Vassals of the same suzerain, residing in the same territory, and possessing fiefs of a similar value, were termed _pairs_ (_pares_), or equals. Suzerains of every rank, the king included, had their _pairs_, and all could claim the privilege of being tried by these _pairs_ in the presence of his immediate seignior. If the seignior refused to act justly, and the vassal considered himself unrighteously condemned, he had the right of making an appeal in _default of justice_ to the suzerain of his own seignior. Another right of appeal, that of arms, prevailed also in feudal society. The nobles, as a rule, preferred to carry out their own justice rather than await from others a slow and uncertain decision. This was the cause of there being so many little wars and so many desperate and bloody struggles between different seigniorships. Might made right; but custom, nevertheless, to some extent regulated the formalities that preceded these internecine conflicts, so that the seignior or the vassal who was to be attacked might be forearmed, and might put himself upon his guard (Figs. 14 and 15). Further, to remedy as much as possible the calamities ensuing from these perpetual contentions, the Church had the power of suspending and preventing them, under pain of excommunication, from sunset on Wednesday to sunrise on Monday during the festivals of Lent and Advent, and at all periods of high religious solemnity. This was the _Peace_ or the _Truce_ of God. [Illustration: Fig. 14.--Château de la Panouze (Aveyron), type of a French Feudal Castle of the Fourteenth Century, of which remains still exist.--From a Miniature in a Manuscript in the National Library of Paris.] The seigniors possessed no right of uniform justice. In France, a superior, a middle, and an inferior judicial court were recognised. The first alone possessed the power of life and death. The more considerable fiefs had usually attached to them the right to exercise the highest justice, but there were exceptions to this rule. A _vavasseur_, for instance, might sometimes appeal against this highest justice, while a seignior, who was only entitled to exercise the inferior justiciary rights, might inflict death on all robbers caught _in flagrante delicto_ on his lands. [Illustration: Fig. 15.--View overlooking the Castle of Pierrefonds (beginning of the Fifteenth Century), as restored by M. Viollet-le-Duc, in his “Dictionnaire d’Architecture.”] The privilege of coining money, always a sure index of sovereignty, together with the exclusion of all foreign jurisdiction and of all external authority from the area of each fief, also constituted two important prerogatives. Finally, the fief, with its privileges, always remained intact; it passed invariably to the eldest of the family, on the sole condition of his paying homage to the suzerain.