tribe, Tacitus. traces and survivals. In the words of Sir Henry Maine, "As societies do not advance concurrently, but at different rates of progress, there have been epochs at which men trained to habits of methodical observation have really been in a position to watch and describe the infancy of mankind. Tacitus made the most of such an opportunity." According to his account the race now called Teutonic, although of the same physical type, and speaking the same language, and although possessed of a common mythology, and a common system of social, political, and military institutions, did not possess in its own tongue a common name by which to describe the race as a whole, nor any form of central political organization. This homogeneous race was broken up into an endless number of political communities or tribes which stood to each other in a state of complete political isolation, except when united in temporary confederacies. The typical Teutonic tribe- the civitas of Cæsar and Tacitus repre- Teutonic sented an aggregation of hundreds, while the hundred rep- civitas of resented an aggregation of village-communities.3 The spot Cæsar and inhabited by the village community is called in German muniments the mark, an area of land marked out and defined The mark. by settled boundaries. The absolute ownership of the territory embraced within the mark was vested in the community itself, or in the state of which the mark was a part, while the right to its common enjoyment was vested in its qualified members. Territorially the mark was divided into three parts, the village lands, the arable lands, and the common or waste lands. In the centre of the mark was situated the village in which the markmen dwelt in their homesteads, surrounded by inclosures and out-houses. The possession of such a homestead was evidence of the fact that its possessor was a fully qualified member of the mark, and as such entitled to a full share in the enjoyment of every right that belonged to any other member of the community. The arable mark was usually divided into three great fields, whose cultivation was regulated by a system of minute and complicated rules, while the use of the woods, pastures, and meadows was enjoyed in obedience to a scheme of strict proportion. The 1 Ancient Law, p. 116. 2 Tac. Germania, cc. 1−4. 3 See below, bk. i. ch. ii. c. 5 Parallel be tween the Teutonic, internal affairs of the mark were regulated by a village council or mark-moot in which every markman had his place. In the assembly of the mark was transacted all business which arose out of the system of common cultivation, and out of the enjoyment of common rights.1 The parallel between the Teutonic, the Greek, and the Latin tribe seems to be comGreek, and plete. The yévos, the gens, the mark represent the same thing the village-community; while the pparpía, the curia, the hundred seem to represent the same thing—a group or union of village-communities.2 Out of the aggregation of such intermediate groups or hundreds arose the tribe itself. But here the parallel ceases. In the Mediterranean peninsulas the resultant of a union of tribes was the city-commonwealth, in Teutonic lands the resultant of a union of tribes was not a city at all but a nation. In ancient Greece and Italy the city became the heart, the centre of social and political life; while in countries inhabited by the Teutonic race the idea of the city never became dominant. The Teutonic city, if it was to be found at all, was simply the dwelling-place of part of the nation who were in no wise privileged above those who dwelt beyond its bounds. At the time Tacitus wrote the typical Teutonic tribe (civitas) was a distinct commonwealth, the largest and highest political aggregate. Not until nearly a hundred years later were these scattered tribes gathered into larger wholes into nations. When this stage was reached, when tribes were fused into the higher political unit- the nation the primitive Teutonic conception of the state or commonwealth widened into its full and final development. But another stage of growth had yet to be passed before the new unit, which thus arose out of an aggregation of tribes, reached the full modern conception of the state as a nation possessing a definite portion of the earth's surface with fixed geographical boundaries. The fact must be borne in mind. that the primary bond which united the people who composed a Teutonic nation was a personal one, the national king Teutonic tribes gathered into nations. 1 For the authorities as to the primitive Teutonic mark, see below, bk. i. ch. ii. c. 7. 2 Comparative Politics, pp. 102-105,117. 8 "The Teutons passed from the tribal stage into the national stage without ever going through the city stage at all." Ibid., p. 101. "In Greece and Italy the union of tribes formed only the city; among all the branches of the Teutonic stock the union of tribes formed the nation." Ibid., p. 120. 4 Zeuss, Die Deutschen und die Nach barstämme, pp. 303, 304. ereignty. was first among the people, the embodiment of the national being, but not the king of a particular area or region of territory. The idea of sovereignty was not associated in the Teutonic mind with dominion over a particular portion or subdivision of the earth's surface. The Merovingian line of Tribal sovchieftains were not kings of France, they were kings of the Franks; Alaric was king of the Goths wherever the Goths happened to be, whether upon the banks of the Tiber, the Tagus, or the Danube.1 The leading idea which seems to have prevailed among the conquering nations who settled down upon the wreck of Rome was that they were simply encamped upon the land whose possession they had won. The conception of sovereignty which the Teutons brought with them from the forest and the steppe was distinctly tribal or national and not territorial. The general nature of the transition whereby the primitive notion of tribal