on the different points of the road that the troops were expected to follow, and the inhabitants had to provide lodgings--this was the only military service expected of them, but none could escape it. [Illustration: Fig. 35.--Military Costume from the Sixth to the Tenth Centuries.--From a Miniature in the “Dialogues de Saint Grégoire,” Manuscript of the Eleventh Century (National Library of Paris).] The towns were at this time almost always fortified, and entrenched camps covered nearly the whole of Italy. The castles in the rural districts, constructed to protect the frontiers, were usually full of troops, whose support was part of the duty of the pretorial prefect, and whose insubordination often necessitated severe measures of repression. “Keep up a spirit of military discipline; it is often difficult to enforce it under civil rule,” said Theodoric to Servatus, one of his generals. If it is a matter of surprise to meet with such a right moral feeling in the sovereign of reputed barbarians, barbarians half civilised, however, by their contact with the Latin race, it is not the less so to find, in the wars which occurred in the years 507, 508, and 509, other barbarian kings, namely, Alaric, Clovis, Gondebaud, and Thierry, make use of and apply with skill the rules of Greco-Roman strategy, either in executing long military manœuvres, or in displaying all the strategic science that sieges then required, in attacking or defending the fortified towns of Avignon, of Carcassonne, and of Arles. [Illustration: Fig. 36.--St. Benedict reproaches Totila with having deceived him, and predicts his death.--Fresco in the Church of San Miniato, Florence, painted by Spinelli of Arezzo (Thirteenth Century).] [Illustration: Fig. 37.--Moorish Arms from the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century: Armlet.--From the Armeria Real, Madrid.] [Illustration: Fig. 38.--Moorish Arms: Daggers.--Armeria Real, Madrid.] [Illustration: Fig. 39.--Moorish Arms: Trident.--Armeria Real, Madrid.] In proportion as the preponderance of the Goths (Fig. 36), of the Ostrogoths, and of the Visigoths diminished in Europe, that of the Franks and of the Lombards increased. The latter were the first to institute in Italy the feudal system, founded on the possession of conquered territory. The conquerors established their camp in the midst of the vanquished country, seized half the land, reduced into servitude a portion of the colons, and imposed heavy taxes on those whom they had not despoiled. The king having at first distributed the great fiefs among his principal officers, these great vassals then made a subdivision of the land granted them by their suzerains in favour of their own men-at-arms and satellites, and these latter, in their turn, ceded a portion of their lands to the common soldiers. The obligation of personal service, the hierarchic subordination of vassalage, were the necessary consequence of feudal institutions.