Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/24

 a gradual transition, facilitated materially by the advent of numerous official dignitaries bringing with them to their new homes all the refinements and many of the luxuries of their native city, the once rude land was converted into a smiling and prosperous province, where the civilization and improvements introduced by their new masters found a ready welcome. Under the influence of this power the military spirit of the inhabitants was not evoked. Rome maintained her sway not by a local militia but by a standing army, and trusted for her victories rather to the well-trained movements of an organized soldiery than to the spontaneous efforts of an undisciplined peasantry, however martial their native spirit might be. The principle of centralization pervaded every act of their government, and the constant communication thus created with the capital went far to help on the progress of refinement. The conquered population, instead of being degraded into slavery, were raised to the dignity of Roman citizens, and the judicious liberality with which they were treated made them yield the more readily to the softening and enervating influences of peace and civilization.

The case was, however, widely different with the barbarians, the torrent of whose invasion subsequently overthrew the power of Rome. They had no central seat of empire from which to draft the rulers of their new acquisitions; they sought, not a simple extension of an existing government, a new appanage of a monarchy already flourishing, but descending from their wild homes amid the bleak fastnesses of the North, they made for themselves a new settlement and a more genial dwelling-place in the luxuriant plains of the South. The original holders of the land were dispossessed and mostly exterminated, their places being filled by the intruders. The leader of the irruption, secure in his power only in so far as he consulted the interests and by that means retained the affections of his followers, established his government upon a wholesale system of military colonization. There was no standing army distinct from the occupiers of the soil, but every man remained a soldier whilst becoming a landed proprietor in the country of his adoption.

Hence arose the feudal system. The leader himself became a monarch, holding supreme sway within his newly-acquired