When the feudal nobles granted to their vassals the right of assembling on certain days, in order to hold fairs and markets, they never neglected to reserve to themselves some tax on each head of cattle, as well as on the various articles brought in and put up for sale. As these fairs and markets never failed to attract a great number of buyers and sellers, this formed a very lucrative tax for the noble (Fig. 26). [Illustration: Fig. 26.--Flemish Peasants at the Cattle Market.--Miniature of the "Chroniques de Hainaut." Manuscripts of the Fifteenth Century, vol. ii. fol. 204 (Library of the Dukes of Burgundy, Brussels).] The right of _marque_, or reprisal, was a most barbarous custom. A famous example is given of it. In 1022, William the Pious, Count of Angoulême, before starting for a pilgrimage to Rome, made his three brothers, who were his vassals, swear to live in honourable peace and good friendship. But, notwithstanding their oath, two of the brothers, having invited the third to the Easter festivities, seized him at night in his bed, put out his eyes so that he might not find the way to his castle, and cut out his tongue so that he might not name the authors of this horrible treatment. The voice of God, however, denounced them, and the Count of Angoulême, shuddering with horror, referred the case to his sovereign, the Duke of Aquitaine, William IV., who immediately came, and by fire and sword exercised his right of _marque_ on the lands of the two brothers, leaving them nothing but their lives and limbs, after having first put out their eyes and cut out their tongues, so as to inflict on them the penalty of retaliation. The right of sporting or hunting was of all prerogatives that dearest to, and most valued by the nobles. Not only were the severest and even cruellest penalties imposed on "vilains" who dared to kill the smallest head of game, but quarrels frequently arose between nobles of different degrees on the subject, some pretending to have a feudal privilege of hunting on the lands of others (Fig. 27). From this tyrannical exercise of the right of hunting, which the least powerful of the nobles only submitted to with the most violent and bitter feelings, sprung those old and familiar ballads, which indicate the popular sentiment on the subject. In some of these songs the inveterate hunters are condemned, by the order of Fairies or of the Fates, either to follow a phantom stag for everlasting, or to hunt, like King Artus, in the clouds and to catch a fly every hundred years.