As the corrective of the violences of feudal licentiousness, no where was chivalry more required, and no where was it less known than in Germany. It is not possible to exaggerate the enormities of the nobility, and, I fear, of the clergy, during all that long tract of time which is called the age of chivalry. Each castle was a den of thieves; and an archbishop thought he had a fair revenue before him, when he built his fortress on the junction of four roads.[218] To preserve the people from the rapaciousness and cruelty of these noble and clerical robbers, knights-errant sometimes scoured the plain; but this mode of corrective was very imperfectly applied. It was in the cities and towns, which were protected by the Emperors, that the oppressed and injured people found refuge. While the German historians seldom mention the protecting influence of knight-errantry, they constantly represent the benefit of towns, and press the fact upon the readers, that it was the tyranny of the nobles which occasioned their growth. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there were confederacies among towns, and confederacies among the nobility: the former associations were formed in order to repel the aggressions of the latter. This is a feature in German history totally unknown to other countries of the great republic of Europe, and distinct from all chivalric origin or chivalric effects. [Sidenote: A remarkable exception to this.] Except in the occasional adventurousness of knights-errant, chivalry was but once concerned in repressing the evils of the time, and interwoven with the interesting circumstances of that occasion is one of the most amusing stories in all the long annals of knighthood. The citizens, in conveying their merchandizes from one place to another, suffered dreadfully from the rapine of the barons; and finding the weapons used by common people were an insufficient protection, they wisely and boldly armed themselves in the manner of their enemies. They wielded the lance and sword, rode the heavy war-horse, practised tournaments and other martial games, and even attended tournaments in castles and courts; assuming for the occasion the armorial distinctions of noble families who were distant from the scene. So much did this state of citizenship resemble that of knighthood, that all the castles on the Rhine were not inhabited by barons and knights only. [Sidenote: A female tournament.]