The guilds, therefore, formerly purely professional associations, soon began to meddle in politics and to become political organizations as well. Their members discussed in their guild-halls, built for their business meetings, the changes desired in the existing social, economic, and political conditions of the community, and carried on propaganda in support of their demands. At the same time the members of the guilds began to build walls around the settlement, in order to protect the new city against attack from the outside. Such a fortified town was called _burgus_, _bourg_, “borough,” and the inhabitants were called _burgenses, bourgeois_, “burgesses.” When the burgesses began to work for changes in the existing régime of the territory in which the town had developed, the princes and landlords to which that territory belonged naturally showed opposition. In some cases they resisted the demands of the guild, but the people were frequently induced to rebel and, by a revolutionary method, to wrest from their overlords the rights they demanded. In most cases the princes recognized the justice of the claims and granted the burgesses a new law, better suited to the needs of commerce and industry. This new law, the city law, different from the feudal law and the law of the manor, was called _Keure_ in Flemish, _charte de commune_ in French. It contained the political, social, and financial privileges granted by the landlord and the prince to the burgesses. When the city law was granted, the commune came into existence. One of the most important privileges of the commune was a special tribunal, called _échevinage, schepenhank_, composed of citizens and presided over by an officer appointed by the lord. The commune possessed political and judicial autonomy and its inhabitants were personally free. A man from a neighboring country or a foreigner who had dwelt in the city for one year and one day became a burgess and enjoyed all the privileges of citizenship. Although politically autonomous, the commune still owed certain obligations to its lord. These were mainly an oath of allegiance and the duty of assisting the lord with its army of citizens. This latter duty sometimes created curious situations. At the battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302, when King Philip IV of France was defeated by the Flemish communists, the inhabitants of Louvain fought on the side of the French King against their Flemish brethren, because their lord, the Duke of Brabant, was a partisan of Philip.