The repeated _bagaudies_ of the Gallic peasantry have been already mentioned: the next revolt was in the tenth century, when the serfs and peasants of Neustræ (Normandy) rose against the Northmen, who had just established themselves, and who tried to transform them into chattels; and another rising took place about the same time in Brittany. Beside many partial uprisings against particular strongholds or districts, the most general and most celebrated were those of the _pastouraux_, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries--one of which was directed principally against the feudalized clergy--and the repeated _jacqueries_. Indeed, during the fourteenth century, the whole of Europe might be said to be divided into two great hostile camps: the nobles with their exactions and oppressions forming one, and the laborers, peasants and serfs, resisting their oppressors with battle-axe and fire, forming the other. And thus the oppressed everywhere hewed out their path to freedom and civilization. The fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had their various revolts, sometimes evoked by governmental measures and maladministration, but far oftener stirred up by the reckless and cruel treatment of the laborer by the nobles--against whom both the law and royal authority were too often inefficient and powerless. Then came the epoch of atonement and of justice--1789-1793. Then germinated the seeds which had been sown for centuries in the social soil by the oppressors, and then, too, was gathered the bloody harvest. The present rural population or peasantry of France, the descendants of serfs and chattels, now possess the same civil and political rights as any other class in the nation--rights more ample than are enjoyed by any other peasantry in Europe. They have, of course, still to suffer various evils arising from the common imperfection of all social structures; but no special degradation is attached to their birth or their condition. The first glimpses of mental culture, in the earliest mediæval night, came from the monasteries--from monks who generally belonged to the conquered race, or sprang from chattels and serfs. Indeed, almost all the modern European civilization was elaborated in the cities by the so-called middle classes, and by peasants. Luther and Kepler were the sons of poor peasants; and the sires of the immense majority of the European middle classes, at one time or another, were chattels, serfs, or bondmen, who were for ages considered and treated as brutes by the nobles and barons. All over Europe many of the genealogies of aristocratic families ascend to slaves, serfs and villeins. XIX. BRITONS, ANGLO-SAXONS, ENGLISH. AUTHORITIES: _Domesday-book, Sharon Turner, Lappenberg, Pauli, Hallam, Brougham, Vaughan, etc._