The seigneurial system of land tenure, as all students of history know, was feudalism in a somewhat modernized form. During the chaos which came upon Western Europe in the centuries following the collapse of Roman imperial supremacy, every local magnate found himself forced to depend for existence upon the strength of his own castle, under whose walls he gathered as many vassals as he could induce to come. To these he gave the surrounding lands free from all rents, but on condition of aid in time of war. The lord gave the land and promised to protect his vassals, who, on their part, took the land and promised to pay for it not in money or in kind, but in loyalty and service. Thus there was created a close personal relation, a bond of mutual wardship and fidelity which bound liegeman and lord with hoops of steel. The whole social order rested upon this bond and upon the gradations in privilege which it involved in a sequence which became stereotyped. In its day feudalism was a great institution and one which shared with the Christian Church the glory of having made mediaeval life at all worth living. It helped to keep civilization from perishing utterly in a whirl of anarchy, and it enabled Europe to recover inch by inch its former state of order, stability, and law. But, having done its service to humanity, feudalism did not quietly make way for some other system more suited to the new conditions. It hung on grimly long after the forces which had brought it into being ceased to exist, long after the growth of a strong monarchy in France with a powerful standing army had removed the necessity of mutual guardianship and service. To meet the new conditions the system merely changed its incidents, never its general form. The ancient obligation of military service, no longer needed, gave place to dues and payments. The old personal bond relaxed; the feudal lord became the seigneur, a mere landlord. The vassal became the _censitaire_, a mere tenant, paying heavy dues each year in return for protection which, he no longer received nor required. In a word, before 1600 the feudal system had become the seigneurial system, and it was the latter which was established in the French colony of Canada.