We may perhaps do well to pause here awhile before proceeding to show how the various Swiss cantons were gathered into the fold of the Eidgenossenschaft--a long process, as a matter of fact--and devote a short chapter to a glance at an aristocratic city whose polity and development contrast with those of the Forest lands. Zurich presents a fair example of a city whose origin dates back to a remote age, and whose transition from the condition of a feudal territory into the position of an independent commonwealth can be clearly followed. That Turicum is a word of Celtic origin, and that the place was one of the lake settlements in prehistoric times, and a Roman toll-station later on, has been already shown. The chief founders of this Alamannic, or Swabian, settlement, however, were the Carolinger. Louis the German had raised the Grand Abbey and Church of Our Lady (Fraumunsterabtei) in 853, to provide his saintly daughters, Hildegarde and Bertha, with positions and incomes equal to their rank. His ancestors, Pepin the Short and Charlemagne, had founded or enlarged the minster, with its vast establishment of prebends, and the Carolinum, or clerical colleges. Both institutions were richly endowed with land, and granted many prerogatives, especially the _immunity_, most precious of all, viz., the severance from the county or local administration of Zurich. They thus came again under the immediate control of the empire, and there were developed, two distinct centres of feudal life. Yet a third nucleus was formed by the dependants of royalty, the _fiscalini_, and followers of the monarch and of the Swabian dukes. These were grouped around the imperial palace (Pfalz) on the Lindenhof, a fortified stronghold on the site of the Roman _castrum_, and a favourite residence of the German sovereigns, who were attracted thither by the natural beauty of the place. The houses of the Alamannic free peasantry were scattered over the slopes of Zurichberg, and reached down to the Limmat river. Gradually these four distinct settlements approached each other, and in the tenth century the inner core at the mouth of the lovely lake was girt with strong walls with towers, and the _tout ensemble_ now looked like a picturesque mediæval city with its suburbs. The rights of high jurisdiction over the whole were exercised by a royal governor, or representative of the sovereign. This was the so-called _Reichsvogtei_, or Advocacia in imperio.