The history of the 9th and 10th centuries is the history of the gradual break-up of the Carlovingian Empire, and the rise of feudalism on its ruins. In 877, the year of his death, Charles the Bald signed a decree making the counts of the provinces, who until then had been imperial officers, hereditary. He thus, as Sismondi says, annihilated the remains of royal authority in the provinces.[165] The removable officers now became local sovereigns. Gradually, as the Carlovingian Empire fell to pieces, the artificial organisation of the feudal system arose to take its place. By the end of the 10th century the victory of feudalism was complete; and the victory of feudalism was the victory of the private castle. "The very word castle," says Guizot, "brings with it the idea of feudal society; we see it rising before us. It was feudalism that built these castles which once covered our soil, and whose ruins are still scattered upon it. They were the declaration of its triumph. Nothing like them had existed on Gallo-Roman soil. Before the Germanic invasion, the great landed proprietors dwelt either in the cities, or in beautiful houses agreeably situated near the cities."[166] These Gallo-Roman villas had no fortifications;[167] nor were the Roman villas in England fortified.[168] It was the business of the State to defend the community; this was the theory so long sustained by imperial Rome, and which broke down so completely under the later Carlovingians. In the time of Charlemagne and Louis le Debonnaire, even the royal palaces do not appear to have been fortified. They were always spoken of as _palatia_, never as _castella_. The Danes, when they took possession of the palace of Nimeguen in 880, fortified it with ditches and banks.[169] Charles the Bald appears to have been the first to fortify the palace of Compiègne.[170]