Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/484

422 might grant it out in parcels to his chief men, they, in return for it, promising, in general, to be faithful to him as their lord, and to serve and aid him. Should these men, now vassals, be in any way untrue to their engagement, they forfeited their fiefs, and these might be resumed by their suzerain and bestowed upon others.

In like manner these immediate vassals of the king or suzerain might parcel out their domains in smaller tracts to others, on the same conditions as those upon which they had themselves received theirs; and so on down through any number of stages.

We have thus far dealt only with the soil of a country. We must next notice what disposition was made of the people under this system.

The king in receiving his fief was intrusted with sovereignty over all persons living upon it: he became their commander, their lawmaker, and their judge—in a word, their absolute and irresponsible ruler. Then, when he parcelled out his fief among his great men, he invested them, within the limits of the fiefs granted, with all his own sovereign rights. Each vassal became a virtual sovereign in his own domain. And when these great vassals divided their fiefs and granted them to others, they in turn invested their vassals with those powers of sovereignty with which they themselves had been clothed. Thus every holder of a fief became " monarch of all he surveyed."

To illustrate the workings of the system, we will suppose the king or suzerain to be in need of an army. He calls upon his own immediate vassals for aid; these in turn call upon their vassals; and so the order runs down through the various ranks of retainers. The retainers in the lowest rank rally around their respective lords, who, with their bands, gather about their lords, and so on up through the rising tiers of the system, until the immediate vassals of the suzerain, or chief lord, present themselves before him with their graduated trains of followers. The array constitutes a feudal army,—a splendidly organized body in theory, but in fact an extremely poor instrument for warfare.