The economic condition of the people was far from satisfactory. Famine and pestilence claimed their victims with appalling frequency, and between 970 and 1040, forty-eight famines and plagues are known to historians; that of 1033 is recounted by the chronicler, Raoul Glaber, with details so ghastly that the heart sickens and the hand faints at their transcription. Slavery existed everywhere: it was regarded as an integral part of the divine order of things. The Church aimed at alleviating the lot of the slave, not at abolishing slavery. At a division of serfs, held in common between the priors of two abbeys in 1087, the children were shared, male and female, without any reference to their parents. Archbishops fulminated against serfs who tried to escape from their lords, quoting the words of the apostle: "Serfs be subject in all things to your masters." A serf was valued at so much money, like a horse or an ox. The serfs of the Church at Paris were sent to the law courts to give evidence for their bishop or prior, or to do battle for them in the event of a judicial duel. The freemen in the eleventh century began to rebel against fighting with a despised serf, and refused the duel, whereupon early in the next century the king and his court decided that the serfs might lawfully testify and fight against freemen, and whoso refused the trial by battle should lose his suit and suffer excommunication. The prelates exchanged serfs, used them as substitutes in times of war, allowed them to marry outside their church or abbey only by special permission and on condition that all children were equally divided between the two proprietors. If a female serf married a freeman he and their children became serfs. Serfs were only permitted to make a will by consent of their master; every favour was paid for and liberty bought at a great price. Whole _bourgades_ were often in a state of serfdom. Merchants even and artizans in towns owed part of their produce to the seigneur. In the eleventh century burgesses as well as serfs and Jews were given to churches, exchanged, sold or left in wills by their seigneurs. The story of mediæval France is the story of the efforts of serf and burgess to win their economic freedom[42] and of her kings to tame the insolence of disobedient vassals and to make their shadowy kingship a real thing. And the story of mediæval France is closed only by the great Revolution. [Illustration: HOTEL GEROUILHAC]