Another great change took place about the same time. One reason why Charles Martel made grants of ecclesiastical property to his warriors was that they had now to support great expense. They served in his armies no longer as foot soldiers but as cavalry, and their equipment was very costly. The revenue of the lands which were granted to them served as an indemnity against the expenses of military service. Thus it came to be considered that the benefice carried with it the obligation of military service. Under Charles the Great, the holders of royal lands were bound to be first at the muster; and before long it was an understood thing that, when a private person who had granted benefices marched to the wars, all his beneficiaries, who were also his vassals, must accompany him. Thus at the end of the Merovingian period the characteristics of the later fief are taking shape. The eleventh century fief is the direct descendant of the eighth century benefice, of which we have just traced the origin.
Another characteristic of the fief is that the holder of it exercises thereon all the powers of the State: he levies taxes, administers justice, and summons the men of the fief to follow him to war. Now even in the Merovingian period on some of the great domains the State resigned a portion of its rights to the proprietor or seignior, and thus we find present, from this time onward, all the germs of the feudal system. We have seen how great were the powers of the count and the other royal officials: they often abused these powers, and the proprietors of the great estates complained to the king of their tyranny. In many cases the king listened to their complaints and gave them charters of immunity, forbidding all public officials to enter their estates, to claim right of lodging, to try causes, to levy the fredus or other impost, or to compel the men to attend the muster of the royal army. Thenceforward the men of this privileged territory had nothing more to do with the agents of the government; the agents of the proprietor took their place; and before long the proprietor himself levied the former state-taxes, judged cases in his private court, and regarded it as within his competence to deal with all offences committed upon his domain. He led his men in person to join the royal army, and he was naturally tempted to use them also in the prosecution of his private quarrels. If we remember the extent of some of the domains, which comprised a number of villae and were sometimes as large as a modern canton, we see how great was the area which was withdrawn from the authority of the royal officials, if not from that of the king himself. The estates which enjoyed these immunities were veritable seigniories. Alongside of the institutions of the State there had thus arisen another set of institutions which came into collision with the former and brought about the decay of the authority of the State. All the elements of feudalism — commendations, benefices, and immunities — are in existence without its being possible to say that feudalism is as yet constituted, because the elements are not combined into a system.
