When they succeeded they obtained those treaties of peace called charters, which brought about in the condition of the insurgents salutary changes accompanied by more or less effectual guarantees.

When they failed or when the charters were violated, the result was violent reactions, mutual excesses; the relations between the populations and their lords were tempestuous and full of vicissitudes; but at bottom neither the political regimen nor the social system of the communes was altered.

And so there were, at many spots without any connection between them, local revolts and civil wars, but no communal revolution.
One of the earliest facts of this kind which have been set forth with some detail in history clearly shows their primitive character; a fact the more remarkable in that the revolt described by the chroniclers originated and ran its course in the country among peasants with a view of recovering complete independence, and not amongst an urban population with a view of resulting in the erection of a commune.

Towards the end of the tenth century, under Richard II., Duke of Normandy, called the Good, and whilst the good King Robert was reigning in France, "In several countships of Normandy," says William of Jumiege, "all the peasants, assembling in their conventicles, resolved to live according to their inclinations and their own laws, as well in the interior of the forests as along the rivers, and to reck nought of any established right.

To carry out this purpose these mobs of madmen chose each two deputies, who were to form at some central point an assembly charged to see to the execution of their decrees.