In dealing with the formation of the communes from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, the majority of the French historians, even M. Thierry, the most original and clear-sighted of them all, often entitle this event the communal revolution.  This expression hardly gives a correct idea of the fact to which it is applied.  The word revolution, in the sense, or at least the aspect, given to it amongst us by contemporary events, points to the overthrow of a certain regimen, and of the ideas and authority predominant thereunder, and the systematic elevation in their stead of a regimen essentially different in principle, and in fact.  The revolutions of our day substitute, or would fain substitute, a republic for a monarchy, democracy for aristocracy, political liberty for absolute power.  The struggles which from the eleventh to the fourteenth century gave existence to so many communes had no such profound character; the populations did not pretend to any fundamental overthrow of the regimen they attacked; they conspired together, they swore together, as the phrase is according to the documents of the time—­they rose to extricate themselves from the outrageous oppression and misery they were enduring, but not to abolish feudal sovereignty and to change the personality of their masters.  When they succeeded they obtained those treaties of peace called charters, which brought about in the condition of the insurgents salutary changes accompanied by more or less effectual guarantees.  When they failed or when the charters were violated, the result was violent reactions, mutual excesses; the relations between the populations and their lords were tempestuous and full of vicissitudes; but at bottom neither the political regimen nor the social system of the communes was altered.  And so there were, at many spots without any connection between them, local revolts and civil wars, but no communal revolution.

One of the earliest facts of this kind which have been set forth with some detail in history clearly shows their primitive character; a fact the more remarkable in that the revolt described by the chroniclers originated and ran its course in the country among peasants with a view of recovering complete independence, and not amongst an urban population with a view of resulting in the erection of a commune.  Towards the end of the tenth century, under Richard II., Duke of Normandy, called the Good, and whilst the good King Robert was reigning in France, “In several countships of Normandy,” says William of Jumiege, “all the peasants, assembling in their conventicles, resolved to live according to their inclinations and their own laws, as well in the interior of the forests as along the rivers, and to reck nought of any established right.  To carry out this purpose these mobs of madmen chose each two deputies, who were to form at some central point an assembly charged to see to the execution of their decrees.  As soon as the duke (Richard II.) was informed thereof, he sent a