a magistracy of their own; it was thus that the innate power of the people revealed itself: the towns and the boroughs were peopled with inhabitants who held their homes in tenure from the seigniors--who were the proprietors of the soil--under certain servile obligations as to the payment of taxes. As soon as the establishment of the hierarchy of fiefs had put an end to discord and anarchy, the germs of the Great Revolution--destined to restore civil liberty to the heirs of the countless inhabitants whom the misfortunes of Gaul and the tyranny of the emperors had reduced to servitude--began to show themselves. It was in this wise that the communal movement originated, and the town of Mans is generally credited with having been the first to set the example of having, through the agency of the working classes, conspired against the seignior. We find in the annals of Metz, about the year 1098, record of the election for life of a _maître-échevin_ (high-sheriff), named Millon, in place of one, by name Hennolu-Bertin, who had been elected for one year, but who, doubtless, was not the first in his office. And we find an echevinal council, termed the council of the twelve, enjoying functions at once magisterial, administrative, and military. Metz possessed at the same time, by the side of their communal organization, a count of the name of Gerald, who was succeeded in 1063 by another count named Folmar. It had also a bishop, rich, powerful, firm, full of learning, named Adalbéron, a favourite both with the Pope and with the Emperor, influential enough to obtain anything, but never asking anything but what was just. It was, therefore, under the protection of the sword of the count and of the crozier of the bishop that the municipal liberties of Metz began to grow--liberties that became within a single century so developed and powerful that Bertram, another bishop of Saxon origin, undertook the task of restricting them, and endeavoured to regulate them by a charter which restored to the Church its electoral but not its governmental influence. This first communal organization, a type of many other municipalities in France and in Germany, was inaugurated without bloodshed. But this was not everywhere the case; at Cambrai, for instance, the commune was only established after a century of open warfare between the inhabitants and the bishop, their suzerain. At Laon--that ancient feudal city where the nobility and the burgesses engaged in all kinds of brigandage, where the bishop, who was a famous warrior and huntsman, was in the habit of sharing with the dignitaries of his cathedral and with the aristocracy of the town the fruit of his exactions--the commune inaugurated itself with the blood of their bishop, who was assassinated in the midst of a terrible insurrection. The towns of Amiens, of Beauvais, of Noyon, of Saint-Quentin, of Sens, of Soissons (Fig. 17), and of Vézelay, underwent nearly the