ody of trusty friends, of whom it would naturally
be expected that they would ever side with the Emperor against the
nobility.

This new regulation appears to have been founded on the ancient mode of
division. At first, out of every nine freemen--which recalls the
_decania_--one only was placed within the new fortress, and the
remaining eight were bound--perhaps on account of their ancient
association into corporations or guilds--to nourish and support him; but
the remaining freemen, in the neighborhood of the new cities, appear to
have been also gradually collected within their walls, and to have
committed the cultivation of their lands in the vicinity to their
bondmen. However that may be, the ancient class of freemen completely
disappeared as the cities increased in importance, and it was only among
the wild mountains, where no cities sprang up, that the _centen_ or
cantons and whole districts or _gauen_ of free peasantry were to be met
with.

Henry's original intention in the introduction of this new system was,
it is evident, solely to provide a military force answering to the
exigencies of the State; still there is no reason to suppose him blind
to the great political advantage to be derived from the formation of an
independent class of citizens; and that he had in reality premeditated a
civil as well as a military reformation may be concluded from the fact
of his having established fairs, markets, and public assemblies, which,
of themselves, would be closely connected with civil industry, within
the walls of the cities; and, even if these trading warriors were at
first merely feudatories of the Emperor, they must naturally in the end
have formed a class of free citizens, the more so as, attracted within
the cities by the advantages offered to them, their number rapidly and
annually increased.

The same military reasons which induced the emperor Henry to enroll the
ancient freemen into a regular corps of infantry, and to form them into
a civil corporation, caused him also to metamorphose the feudal
aristocracy into a regular troop of cavalry and a knightly institution.
The wild disorder with which the mounted vassals of the empire, the
dukes, grafs, bishops, and abbots, each distinguished by his own banner,
rushed to the attack, or vied with each other in the fury of the
assault, was now changed by Henry, who was well versed in every knightly
art, to the disciplined manoeuvres of the line, and to that of fighti