sovereignty was gradually superseded by that of territorial sovereignty has been described as a movement from personal to territorial organization; 2 from a state of things in which personal freedom and political right were the dominant ideas to a state of things in which those ideas have become bound up with and subservient to the possession of land. The most striking Territorial single result of the transition, which, for the want of a bet- the out ter term, has been called "the process of feudalization," 4-come of is that the elective chief of the nation, the primitive embodi- cess of feument of the tribal sovereignty, is gradually transformed into the hereditary lord of a given area of land. The new conception of sovereignty, which thus grew out of "the process of feudalization," did not become established, however, until after the breaking up of the empire of Charles the Great, out of whose fragments have arisen most of the states of modern Europe. The completion of the transition is marked by the accession of the Capetian dynasty in France. When the hundred years' struggle between the Dukes of Paris and the descendants of Charles the Great ended in the triumph of Hugh Capet, he not only assumed the dynastic title of 8 Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 166. sovereignty "the pro dalization." Growth of King of the French, but he also styled himself King of France.1 Hugh Capet and his descendants were kings in the new territorial sense; they were kings who stood in the same relation to the land over which they ruled as the baron to his estate, the tenant to his freehold. The form thus assumed by the monarchy in France was reproduced in each subsequent dominion established or consolidated; and thus has arisen the state-system of modern Europe in which the idea of territorial sovereignty is the basis of all international relations.2 The modern conception of the state is, therefore, an outgrowth of "the process of feudalization" through which the Teutonic nations passed after their settlement within the limits of the Roman Empire. 4. Amongst all the states that have arisen out of the setthe English tlements made by the Teutonic nations on Roman soil, there kingdom. is not one whose political life has remained more pure, or whose political development has been more persistent or more unbroken than that of the English kingdom. This condition of things has arisen in the main out of the special circumstances under which the Teutonic settlements in Britain were made. In the first place the very physical difficulties that had to be met and overcome impressed upon the Teutonic invasion of Britain a character and form at once local and peculiar. The invaders were compelled to cross the sea in ships, and their sea craft and war craft could only transport bodies of men more or less numerous, and not great armies of invasion by which the whole land could be suddenly overrun. All the evidence goes to show that the Teutonic invaders came into Britain in disconnected bands, more or less numerous, each under its own leader, who singled out some 1 "The important change occurred when the feudal prince of a limited territory surrounding Paris began, from the accident of his uniting an unusual number of suzerainties in his own person, to call himself King of France, at the same time that he usurped from the earlier house their dynastic title of Kings of the French."-Maine, Ancient Law, p. 104. Mr. Freeman was at first inclined to challenge this statement. He has since written me as follows: "I should not say that what Maine says about Rex tonic theory." special district of country for conquest and settlement. Such a leader, with the limited force at his command, necessarily circumscribed his efforts to a narrow area, from which by dint of hard fighting he was obliged to drive the Celtic masters of the soil. In this way, bit by bit, the land was won. Moving from the south, the east, and the northeast, the invaders drove the Britons slowly to the west. The struggle from its very nature was a bitter one. Invasion no "The Teu longer signified, as upon the Continent, forcible intrusion, it became, within the districts which the conquerors made their own between the middle of the fifth century and the end of the sixth, practically equivalent to extermination. "The plain fact is that, in utter contrast to the phenomena of Teutonic conquest on the mainland, the Britons were, as a race, exterminated within those parts of Britain which the English occupied while they were still heathens. . . . How far in any particular district the vanquished were slain, how far they were simply driven out, we never can tell. It is enough that they were exterminated, got rid of in one way or another, within what now became the English border." 1 "Though the literal extirpation of a nation is an impossibility, there is every reason to believe that the Celtic inhabitants of those parts of Britain which had become English at the end of the sixth century had been as nearly extirpated as a nation can be. The women would, doubtless, be often spared; but, as far as the male sex is concerned, we may feel sure that death, emigration, or personal slavery were the only alternatives which the vanquished found at the hands of our fathers." 2 Under such favorable conditions as these the whole fabric of Teutonic life was replanted in a practically free and unincumbered soil. In a state of pure barbaric 1 Freeman, The English People in its Three Homes, p. 133. 2 Norman Conquest, vol. i. p. 18, 3d ed. As Mr. Freeman is now generally regarded as the champion of "the Teutonic theory," I have preferred to state it in his own language. His latest utterance upon the subject is contained in his Four Oxford Lectures, 1887, in which he quotes both of the passages given in the text. See his lecture on Teutonic Conquest in Gaul and Britain, pp. 61-112. See also Green, Making of England, p. 132. |