means, though equally bound to the public defence,
were relieved from the severity of this rule, and presumed not to belong
to the class of Sallic. Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 145. Compare
Sismondi, vol. i. p. 196.--M.]

In the bloody discord and silent decay of the Merovingian line, a new
order of tyrants arose in the provinces, who, under the appellation of
Seniors, or Lords, usurped a right to govern, and a license to oppress,
the subjects of their peculiar territory. Their ambition might be
checked by the hostile resistance of an equal: but the laws were
extinguished; and the sacrilegious Barbarians, who dared to provoke the
vengeance of a saint or bishop, [92] would seldom respect the landmarks
of a profane and defenceless neighbor. The common or public rights of
nature, such as they had always been deemed by the Roman jurisprudence,
[93] were severely restrained by the German conquerors, whose amusement,
or rather passion, was the exercise of hunting. The vague dominion which
Man has assumed over the wild inhabitants of the earth, the air, and the
waters, was confined to some fortunate individuals of the human species.
Gaul was again overspread with woods; and the animals, who were reserved
for the use or pleasure of the lord, might ravage with impunity the
fields of his industrious vassals. The chase was the sacred privilege
of the nobles and their domestic servants. Plebeian transgressors were
legally chastised with stripes and imprisonment; [94] but in an age
which admitted a slight composition for the life of a citizen, it was a
capital crime to destroy a stag or a wild bull within the precincts of
the royal forests. [95]

[Footnote 92: Many of the two hundred and six miracles of St. Martin
(Greg Turon. in Maxima Bibliotheca Patrum, tom. xi. p. 896-932) were
repeatedly performed to punish sacrilege. Audite haec omnes (exclaims
the bishop of Tours) protestatem habentes, after relating, how some
horses ran mad, that had been turned into a sacred meadow.]

[Footnote 93: Heinec. Element. Jur. German. l. ii. p. 1, No. 8.]

[Footnote 94: Jonas, bishop of Orleans, (A.D. 821-826. Cave, Hist.
Litteraria, p. 443,) censures the legal tyranny of the nobles. Pro
feris, quas cura hominum non aluit, sed Deus in commune mortalibus ad
utendum concessit, pauperes a potentioribus spoliantur, flagellantur,
ergastulis detruduntur, et multa alia patiuntur. Hoc enim qui faciunt,
lege mundi se facere juste posse contendant.