But by far the greater number of the infant communes were sunk in poverty, and so overwhelmed with dues and taxes that they had no margin for communal buildings.
In the fourteenth century even the commune of Paris could boast only the most modest of town-halls. In 1357 Étienne Marcel, provost of the merchants, bought from the collector of the salt-tax a small two-gabled building which adjoined several private dwellings. We may, therefore, conclude that down to this period the town-hall was in nowise distinguished from an ordinary habitation.
At the close of the century Caen possessed a town-hall of four stories.
During the thirteenth century many new towns and communes had been founded by the Crown, the nobles, and the clergy, the depositaries of power in the Middle Ages.
In the North, Villeneuve le Roi, Villeneuve le Comte, and Villeneuve l'Archevêque owed their existence, material and communal, to these powers respectively.
In the South the war of the Albigenses had devastated and even destroyed many cities. The authorities recognised the necessity of repeopling the districts so cruelly decimated. The great nobles, spiritual and temporal, reconcentrated the scattered population by grants of lands for the building of new towns, and sought to establish them permanently by apparently liberal concessions in the form of communal franchises.
According to Caumont and Anthyme St. Paul, these new towns or bastides may be identified by their names, or by their regularity of plan, or by both combined.
Certain names indicate a royal foundation or dependency, as Réalville or Monréal; others point to privileges conferred on the town, as Bonneville, La Sauvetat, Sauveterre, Villefranche, or even La Bastide, and Villeneuve.
