g whom are hardly to be
distinguished from the secular nobility, Below these, and a long
distance below, come the inhabitants of the larger towns, the merchants
and the better class of artisans. At the bottom, trodden down to the
very soil from which they are forced to extract food for all the rest,
and perhaps, if any is left, for themselves, come the peasantry.

Since the disruption of the great conglomerate empire of Charlemagne,
the power of the nominal kings of France had been gradually restricted.
Powerless to protect the kingdom from the attacks of foreign enemies,
the king was also powerless to preserve order within it. Personal
immunity from force could be obtained only by the use of force; and if
one were not strong enough to protect one's self, the only way was to
purchase protection from a stronger neighbor. This was the reason for
the growth of the complicated system of feudalism, with whose remote
origins and exact details we are not here concerned.

As regards the influence of the feudal system upon the position of
women, it might be safe to say that feudalism at first made little
change in their condition. They enjoyed neither more nor less rights
than during the ages of barbaric _Sturm und Drang_; but certainly they
found a little greater security against violence and oppression, since
greater security was the general aim and the general effect of
feudalism. The weak must always occupy a relatively better position in a
compactly organized society than in a democracy of violence; and so the
feudal system, retaining for women such small civil rights as they
already possessed, added a greater personal security.

This was not all. Though the transmission of property, on which all
social standing was based, was regularly from male to male, and though
female heirs might be passed over or disposed of by violence or
chicanery, there were exceptions, which become more numerous as we go
on. It cannot be said that there was at any time absolute prohibition of
a daughter's inheriting from her father. In the Salic law, so called,
there was a provision that "no part _of the salic land_ shall pass to a
woman;" but all land was not salic, or allodial, and this provision was
later held to apply particularly to the lands of the crown, and hence to
the crown itself, as we shall see. Under the feudal system, the fief was
held on condition of military service, and each vassal, as a rule, must
_servir son fief_ (do the ser