of the 11,000 devils spoken of in the time of our grandfathers.” The taxation fell very heavily on the Tiers état, and particularly upon the agricultural classes. The towns-people, the bourgeoisie, were to some degree protected by charters and privileges, and had an organization of their own by which the taxes were levied. They were exempt from foreign garrisons, elected their own officers (with the exception of the provost of the merchants), enrolled a citizen guard, and had the right to barricade the streets and shut their gates, even against the king.[183] No charters or securities guaranteed the peasant from injustice. Michieli, writing in 1561, describes the oppression in some provinces (especially in Normandy and Picardy) as so excessive, that the peasantry were forced to abandon the country.[184] The burdens were the more severe and invidious, that while the seigneurs mercilessly exacted their rents, dues, corvées, customs, etc., they contributed nothing to the state beyond what they gave of their free-will as a gift. Clergy, nobility, soldiers, members of the king’s household, and of the high courts of parliament, school-masters, officers of finance, free cities (villes de franchise) like Paris, and noble cities (villes nobles) like Troyes, were all exempt; not that they did not contribute to the revenue, but only so much as they chose to assess themselves. In the reign of Francis I. the French clergy, with the consent of the pope, agreed to pay a _décime_, or one-tenth of their revenue, which in the next reign was doubled. At Poissy, in 1561, they entered into an arrangement to pay sixteen hundred thousand livres annually, on condition of their future exemption from all other taxes. Considering that they possessed about one-third of the landed and house-property in France, this was but a small contribution to the necessities of the crown. The yearly rental of the whole kingdom has been estimated, on what are indeed very vague data, to have amounted to fifteen millions of crowns, of which six belonged to the clergy[185] and one and a half to the king. The exports of corn, wine, salt, and wood were valued at twelve millions of francs, more than Spain received from her mines of Mexico and Peru.