II. Services and Recompenses of the Nobles.

Up to this point no aid is found against the power of the sword and
the battle-ax except in persuasion and in patience. Those States
which, imitating the old empire, attempted to rise up into compact
organizations, and to interpose a barrier against constant invasion,
obtained no hold on the shifting soil; after Charlemagne everything
melts away. There are no more soldiers after the battle of Fontanet;
during half a century bands of four or five hundred outlaws sweep over
the country, killing, burning, and devastating with impunity. But, by
way of compensation, the dissolution of the State raises up at this
very time a military generation. Each petty chieftain has planted his
feet firmly on the domain he occupies, or which he withholds; he no
longer keeps it in trust, or for use, but as property, and an
inheritance. It is his own manor, his own village, his own earldom; it
no longer belongs to the king; he contends for it in his own right.
The benefactor, the conservator at this time is the man capable of
fighting, of defending others, and such really is the character of the
newly established class. The noble, in the language of the day, is the
man of war, the soldier (miles), and it is he who lays the second
foundation of modern society.

In the tenth century his extraction is of little consequence. He is
oftentimes a Carlovingian count, a beneficiary of the king, the sturdy
proprietor of one of the last of the Frank estates. In one place he is
a martial bishop or a valiant abbot in another a converted pagan, a
retired bandit, a prosperous adventurer, a rude huntsman, who long
supported himself by the chase and on wild fruits.[9] The ancestors
of Robert the Strong are unknown, and later the story runs that the