thorities to interfere. Lastly, these brotherhoods gave rise
to many violent quarrels, which ended in blows and too often in bloodshed,
between workmen of the same craft, who took different views on debateable
points. The decrees of parliament, the edicts of sovereigns, and the
decisions of councils, as early as at the end of the fifteenth century and
throughout the whole of the sixteenth, severely proscribed the doings of
these brotherhoods, but these interdictions were never duly and rigidly
enforced, and the authorities themselves often tolerated infractions of
the law, and thus license was given to every kind of abuse.

[Illustration: Fig. 250.--Carpenters.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the
"Chroniques de Hainaut," Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the
Burgundy Library, Brussels.]

We have frequently mentioned in the course of this volume the political
part played by the corporations during the Middle Ages. We know the active
and important part taken by trades of all descriptions, in France in the
great movement of the formation of communities. The spirit of fraternal
association which constituted the strength of the corporations (Fig. 251),
and which exhibited itself so conspicuously in every act of their public
and private life, resisted during several centuries the individual and
collective attacks made on it by craftsmen themselves. These rich and
powerful corporations began to decline from the moment they ceased to be
united, and they were dissolved by law at the beginning of the revolution
of 1789, an act which necessarily dealt a heavy blow to industry and
commerce.

[Illustration: Fig. 251.--Painting commemorative of the Union of the
Merchants of Rouen at the End of the Seventeenth Century.]

[Illustration: Fig. 252.--Banner of the Drapers of Caen.]

Taxes, Money, and Finance.

Taxes under the Roman Rule.--Money Exactions of the Merovingian
Kings.--Varieties of Money.--Financial Laws under Charlemagne.--Missi
Dominici.--Increase of Taxes owing to the Crusades.--Organization of
Finances by Louis IX.--Extortions of Philip le Bel.--Pecuniary
Embarrassaient of his Successors.--Charles V. re-establishes Order in
Finances.--Disasters of France under Charles VI., Charles VII., and
Jacques Coeur.--Changes in Taxation from Louis XI. to Francis I.--The
great Financiers.--Florimond Robertet.

If we believe Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War, the Gauls were
groaning in his t