The crusades made great improvement in the condition of the serfs.
Local self-government…is the life-blood of liberty.
In Gaul were two orders, the nobility and the priesthood, while the people, says Caesar, were all slaves.
Enthusiasm could not supply the place of experience.
Thus the whole country was broken into many shreds and patches of sovereignty.
In the tenth century the old Batavian and later Roman forms have faded away.