ABSTRACT
The insubordination of the city aristocracies, sometimes organized in regional leagues, had constituted almost as great a threat to the unity of the Roman Empire in its last days as the ambitions of military commanders. The Merovingian kings had been obliged at various times to grant to the aristocracy of a particular county the right to elect the count, and to the great men of Burgundy the privilege of appointing their own mayor of the palace. The grant of a county was as a rule supplemented by the grant of the principal royal monasteries of the region. The founders of principalities were doubtless not very subtle geographers. In the states born of the Carolingian Empire the counties, which had sooner or later become hereditary, had not all been absorbed by the great principalities. Faithful to the Frankish tradition, the German sovereigns seem to have long hesitated to touch the old county organization.
