[Illustration:  Fig. 57.—­Louis de Mallet, Lord of Graville, Admiral of France, 1487, in Costume of War and Tournament, from an Engraving of the Sixteenth Century (National Library of Paris, Cabinet des Estampes).]

Many centuries elapsed before the dawn of liberty could penetrate the social strata of this multitude, thus oppressed and denuded of all power of action.  The development was slow, painful, and dearly bought, but at last it took place; first of all towns sprang up, and with them, or rather by their influence, the inhabitants became possessed of social life.  The agricultural population took its social position many generations later.

As we have already seen, the great movement for the creation of communes and bourgeoisies only dates from the unsettled period ranging from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, and simultaneously we see the bourgeois appear, already rich and luxurious, parading on all occasions their personal opulence.  Their private life could only be an imitation of that in the chateaux; by degrees as wealth strengthened and improved their condition, and rendered them independent, we find them trying to procure luxuries equal or analogous to those enjoyed by the upper classes, and which appeared to them the height of material happiness.  In all times the small have imitated the great.  It was in vain that the great obstinately threatened, by the exercise of their prerogatives, to try and crush this tendency to equality which alarmed them, by issuing pecuniary edicts, summary laws, coercive regulations, and penal ordinances; by the force of circumstances the arbitrary restrictions which the nobility laid upon the lower classes gradually disappeared, and the power of wealth displayed itself in spite of all their efforts to suppress it.  In fact, occasions were not wanting in which the bourgeois class was able to refute the charge of unworthiness with which the nobles sought to stamp it.  When taking a place in the council of the King, or employed in the administration of the provinces, many of its members distinguished themselves by firmness and wisdom; when called upon to assist in the national defence, they gave their blood and their gold with noble self-denial; and lastly, they did not fail to prove themselves possessed of those high and delicate sentiments of which the nobility alone claimed the hereditary possession.

[Illustration:  Fig. 58.—­Burgess of Ghent and his Wife, in ceremonial Attire, kneeling in Church, from a painted Window belonging to a Chapel in that Town (Fifteenth Century).]

“The bourgeois,” says Arnaud de Marveil, one of the most famous troubadours of the thirteenth century, “have divers sorts of merits:  some distinguish themselves by deeds of honour, others are by nature noble and behave accordingly.  There are others thoroughly brave, courteous, frank, and jovial, who, although poor, find means to please by graceful speech, frequenting courts, and making themselves agreeable there; these, well versed in courtesy and politeness, appear in noble attire, and figure conspicuously at the tournaments and military games, proving themselves good judges and good company.”