to
royalty, the kings turned against their former allies, the middle classes,
and deprived them successively of all the prerogatives which could
prejudice the rights of the Crown.

The middle classes, it is true, acquired considerable influence afterwards
by participation in the general and provincial councils. After having
victoriously struggled against the clergy and nobility, in the assemblies
of the three states or orders, they ended by defeating royalty itself.

Louis le Gros, in whose orders the style or title of _bourgeois_ first
appears (1134), is generally looked upon as the founder of the franchise
of communities in France; but it is proved that a certain number of
communities or corporations were already formally constituted, before his
accession to the throne.

The title of bourgeois was not, however, given exclusively to inhabitants
of cities. It often happened that the nobles, with the intention of
improving and enriching their domains, opened a kind of asylum, under the
attractive title of _Free Towns_, or _New Towns_, where they offered, to
all wishing to establish themselves, lands, houses, and a more or less
extended share of privileges, rights, and liberties. These congregations,
or families, soon became boroughs, and the inhabitants, though
agriculturists, took the name of bourgeois.

[Illustration: Fig. 21.--Costume of a Vilain or Peasant, Fifteenth
Century, from a Miniature of "La Danse Macabre," Manuscript 7310 of the
National Library of Paris.]

There was also a third kind of bourgeois, whose influence on the extension
of royal power was not less than that of the others. There were free
men who, under the title of bourgeois of the King _(bourgeois du Roy_),
kept their liberty by virtue of letters of protection given them by the
King, although they were established on lands of nobles whose inhabitants
were deprived of liberty. Further, when a _vilain_--that is to say, the
serf, of a noble--bought a lease of land in a royal borough, it was an
established custom that after having lived there a year and a day without
being reclaimed by his lord and master, he became a bourgeois of the King
and a free man. In consequence of this the serfs and vilains (Fig. 21)
emigrated from all parts, in order to profit by these advantages, to such
a degree, that the lands of the nobles became deserted by all the serfs of
different degrees, and were in danger of remaining uncultivated. The
nobility, in the inte