But what proved the great disturbing element in Gallo-Roman society was the fact that the conquerors, owing to their former customs and the degree of their civilization, were all warriors, men whose chief interest was to become practised in the handling of arms, and whose normal state was that of war. It is true that under the Roman empire all the men of a _civitas_ were obliged, in case of necessity, to march against the enemy, and under the Frankish monarchy the count still called together his _pagenses_ for this object. But the condition of the barbarian was very different; he lived essentially for fighting. Hence those gatherings or annual reviews of the _Campus Martius_, which continued so long, in Austrasia at least. They constituted the chief armed force; for mercenary troops, in spite of the assertions of some to the contrary, play at this period only a small part. But this military class, though not an aristocracy (for among the Franks the royal race alone was noble), was to a large extent independent, and the king had to attach these _leudes_ or _fideles_ to himself by gifts and favours. At the same time the authority of the king gradually underwent a change in character, though he always claimed to be the successor of the Roman emperor. It gradually assumed that domestic or personal character that, among the Germans, marked most of the relations between men. The household of the king gained in political importance, by reason that the heads of the principal offices in the palace became at the same time high public officials. There was, moreover, a body of men more especially attached to the king, the _antrustions_ (q.v.) and the commensals (_convivae regis_) whose _weregeld_ (i.e. the price of a man's life in the system of compensation then prevalent) was three times greater than that of the other subjects of the same race. The Frankish monarch had also the power of making laws, which he exercised after consulting the chief men of the kingdom, both lay and ecclesiastical, in the _placita_, which were meetings differing from the _Campus Martius_ and apparently modelled principally on the councils of the Church. But throughout the kingdom in many places the direct authority of the king over the people ceased to make itself felt. The _immunitates_, granted chiefly to the great ecclesiastical properties, limited this authority in a curious way by forbidding public officials to exercise their functions in the precinct of land which was _immunis_. The judicial and fiscal rights frequently passed to the landowner, who in any case became of necessity the intermediary between the supreme power and the people. In regard to this last point, moreover, the case seems to have been the same with all the great landowners or _potentes_, whose territory was called _potestas_, and who gained a real authority over those living within it; later in the middle ages they were called _homines potestatis_ (_hommes de poeste_).