What strikes one with astonishment in the writings of Maurer and his disciples is that they omit and leave altogether out of sight a fact which is of vital importance and rests on abundant evidence: the existence of great estates in the early centuries of the Middle Ages. They disregard also the existence of _coloni_ and of slaves. But these were to be found not only in Gaul, but even in Germany. Tacitus himself describes the cultivation of the soil in Germany by serfs.[151] He gives a picture of a society full of inequalities, including rich and poor, nobles and simple freemen, freedmen and slaves; and he remarks this peculiar characteristic, that the Germans--those of them who were free, that is--did not themselves cultivate their land, but left the work “to the weakest of their slaves.”[152] Later on we see in the laws of the Burgundians that proprietors of land have _coloni_ to cultivate their estates;[153] they have slaves;[154] they have on each estate a manager, _actor_, or a farmer, _conductor_.[155] When the Burgundian king makes a present to one of his warriors, it is not a small field that he gives him, but “an estate with its slaves.”[156] The laws of the Alamanni also indicate the existence of large estates. As to those belonging to the king and the church the laws give particularly clear information, and show that they were cultivated by slaves, or by _coloni_ who paid a yearly rent in produce or labour.[157] We may suppose that lands of the same character were also in the hands of private persons; for reference is made to their slaves, and in such a way as to show that they were numerous.[158] Moreover, the laws speak of slaves holding portions of land, with house, stable and barn,[159] by the side of the house and barn of the owner.[160] In the laws of the Bavarians, the same classes of _coloni_ and slaves make their appearance. Amongst the Thuringians, Frisians and Saxons, there are slaves and _liti_; and neither of these classes is quick to disappear, for they are still to be found in the documents of the Middle Ages, and to be found cultivating holdings which belong to an owner and for which they pay dues.[161] It is also noticeable in the greater part of these documents, that the owner declares that, in giving or selling his land, he gives or sells at the same time the slaves, freedmen, _coloni_, _liti_; in a word, all who actually worked on the land.[162] The number of slaves is considerable. Thus in a deed of 863, Ansfrid makes a grant of an estate and sixty-four slaves.[163] In 786, Warinus presents the Abbey of Fulde with a _marca_, which contains thirty _hubæ_ and three hundred and thirty slaves.[164] Some one else, in 787, gives the lands that he owns in the _marca_ of Wangheim, and, at the same time, the sixty-two slaves who cultivate them.[165] Walafrid, in another _marca_, gives twenty-eight slaves.[166] In 815, we find a man of middle rank possessing seven