‘I, Rollo, Duke of Normandy, give to the Brethren of the Church Notre-Dame de Chartres my Castle of Malmaison, which I have won with my sword, and with my sword I will guarantee it to them, as let this knife be witness.’
A knife in the Middle Ages was a symbol of putting in possession. It was a fitting symbol for the _siècle de fer_, that century of moral and material disorder and disaster in which the country was now involved.
For France was now falling into the iron grip of feudalism. It is the age of castles. As the power of the central authority weakens, the power of the great vassals, dukes, counts, bishops and abbots becomes established as absolute in their fiefs. But during the period of disorder, from which the feudal _régime_ emerged triumphant, the serf had waged with his master the same struggle that the vassal was waging with his lords and the lord with the King. The result was similar in all cases. Usurpation of servile tenures accompanied that of liberal tenures, and, territorial appropriation having taken place in every rank of society, it was as difficult to dispossess a serf of his manse as a seigneur of his benefice. The serf, therefore, emerged from the condition of almost absolute slavery in which he was at the time of the fall of the Western Empire, and from the condition of servitude that had been his up to the end of the reign of Charles-le-Chauve. From this time _servitude_ was transformed into serfage. The serf having withdrawn his person and his field from his master’s hands, owes to him no longer his body and goods, but only a portion of his labour and his income. He ceases to be a slave and becomes a tributary.
With the advent of feudalism the map of the country underwent a change. The Roman arrangement, by which Gaul had been divided into eighteen provinces and 127 dioceses, had been little altered by the Francs, and lasted on under the Carlovingians, but it gradually disappeared in the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries. It was preserved only by the Church, the dioceses of which, up to the time of the Revolution, represented very nearly the ancient divisions of Gaul under the Romans. Before the days of Cæsar it was into _pagi_ that Gaul had been divided. The pagus or _pays_ persisted now; more numerous than the cities, they continued to split up and multiply. But from 800 onwards most of these pays having set up comtés of the same name and same extent began to be known as such--as, for instance, the Comté of Chartres.