riches were only such as served for the support of men--herds, land,
wine and corn. They needed cultivators for their large farm, so
instead of destroying every one with fire and sword, they spared those
of the weak inhabitants of the land who had survived the first
onslaught, in order that they might make use of farmers to cultivate
their new possessions. In most cases they did not make slaves of them,
but tributaries; and after the land had been portioned evenly among
the soldiers of the invading host, the original holders of the land
tilled it themselves, under a system somewhat kindred to the metayer
system as to-day existent in Tuscany and elsewhere, paying, according
to the usual custom adopted by the northern conquerors of Italy,
one-third of the produce[1] to their new masters. The whole
organization of society was on a purely military basis; the soldiers
of the conquering army, although they became landed proprietors, none
the less retained their character and name of soldiers. Hence when
these crude forms of social life began to crystallize into the
carefully marked ranks of the feudal system, the "_milites_"[2] formed
the order of gentlemen, the smaller feudatories, who gave land in fief
to their vassals--generally the old inhabitants--while holding their
own nominally from the "_duces_," or dukes, the representatives of
their former leaders in war, who held their tenure direct from the
king or chief.

As the object of this paper is particularly to trace the origin and
early sources of municipal life in Northern Italy, let us turn and see
what were the effects on the already existing towns, of the inroads of
these hordes of northern barbarians. At the outset I must state
emphatically that all our sources of information as to the
institutional history of this obscure period are exceedingly vague,
meagre and unsatisfactory. The progress of events we can follow with