The many changes introduced into the fiefs in particular cases seemed to
spread so widely as to be productive of general corruption. I noticed
that in the beginning several fiefs had been alienated in perpetuity;
but those were particular cases, and the fiefs in general preserved
their nature; so that if the crown lost some fiefs it substituted others
in their stead. I observed, likewise, that the crown had never alienated
the great offices in perpetuity.
[186]
But Charles the Bald made a general regulation, which equally
affected the great offices and the fiefs. He ordained, in his
capitularies, that the counties should be given to the children of the
count, and that this regulation should also take place in respect to the
fiefs.
[187]
We shall see presently that this regulation received a wider
extension, insomuch that the great offices and fiefs went even to
distant relatives. Thence it followed that most of the lords who before
this time had held immediately of the crown, held now mediately. Those
counts who formerly administered justice in the king's placita, and who
led the freemen against the enemy, found themselves situated between the
king and his freemen; and the king's power was removed farther off
another degree.
Again, it appears from the capitularies,
[188]
that the counts had
benefices annexed to their counties, and vassals under them. When the
counties became hereditary, the count's vassals were no longer the
immediate vassals of the king; and the benefices annexed to the counties
were no longer the king's benefices; the counts grew powerful because
the vassals whom they had already under them enabled them to procure
others.
In order to be convinced how much the monarchy was thereby weakened
towards the end of the second race we have only to cast an eye on what
happened at the beginning of the third, when the multiplicity of
rear-fiefs flung the great vassals into despair.
It was a custom of the kingdom
[189]
that when the elder brothers had
given shares to their younger brothers, the latter paid homage to the
elder; so that those shares were held of the lord paramount only as a
rear-fief. Philip Augustus, the Duke of Burgundy, the Counts of Nevers,
Boulogne, St. Paul, Dampierre, and other lords declared
[190]
that
henceforward, whether the fiefs were divided by succession or otherwise,
the whole should be always of the same lord, without any intermediation.
This ordinance was not generally followed; for, as I have elsewhere
observed, it was impossible to make general ordinances at that time; but
many of our customs were regulated by them.
