might not pursue him if he took refuge in a private house. The general
Land-peaces of Frederic Barbarossa (1152) and Frederic II (1235) are the
most important enactments of this kind; but they deviate widely from the
original type. They are permanent; they aim at the total suppression of
lawless self-help; they are codes of criminal law which, if thoroughly
enforced, would have opened a new era in German history. As the case
stands--they are only the evidence of an unrealised project of reform.

It was not by confederations of this kind, whether spontaneous or
compulsory, that feudalism could be bridled. The twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, the great age of medieval statesmanship, saw other and more
effectual remedies applied. In the free cities of France, Italy, the
Netherlands and Germany, the commercial classes perfected a form of
association which, however faulty in other respects, was successful in
excluding feudalism from the principal centres of urban industry. In the
larger states, whether kingdoms or not, the rulers, supported by the
Church and the commons, bestirred themselves to slay the many-headed
Hydra. Feudalism was not extirpated, but it was brought under the law.
In many districts it defied repression. To the end of the Middle Ages
the Knights of Suabia and the Rhineland maintained the predatory
traditions of the Dark Ages; and everywhere feudalism remained a force
inimical to national unity. But the great feudatories who survived into
the age of Machiavelli and of the new despotisms had usually some claims
upon the respect of their subjects. The Duchy of Brittany, the
Burgundian inheritance, the German electorates, were mainly
objectionable as impeding the growth of better communities--better
because more comprehensive, more stable, more fitted to be the nurseries
of great ideas and proud traditions.

It remains to speak of chivalry, that peculiar and often fantastic code