[Illustration: Fig. 43.--Richard Cœur-de-Lion, King of England and Duke of Normandy, mortally wounded by an arrow shot by Bertrand de Gourdon, at the Siege of the Castle of Chalus, in Limousin (1199).--“Chroniques de Normandie,” Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (Library of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot).] [Illustration: Fig. 44.--Soldier of the Time of Philippe le Bel.--Miniature in a Manuscript of the Period (National Library of Paris).] [Illustration: Fig. 45.--Man-at-arms with a _pot de fer_ with nose-piece, a coat of mail over his leather tunic, and armed with a short broadsword.--From a Miniature in the “Dialogues de Saint Grégoire,” a Manuscript of the Eleventh Century, in the National Library of Paris.] While Philippe le Bel was destroying the Knights Templars, whom he held to be obstacles to his political plans, he was at the same time seeking in every way the means of restraining a haughty aristocracy, always under arms, whose systematic want of discipline was a danger both to the throne and to the country. As soon as he had obtained from the representatives of the nation, assembled together in States-General, the right to impose taxes according to the requirements of the sovereign, he set to work on the definitive organization of a permanent paid army (Fig. 44). He fixed the age of military service at eighteen, and decreed that none of his subjects, except the old and the sick, should be exempt from it, unless they paid a certain sum to the royal treasury, and supplied, according to their rank and means, one or more substitutes (decree of 1302, 1303, 1306) to serve under the flag of the _ost_ of the king (Fig. 46). Till that time, military service had only been obligatory for forty consecutive days, or, at the most, for three months. This service was, indeed, often of less duration, according to the different degree of infeudation of any particular fief, and was hedged about, besides, with so many privileges and with so many exemptions, that if a feudal army did not succeed in bringing a short campaign to a prosperous issue, it generally met with a fatal collapse. In accordance with this design, Philippe le Bel, at the opening of the Flemish campaign, summoned “for four months to his standards, archbishops, bishops, abbots, dukes, counts, barons, and other nobles, all liable to the ban,” each of whom could claim pay at the rate of twelve deniers (about four francs) a day, besides a sum of thirty sous (about thirty francs) for their equipment. Philippe le Long (1314) and Philippe de Valois 1337–1340) continued and improved the work of Philippe le Bel. Thenceforward, the _ost_ or army of the king was regularly established; the cross-bowmen and the men-at-arms were the first corps who received a permanent organization and a fixed rate of pay. [Illustration: Fig. 46.--Messenger bringing a Letter to the King’s Army.--From a Manuscript in the National Library of Paris (Thirteenth Century).]