real royal authority, of great
barons like the Sires de Coucy bent on getting a complete local
independence of any central government, and of the people of the
communes, who very early saw their own game as between the Church, the
barons, and the king, and played it here, as in so many other places,
with most respectable skill and success. There is a picturesque story of
Pope Benedict VIII., who held a council at Laon, going from Laon to view
the episcopal chateau at Anizy, with a _cortege_ of cardinals and
bishops, and on the way springing down nimbly from his horse to rescue
the bishop of Cambray, obviously a prelate of much weight, under whom a
little bridge gave way as they were crossing the river Lette. This was
in the year 1018. A century later, in 1110, Gandri, bishop of Laon,
summoned John Comte de Soissons, Robert II. Comte de Flandre, and
Enguerrand I. Sire de Coucy, the three loftiest and lordliest personages
then of this part of the world, to a conference at his chateau in Anizy,
there to fix and define where the authority of the Sire de Coucy ended
and that of the bishops of Laon began. In 1210 the burgh of Anizy became
a free commune and elected its first mayor. The next year its seigneur,
Robert de Chatillon, bishop-duke of Laon, at his own cost fortified the
place with walls and towers, and did this so well that three years
afterwards Enguerrand III. de Coucy, just then the most masterful person
in all this part of France, thought it wise to treat with the
bishop-duke as to their respective rights of ownership in the adjoining
forest of Roncelais. They agreed so perfectly that the formidable lord
of Coucy immediately afterwards did the bishop-duke and the people of
Anizy the notable service of leading a band of his retainers against a
company of brigands who were burning lonely farmhouses and carrying off
the crops.

Having got their mayor and their walls and their towers, the burghers of
Anizy took to quarrelling with the bishop-dukes of Laon, and so got
their communal rights suppressed by one of those prelates in 1230, only
to see them re-established again half a century later in 1278, by
another bishop-duke, Geoffroi de Beaumont, who made a compromise with
his troublesome vassals, reserving only to himself the right to nominate
the officers of justice. The king of France, Philippe le Hardi, be it
observed, took sides with the burghers in this affair, and they raised a
monument to him in 1293.

This,