According to this Achaian Doomsday-book, twelve baronies, whose number recalls the twelve peers of Charlemagne, were created, their holders, with the other lieges, forming a High Court, which not only advised the Prince in political matters but acted as a judicial tribunal for the decision of feudal questions. In the creation of these twelve baronies due regard was paid to the fact that the Franks were a military colony in the midst of an alien, and possibly hostile, population, spread over a country possessing remarkable strategic positions. Later on, after the distribution of the baronies, strong castles were erected in each upon some natural coign of vantage, from which the baron could overawe the surrounding country. The main object of this system may be seen from the name of the famous Arcadian fortress of Matagrifon, a name given also to our Richard I’s castle at Messina[45], (“Kill-Greek,” the Greeks being usually called _Grifon_ by the French chroniclers), built near the modern Demetsana by the baron of Akova, Gautier de Rozières, to protect the rich valley of the Alpheios. The splendid remains of the castle of Karytaina, the Greek Toledo, which dominates the gorge of that classic river, which the Franks called _Charbon_, still mark the spot where Hugues de Bruyères and his son Geoffroy built a stronghold out of the ruins of the Hellenic Brenthe to terrify the Slavs of Skorta, the ancient Gortys and the home of the late Greek Prime Minister, Delyannes. The special importance of these two baronies was demonstrated by the bestowal of 24 knights’ fees upon the former and of 22 upon the latter. The castle-crowned hill of Passavâ, so-called, not, as Fallmerayer imagined, from a Slavonic Passau, but from the French war-cry _Passe Avant_, still reminds us how Jean de Neuilly, hereditary marshal of Achaia and holder of four fiefs, once watched the restless men of Maina; and, if earthquakes have left no mediæval buildings at Vostitza, the classic Aigion, where Hugues de Lille de Charpigny received eight knights’ fees, his family name still survives in the village of Kerpine, now a station on the funicular railway between Diakophto and Kalavryta. At Kalavryta itself Othon de Tournay, and at Chalandritza to the south of Patras Audebert de la Trémouille, scion of a family famous in the history of France, were established, with twelve and four fiefs respectively. Veligosti near Megalopolis with four fell to the share of the Belgian Matthieu de Valaincourt de Mons, and Nikli near Tegea with six to that of Guillaume de Morlay. Guy de Nivelet kept the Tzakones of Leonidi in check and watched the plain of Lakonia from his barony of Geraki with its six fiefs—a castle which has been surveyed by the British School at Athens—and Gritzena, entrusted to a baron named Luke with four fiefs depending on it guarded the ravines of the mountainous region round Kalamata. Patras became the barony of Guillaume