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King John was keen to fight; the States General gave him the means for carrying on war, by establishing the odious "gabelle" on salt, and other imposts. John hoped with his new army to drive the English completely out of the country. Petty war began again on all the frontiers, an abortive attack on Calais, a guerilla warfare in Brittany, slight fighting also in Guienne.

Salt being thus worth thirty times as much in one province as in another, it was possible for a successful smuggler to make a living by a very few trips. The opportunity was largely used; children were trained by their parents for the illicit traffic, but the penalties were very severe. Ibid., Compte rendu, 82, and see the map of France divided according to the gabelle in the same volume.

At the request of our brother and cousin we order the inhabitants of the said territories to pay both gabelle and poll tax, all that is due from the time it was imposed and for the time to come, under penalty of the confiscation of their goods and their persons." It was the old story of bricks without straw taxes and rents for property ruthlessly destroyed were so easy.

To preserve Rome from the tyrants it was necessary to maintain an armed force; to pay the force a tax was necessary; the tax was imposed and the multitude joined with the tyrants, and their cry was, "Perish the traitor who has made the gabelle!" This was their only charge this the only crime that their passions and their fury could cite against him.

The only charges against him, as Senator, were the deaths of Montreal and Pandulfo di Guido, the imposition of the gabelle, and the renunciation of his former habits of rigid abstinence, for indulgence in wine and feasting. Of the first charges, the reader has already been enabled to form a judgment. To the last, alas! the reader must extend indulgence, and for it he may find excuse.

The "taille" or tallage has become the land tax; the "gabelle," the tax on salt; the "aids," the indirect contributions and the consolidated duties; the tax on trade companies and guilds, the license, &c. One of the most essential functions of statesmen consists, then, in baptizing with popular or, at any rate, indifferent words things the crowd cannot endure under their old names.

My fault is, that I have been true to you. Oh Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, I pray you be you true to me! "From this prison here of horror, whence I every hour tend nearer and nearer to destruction, I send you, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, the assurance of my dolorous and unhappy service. "Your afflicted, "Gabelle."

They were not going to wait for the return of those boats which had conveyed the Polish troopers on shore: they took to the water and waded across the bay, tossing the salt spray all around them as they trod the shingle, like so many shaggy dogs enjoying a bath; and when six hundred fur bonnets darkened the sands of the bay at the foot of the Tower of la Gabelle, such a shout of "Vive l'Empereur" went forth from six hundred lusty throats that the midday spring air vibrated with kindred enthusiasm for miles and miles around.

It could not be hidden that these 'faux sauniers' were redoubtable by their valour and their arrangements; that the people were favourable to them, buying as they did from them salt at a low price, and irritated as they were against the gabelle and other imposts; that these 'faux sauniers' spread over all the realm, and often marching in large bands, which beat all opposed to them, were dangerous people, who incited the population by their examples to opposition against the government.

Their knights and squires, lad, are every whit as good as ours, and I could pick out a score of those who ride behind Du Guesclin who would hold the lists with sharpened lances against the best men in the army of England. On the other hand, their common folk are so crushed down with gabelle, and poll-tax, and every manner of cursed tallage, that the spirit has passed right out of them.