There is yet one more point to add to this picture of the distracted realm of the Visigoths; they were not even masters of the whole of the Iberian peninsula, but had to contend with fierce and watchful enemies within its limits. In the western Pyrenees, and on the shores of the Gulf of Biscay, the Basques preserved a precarious independence, and descended from their fastnesses to plunder the valley of the Ebro, whenever the Goths were engaged in civil discords. Farther to the west there still subsisted in the ancient Galicia and Lusitania the kingdom of the Suevi—the original Teutonic conquerors of Spain. The early Visigothic kings had driven them into the mountains of the West, but had never followed them into their last retreats, to compel them to make complete submission. Suevic kings reigned at Braga over the country north of the Tagus and west of the Esla and Tormes till the last years of the sixth century. Whenever a favourable opportunity occurred, they took part in the civil wars of the Visigoths, and harried the valley of the upper Douro and the lower Tagus. The inner organisation of the Visigothic realm presents a very different picture from the centralised despotism, with everything depending on the king, which we have described as existing among the early Franks in Gaul. Like the Franks the Visigoths had divided their conquest into districts, governed by counts or dukes, generally using as the unit of division the old Roman boundaries of provinces and _civitates_. But the Visigothic governors were far less under the control of their elective kings than were the Frankish counts under the hand of the despotic Merovingians. Each of them kept a body-guard of personal dependants called—as among the Ostrogoths—_saiones_, or sometimes _bucellarii_, whom he could trust to follow him even against the king. [Sidenote: The Saiones.] It was the possession of this armed following among a helpless, weaponless mass of provincials which enabled any count or duke who was popular and ambitious to dare an attempt at rebellion, whenever his master was weak or unfortunate. There seems to have been a comparatively small body of lesser freeholders—_ceorls_ as they would have been called in England—among the Visigoths. There is little trace of any intermediate class between the nobles—whether official nobles, _palatini_, or nobles of birth—and their sworn followers the _saiones_. In fact, the kingdom might fairly be called feudal in its organisation, consisting as it did of a servile population of Hispano-Roman blood, held down by a sprinkling of Gothic men-at-arms, each bound by oath to follow some great noble, who considered himself the equal of his king, and vouchsafed him only the barest homage. As yet the king had no opportunity of supporting himself by calling in to his aid either the Church or the subject Roman population; his Arianism prevented him from having recourse to any such expedient.