shall all be hung on the battlements."
The siege commenced, and did not at first seem to favour the English, for
the besieged made a noble stand. One evening, as his troops were
assaulting the place, in order to witness the scene, Richard was sitting
at a short distance on a piece of rock, protected with a target--that is,
a large shield covered with leather and blades of iron--which two archers
held over him. Impatient to see the result of the assault, Richard pushed
down the shield, and that moment decided his fate (1199). An archer of
Chalus, who had recognised him and was watching from the top of the
rampart, sent a bolt from a crossbow, which hit him full in the chest. The
wound, however, would perhaps not have been mortal, but, shortly after,
having carried the place by storm, and in his delight at finding the
treasure almost intact, he gave himself up madly to degrading orgies,
during which he had already dissipated the greater part of his treasure,
and died of his wound twelve days later; first having, however, graciously
pardoned the bowman who caused his death.

The right of shipwrecks, which the nobles of seaboard countries rarely
renounced, and of which they were the more jealous from the fact that they
had continually to dispute them with their vassals and neighbours, was the
pitiless and barbaric right of appropriating the contents of ships
happening to be wrecked on their shores.

[Illustration: Figs. 24 and 25.--Varlet or Squire carrying a Halberd with
a thick Blade; and Archer, in Fighting Dress, drawing the String of his
Crossbow with a double-handled Winch.--From the Miniatures of the
"Jouvencel," and the "Chroniques" of Froissart, Manuscripts of the
Fifteenth Century (Imperial Library of Paris).]

When the feudal nobles granted to their vassals the right of assembling on
certain days, in order to hold fairs and markets, they never neglected to
reserve to themselves some tax on each head of cattle, as well as on the
various articles brought in and put up for sale. As these fairs and
markets never failed to attract a great number of buyers and sellers, this
formed a very lucrative tax for the noble (Fig. 26).

[Illustration: Fig. 26.--Flemish Peasants at the Cattle Market.--Miniature
of the "Chroniques de Hainaut." Manuscripts of the Fifteenth Century, vol.
ii. fol. 204 (Library of the Dukes of Burgundy, Brussels).]

The right of _marque_, or reprisal, was a most barbarous custom. A famous
example