But
this extension was even more fatal to the free self-government of a city
state. The population of Italy could not meet in the Forum of Rome or
the Plain of Mars to elect consuls and pass laws, and the more wisely
it was extended the less valuable for any political purpose did
citizenship become. The history of Rome, in fact, might be taken as a
vast illustration of the difficulty of building up an extended empire on
any basis but that of personal despotism resting on military force and
maintaining peace and order through the efficiency of the bureaucratic
machine. In this vast mechanism it was the army that was the seat of
power, or rather it was each army at its post on some distant frontier
that was a potential seat of power. The "secret of the empire" that was
early divulged was that an emperor could be made elsewhere than at Rome,
and though a certain sanctity remained to the person of the emperor, and
legists cherished a dim remembrance of the theory that he embodied the
popular will, the fact was that he was the choice of a powerful army,
ratified by the God of Battles, and maintaining his power as long as he
could suppress any rival pretender. The break-up of the Empire through
the continual repetition of military strife was accelerated, not caused,
by the presence of barbarism both within and without the frontiers. To
restore the elements of order a compromise between central and local
jurisdictions was necessary, and the vassal became a local prince owning
an allegiance, more or less real as the case might be, to a distant
sovereign. Meanwhile, with the prevailing disorder the mass of the
population in Western Europe lost its freedom, partly through conquest,
partly through the necessity of finding a protector in troublous times.
The social structure of the Middle Ages accordingly assumed the
hierarchical form which we speak of as the Feudal system. In this
thorough-going application of the principle of authority every man, in
theory, had his master. The serf held of his lord, who held of a great
seigneur, who held of the king. The king in the completer theory held of
the emperor who was crowned by the Pope, who held of St. Peter. The
chain of descent was complete from the Ruler of the universe to the
humblest of the serfs.[1] But within this order the growth of industry
and commerce raised up new centres of freedom. The towns in which men
were learning anew the lessons of association for united defence and