There existed in Germany at that time two kinds of leagues between the nobility, the one offensive and the other defensive; that of the _Gauerbinate_ or _Gauerbschaften_, by virtue of which the petty nobility formed family pacts for transmitting their fiefs by indirect line when the direct line should fail, and for reconstructing or repairing their castles out of a common fund; and that of the _Teutonic Hanse_, the league of the prince-archbishops and electors with sixty towns upon the Rhine. Rodolph of Hapsburg (Fig. 30), a monarch as resolute as he was able, put a stop to proceedings which were full of danger to the imperial authority, compelled his vassals to do him homage, and razed to the ground seventy fortresses whose feudal brigandage had scattered desolation and ruin; but, after his death, the usurpation of the suzerain lords began afresh, and the _Bulle d’Or_, which was the basis of public right in Germany, confirmed the downfall of the imperial suzerainty (1378). [Illustration: Fig. 30.--Equestrian Stone Statue of Rodolph of Hapsburg, Emperor of Germany, by Erwin de Steinbach, placed above the Grand Portal of Strasburg Cathedral (Thirteenth Century).] [Illustration: Fig. 31.--Maximilian of Austria, with Mary of Burgundy, his wife, only daughter of Charles the Bold, and their young son Philip, afterwards King of Castile.--“Abridged Chronicles of Burgundy,” Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Library of M. Ambroise-Firmin Didot.] In France, on the other hand, as each convocation of the States-General was attended with the creation or levying of some new tax, the third estate attempted to exact all the more from royalty in proportion as it gratified the latter’s pecuniary demands, claiming to have a voice in the question of peace or war, to direct the financial affairs of the kingdom, to be convoked every year, and to share, with the two other orders, the weight of the charges the profit of which ought to be shared by all. The feudal nobility resisted the exorbitant pretensions of the third estate, but when they saw this class forming a secret alliance with the clergy, and setting on foot a formidable league, the password of which was the destruction of the castles and the annihilation of the nobles, they hesitated, and did nothing until the horrible excesses committed by the league in the country districts had given the feudal reaction a character of legality. In 1383, after the battle of Rosebecque, which inflicted a heavy blow upon the communal cause in Flanders and in France, it seemed as if the power of suzerainty was about to revive once more. Froissart, in his Chronicles, rejoiced at this fact, because he believed that social order was threatened with utter ruin (see his Chronicles, year 1383); but French chivalry succumbed in its turn at Agincourt beneath the onslaught of the English archers. This was the final condemnation of feudal armies,