on think
itself servile. Thence came that extension of the domestic circle, that
ennoblement of personal service, from which sprang one of the most
generous sentiments of the middle ages, fealty, which reconciled the
dignity of the man with the devotion of the vassal.

Further, it was not from a numerous aristocratic senate, but from
himself, and almost from himself alone, that every possessor of fiefs
derived his strength and his lustre. Isolated as he was in his domains,
it was for him to maintain himself therein, to extend them, to keep his
subjects submissive and his vassals faithful, and to correct those who
were wanting in obedience to him, or who ignored their duties as members
of the feudal hierarchy. It was, as it were, a people consisting of
scattered citizens, of whom each, ever armed, accompanied by his
following or intrenched in his castle, kept watch himself over his own
safety and his own rights, relying far more on his own courage and his
own renown than on the protection of the public authorities. Such a
condition bears less resemblance to an organized and settled society than
to a constant prospect of peril and war; but the energy and the dignity
of the individual were kept up in it, and a more extended and better
regulated society might issue therefrom.

And it did issue. This society of the future was not slow to sprout and
grow in the midst of that feudal system so turbulent, so oppressive, so
detested. For five centuries, from the invasion of the barbarians to the
fall of the Carlovingians, France presents the appearance of being
stationary in the middle of chaos. Over this long, dark space of
anarchy, feudalism is slowly taking shape, at the expense, at one time,
of liberty, at another, of order; not as a real rectification of the
social condition, but as the only order of things which could possibly
acquire fixity, as, in fact, a sort of unpleasant but necessary
alternative. No sooner is the feudal system in force, than, with its
victory scarcely secured, it is attacked in the lower grades by the mass
of the people attempting to regain certain liberties, ownerships, and
rights, and in the highest by royalty laboring to recover its public
character, to become once more the head of a nation. It is no longer the
case of free men in a vague and dubious position, unsuccessfully
defending, against the nomination of the chieftains whose lands they
inhabit, the wreck of their independence, whet