34 EMPLOYMENT OF THE PLEBISCITE (^332 



allegiance to the king, as the suzerain of both seigneur and 

 vassal.^" The territorial arrangement was as follows : 



Each seigneur possessed a certain number of rights which he ex- 

 ercised, within the hmits of a territory more or less extended, over 

 diverse classes of people. The territory of a seigneurie . . . was 

 ordinarily composed of three categories of lands : the one the seig- 

 neur inhabited with his family and his men [gciis], comprising his 

 chateau and his diverse residences, with dependencies and houses, 

 gardens . . . forming the proprietes scigncuriales: the second wliich 

 were occupied by his urban and rural tenants, whose direct admin- 

 istration he had reserved to himself. These formed his domain 

 proper. And the last whose enjoyment and droits utiles he had 

 conceded to his vassals, under obligation of hommage and noble 

 service; these formed his fiefs, fcoda. In each of these categories 

 of lands there were nobles, men of the church, bourgeois and villains, 

 serfs and other mainmortahlcs.'^^ 



J. Flach describes the state of society in the formative 

 stages of feudalism as one of violent instability and he 

 speaks of the mightiest man as " the one who has a numer- 

 ous fighting force [hommes d'armes'\, retreats [castella] 

 secure in case of alarm": who will "attract soldiers to his 

 clientele [z-a.y.ya/iVc'], peasants into his dependence [potcstas], 

 villages into his tutelage [commandise]."''^ We have here 

 a clear characterization of the vassal as the soldier, the 

 fighting man, as distinguished from the peasant, the de- 

 pendent and the villager. Considering now Soliere's state- 

 ment that "peoples and notables" had to be considered in 

 every case of a transfer we find his term people decidedly 

 too wide and too indefinite. It may be objected that Soliere 

 limits his statement to the 12th and 13th centuries and that 

 during this time " the people " actually were consulted. 



E. Glasson, describing the system of alienation of the 

 fief, distinguishes two periods with differing modes of 

 alienation. He writes : 



'^ In a letter to one of his vassals Fulbert de Chartres. in the be- 

 ginning of the eleventh century, admonishes the addressee thus : " I 

 exact from you the security of my life, of my limbs and of the land 

 I possess. ... I count at the same time on your aid against any 

 person in the world, except against King Robert" (cited by Luchaire, 

 p. 192). 



2" La Grande encyclopedie illustree, Feodalite, regime politique. 



2* J. Flach, Les origines de I'ancienne France, X* et XT sieclcs, 

 Paris, 1886-1904, vol. i, pp. 12&-129. 



