With the aid of many hundreds of documents in the Tuscan archives[73] we can closely follow the history of the growth of the Florentine territory, as it increased in all directions above the valley of the Arno, often with difficulty and with the most violent struggles, beyond Prato, Pistoja, on the shore of the Mediterranean towards Leghorn, through the Elsa and Chiana valley, where the conflicts took place with Siena, beyond Arezzo; finally, by way of Cortona, to the upper valley of the Tiber, and towards the Umbrian frontier, as along the Apennines to that of Romagna, including, on the other side, Volterra and the long-contested Pisa. The forms under which the villages and territories were annexed were very various. First of these, was the submission (_submissio_), a result generally of war, but which sometimes was brought about by compacts with other commonwealths and rulers, and at times occurred spontaneously. The submitting commune assembled in such case a parliament to appoint a syndicus, who repaired to Florence to settle affairs with the Signoria, after which the Chapter was consulted, and a commissary of the Republic was sent to the place in question to receive homage, and complete the so-called act of taking bodily possession. These things were very simple in small communes. They expressed to the Signoria by their syndics and procurators the hope that they might be well governed by them, and live in peace; promised faith and obedience—appointing a fine in case of a breach of this promise; received a podestà and judge from Florence; retained free choice of their presidents from their own citizens; stipulated conditions in respect to markets, customs, weights and measures, etc., as well as observance of their own statutes, such as even the smallest communes possessed. For if, with the decline of the imperial power towards the time of the Swabian emperors, the legal power once pertaining to the empire might be considered as having passed actually to princes and commonwealths, the case now occurred that princes and larger towns claimed the former rights of the empire over little towns, which defended themselves as far as they could by reservations. In such cases the statute of the chief town represented towards the subject communes the common law, to which there was an appeal from the separate municipal statutes where appeal to the Roman law was not stipulated. After the subjection of Pisa, the Pisan statutes remained valid for all the dependencies of this town; but in Florence such dependencies had always a hearing if they appealed to the Florentine statute law. But where there was a special fortress in the stipulating place (Rocca, Cassero), the garrisoning of it was decided by the ruling commune.