allowed to sell at a higher rate, under a penalty of 12 livres for the first, and 24 livres for the second offence. Moreover, to encourage the production of the locality, they were strictly forbidden to sell in their taverns any other wine than that of the 'cru du pays et de huit lieues es environs,' under pain of confiscation and a fine, the amount of which was arbitrary. The vine-dressers too, in the same ordinances, were enjoined to kill and burn all vine-slugs and other vermin, which during 1621 and the two succeeding years had caused much damage.[61] [Illustration] [Illustration] This rule must have been perforce relaxed during the troubles of the Fronde, when for two years the troops of the Marshal du Plessis Praslin lived as in a conquered country, indulging in drinking carousals in the wine-shops of the towns, or marching in detachments from village to village throughout the district, in order to prevent all those who neglected to pay the contributions imposed from working in their vineyards; when their leader, on the refusal of the Rémois to supply him with money, ravaged the vineyards of the plains of les Moineaux and Sacy; and when Erlach's foreigners at Verzy sacked the whole of the Montagne from March until July 1650. As a consequence, people in the following year were existing on herbs, roots, snails, blood, bread made of bran, cats, dogs, &c., or dying by hundreds through eating bread made of unripe wheat harvested in June; the ruin of the citizens being completed, according to an eyewitness, at the epoch of dressing the vines, owing to the lack of men to do the work.[62] A contemporary writer, however, asserts that the vineyards still continued 'to cover the mountains and to encircle the town of Reims like a crown of verdure;' and that their produce not only supplied all local wants, but, transported beyond the frontier, caused the gold of the Indies to flow in return into the town, and spread its reputation afar.[63] [Illustration: A BETROTHAL BANQUET IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.]