The first effect of this striking change in
the nature of landed property and of public office was to substitute for the
centralised state of the Carolingians a lax federal system, in which each unit
was a group of men attached to the person of a hereditary superior. This nascent
feudalism was often brutal, always summary and short-sighted, in its methods of
government. The feudal group was engaged in a perpetual struggle for existence
with neighbouring groups. Feudal policy was aggressive; for every lord had his
war-band, whom he could only hold together by providing them with adventure and
rich plunder; nor could any lord regard himself as safe while a neighbour of
equal resources remained unconquered.
Furthermore, as though the disintegration
of society had not gone far enough, every great fief was in constant danger of
civil war and partition. As the lord had treated the King, so he in turn was
treated by his vassals. He endowed them with lands, he allowed them to found
families, he gave them positions of authority; and then they defied him. In the
eleventh century the great fief bristled with castles held by chief vassals of
the lord; in the small county of Maine alone we hear of thirty-five such
strongholds; generally speaking they were centres of rebellion and
indiscriminate rapine. Such feudalism was not a system of government; it was a
symptom of anarchy.
