The sales of wine mainly took place at the Etape aux Vins, where most of the wine-merchants were established, the busiest time being during the three great annual fairs, when no duties were levied. The old Etape aux Vins is now the Rue de l'Etape, jocularly styled the Rue de Rivoli of Reims, on account of the arcades formed by the projecting upper floors of its fifteenth-and sixteenth-century houses, which rest upon wooden and stone pillars. To-day the casino and the principal restaurants of the city are installed here; still the locality retains much the same aspect as it presented in the days when Remi Cauchois and Huet Hurtaut stood here and chaffered with the peasants who had brought their casks of wine on creaking wains into the city; when S. de Laval glided in search of a customer among the long-gowned fur-capped merchants of the Low Countries; when bargains were closed by a God's-penny and wetted with a stoup of Petit Jehannin's best; and when files of wine-laden wagons rolled forth from the northern gates of the city to gladden the thirsty souls of Hainault and Flanders. Some of the wine had, however, a nobler destination. An order of payment addressed by the town council to the receiver, and dated March 23, 1419, commands him to pay Jacques le Vigneron the sum of 78 livres 12 sols for six queues of 'vin blanc et clairet,' presented to the fierce Duke of Burgundy, Jean sans Peur, at the high price of about 11_s._ each.[47] Nor did his son Philip, the self-styled 'Prince of the best wines in Christendom,' disdain to draw bridle in order to receive eleven poinçons of 'vin claret' when hastening, 'Bloody with spurring, fiery red with speed,' through Reims to avenge his father's murder at the Bridge of Montereau.[48] The devastating results of the terrible struggle for supremacy waged between the Armagnacs and Burgundians, and of the invasion of Henry V. of England, are evidenced in the facts that when, in fear and trembling, the Reims council resolved to allow Duke Philip to enter the town in 1425, at the head of four thousand horse, they could only offer him one queue of Beaune, one queue of red, and one queue of white wine; and to the duchess the following year one queue of Beaune and one of French wine; and that wine sent to l'Isle Adam, at the siege of Nesle, cost as much as 19 livres, or nearly 16_s._, the queue. [Illustration: RUE DE L'ETAPE, REIMS.] [Illustration]