There porters were transporting bales of merchandise or sacks of grain from a warehouse to a pier, or from one landing to another The occasional parading of the king's guards, or the arrival and departure of ships of war to land or to take away bodies of armed men, were occurrences that sometimes intervened to interrupt, or as perhaps the people then would have said, to adorn this scene of useful industry; and now and then, for a brief period, these peaceful vocations would be wholly suspended and set aside by a revolt or by a civil war, waged by rival brothers against each other, or instigated by the conflicting claims of a mother and son.

These interruptions, however, were comparatively few, and, in ordinary cases, not of long continuance.

It was for the interest of all branches of the royal line to do as little injury as possible to the commercial and agricultural operations of the realm.

In fact, it was on the prosperity of those operations that the revenues depended.

The rulers were well aware of this, and so, however implacably two rival princes may have hated one another, and however desperately each party may have struggled to destroy all active combatants whom they should find in arms against them, they were both under every possible inducement to spare the private property and the lives of the peaceful population.