The history of France presents but one period of greater horror than that of the Free Companies--namely, the epoch of the wars of religion. But practically these latter wars were the outcome of the former. For three hundred years the barons and the great seigneurs of Aquitaine had been free to act in accordance with their passions, uncontrolled by any hand. They had made war against each other on no provocation; they had made the cities and commercial towns their common prey. The only possible way in which a community of peaceful citizens or of villagers could struggle on was by contracting patis or compacts with the barons, whereby they undertook to pay them an annual sum, and on this agreement were freed from vexation by his armed men. The younger sons of the barons, and bastards, collected about them the scum of society, runaway serfs, escaped felons, adventurers from Spain, from Brabant, from Italy, but chiefly Gascons, drilled them, armed them, maintained them in strict discipline, captured such castles as seemed to them most advisable centres as dominating fertile districts, or else constructed others wherever was a rock that lent itself to defence; and thence they carried their arms in all directions. They came in torrents down from the Causses and the Cevennes upon Languedoc. They ravaged Auvergne, they carried their incursions into Berry and the Limousin. The king of France, the estates of the several provinces, were powerless to rid the country of them. Again and again vast sums of money were collected and poured into their bottomless purses, and the Companions promised on receipt of these sums to surrender their castles and quit the country. But very generally they only half-fulfilled their undertaking. They yielded up a fortress or two; they drifted off over the Pyrenees into Spain, or over the Alps into Italy, and not finding there the spoil they wanted, or meeting there with reverses, they turned their faces again toward France and reoccupied their old nests or constructed fresh ones, and all the old evils returned in aggravated form. The mediæval historian Villani, who died in 1363, gives an account of the formation of one of these terrible bands, which may serve as an example of the constitution of all. He says that in 1353 a knight of St. John of Jerusalem, wearied of his order and its discipline, renounced his vows and formed a Company of Free Companions in the marches of Ancona.