The popular government of 1357 unfortunately did not have in its bosom sufficient harmony, strength, and experience to maintain the important conquest the people had just made. Moreover its situation was one of the most difficult; its credit was shaken by King John, who from his prison forbade the states-general to assemble and the people to pay the taxes they themselves had voted. The rural committees were in the most deplorable state. Overburdened by taxes, by the heavy ransoms which their captive lords extracted by torture, the peasants could no longer cultivate a land that had moreover been ravaged in the war. They developed into vagabonds and preferred to become the accomplices rather than victims of the bands of discharged soldiers from every country, which the war had left upon French soil.[f] In the fourteenth century the name brigand was given to this licensed soldiery, nearly all of whom, as we are aware, fought on foot, and were, as a general rule, but slenderly equipped; they carried, as a part of their equipment, a small fine coat of mail, which took its name of brigantine from them. The pay of the mercenaries being stopped in time of truce or between the different expeditions, they turned to the daily practice of rapine and plunder for their means of subsistence, which brought them in more than their pay. A crowd of adventurers and loafers joined forces with them, among the number being many noblemen. As to the rest, the following passage from Froissart[g] sets forth vividly the methods by which the brigands carried on their terrible profession: [Illustration: A FRENCH NOBLEMAN OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY] “And the poor brigands always succeeded in sacking and pillaging towns and castles, and got thence such wealth as was marvellous, and some of them became rich, especially those who had made themselves leaders and captains of other brigands; there were among them some who even had as much as forty thousand crowns. Indeed and in truth right marvellous were the things they did. When--and this happened very frequently--they espied a large town or a fine castle, distant a day’s journey or two, twenty or thirty brigands would band themselves together and travel night or day by secret ways, and just as day broke they would enter the town or castle they had descried and set fire to a house. The townspeople, fearing that an army of a thousand warriors had come to burn their town, escaped each as best he might, and the brigands sacked houses, coffers, and libraries, seizing whatsoever they could find and departing laden with booty.”