FEUDAL SYSTEM. 



179 



In the tenth and eleventh centuries, no duty due 

 from subjects was known, except feudal duties ; the 

 whole German empire was one vast feudal possession, 

 and the ideas of feudal lords and national sovereigns 

 were wholly confounded. If any one was neither a 

 lord nor a vassal, he was scarcely looked upon as a 

 citizen, and no one took care for his safety. Hence 

 few rich landed proprietors ventured to rely upon 

 their own strength, without a feudal connexion. 

 And even most of these at last yielded to the spirit 

 of the age, and became royal vassals (as the lords of 

 Brunswick and Hesse, and the counts in Thuringia, 

 at that period called dukes and landgraves). The 

 emperor, likewise, used every means to induce them 

 to adopt such a course. Thus, when the haughty 

 baron of Krenzingen, who was the vassal of no one , 

 refused to do homage to Frederic I., the enraged 

 monarch invested him with the right of coinage, that 

 he might become his lord. On the other hand, it 

 was considered the duty of the German emperor not 

 to extinguish a fief which reverted to the sovereign 

 for want of heirs to inherit it, but to infeoff some 

 other person (though the selection depended entirely 

 on the pleasure of the monarch), and thus to secure 

 the continuance of the feudal system, on which the 

 continuance of the empire seemed to depend ; for a 

 reversion of fiefs to the emperor would bring into his 

 hands an excess of power ; and a release of the 

 princes from their feudal ties would be followed by 

 a state of anarchy. Besides, the necessary connexion 

 of all the offices with the fiefs rendered the line of 

 separation between them very indistinct ; and the 

 service which was paid fora fief was regarded as 

 the fief itself; so that persons were no longer invested 

 with estates as the reward of office, but with the office, 

 as a productive capital, on account of the property 

 attached to it. The dukes, bishops, bailiffs, and 

 burgraves, sometimes from ignorance, and sometimes 

 from interested motives, increased this confusion. 

 They made no difference between their fiefs and the 

 districts and castles for the government of which they 

 were given to them. They exercised in these places, 

 which were filled mostly by their own vassals, the 

 power of feudal landlords, and esteemed any attempt 

 to curtail their rule as an act of flagrant injustice, 

 equivalent to a withdrawal of the fiet. In the pro- 

 vinces where the ducal power was early abolished, as 

 in Franconia, Suabia, and Westphalia, the counts and 

 abbots took the same course ; while in Bavaria, 

 Misnia, Thuringia, Austria, and Brandenburg, often 

 wholly forgetful of their dignity as imperial governors, 

 they sank into the state of mere vassals to the dukes, 

 landgraves, and margraves, and were hardly able to 

 maintain their under-tenures in a state of dependence. 



From the feudal system, the only social organiza- 

 tion of the European states in the middle ages, a new 

 system of civil rank arose. The inferior nobility, a 

 rank intermediate between the higher nobil ity (princes) 

 and freemen, owes its origin, it is said, to this insti- 

 tution ; and a regular scale of rank was formed among 

 the vassals, without detriment, however, to the prin- 

 ciple of equal birth. The king formed the first class ; 

 the spiritual princes, bishops, and immediate abbots 

 constituted the second ; the lay princes, dukes, land- 

 graves, margraves, and immediate counts, the third ; 

 those barons, or rich landed proprietors, who owed 

 fealty to no one, but yet, on account of their limited 

 rights or possessions, were the vassals of the emperor, 

 the fourth ; those freemen who stood in the same 

 relation to the princes, the fifth ; the vassals of the 

 former and the servants of the princes, the sixth; and 

 the possessors of small fiefs, the seventh. This 

 arrangement corresponds to the Italian division into 

 principes, capitanei, valvasores majores, valvasore* 

 minores, valvasini t aml solduti; the English into lords, 



esquires, and freeholders ; the Spanish grandees (ricoa 

 hombres, rich men), escuderos, hidalgos ; and the 

 French pairs, barons, ecuyers, and valvasseurs. The 

 title ecuyers, escuderos, esquires, however, belongs 

 rather to chivalry (q. v.). Besides these ranks, after 

 some centuries, the order of citizens was formed, as 

 being included under no one of them. The spirit of 

 the feudal system, grounded on the prevalence of 

 landed property, was necessarily foreign to cities, 

 which owed their origin to industry and personal 

 property, and founded thereon a new sort of power. 

 Hence we see them almost always involved in open 

 hostilities and contests with the nobility. 



The principles of the feudal laws (the name given 

 to the system of rights and obligations existing be- 

 tween feudal lords and vassals) were developed and 

 established by the Lombard lawyers of the twelfth 

 century. The collection of feudal laws and customs, 

 which is appended to the Roman code under the title 

 of libri feudorum (fiefs are called feuda, in opposition 

 to allodia, originally, estates gained by lot ; feudum 

 is from the ancient/*?, a reward, and ode, a possession,) 

 has become the code of feudal law over half of Europe. 

 In the north of Germany, Denmark, Prussia, Poland, 

 &c., the old German feudal code still obtains, which 

 differs from the Lombard code chiefly in not acknow- 

 ledging the right of collateral relations, as such, to 

 succeed to a lief; and in grounding the right of 

 feudal succession, not on descent from the first pos- 

 sessor of the fief, but only on community of possession; 

 so that divisions destroyed the right of inheritance. 

 In place of this community, similar force has been 

 given, since the twelfth century, in the above-men- 

 tioned countries, to a merely formal union, instituted 

 in the first investiture, and preserved and renewed in 

 all cases of division or death (joint investiture). 



The feudal government, at a period when a spirit 

 of independence and of opposition to despotism was 

 abroad in the land, was well suited to put into the 

 hands of one governor, as supreme feudal lord, the 

 reins of the national power, to be employed against 

 foreign enemies without endangering domestic free- 

 dom. But as every human institution bears in itself 

 the germ of decay, the purity and influence of feudal 

 relations was diminished ; and the strength of the 

 national government declined amidst a spirit of disaf- 

 fection and sedition, which became universal, when 

 nobles began to perceive that the feudal government 

 was not naturally dependent on kings, but kings on 

 it. Indeed, the sovereigns had no other security for 

 their subjection than the feudal oath, and the menaces 

 of punishment, which the king had not the ability to 

 carry into effect, as his power was divided in most of 

 his states, either by investiture or by the usurpations 

 of the princes. Thus the vassals of the crown in 

 Germany, Italy, and the oldest districts of France, 

 succeeded in depriving the king of almost all power, 

 even of the external honour of royalty; and never, 

 in the two first countries, and in France only after 

 the extinction of the great baronial families, coul d he 

 succeed in establishing a new authority, indepen der.t 

 of the feudal power. 



As the improvements in the art of war had brought 

 about a total change in modern times, and the fe udal 

 militia had been entirely superseded by the standing 

 armies, the feudal government had no means of re- 

 taining its authority, but by the feudal services of a 

 civil character. The feudal system is a relic of the 

 past, too useless and inconvenient, and too much op- 

 posed to the principles of the modern laws of equality 

 to be any longer maintained. Feudal service is 

 no longer demanded, because it has ceased to be use- 

 fill. It lias been, and still is, the great task of the 

 present age in Europe, to overthrow the feudal sys- 

 tem an order of things which grew out of times of 



