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The deputies objected to this grant being asked only from the lands de par de ça the Netherlands and not from the Burgundies. Secondly, they wished a definite assessment imposed on each province. Thirdly, they desired a declaration that the fiefs and arrière-fiefs already bound to furnish troops should be exempt from share in this tax. The remonstrance was courtly in tone.
As an illustration, it may not be amiss to translate the following passages from 'Les Anglais en Guyenne, by M. D. Brissaud: 'The Aquitanians had reason to thank the English Government for not having treated them as foreigners, like the inhabitants of a conquered province, as the people of Ireland, for example, had been treated, and for having confined its action to the development of judicial institutions, of which the germ was found in the feudal system of France.... The kings of England not only refrained from setting themselves in opposition to the local justice of the arriere-fiefs; we have seen them, and we shall see them again in the history of the communal movement, favour the extension of trial by peers, while accommodating at the same time their administrative system to the spontaneous manifestations of opinion in a continental country.
Laying stress on the extreme modesty of his demand, whose purpose mainly was for defence of Flanders, the duke proceeded to berate his visitors soundly for their presumptuous haggling, declaring that as to the fiefs and arrière-fiefs he would see to it that no double burdens were borne.
Seven to eight thousand combatants, besides Mademoiselle's escort and the fiefs and arrière-fiefs, Monseigneur could manage to make suffice for the present, and these must be provided. These confidences were at once reported to the assembly, which then adjourned to think over the matter during the night.
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