verses and songs which tell of the "precedents" of which customary law consists^ and recites them on great festival days before the commune. And little by little some families made a specialty^ transmitted from father to son, of retaining these songs and verses in their memory and of preserving "the law" in its purity. To them villagers apply for judgment of differences in intricate cases^ especially when two villages or confederations refuse to accept the decisions of arbitrators taken from their midst.
The germ of princely or royal authority is already sown in these families; and the more I study the institutions of that time, the more I see that the knowledge of customary law did far more to constitute that authority than the power of the sword. Man allowed himself to be enslaved far more by his desire to "punish according to law" than by direct military conquest.
And gradually the first "concentration of powers," the first mutual insurance for domination—that of the judge and the military chief—grew up to the detriment of the village commune. A single man assumed these two functions. He surrounded himself with armed men to put his judicial decisions into execution; he fortified himself in his turret; he accumulated the wealth of the epoch, viz., breads cattle, and iron, for his family; and little by little he forced his rule upon the neighboring peasants. The scientific man of the age, that is to say the witch-doctor or priest, lost no time in bringing his support and in sharing the chief's domination; or else, adding the sword to his power of redoubtable magician, he seized the domination for his own account.
A course of lectures, rather than a simple lecture, would be needed to deal thoroughly with this subject, so full of new teachings, and to tell how free men gradually became serfs, forced to work for the lay or clerical lord of the manor; how authority was constituted, in a tentative way, over villages and boroughs; how peasants leagued, revolted, struggled, to fight the advancing domination, and how they succumbed in those struggles against the strong castle walls and the men in armor who defended them.
