The coronations at Reims served, as already remarked, to attract within the walls of the old episcopal city all that was great, magnificent, and noble in France. The newly-crowned king, with that extensive retinue which marked the monarch of the Middle Ages; the great vassals of the crown scarcely less profusely attended; the constable, the secular and ecclesiastical peers, and the host of knights and nobles who assisted on the occasion, were wont at the conclusion of the ceremony to hold high revelry in the spacious temporary banqueting-hall reared near the cathedral. It is to be regretted that the _menus_ of these banquets have not been handed down to us in their entirety; but a few fragmentary excerpts show that from a comparatively early period there was no lack of wine, at any rate. A remonstrance addressed to Philip the Fair, after his coronation in 1286, by the archbishop and burghers, asks that they may be relieved of a certain proportion of the sum levied on them for the cost of the ceremony, on the ground that there still remained over for the king's use no less than seven score tuns of wine from the banquet. Some idea may be formed of the quantity of wine brought regularly into the city from the circumstance of the king having Reims surrounded by walls in 1294, and levying a duty on the wine imported to pay for them, and by the value attached to the 'rouage'[27] of the Mairie St. Martin, claimed by the chapter of Reims Cathedral in 1300. [Illustration: REIMS CATHEDRAL, WEST FRONT.]