The population of the rural districts of fourteenth-century France varied terribly according to the progress of the Hundred Years’ War. It is difficult to frame a clear idea of then and now. But from the size of the churches remaining from the thirteenth century, which are almost always in accordance with the actual population, we may suppose that the inhabitants have not increased by more than half: we must allow about that proportion, since mediæval churches, built for sanctuary, were obliged to be large enough to shelter not only all the villagers, but also their valuables, in war time. The villages which have come down to us are not immensely larger, but numerous new communes have arisen on land that was covered then by bog or forest. On the other hand, many villages called into life by the plenty and peace that followed the last Crusade of Saint Louis disappeared utterly in the long disaster of the Hundred Years’ War. The King’s tax-gatherers jolted through the country collecting the hearth-tax; again and again they found, beside the ruined steeple, a few tumbling beams, an empty stock-yard still paven; nothing more. Another village had vanished. The ordonnances of the Kings of France during the first twenty years of Charles V. are painfully eloquent of this continuous depopulation of the country. The wars against the English on the frontiers of Normandy and Gascony accomplished the same end as the cruel repression of the Peasants’ Revolt in the centre, or the sackings and plunderings of the Captains of Adventure round Rheims, round Orleans, and on the borders of Provence. I have dismissed many tragedies in a single phrase; but how in a few lines shall I indicate the terrible position of the peasants? Their grandfathers had dwelt in little hamlets almost under shelter of the town, to whose palisaded suburbs every winter they, with their families, their harvest and their furniture, thronged for asylum. Moreover, in that earlier age, ruled by firm principles still confidently trusted, the peasant was little less sacred than the priest. All classes recognized the holiness, the authority, of him who sows and reaps the grain that is the life of all. No usurer might take in pledge the ploughshare, the beasts that draw it, nor the corn as yet unthrashed. Four days a week, in war time as in peace time, from every Wednesday night till Monday at sunrise, the _Truce of God_ forbade the men-at-arms to traverse field or sheep-walk; moreover, at any time the peasant, threatened by marauders, was safe if he fled to his plough and laid his hand upon it; the man who touched the iron that furrowed the earth was inviolable, and the plough was as sure a sanctuary as the church.[47] But in the thirteenth century the rural populations, overcrowded round their district towns, pushed further and yet further out into the outlying area of moor and forest, till their clearings, far afield, were beyond reach of their earlier centre. In their new home