A period of comparative quiet ensued under the administration of Charles the Wise, who summoned the States-General to meet at Chartres, and entrusted the patriotism of this and other principal towns with the task of raising forces to deal with the roving bands of freebooters which, under the name of _grandes compagnies_, swarmed over the country. The campaigns conducted by Duguesclin against the English in the south left Chartres undisturbed. She devoted herself to the restoration of order, the enforcement of law, and the strengthening of her wall. One little incident will show the progress which, in spite of war, and impositions of every sort, had been made since the high days of feudalism. The house of one Guillaume Morhier, knight and seigneur of S. Piat, was forcibly entered by some bailiffs, who were charged to distrain upon him for the benefit of a horse-dealer. Morhier’s daughter, when the chief official was preparing to read his warrant to her, snatched the paper out of his hands, and for this offence was roughly seized and, in spite of her protests, dragged on her knees across the town, as though she had been a common thief or murderess, and committed to prison in the Tour-le-Roi. She was thrown into the cells used for women of loose life. It was with the utmost difficulty that the unfortunate girl regained her liberty, after two friends had appeared to go bail for her. Intense indignation was aroused by this high-handed behaviour on the part of the officials. For the Morhier family was one of the most important in the district. The bailiffs, after a formal investigation of the case, lasting over two years, were condemned to make full apology, and pay a heavy fine. But the mere fact that Morhier did not, without trial, hang then and there the servant of the law who had presumed to raise his hand against his high-born daughter is significant of the advance that had been made in the last two hundred years.