These developments mainly concerned the relations between greater and lesser men, and they came about partly as a response to military developments, partly as a reflection of economic recovery, but perhaps also because they favoured interests which could not indefinitely be gainsaid. Kings and great lords were essentially military leaders; they were held in esteem, or not, according to their ability to fight, whether in defence of their rights and lands or in conquest. A retinue of trained fighters was an indispensable consequence of this function. Such a retinue could be gathered and maintained in various ways. It might consist of paid men, such as the Polish dukes were able to gather about them in the tenth century. It might consist of men attracted to a particular leader by the prospect of conquest and plunder, as was the case among the Vikings in the tenth and eleventh centuries and as was much of Duke William of Normandy's army when he successfully invaded England in 1066. It might consist of landless nobles who looked for their keep while hoping to achieve something better, as was the case with the forces employed by King Henry I of England during his continental campaigns in the first quarter of the twelfth century. It might also consist of men who had contracted particular bonds to a lord or king, generally as free men but in Germany often as unfree soldiers, or ministeriales. Despite the great variety of arrangements which might be made and aspirations which might be shared, there was a general pressure for service to be rewarded by grants of land. Possession of land freed a man from the accidents of life such as a quarrel with his lord or years of sickness and old age and it was an essential for those who sought wives.
Land could be owned or held upon many different terms. If owned it was termed an allod; as such it passed within a family according to the dictates of local, customary law, though a lord or king might be asked to intervene if this provoked disagreement. Those who owned allods did not necessarily do so unconditionally. Public obligations to provide military service and attend local courts had been an essential feature of Carolingian government, and in due course these might be supplemented by an obligation to pay some form of taxation.
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