The barbarian states which arose on the ruins of the
Western Empire were founded, under widely different circumstances of time and
place, by tribes and federations of tribes drawn from every part of Germany. We
expect to find, and we do find, infinite varieties of detail in their laws,
their social distinctions, their methods of government. But from a broader
point of view they may be grouped in two classes, not according to affinities
of race, but according to their relations with the social order which they had
invaded.
One group of kingdoms was founded under cover of a legal
fiction; the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, and the Burgundians claimed to be the
allies of the Empire. At one time or another they obtained the recognition of Constantinople
for their settlements. Their kings accepted or usurped the titles of imperial
administrators, stamped their coins with the effigies of the reigning Emperor,
dated their proclamations by the names of the consuls for the year, and in many
other ways flaunted their nominal subjection as the legal basis of their actual
sovereignty. This fiction did not prevent them from governing their new
dominions in true Teutonic fashion, through royal bailiffs, who administered
the state demesnes, and military officers (dukes, counts, etc.) who ruled with autocratic
sway over administrative districts. Nor did the most lenient of them hesitate
to provide for their armies by wholesale confiscations; the ordinary rule was
to take from the great proprietor one-third or two-thirds of his estate for the
benefit of the Teutonic immigrant. Further, we have ample evidence that the
provincials found existence considerably more precarious under the new order.
The rich were exposed to the malice of the false informer and the venal judge;
the cultivators of the soil were often oppressed and often reduced from partial
freedom to absolute slavery.
