Bastides are fortified towns built in medievalFrance starting around 1229, the date of the first recorded bastide. The majority of bastides have a grid layout and a central market square with a covered weighing and measuring area. Bastides began to appear as feudalism began to wane in medieval France, and were an attempt by landowners to generate revenues from taxes on trade rather than tithes (taxes on production). Farmers who elected to move their families to bastides were no longer vassals of the local lord -- they became free men. They were encouraged to work the land around the Bastide, which in turn attracted trade in the form of merchants and markets. The lord taxed dwellings in the bastides and all trade in the market. Ease of tax collection is the reason for the grid layout (property taxes) and the covered weighing and measuring area in the marketplace. The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times. ... Events February 18 - The Sixth Crusade: Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor signs a ten-year truce with al-Kamil, regaining Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem with neither military engagements nor support from the papacy. ... Roland pledges his fealty to Charlemagne; from a manuscript of a chanson de geste. ...
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