appointed by the metropolis. The Franks pursued the same course.
In Charlemagne's time, the revolution is complete. Popular assemblies
and popular election entirely vanish. Military, civil, and judicial
officers-dukes, earls, margraves, and others--are all king's creatures,
'knegton des konings, pueri regis', and so remain, till they abjure the
creative power, and set up their own. The principle of Charlemagne,
that his officers should govern according to local custom, helps them
to achieve their own independence, while it preserves all that is left
of national liberty and law.

The counts, assisted by inferior judges, hold diets from time to time--
thrice, perhaps, annually. They also summon assemblies in case of war.
Thither are called the great vassals, who, in turn, call their lesser
vassals; each armed with "a shield, a spear, a bow, twelve arrows, and a
cuirass." Such assemblies, convoked in the name of a distant sovereign,
whose face his subjects had never seen, whose language they could hardly
understand, were very different from those tumultuous mass-meetings,
where boisterous freemen, armed with the weapons they loved the best,
and arriving sooner or later, according to their pleasure, had been
accustomed to elect their generals and magistrates and to raise them upon
their shields. The people are now governed, their rulers appointed by an
invisible hand. Edicts, issued by a power, as it were, supernatural,
demand implicit obedience. The people, acquiescing in their own
annihilation, abdicate not only their political but their personal
rights. On the other hand, the great source of power diffuses less and
less of light and warmth. Losing its attractive and controlling
influence, it becomes gradually eclipsed, while its satellites fly from
their prescribed bounds and chaos and darkness return. The sceptre,
stretched over realms so wide, requires stronger hands than those of
degenerate Carlovingians. It breaks asunder. Functionaries become