Fergan knew not how long he remained in that condition. When he regained consciousness it was night. The brightness of a large number of torches struck his eye. Religious songs, repeated in chorus by thousands of voices, fell upon his ears. Flanked by two files of soldiers, who marched in measured tread with torches in their hands, he saw a long procession pass by the temple. The procession wended its way to the Mount of Golgotha, close to the Church of the Resurrection, where stood the sepulchre of Jesus. At the head of the procession triumphantly marched the legate of the Pope, Peter the Hermit and the clergy, chanting praises to the All-powerful; after them the chiefs of the Crusaders, among them William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, clad in an old sack and smiting his breast. These were followed by the train-bands of the seigneurs, together with a multitude of soldiers, men, women, children and pilgrims, singing in chorus Laudate Creator. The crowd was so numerous that when the prelates and the chiefs of the Crusade, who headed the procession, reached the front of the Church of the Resurrection, the last ranks were still crowding upon each other in the middle of the square of the mosque. Other Crusaders marched outside of the two files of torch-bearing soldiers.
When Fergan approached the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, brilliantly lighted within, he heard loud roars of laughter mingled with maudlin imprecations. The King of the Vagabonds and his band, in company with their wenches, all drunk with wine and carnage, had taken possession of the holy place, and had begun to pillage it of its ornaments. At the center of the sanctuary stood Perrette the Ribald, her hair disheveled like a Bacchante's.
PART III.
THE COMMUNE OF LAON.
CHAPTER I.
THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES.
For centuries Laon had for its temporal seigneur the bishop of the diocese, and figured from the start among the foremost cities of Picardy. Since the Frankish conquest, and down to the date of the events here narrated (1112), Laon constituted a part of the special domains of the kings. Clovis made himself master of the city through the treason of Saint Remy, who baptized that crowned bandit at Rheims. Clovis' wife, Clotilde, founded in the city the collegiate church of Saint Peter, and later Brunhild built a palace there. A bishop of Laon, Adalberon, the paramour of Queen Imma, was her accomplice in the poisoning of Lothair, the father of Louis the Indolent,—a homocidal example that was soon imitated upon himself by his Queen, Blanche, another adulterous poisoner, who, through the murder committed by her, confirmed the usurpation of Hugh Capet, to the injury of the last Carlovingian king. Charles, Duke of Lorraine, the uncle of Louis the Indolent, having become through the latter's death the heritor of the crown of the Frankish kings, took possession of Laon. Hugh Capet besieged him there, and, after several assaults, succeeded in capturing the city, thanks to the connections that Adalberon, the adulterer and poisoning bishop, had preserved in the place. Since then, Laon continued as a sovereign ecclesiastical seigniory, but always under the suzerainty of the French King. In the year 1112, the date of this narrative, the reigning king was named Louis the Lusty. As obese as, but much less indolent than his father, Philip I, the excommunicated lover of the handsome Berthrade who died in 1108, Louis the Lusty did not, like his father, submit to the affronts and vexations of the feudal seigneurs; he waged war to the knife against them to the end of extending with their spoils his own domains, that then took in only Paris, Melun, Compiegne, Etampes, Orleans, Montlhery, Puiset and Corbeil. Thus, in addition to the scourge of the private wars among the seigneurs, the people bent under the affliction of the wars of the king against the seigneurs, and of the Normans against the king. The Normans, the descendants of old Rolf the Pirate, had conquered England under their duke William. But, although settled down in that ultramarine country, the Kings of England preserved in Gaul the duchy of Normandy and Gisors, and from thence dominated the territory of Vexin, almost to the gates of Paris, waging incessant war upon Louis the Lusty. Thus Gaul continued to be ravaged by bloody strifes, with none other than the people, the serfs and villeins, as the perpetual victims. The wretched agricultural plebs, decimated by the execrable craze of the Crusades, that held out despite the recapture of Jerusalem by the Turks, found itself crushed by a double burden, their decreased numbers being compelled by increased labor to provide for the needs, the prodigalities and the debaucheries of the clergy and the seigneurs.
The bourgeois and other townsmen, better organized, better able to realize their power, above all more enlightened than the serfs of the fields, had revolted in many cities against their lay or ecclesiastical seigneurs, and, by dint of daring, of energy and stubbornness, had, at the price of their own blood, regained their freedom and secured the abolition of the degrading and shameful rights that the feudal families had been long enjoying. A small number of cities, even without resorting to arms, had, by virtue of great pecuniary sacrifices, purchased their enfranchisement from the seigniorial rights, with round sums of money. Delivered from their former secular and creed servitude, the city populations celebrated with enthusiasm all the circumstances connected with their emancipation. Thus, on April 15, 1112, the bourgeois merchants and artisans of the city of Laon were in gala since early morning. From one side to the other of the streets, male and female neighbors called one another from their windows and exchanged gladsome salutations.
"Well, neighbor," said one, "the bright anniversary of the inauguration of our Commune Hall and belfry has arrived!"
"Do not mention it, neighbor; I have not slept all night! With my wife and children we were up till three o'clock in the morning burnishing up my iron casque and coat of mail. Our armed militia will add great luster to the ceremony. May God be praised for this great day!"