Charters of the sort were usually granted by the lord, not merely because requested by the burghers, but because they were paid for and constituted a valuable source of revenue. Not infrequently, however, a charter was wrested from an unwilling lord through open warfare. It was in the first half of the twelfth century that town charters became common. As a rule they were obtained by the larger towns (it should be borne in mind that a population of 10,000 was large in the twelfth century), but not necessarily so, for many villages of two or three hundred people secured them also. The two great classes of towns were the _villes libres_ (free towns) and the _villes franches_, or _villes de bourgeoisie_ (franchise, or chartered, towns). The free towns enjoyed a large measure of independence. In relation to their lords they occupied essentially the position of vassals, with the legislative, financial, and judicial privileges which by the twelfth century all great vassals had come to have. The burghers elected their own officers, constituted their own courts, made their own laws, levied taxes, and even waged war. The leading types of free cities were the communes of northern France (governed by a provost and one or more councils, often essentially oligarchical) and the consulates of southern France and northern Italy (distinguished from the communes by the fact that the executive was made up of "consuls," and by the greater participation of the local nobility in town affairs). A typical free town of the commune type, was Laon, in the region of northern Champagne. In 1109 the bishop of Laon, who was lord of the city, consented to the establishment of a communal government. Three years later he sought to abolish it, with the result that an insurrection was stirred up in which he lost his life. King Louis VI. intervened and the citizens were obliged to submit to the authority of the new bishop, though in 1328 fear of another uprising led this official to renew the old grant. The act was ratified by Louis VI. in the text (a) given below.