smen (and
most of Europe in the year 1000 was "frontier") must help themselves.
They willingly submitted to the representatives of the king who were
sent to administer the outlying districts, PROVIDED THEY COULD PROTECT
THEM AGAINST THEIR ENEMIES.

Soon central Europe was dotted with small principalities, each one ruled
by a duke or a count or a baron or a bishop, as the case might be, and
organised as a fighting unit. These dukes and counts and barons had
sworn to be faithful to the king who had given them their "feudum"
(hence our word "feudal,") in return for their loyal services and a
certain amount of taxes. But travel in those days was slow and the
means of communication were exceedingly poor. The royal or imperial
administrators therefore enjoyed great independence, and within the
boundaries of their own province they assumed most of the rights which
in truth belonged to the king.

But you would make a mistake if you supposed that the people of the
eleventh century objected to this form of government. They supported
Feudalism because it was a very practical and necessary institution.
Their Lord and Master usually lived in a big stone house erected on the
top of a steep rock or built between deep moats, but within sight of his
subjects. In case of danger the subjects found shelter behind the walls
of the baronial stronghold. That is why they tried to live as near the
castle as possible and it accounts for the many European cities which
began their career around a feudal fortress.

But the knight of the early middle ages was much more than a
professional soldier. He was the civil servant of that day. He was the
judge of his community and he was the chief of police. He caught the
highwaymen and protected the wandering pedlars who were the merchants of
the eleventh century. He looked after the dikes so that the countryside
should not be flooded (just as the first noblemen had done in the valley
of the Nile four thousand years before). He encouraged the Troubadours
who wandered from place to place telling the stories of the ancient
heroes who had fought in the great wars of the migrations. Besides, he
protected the churches and the monasteries within his territory, and
although he could neither read nor write, (it was considered unmanly to
know such things,) he employed a number of priests who kept his accounts
and who registered the marriages and the births and the deaths which
occurred within the baronial or duca