Difference of condition thus became an impediment to the duel, and formed the subject of many regulations, varying with circumstance and locality. The free mountaineers of Béarn, as has been seen, placed the prince and the subject on an equality before the law, but this was a rare example of independence, and the privileges of station were sometimes exhibited in their most odious form. In France, for instance, while the battle trial could take place between the gentilhomme and the _vilain_, the former was secured by the distinction that if the villein presumed to challenge him, he enjoyed the right of fighting on horseback with knightly weapons, while the challenger was on foot and armed only with shield and staff; but if the gentleman condescended to challenge the villein, they met on equal terms.[445] This last regulation was enforced with impartial justice, for Beaumanoir mentions a case in which a gentleman challenged a roturier, and presented himself in the lists mounted and armed with his knightly weapons. The defendant protested against this illegal advantage, and the judges decided that the gentleman had forfeited his horse and arms, and that if he desired to continue the combat he must do so in the condition in which he was left by the disarmament—in his shirt without armor or weapons, while his adversary should retain coat of mail, target, and club.[446] The barbarous injustice of the general rule, moreover, was by no means of universal application. Pierre de Fontaines, for instance, directs that in cases of appeal from a roturier to a gentleman the combat shall take place on foot between champions;[447] and I find a case recorded in 1280, in which a _femme de corps_ of Aimeri de Rochechouart accused the Sire de Montricher of burning her houses, and as the duel was adjudged she placed in the lists an armed and mounted knight as her champion, to whom no objection seems to have been made.[448]