which feudalism gave so striking an example, could not fail to influence the minds of the rustics and the lower classes, and they only wanted the opportunity which the idea of the Commune at once gave them of imitating their superiors.

They too took oaths, and possessed their bodies and souls in “common;” they seized, by force of strategy, the ramparts of their towns; they elected mayors, aldermen, and jurors, who were charged to watch over the interests of their association.  They swore to spare neither their goods, their labour, nor their blood, in order to free themselves; and not content with defending themselves behind barricades or chains which closed the streets, they boldly took the offensive against the proud feudal chiefs before whom their fathers had trembled, and they forced the nobles, who now saw themselves threatened by this armed multitude, to acknowledge their franchise by a solemn covenant.

It does not follow that everywhere the Commune was established by means of insurrection, for it was obtained after all sorts of struggles; and franchises were sold in some places for gold, and in others granted by a more or less voluntary liberality.  Everywhere the object was the same; everywhere they struggled or negotiated to upset, by a written constitution or charter, the violence and arbitrary rule under which they had so long suffered, and to replace by an annual and fixed rent, under the protection of an independent and impartial law, the unlimited exactions and disguised plundering so long made by the nobility and royalty.