Two sorts of people were bound to military service; the great and lesser vassals, who were obliged in consequence of their fief; and the freemen, whether Franks,
Romans, or Gauls, who served under the count and were commanded by him
and his officers.
The name of freemen was given to those, who on the one hand had no
benefits or fiefs, and on the other were not subject to the base
services of villainage; the lands they possessed were what they called
allodial estates.
The counts assembled the freemen,
[103]
and led them against the
enemy; they had officers under them who were called vicars;
[104]
and as
all the freemen were divided into hundreds, which constituted what they
called a borough, the counts had also officers under them, who were
denominated centenarii, and led the freemen of the borough, or their
hundreds, to the field.
[105]
This division into hundreds is posterior to the establishment of the
Franks in Gaul. It was made by Clotharius and Childebert, with a view of
obliging each district to answer for the robberies committed in their
division; this we find in the decrees of those princes.
[106]
A regulation of this kind is to this very day observed in England.
As the counts led the freemen against the enemy, the feudal lords
commanded also their vassals or rear-vassals; and the bishops, abbots,
or their advocates
[107]
likewise commanded theirs.
[108]
The bishops were greatly embarrassed and inconsistent with
themselves;
[109]
they requested Charlemagne not to oblige them any
longer to military service; and when he granted their request, they
complained that he had deprived them of the public esteem; so that this
prince was obliged to justify his intentions upon this head. Be that as
it may, when they were exempted from marching against the enemy, I do
not find that their vassals were led by the counts; on the contrary, we
see that the kings or the bishops chose one of their feudatories to
conduct them.
[110]
In a Capitulary of Louis the Debonnaire,
[111]
this prince
distinguishes three sorts of vassals, those belonging to the king, those
to the bishops, and those to the counts. The vassals of a feudal lord
were not led against the enemy by the count, except some employment in
the king's household hindered the lord himself from commanding
them.
[112]
But who is it that led the feudal lords into the field? No doubt the
king himself, who was always at the head of his faithful vassals. Hence
we constantly find in the capitularies a distinction made between the
king's vassals and those of the bishops,
[113]
Such brave and magnanimous
princes as our kings did not take the field to put themselves at the
head of an ecclesiastic militia; these were not the men they chose to
conquer or to die with.
But these lords likewise carried their vassals and rear-vassals with
them, as we can prove by the capitulary in which Charlemagne ordains
that every freeman who has four manors, either in his own property or as
a benefice from somebody else, should march against the enemy or follow
his lord.
[114]
It is evident that Charlemagne means that the person who
had a manor of his own should march under the count and he who held a
benefice of a lord should set out along with him.
And yet the Abbé du Bos pretends
[115]
that, when mention is made in
the capitularies of tenants who depended on a particular lord, no others
are meant than bondmen; and he grounds his opinion on the law of the
Visigoths and the practice of that nation. It is much better to rely on
the capitularies themselves; that which I have just quoted says
expressly the contrary. The treaty between Charles the Bald and his
brothers notices also those freemen who might choose to follow either a
lord or the king; and this regulation is conformable to a great many
others.
We may, therefore, conclude that there were three sorts of military
services; that of the king's vassals, who had other vassals under them;
that of the bishops or of the other clergy and their vassals, and, in
fine, that of the count, who commanded the freemen.
Not but the vassals might be also subject to the count; as those who
have a particular command are subordinate to him who is invested with a
more general authority.
We even find that the count and the king's commissaries might oblige
them to pay the fine when they had not fulfilled the engagements of
their fief. In like manner, if the king's vassals committed any
outrage
[116]
they were subject to the correction of the count, unless
they choose to submit rather to that of the king.
