Read "The Greatest Story in the World, Period 2" by Horace G. Hutchinson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
One chief effect of the growing power of the French king over his / nobility was the gradual breaking up of the feudal system throughout / the greater part of France. Philip sent bailiffs to collect his / taxes, instead of receiving them through the hands of the lords, and / we may look on this as a striking sign of the changing tunes. He / formed, moreover, the beginnings of a standing army. In the extreme / south of France, in Aquitaine and Provence, the feudal conditions / lasted longer, but there, too, feudalism was crushed out after the / so-called Crusade against the Albigenses, the people of Albi in the / south of France, who held certain religious views at variance with / those of the Church. Moreover, they professed themselves offended by / the life and manners of the monastic orders and other clerics. It / was the very offence which caused the Reformation later; but these / would-be reformers of Albi were too few to win success, and their / so-called "heresy" was stamped out with cruel severity.
The troubadours, together with the poetic language of "oc," passed / away for ever with the feudal society which had made their manner of / life possible. We have come to some very dark pages of our story. / In the course of the perpetual fights between the feudal lords / themselves, and between combinations of the lords and the king, the / one side or the other, finding its own {162} forces failing, hired / bands of mercenary soldiers to aid them. When the little wars were / over, these hirelings got their dismissal. Perhaps they did, or / perhaps they did not, get their pay. If not, they were likely to / take its equivalent, and more, from any that had not the force to / withstand them, and even if they were paid for past service, what / were they to do on their dismissal? What they did was to wander up / and down the country, offering their service to any who cared to hire / it, and in the meantime supporting themselves by high-handed robbery / and violence.