Above these agents, local and resident, magistrates or beneficiaries, were the _missi dominici,_ temporary commissioners, charged to inspect, in the emperor’s name, the condition of the provinces; authorized to penetrate into the interior of the free lands as well as of the domains granted with the title of benefices; having the right to reform certain abuses, and bound to render an account of all to their master. The _missi dominici_ were the principal instruments Charlemagne had, throughout the vast territory of his empire, of order and administration. As to the central government, setting aside for a moment the personal action of Charlemagne and of his counsellors, the general assemblies, to judge by appearances and to believe nearly all the modern historians, occupied a prominent place in it. They were, in fact, during his reign, numerous and active; from the year 776 to the year 813 we may count thirty-five of these national assemblies, March-parades and May-parades, held at Worms, Valenciennes, Geneva, Paderborn, Aix-la-Chapelle, Thionville, and several other towns, the majority situated round about the two banks of the Rhine. The number and periodical nature of these great political reunions are undoubtedly a noticeable fact. What, then, went on in their midst? What character and weight must be attached to their intervention in the government of the State? It is important to sift this matter thoroughly. There is extant, touching this subject, a very curious document. A contemporary and counsellor of Charlemagne, his cousin-german Adalbert, abbot of Corbic, had written a treatise entitled _Of the Ordering of the Palace (De Ordine Palatii),_ and designed to give an insight into the government of Charlemagne, with especial reference to the national assemblies. This treatise was lost; but towards the close of the ninth century, Hincmar, the celebrated archbishop of Rheims, reproduced it almost in its entirety, in the form of a letter or of instructions, written at the request of certain grandees of the kingdom who had asked counsel of him with respect to the government of Carloman, one of the sons of Charles the Stutterer. We read therein, “It was the custom at this time to hold two assemblies every year. . . In both, that they might not seem to have been convoked without motive, there were submitted to the examination and deliberation of the grandees . . . and by virtue of orders from the king, the fragments of law called _capitula,_ which the king himself had drawn up under the inspiration of God or the necessity for which had been made manifest to him in the intervals between the meetings.”