In mediæval France during the endless wars, and the brief intervals between them, the roads were held by plundering brigands: labourers or knights by birth. Soldiers, the dregs of the lowest or highest classes, considered the rest of society as their devoted prey, the highway resounded with the noise of arms, the peasant fled. Troops originally equipped for the defence of the land attacked without scruple all whom they thought less strong than themselves and worth robbing. Such people “turned French,” as Froissart puts it, and “turned English” according to the interest of the moment. The vagrants threatened with the stocks by the English law were of another kind, and whatever the number of brigands among them these were not the majority; the peasants mostly sympathized with, instead of fearing, them. Thus the English revolt was not a desperate enterprise; it was conducted with extraordinary coolness and practical sense. The insurgents showed a calm {280} consciousness of their strength which strikes us, and struck much more the anxious knights in London; they went with their eyes open, and, if they destroyed much, they wished also to reform. It was possible to treat and come to an understanding with them; truth to say, the word and pledge given them will be broken, and the prison, the rope and the block will quickly put an end to the revolt; but whatever the Lords and Commons sitting at Westminster may say,[383] the new bonds will not have the tenacity of the old ones, and a great step towards freedom, one with which the continent has nothing comparable, will have been made. In France, the beast of burden, ill-nourished, ill-treated, fretted by the harness, trudged wearily along with shaking head, wan eye and a halting gait; his sudden bolts only caused new loads to be added to his fardel, and that was all; centuries were to pass before the day of accounting came and, in blood too, the account would be settled. {281} PART III _RELIGIOUS WAYFARERS_ {283} [Illustration 54. A FRIAR ON A JOURNEY (CHAUCER’S “FRERE”). (_From the Ellesmere MS._)] CHAPTER I WANDERING PREACHERS AND FRIARS