One chief effect of the growing power of the French king over his nobility was the gradual breaking up of the feudal system throughout the greater part of France. Philip sent bailiffs to collect his taxes, instead of receiving them through the hands of the lords, and we may look on this as a striking sign of the changing tunes. He formed, moreover, the beginnings of a standing army. In the extreme south of France, in Aquitaine and Provence, the feudal conditions lasted longer, but there, too, feudalism was crushed out after the so-called Crusade against the Albigenses, the people of Albi in the south of France, who held certain religious views at variance with those of the Church. Moreover, they professed themselves offended by the life and manners of the monastic orders and other clerics. It was the very offence which caused the Reformation later; but these would-be reformers of Albi were too few to win success, and their so-called "heresy" was stamped out with cruel severity. The troubadours, together with the poetic language of "oc," passed away for ever with the feudal society which had made their manner of life possible. We have come to some very dark pages of our story. In the course of the perpetual fights between the feudal lords themselves, and between combinations of the lords and the king, the one side or the other, finding its own {162} forces failing, hired bands of mercenary soldiers to aid them. When the little wars were over, these hirelings got their dismissal. Perhaps they did, or perhaps they did not, get their pay. If not, they were likely to take its equivalent, and more, from any that had not the force to withstand them, and even if they were paid for past service, what were they to do on their dismissal? What they did was to wander up and down the country, offering their service to any who cared to hire it, and in the meantime supporting themselves by high-handed robbery and violence. The Scandinavian nations and the Swiss furnished most of these mercenaries, and they were the scourge and terror of all Europe in the Middle Ages. It is very largely the insecurity of life and property due to their numbers and cruelties that so darkens the record of this period of the story. This particular trouble was one from which the island position of England kept her fortunately free, but she had her own troubles, more than enough. The English barons, in their disgust at their treatment by John, had invited the son of King Philip of France to come over and claim the English throne. He actually was in England, with a French army, at the time of John's death; but a heavy defeat at Lincoln sent him home again.