Gallic slaves consisted of criminals, vagabonds, foreigners imported from Massilia, and prisoners of war principally made from nations beyond the Alps and the Rhine. Even after the invasion of the Kimbri and Belgæ, Gaul was inhabited by tribes more or less akin to each other. It was therefore the theatre of almost uninterrupted domestic war between tribes and federations. But when one tribe was conquered by another, the subject people and those who escaped the fury of battle were not reduced to slavery, but simply became tributary, and received their laws from the conqueror. Exceptions to this rule must have been exceedingly rare. If an invading tribe was subdued, it received lands and was obliged to settle among the conquerors. The founders of Rome, as we saw (see "Romans: Republicans"), acted in a similar manner. Prisoners of war were absorbed into the clan, and were held, perhaps exclusively by the chieftain, in the condition of serfs bound to the soil, but not as chattels or marketable objects; and they were neither deprived of personality nor the rights of family. The arable lands, forests, and pasturages were owned by the clan collectively--the chiefs, of course, receiving the lion's share when distributed for cultivation; and each clan lived on its own lands. These agricultural clansmen it was who constituted the terrible armies which, under various Brenni (chiefs, leaders, kings), so often terrified and scourged almost the whole known world. With the increase of the wealth and power of the chieftains, their relations with the poorer clansmen became more aggressive, and the lands were held by the latter under conditions more and more onerous. But when Cæsar invaded Gaul, no large estates (_latifundia_) existed, and the soil was in the hands of a numerous peasantry inspired with patriotism and love of independence. This peasantry flocked to the standard of Vercingetorix, and, to the last, sustained him in his deadly struggle against Cæsar. The living acoustic telegraph used by the Gauls during the wars with Cæsar is another proof that great estates did not exist in Gaul, and that the soil was tilled by freemen possessed of homesteads: for each peasant, from the limit of his homestead, shouted the news to his next neighbor, he to the next, and so on; and thus intelligence was swiftly carried hundreds of miles even during the shortest day of the year. An important event occurring in any one tribe was thus spread in a twinkling all over Gaul. Now, if the country had been divided into large estates worked by slaves, such a mode of communication would of course have been impossible.