ak through the bonds of the gens. While freed slaves
generally occupied an inferior position, because they could not be
members of any gens, they often gained rank, wealth and honors as
favorites of the new kings. The same thing took place after the conquest
of the Roman empire by those military leaders who had now become kings
of great countries. Among the Frankons, slaves and freed slaves of the
king played a leading role first at the court, then in the state. A
large part of the new nobility were descended from them.

There was one institution that especially favored the rise of royalty:
the military following. We have already seen, how among the American
redskins private war groups were formed independently of the gens. Among
the Germans, these private groups had developed into standing bodies.
The military leader who had acquired fame, gathered around his person a
host of booty loving young warriors. They were pledged to personal
faithfulness by their leader who in return pledged himself to them. He
fed them, gave them presents and organized them on hierarchic
principles: a body guard and a troop for immediate emergencies and short
expeditions, a trained corps of officers for larger enterprises. These
followings must have been rather insignificant, in fact we find them so
later under Odoaker in Italy, still they portended the decay of the old
gentile liberty, and the events during and after the migrations proved
that military retainers were heralds of evil. For in the first place,
they fostered the growth of royalty. In the second place, Tacitus
affirms that they could only be held together by continual warfare and
plundering expeditions. Robbery became their life purpose. If the leader
found nothing to do in his neighborhood, he marched his troops to other
countries, where a prospect of war and booty allured him. The German
auxiliaries, many of whom fought under the Roman standard even against
Germans, had been largely recruited among such followings. They
represent the first germs of the "Landsknecht" profession, the shame and
curse of the Germans. After the conquest of the Roman empire, these
retainers of kings together with the unfree Roman courtiers formed the
other half of the nobility of later days.

In general, then, the German tribes combined into nations had the same
constitution that had developed among the Greeks of the heroic era and
the Romans at the time of the so-called kings: public meetings, counc