Free Men. From the Leudes, let us pass to those who were simply free men. There are words which have, in our time, so simple and absolute a signification, that we apply them without consideration or scruple to times in which their actual significance was not recognized at all. The expression _free man_ is an example. If by it we mean the man who is not a slave, the man who is not the property of another man, and can neither be given nor sold as an article of traffic, there were a great number of free men from the fifth to the tenth centuries. But if we attach to this expression the political sense which it possesses in our days, that is to say, the idea of a citizen dependent on no other citizen, who depends for the safety of his person and his property only upon the state, and the laws of the state, the number of free men was very inconsiderable at the period of which we speak, and was continually diminishing. Most of those who were not serfs were engaged or were binding themselves with increasing frequency, either for the security of their persons or of their properties, to the service, and to a certain amount of dependency upon some man more powerful than themselves, who employed them in his house or protected them at a distance. The independence of the citizen as it existed in the republics of antiquity, and as it exists in our public communities, became more and more rare from the fifth to the tenth centuries. Eminent publicists, M. de Savigny among others, in his _Histoire du droit romain dans le moyen âge_, have affirmed that always at this period a numerous class of free men existed, true citizens, exempt from all personal dependence, depending only upon the state and forming the body of the nation. {146} This involves a complete confusion of times' and a misapprehension of the natural succession of events. Doubtless at the time of the invasion, and during the period which immediately followed it, there were many free men of this kind; the independence of individuals who live a wandering and barbarian life did not suddenly and completely vanish under the influence of the new circumstances which resulted from their territorial establishment. But, so far as regards the greater number of free men, this independence was rapidly absorbed by new ties, and by the very numerous and various forms of feudal hierarchy. We may think we have found, under certain names which are frequently to be met with in documents and historical works, such as, _Arimanni, Erimanni, Herimanni, Hermanni_, among the Lombards, and _Rachimburgi, Rathimburgi, Regimburgi_, among the Franks, a class of men actually free--citizens in the sense in which we use the words at the present time. But when we investigate more closely, we soon learn that no such class is to be found, and that nearly if not quite all the _Arimanni_ or _Rathimburgi_, were bound in the fetters of a feudal organization and depended far more on some superior individual