Before presenting any manifestation of its existence, feudalism had long been gradually developing, and seemed to be moving forward invisibly at the head of the barbarian conquerors of Roman Gaul. From the day that their great leader, Clovis, shared amongst his leudes, or companions-in-arms, the lands that they had won at the price of their blood while fighting under his orders—from the day when, by his miraculous baptism after the victory of Tolbiac (Fig. 1), he himself a proud Sicamber, submitted himself to and became a vassal of the Christian Church, simultaneously sprang into existence a theocratic and a martial aristocracy. In this simultaneous double origin might have already been perceived the hidden cause of the future inevitable antagonism between the modern influence of the cross and the material power of the sword. Conspiracies, bloodthirsty executions, continual revolts, divers plots, in which were concerned at one time the king’s leudes, at another the principal clergy; ecclesiastical censures, ceaselessly threatening these blind and savage tyrants, who, while bending to the reproof, at the same time panted for revenge; curbless ambitions, terrible hatreds, the continued strife of opposing races; on one side the Gallo-Romanic (Figs. 2 and 3) and its heir the Gothic, on the other the barbarous Germanic and Slavonian, more or less christianized; all these were the endless signs by which the coming reign of feudalism, at each successive stage of modern civilisation, marked its advent. The political system which a barbarous legal code had inaugurated for the benefit of the leudes, was entirely opposed to the system sanctioned by the Roman law. It was the desire of the leudes that a seignior, the owner of the land and of the men who cultivated it, should possess the right of infeudalising, that is to say, of ceding, as an inferior freehold, a certain portion of his own estate, abandoning in so doing to the concessionary or vassal not only the rights of the soil, but the sovereignty over those who occupied it. For a vassal to forfeit his rights, he must first have failed to fulfil the engagements he undertook when he received the investiture of the fief. The cession of lands and the rights attached to it, which were the foundation of dawning feudalism, remained for more than a century in that state of oscillation which precedes a stable equilibrium.
Fig. 1.—Battle of Tolbiac and Baptism of King Clovis.—Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Mirouer Historial de France,” in folio, printed in Paris by Galliot du Pré in 1516.
Fig. 2.—Gallo-Roman Lords of the Fourth Century.—Sculpture from the Tomb of the Gallic Consul Jovinus, General under the Emperor Julian, at Rheims.
Fig. 3.—Mounted Barbarian in the Roman Service.—From an Antique Monument.
Master of France, of Germany, and of Italy, and protector of the Church, Charlemagne (Fig. 4) enjoyed all the prerogatives of the Western emperors. On two occasions he delivered the Holy Seat from its enemies, and in Germany as well as in Italy he placed his sword at the service of the Christian faith. One of the popes, Adrian, bestowed upon him the dignity of patron; another, Adrian’s successor, Leo III., placed, in the year 800, the imperial crown upon his head. Then might have been seen, better than in the days of the Roman and Greek Emperors, the spectacle of the Church protected by the head of the State, to whom the seignorial aristocracy paid feudal obedience, and who controlled with an iron hand their tendencies to schism. Feudalism, which was gathering strength, and which already knew its own power, never retrograded; it sometimes halted and was at rest, but it was only waiting a more propitious season to continue its path. Charlemagne’s successors were, in fact, neither the kings of France nor the emperors of Germany, but the feudal lords, the great landowners; and their power waxed all the greater from the fact that, in 853, an edict of Charles the Bald ordered the reconstruction of the ancient manors, the repair of their fortifications, and the construction of new ones, so as to arrest the devastating invasions of the Normans, of the Saracens, of the Hungarians, and of the Danes. Thus Europe became dotted with fortresses, behind which both nobles and villains found a refuge against the new flood of barbarians. There was soon scarcely a stream, a mountain pass, or an important road which was left undefended either by military posts or by strong walls (Figs. 5 to 10). The invaders, formerly rendered so bold and indomitable by the fear they had succeeded in inspiring, now ceased their raids, or at most ventured no farther than the shores on which they had disembarked. Little by little a sense of security returned to the inhabitants, and the welfare of the civilised world was assured. A service of this importance, rendered by the nobles and seigniors to society at large, naturally gave them legitimate claims to the exclusive guardianship of the frontiers which they protected from the common enemy.
Fig. 4.—Statue of Charlemagne (formerly in the Church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, Paris).—Eleventh to Twelfth Century.