Chateau de Briançon
Humbert II, the overlord, Comte de Maurienne, to call his brother lord to a more reasonable method of procedure. This was to the Comte de Maurienne’s liking, for he fell upon him tooth and nail and drove Aymon from his castle, leaving it in the ruined and dismantled condition in which it stands to-day.
This toll of roads and bridges was, by inherited right, the privilege of many local seigneurs throughout the feudality, but here the demand was so excessive, so much greater than the traffic could stand, to put it in modern parlance, that the concession was suppressed in the same fashion as has been often brought to bear on latter day monopolies badly administered. This thing doesn’t happen often, but with the precedent of the toll bridge at Briançon it has been steadily growing as a commendable practice. Incidentally the Seigneur of Briançon was killed in the struggle which deprived him of what he thought his right, but that was seemingly a small matter; the main thing was to do away with the oppression, and the Lord of the Maurienne, being one of those who did things thoroughly, went at the root of the evil. It is to his credit that he did not continue the toll-gathering for his own benefit.