Louis XI., on his accession, found himself in presence of an exhausted treasury, and cast about for an expedient to fill it. The wine he drunk at his coronation at Reims may have suggested the dues which, only a month afterwards, he decreed should be levied on this commodity, in conjunction with an impost on salt. The inhabitants of the archiepiscopal city found it impossible to believe in such a return for their wonted hospitality, and the vine-growers assailed the collectors furiously. The affair resulted in a general outbreak, known as the Mique-Maque, and in the final hanging, branding, mutilating, and banishing of a number of individuals, half of whom, it may fairly be presumed, were innocent. The wars between France and Burgundy were also severely felt by the Rémois, whose territory was ravaged by the followers of Charles the Bold after Montlhery, and who suffered almost as much at the hands of their friends as at those of their foes. The garrison put into the town shared amongst themselves the country for a circuit of eight leagues, the meanest archer having a couple of villages, whence he exacted, at pleasure, corn, wood, provisions, and wine, the latter in such profusion that the surplus was sold in the streets, the smallest allowance for each lance being a queue, valued at ten livres, monthly. In 1470 and the following years large subsidies of wine were, moreover, despatched from time to time to the king's army in the field; a cartload being judiciously sent to General Gaillard, 'as he is well disposed towards us, and it is necessary to cultivate such people.' Complaints made in 1489 set forth that in consequence of the _octroi_ of the river Aisne, which had been established six years previously, the merchants of Liège, Mezières, and Rethel, instead of coming to Reims to buy wine, were obtaining their supplies from Orleans. The landing of Henry VII. of England, in 1495, spread new alarms throughout the Champagne, and orders were given for all the vine-stakes within a radius of two leagues of Reims to be pulled up, so that the enemy might be prevented from cooking provisions or filling up the moats of the fortifications with them. Pillaging foes and extortionate defenders were bad enough, but the vine-growers had yet other enemies, to wit, certain noxious little insects, which were in the habit of feeding on the young buds, though there is no record that they were ever so troublesome at Reims as they were in other parts of the Champagne, notably at Troyes, where on the Friday after Pentecost 1516 they were formally and solemnly enjoined by Maître Jean Milon to depart within six days from the vineyards of Villenauxe, under pain of anathema and malediction.[53] A century and a half later these insects renewed their ravages, and were exorcised anew by the rural dean of Sézanne, on the order of the Bishop of Troyes. [Illustration: CULTURE OF THE VINE--SIXTEENTH CENTURY (From a /MS./ Calendar).]