rect idea of the fact to which it is applied. The word revolution,
in the sense, or at least the aspect, given to it amongst us by
contemporary events, points to the overthrow of a certain regimen, and of
the ideas and authority predominant thereunder, and the systematic
elevation in their stead of a regimen essentially different in principle,
and in fact. The revolutions of our day substitute, or would fain
substitute, a republic for a monarchy, democracy for aristocracy,
political liberty for absolute power. The struggles which from the
eleventh to the fourteenth century gave existence to so many communes
had no such profound character; the populations did not pretend to any
fundamental overthrow of the regimen they attacked; they conspired
together, they swore together, as the phrase is according to the
documents of the time--they rose to extricate themselves from the
outrageous oppression and misery they were enduring, but not to abolish
feudal sovereignty and to change the personality of their masters. When
they succeeded they obtained those treaties of peace called charters,
which brought about in the condition of the insurgents salutary changes
accompanied by more or less effectual guarantees. When they failed or
when the charters were violated, the result was violent reactions, mutual
excesses; the relations between the populations and their lords were
tempestuous and full of vicissitudes; but at bottom neither the political
regimen nor the social system of the communes was altered. And so there
were, at many spots without any connection between them, local revolts
and civil wars, but no communal revolution.

One of the earliest facts of this kind which have been set forth with
some detail in history clearly shows their primitive character; a fact
the more remarkable in that the revolt described by the chroniclers
originated and ran its course in the country among peasants with a view
of recovering complete independence, and not amongst an urban population
with a view of resulting in the erection of a commune. Towards the end
of the tenth century, under Richard II., Duke of Normandy, called the
Good, and whilst the good King Robert was reigning in France, "In several
countships of Normandy," says William of Jumiege, "all the peasants,
assembling in their conventicles, resolved to live according to their
inclinations and their own laws, as well in the interior of the forests
as along the rivers, and to reck