[205] This want will be supplied, as regards England, by the completion of the _Victoria County Histories_, and as regards France, by the _Societé Préhistorique_, which is now undertaking a catalogue of all the earthworks of France. The late M. Mortillet, in an article in the _Revue Mensuelle de l'École d'Anthropologie_, viii., 1895, published two lists, one of actual mottes in France, the other of place-names in which the word motte is incorporated. Unfortunately the first list is extremely defective, and the second, as it only relates to the name, is not a safe guide to the proportional numbers of the thing. All that the lists prove is that mottes are to be found in all parts of France, and that place-names into which the word _motte_ enters seem to be more abundant in Central France than anywhere else. It is possible that a careful examination of local chroniclers may lead to the discovery of some earlier motte-builder than Thibault-le-Tricheur. We should probably know more about Thibault's castles were it not that the Pays Chartrain, as Palgrave says, is almost destitute of chroniclers. [206] Cited at length by De Caumont, _Bulletin Monumental_, ix., 246. Von Hochfelden considered that the origin of feudal fortresses in Germany hardly goes back to the 10th century; only great dukes and counts then thought of fortifying their manors; those of the small nobility date at earliest from the end of the 12th century. [207] _Die Befestigungen der Vorzeit_, p. 28. [208] _Entwickelung des Kriegswesens_, iii., 370. [209] _Antiquitates Italicæ_, ii., 504. He says they are many times mentioned both in charters and chronicles in Italy. [210] We hear of Robert Guiscard building a wooden castle on a hill at Rocca di St Martino in 1047. Amari, _Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia_, i., 43. Several place-names in Italy and Sicily are compounded with _motta_, as the Motta Sant'Anastasia in Sicily. See Amari, _ibid._, p. 220. [211] Especially Montfort and Blanchegarde. But there is a wide field for further research both in Palestine and Sicily. [212] "Bei den Sclaven haben die Chateaux-à-motte keinen Eingang gefunden, weil ihnen das Lehnswesen fremd geblieben ist." iii., 338. [213] Professor Montelius informed the writer that they are quite unknown in Norway or Sweden; and Dr Christison obtained an assurance to the same effect from Herr Hildebrand. [214] "These are small well-defended places, the stronghold of the individual, built for a great man and his followers, and answering to mediæval conditions, to a more or less developed feudal system." _Vor Oldtid_, p. 642. [215] I am informed by a skilled engineer that even in the wet climate of England it would take about ten years for the soil to settle sufficiently to bear a stone building. [216] Köhler says: "By far the greater part of the castles of the Teutonic knights in Prussia, until the middle of the fourteenth century, were of wood and earth." _Die Entwickelung des Kriegswesen_, iii., 376.