The right of demanding the wager of battle between principals varied much with the age and race, though as a “bilateral” ordeal, as a rule, from the earliest times either party was entitled to claim it.[390] When Beaumanoir composed his _Coutumes du Beauvoisis_, in 1283, the practice may be considered to have entered upon its decadence; twenty years had elapsed since the determined efforts of St. Louis to abolish it; substitutes for it in legal processes had been provided; and the manner in which that enlightened jurist manifests his preference for peaceful forms of law shows that he fully appreciated the civilizing spirit in which the monarch had endeavored to soften the ferocity of his subjects. When, therefore, we see in Beaumanoir’s treatise how few restrictions existed in his time, we may comprehend the previous universality of the custom. In criminal cases, if an accuser offered battle, the defendant was forced either to accept it or to confess his guilt, unless he could prove an alibi, or unless the accuser was himself notoriously guilty of the crime in question, and the accusation was evidently a mere device to shift the guilt to the shoulders of another; or unless, in case of murder, the victim had disculpated him, when dying, and had named the real criminals.[391] If, on the other hand, the accused demanded to wage his battle, the judge could only refuse it when his guilt was too notorious for question.[392] A serf could not challenge a freeman, nor a bastard a man of legitimate birth (though an appeal of battle might lie between two bastards), nor a leper a sound man.[393] In civil actions, the battle trial was not allowed in cases relating to dower, to orphans under age,[394] to guardianships, or to the equity of redemption afforded by the feudal laws to kinsmen in the sale of heritable property, or where the matter at stake was of less value than twelve deniers.[395] St. Louis also prohibited the duel between brothers in civil cases, while permitting it in criminal accusations.[396] The slenderness of these restrictions shows what ample opportunities were afforded to belligerent pleaders.[397]