Indeed, the further they went the more the revolution they undertook lost its general character. The provincial deputies separated from their constituents lost their enthusiasm, while the commune of Paris, never away from their own hearths, remained numerous, ardent, and popular. The states-general, jealous of the commune’s influence, permitted itself in part to be removed to Compiègne by the dauphin. The nobles gathered about the prince. He had seven thousand lances with whom he lived freely on the country between the Seine and the Marne, ravaging the whole land as far as Paris, which was suffering from famine. This maddened the peasantry of the Beauvoisis, of Brie, of Valois, Laon, and Soissons.[f] THE _JACQUERIE_ (1358 A.D.) It is quite unnecessary to lay stress upon the sufferings of the villeins here. The days were no more, as we have seen, when the lords of the manor, although they considered themselves of different clay from their serfs, defended them at the peril of their lives. Of the feudal institutions, nothing remained but the oppression. Ruined by the love of luxury, by gambling, by debauchery, by the necessity of paying a heavy ransom--preferring to run into debt rather than to impose privations upon themselves, and to wrest from those around them by means of blows, imprisonment, or the pillory the miserable savings they had laid by for bad times rather than to pay their debts, which would have prevented their contracting new ones--they used and abused the right to command so far as to make all testaments, all marrying, on their estates, dependent on their express permission. They even scoffed at their victims, giving them the name of “Jacques Bonhomme” in derision, on account of their awkwardness in carrying weapons, and of their patience in enduring all things. “Save a villain from hanging, he’ll cut your throat; show a villain the steel, and he kneels,” says a proverb of these times (_Oignez vilain, il vous poindra: poignez vilain, il vous oindra_).