_, the _fouage_, and the various
fees for wine-pressing, grinding, baking, &c., all of which were payable
without prejudice to the tithes due to the King and the Church. However,
as the royal tithe was hardly ever paid, the kings were obliged to look to
other means for replenishing their treasuries; and coining false money was
a common practice. Unfortunately each great vassal vied with the kings in
this, and to such an extent, that the enormous quantity of bad money
coined during the ninth century completed the public ruin, and made this a
sad period of social chaos. The freeman was no longer distinguishable from
the villain, nor the villain from the serf. Serfdom was general; men found
themselves, as it were, slaves, in possession of land which they laboured
at with the sweat of their brow, only to cultivate for the benefit of
others. The towns even--with the exception of a few privileged cities, as
Florence, Paris, Lyons, Rheims, Metz, Strasburg, Marseilles, Hamburg,
Frankfort, and Milan--were under the dominion of some ecclesiastical or
lay lord, and only enjoyed liberty of a more or less limited character.

Towards the end of the eleventh century, under Philip I., the enthusiasm
for Crusades became general, and, as all the nobles joined in the holy
mission of freeing the tomb of Jesus Christ from the hands of the
infidels, large sums of money were required to defray the costs. New taxes
were accordingly imposed; but, as these did not produce enough at once,
large sums were raised by the sale of some of the feudal rights. Certain
franchises were in this way sold by the nobles to the boroughs, towns, and
abbeys, though, in not a few instances, these very privileges had been
formerly plundered from the places to which they were now sold. Fines were
exacted from any person declining to go to Palestine; and foreign
merchants--especially the Jews--were required to subscribe large sums. A
number of the nobles holding fiefs were reduced to the lowest expedients
with a view to raising money, and even sold their estates at a low price,
or mortgaged them to the very Jews whom they taxed so heavily. Every town
in which the spirit of Gallo-Roman municipality was preserved took
advantage of these circumstances to extend its liberties. Each monarch,
too, found this a favourable opportunity to add new fiefs to the crown,
and to recall as many great vassals as possible under his dominion. It
was at this period that communities arose,