Page:Western Europe in the Middle Ages.djvu/81

Rh had fallen because it lacked that loyalty, and the Carolingian Empire was weak because, in the end, it was supported only by the Church. Feudal government was local government. It was on a scale which corresponded to the experience and interests of its subjects. It was based on personal allegiance to a visible and nearby lord, not on allegiance to a remote and abstract authority. Both the Roman and the Carolingian Empires had been too large to mean much to the ordinary man; the work of a feudal government concerned him directly. Therefore we find occasionally devotion to the feudal ruler, and almost always loyalty to the administrative and legal customs of the feudal state. They formed part of the birthright of the people; the fact that they were worked out to fit local conditions made them strike deep roots in local soil. It is also true that early feudal government was government reduced to a minimum and that the most common criticism of such a government was that it did not do enough. The combination of loyalty to the local government and desire for stronger government was one of the factors which made possible the experimentation and development of new political techniques which has already been mentioned.

Finally, the relation between lord and vassal changed rapidly during the feudal centuries. At first the vassal was primarily a fighting man, not a landed proprietor. He was often a member of his lord's household; even when he received a grant of land (fief) in return for his services he was expected to spend most of his time at the lord's court. Vassals of this type had no special reason to be interested in good government or the rule of law; they profited from their lord's victories, not from his administration of justice. But this strict, early form of vassalage was soon contaminated. Great men became vassals; their service could not be made frequent or burdensome, and so all service tended to be reduced. Lesser vassals soon received fiefs as a matter of right, not favor; the landless vassal, common enough in the ninth century, was rare after 1100. The vassal with land acquired the mentality