In 1481, Louis XI began to abolish the bow and the lance in France, in so far as they applied to effective warfare. The first fire-arms had already appeared a century before, and though the _coulevrines_ and _canons à main_ were hardly efficient weapons, when compared with those of to-day, they were far more effective than the bow and arrow at a distance, or the javelin, the pike and the lance near at hand. Then developed the _arquebuse_, literally a hand-cannon, clumsy and none too sure of aim, but a fearful death-dealer if it happened to hit. The feudal lords, the seigneurs and other nobles, had the right of levying taxes upon their followers. These taxes, or _impôts_, took varying forms; such as the obligation to grind their corn at the mills of the seigneur, paying a heavy proportion of the product therefor; to press their grapes at his wine-press, and bake their bread in his ovens. At Montauban, in the Garonne, one of these old seigneurial flour mills may still be seen. The seigneurs were not ostensibly "in trade," but their control of the little affairs of the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker virtually made them so. More definite taxes--demanded in cash when the peasants could pay, otherwise in kind--were the seigneurial taxes on fires; on the right of trade (the sale of wine, bread or meat); the _vingtaine_, whereby the peasant gave up a twentieth of his produce to the seigneur; and such oddities as a tax on the first kiss of the newly married; bardage, a sort of turnpike road duty for the privilege of singing certain songs; and on all manner of foolish fancies. After the taxation by the seigneurs there came that by the clerics, who claimed their "ecclesiastical tenth," a tax which was levied in France just previous to the Revolution with more severity, even, than in Italy. Finally the people rose, and the French peasants delivered themselves all over the land to a riot of evil, as much an unlicensed tyranny as was the oppression of their feudal lords. One may thus realize the means which planted feudal France with great fortresses, châteaux and country houses, and the motives which caused their destruction to so large an extent. It was the tyranny of the master and the cruelty of the servant that finally culminated in the Revolution. Not only the petty seigneurs had been the oppressors, but the Crown, represented by the figurehead of the Bourbon king in his capital, put the pressure on the peasant folk still harder by releasing it on the nobles. The tax on the people, that great, vague, non-moving mass of the population, has ever produced the greatest revenue in France, as, presumably, it has elsewhere. In the days before the Revolution it was _le peuple_ who paid, and it was the people who paid the enormous Franco-German war indemnity in 1871.