One of the most famous privileges won by the people during the communal struggles of the fourteenth century is that called the Joyeuse Entrée of Brabant (1354-56). According to the stipulations of that charter of liberty, the territory of the duchy was to remain undivided and undiminished; the seven important cities of Brabant were to keep in their common possession the documents containing the municipal liberties; no offensive war was to be waged, no treaty concluded, no inch of territory ceded, no coin made, without the consent of the subjects. Commerce was to be free, and only legal taxes were to be imposed. The Duke undertook to care for the safety of the roads, to protect his people from arrest in foreign countries, to keep peace between the Rhine and the Meuse, and to respect the treaties concluded with Flanders and Liège. No native of Brabant might prosecute a fellow-countryman before a foreign court. The Duke himself was to be subject to the laws of the duchy. A comparison of the political situation, as revealed by privileges like these, with the tyranny of the princes in feudal times, brings into a strong light all that was achieved, in point of view of freedom and liberty, by the communes of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The development of civic freedom and the spirit of democracy, such as we have described, in Flanders, Brabant, and Liège, did not exist, however, in the same measure in all the principalities of Belgium. They were the pride only of those regions where industrial and economic conditions had created the necessary basis for such developments. In the more agricultural regions of the country they were less in evidence or were introduced much later, and they did not make so deep an impression on the life of the people. Luxemburg, for example, was a very large province, but not thickly populated. It was far removed from the large rivers, while the hills and forests made communication very difficult. In the rocky lines the manors of the robber barons were built, and those watched the passing convoys of merchantmen and attacked them frequently. The historian Froissart depicts very realistically the aspect of the country. Speaking of the passing of the French troops through Luxemburg in 1388, he says: Two thousand workmen were sent ahead through the forests of Chimay and Neufchateau, in order to clear the way for the troops and to construct a road for the passage of the 1,200 carts of the army. When it had passed the picturesque convent of Orval, the army encountered severe difficulties: it advanced only two miles a day toward Bastogne, through the passes of the Ardennes, infested by savage animals and inhabited only by some colliers. The passage became even more difficult in October, when the rivers overflowed from the rain, when the rocks were slippery and the roads impassable. The barons of the Ardennes took advantage of it for attacking the convoys and pillaging the train.