establishment of 1128. Bishop Roger, however, did not hold himself
beaten. He claimed the help of the lords his neighbors, and renewed the
war against the burghers of Laon, who, on their side, asked and obtained
the aid of several communes in the vicinity. In an access of democratic
rashness, instead of awaiting within their walls the attack of their
enemies, they marched out without cavalry to the encounter, ravaging as
they went the lands of the lords whom they suspected of being
ill-disposed towards them; but on arriving in front of the bishop's
allies, "all this rustic multitude," says the canon-chronicler, "terror-
stricken at the bare names of the knights they found assembled, took
suddenly to flight, and a great number of the burghers were massacred
before reaching their city." Louis the Young then took the field to help
them; but Baldwin, Count of Hainault, went to the aid of the Bishop of
Laon with seven hundred knights and several thousand infantry. King
Louis, after having occupied and for some time held in sequestration the
lands of the bishop, thought it advisable to make peace rather than
continue so troublesome a war, and at the intercession of the pope and
the Count of Hainault he restored to Roger de Rosoy his lands and his
bishopric on condition of living in peace with the commune. And so long
as Louis VII. lived, the bishop did refrain from attacking the liberties
of the burghers of Laon; but at the king's death, in 1180, he applied to
his successor, Philip Augustus, and offered to cede to him the lordship
of Fere-sur-Oise, of which he was the possessor, provided that Philip by
charter abolished the commune of Laon. Philip yielded to the temptation,
and in 1190 published an ordinance to the following purport: "Desiring to
avoid for our soul every sort of danger, we do entirely quash the commune
established in the town of Laon as being contrary to the rights and
liberties of the metropolitan church of St. Mary, in regard for justice
and for the sake of a happy issue to the pilgrimage which we be bound to
make to Jerusalem." But next year, upon entreaty and offers from the
burghers of Laon, Philip changed his mind, and without giving back the
lordship of Fere-sur-Oise to the bishop, guaranteed and confirmed in
perpetuity the peace-establishment granted in 1128 to the town of Laon,
"on the condition that every year at the feast of All Saints they shall
pay to us and our successors two hundred livre