Excerpt from Along France's River of Romance; The Loire: The Chateau Country Its Personality, Its Architecture, Its People and Its Associations<br><br>The Community of Merchants of the Loire grew very quickly to have great power and a wonderfully com plete organisation. This organisation was essential, in feudal times, to preserve the trade from extinction, owing to the exactions of the robber barons, whose castles were dotted all along its course. These pillaged the merchants either quite shamelessly or by means of semi-legal exactions - droits de péage. The droits de péage grew very high in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and were the great scourges of commerce in those days. A great deal, however, was done to improve matters by the concerted action of the rich and wealthy Communauté. They succeeded time after time in getting the levies regulated, or in some cases even suppressed; and important acts in connection with the trade were passed in 1577, 1618, 1631, 1724, and as late as 1736, in the days of the Community's decline.<br><br>The passenger service up and down the Loire seems to have been highly organised, from an early date. King Réné of Anjou sailed up it in a galley from Saumur as far as Roanne in 1445 and travelling on the Loire is referred to as a matter of course by such writers as Madame de Sevigne, John Evelyn, and Arthur Young.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.