exerted themselves to escape by reciprocal violence from intolerable
suffering. Thence date those alternations of demagogic revolt and
tyrannical suppression which have so often ensanguined the land and put
in peril the very foundations of social order. Insurrections became of
so atrocious a kind that the atrocious chastisements with which they were
visited seemed equally natural and necessary. It needed long ages, a
repetition of civil wars and terrible political shocks, to put an end to
this brutal chaos which gave birth to so many evils and reciprocal
crimes, and to bring about, amongst the different classes of the French
population, equitable and truly human relations.

So quick-spreading and contagious is evil amongst men, and so difficult
to extirpate in the name of justice and truth!

However, even in the midst of this cruel egotism and this gross unreason
of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the necessity, from a moral and
social point of view, of struggling against such disgusting
irregularities, made itself felt, and found zealous advocates. From this
epoch are to be dated the first efforts to establish, in different parts
of France, what was called God's peace, God's truce. The words were well
chosen for prohibiting at the same time oppression and revolt, for it
needed nothing less than law and the voice of God to put some restraint
upon the barbarous manners and passions of men, great or small, lord or
peasant. It is the peculiar and glorious characteristic of Christianity
to have so well understood the primitive and permanent evil in human
nature that it fought against all the great iniquities of mankind and
exposed them in principle, even when, in point of general practice, it
neither hoped nor attempted to sweep them away. Bishops, priests, and
monks were, in their personal lives and in the councils of the Church,
the first propagators of God's peace or truce, and in more than one
locality they induced the laic lords to follow their lead. In 1164, Hugh
II., count of Rodez, in concert with his brother Hugh, bishop of Rodez,
and the notables of the district, established the peace in the diocese of
Rodez; "and this it is," said the learned Benedictines of the eighteenth
century, in the Art of Verifying Dates, "which gave rise to the toll of
_commune paix_ or _pesade,_ which is still collected in Rouergue." King
Robert always showed himself favorable to this pacific work; and he is
the first amongst