paying him the tribute of a cask of wine; and all the workers in metal who sought to open shops in Besançon had to pay him a tax of as much as five sous. When the Archbishops of Besançon, or their assistant-bishops, entered the town for the first time, the maréchal escorted them, and afterwards claimed the horses or mules they had ridden, as also the cup with which they had made their first repast. When it happened that the emperor came, the same right was exercised, but only on the condition that the maréchal had previously garnished with his own hands the hoofs of the monarch’s steed with four silver shoes!’[1]
The Normans, on their arrival in France, were, like the Saxons and the Franks, far behind the Celts and Gauls in equitation or their management of the horse. On their reaching Neustria, Wace, the troubadour of the 12th century, sings:
N’étoient mie chevaliers
N’ils ne saroient chevalchier
Tot à pié portoient lor armes.
And Rollo, the 'Walker,' as the chroniclers tell us, never rode.[2] Yet they soon conformed to the customs of the people among whom they settled, and in a hundred and fifty years after disembarking from their ships, they had established the finest studs of horses in France. So that we need not be surprised that the Norman princes should also have instituted the office of ’March-shall,’ to super-
