The Roman conquest and the subsequent oppressive administration, contributed to establish the same relations between the population in Gaul as existed in Italy and Spain, and which have been already described. The city (_municipium_) became all and every thing; the clan, the district, the country nothing. The former chiefs of the clans became the senators of their respective centres. The imperial Roman administration favored the concentration of landed estates into a few hands, and consequently the impoverishment of small landholders and free laborers and operatives of every kind; and thereby greatly increased the growth of slavery. The collective ownership of the land by the clan and its chiefs became wholly transformed into the individual property of the chief, who was now also a municipal senator or magnate. A striking analogy to this is found in the Highlands of Scotland, which, in the same way have become the property of a few powerful families. The Gallic clansmen before being transformed into chattels, first became tenants (_coloni_)--similar to those in imperial Italy--of their chiefs (or _tierns_), who, on becoming senators, lived in the cities, and were surrounded, not by clients and clansmen, but by slaves. The estates now began to be worked by bondmen and chattels, and thus a servile population succeeded to the free and sturdy yeomanry of ancient times. Not without a struggle, however, was this accomplished. The oppressive taxation, the tyranny of the domestic oligarchs, and the devastations committed by barbarians--the vanguards of the future destroyers of the Roman empire--generated in the third century the repeated insurrections of the _Bagaudes_ (the Gallic name for _insurgent_), that is, of the peasantry against the cities. All the oppressed small land-owners, tenants, serfs and slaves united in these insurrections.