I have noticed those volunteers
among the Germans, who have followed their princes in their several
expeditions. The same usage continued after the conquest. Tacitus
mentions them by the name of companions;
[89]
the Salic law by that of
men who have vowed fealty to the king;
[90]
the formularies of
Marculfus
[91]
by that of the king's Antrustios;
[92]
the earliest French
historians by that of Leudes,
[93]
faithful and loyal; and those of later
date by that of vassals and lords.
[94]
In the Salic and Ripuarian laws we meet with an infinite number of
regulations in regard to the Franks, and only with a few for the
Antrustios. The regulations concerning the Antrustios are different from
those which were made for the other Franks; they are full of what
relates to the settling of the property of the Franks, but mention not a
word concerning that of the Antrustios. This is because the property of
the latter was regulated rather by the political than by the civil law,
and was the share that fell to an army, and not the patrimony of a
family.
The goods reserved for the feudal lords were called fiscal goods,
benefices, honours, and fiefs, by different authors, and in different
times.
[95]
There is no doubt but the fiefs at first were at will.
[96]
We find
in Gregory of Tours
[97]
that Sunegisilus and Gallomanus were deprived of
all they held of the exchequer, and no more was left them than their
real property. When Gontram raised his nephew Childebert to the throne,
he had a private conference with him, in which he named the persons who
ought to be honoured with, and those who ought to be deprived of, the
fiefs.
[98]
In a formulary of Marculfus,
[99]
the king gives in exchange,
not only the benefices held by his exchequer, but likewise those which
had been held by another. The law of the Lombards opposes the benefices
to property.
[100]
In this, our historians, the formularies, the codes of
the different barbarous nations and all the monuments of those days are
unanimous. In fine, the writers of the book of fiefs inform us
[101]
that at first the lords could take them back when they pleased, that
afterwards they granted them for the space of a year,
[102]
and that at length they gave them for life.
