Such was the primitive legislation of the Barbarians, but though in principle it was long retained, in practice it was speedily disregarded by those whom irresponsible power elevated above the law. The Roman populations of the conquered territories were universally allowed to live under their old institutions; in fact, law everywhere was personal and not territorial, every race and tribe, however intermingled on the same soil, being subjected to its own system of jurisprudence. The summary process of extracting confessions and testimony which the Roman practice thus daily brought under the notice of the Barbarians could not but be attractive to their violent and untutored passions. Their political system was too loose and undefined to maintain the freedom of the Sicambrian forests in the wealthy plains of Gaul, and the monarch, who, beyond the Rhine, had scarce been more than a military chief, speedily became a despot, whose power over those immediately around him was limited only by the fear of assassination, and over his more distant subjects by the facility of revolution. When all thus was violence, and the law of the strongest was scarcely tempered by written codes, it is easy to imagine that the personal inviolability of the freeman speedily ceased to guarantee protection. Even amid the wild tribes which remained free from the corruptions of civilization the idea of torturing for confession the friendless and unprotected was not unfamiliar, and in the Elder Edda we find King Geirröd using the torment of fire for eight days on Odin, who visits him in disguise for the purpose of testing his hospitality.[1463] Among the Gallic Franks, therefore, it need not surprise us to see irresponsible power readily grasping at such means to gratify hate or ambition. In the long and deadly struggle between Fredegonda and Brunhilda, for example, the fierce passions of the adversaries led them to employ without scruple the most cruel tortures in the endeavor to fathom each other’s plots.[1464] A single case may be worth recounting to show how completely torture had become a matter of course as the first resource in the investigation of doubtful questions. When Leudastes, about the year 580, desired to ruin the pious Bishop Gregory of Tours, he accused him to Chilperic I. of slandering the fair fame of Queen Fredegonda, and suggested that full proof for condemnation could be had by torturing Plato and Gallienus, friends of the bishop. He evidently felt that nothing further was required to substantiate the charge, nor does Gregory himself, in narrating the affair, seem to think that there was anything irregular in the proposition. Gallienus and Plato were seized, but from some cause were discharged unhurt. Then a certain Riculfus, an accomplice of Leudastes, was reproached for his wickedness by a man named Modestus, whereupon he accused Modestus to Fredegonda, who promptly caused the unhappy wretch to be severely