The nobles, owners of a large part of the land, bore valiantly, together with their vassals, the heavy and perilous burdens caused by wars.

We know what the battles of Bouvines, Courtrai, Crécy and Azincourt cost the nobility and how many families they wiped out.

In order to preserve the nobility on which the organisation of society was based, the sovereigns could find no other way than to create new nobility; this was the origin of the letters of ennoblement.

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Source gallica.bnf.fr / BnF