to the councils of the duchy; and when it was contemplated to invade England, the Duke William (Fig. 35) found support from the middle class, both in money and men. The case was the same in Flanders, where the towns of Ghent (Fig. 36), of Bruges, of Ypres, after being enfranchised but a short time developed with great rapidity. But in the other counties of western France, the greater part of the towns were still much oppressed by the counts and bishops. If some obtained certain franchises, these privileges were their ultimate ruin, owing to the ill faith of their nobles. A town between the Loire and the Seine gave the signal which caused the regeneration of the North. The inhabitants of Mans formed a community or association, and took an oath that they would obtain and maintain certain rights. They rebelled about 1070, and forced the count and his noble vassals to grant them the freedom which they had sworn to obtain, though William of Normandy very soon restored the rebel city to order, and dissolved the presumptuous community. However, the example soon bore fruit. Cambrai rose in its turn and proclaimed the "Commune," and although its bishop, aided by treason and by the Count of Hainault, reduced it to obedience, it only seemed to succumb for a time, to renew the struggle with greater success at a subsequent period. [Illustration: Fig. 36.--Civic Guard of Ghent (Brotherhood of St. Sebastian), from a painting on the Wall of the Chapel of St. John and St. Paul, Ghent, near the Gate of Bruges.] We have just mentioned the Commune; but we must not mistake the true meaning of this word, which, under a Latin form (_communitas_), expresses originally a Germanic idea, and in its new form a Christian mode of living. Societies of mutual defence, guilds, &c., had never disappeared from Germanic and Celtic countries; and, indeed, knighthood itself was but a brotherhood of Christian warriors. The societies of the _Paix de Dieu_, and of the _Trève de Dieu_, were encouraged by the clergy in order to stop the bloody quarrels of the nobility, and formed in reality great religious guilds. This idea of a body of persons taking some common oath to one another, of which feudalism gave so striking an example, could not fail to influence the minds of the rustics and the lower classes, and they only wanted the opportunity which the idea of the Commune at once gave them of imitating their superiors.