merged with other peoples as the Northmen did. As for the Saracens, lords of Sicily, Sardinia, and other islands of the western Mediterranean, they were completely unassimilable. They had to be conquered in hard fighting and they were not completely expelled from the islands until the beginning of the twelfth century.
The invaders had raided far beyond the area of their conquests and had disrupted normal lines of communication. The Saracens blocked the main land route between France and Italy for years and made navigation in the western Mediterranean extremely hazardous. Forays of the Northmen interrupted travel in the French river valleys, while Magyar horsemen threatened communications between Germany and Italy. The tendency to local self-sufficiency, already strong, was reinforced by the dangers to shipping and travel. No community could be absolutely sure that it would receive supplies from other regions in time of peace, or military assistance in case of war. Society had to be organized so that each district could meet its minimum needs, economic, political, and military, from its own resources. Life was better when outside help was available, but life had to be possible even when outside contacts were reduced to a minimum.
It was in this atmosphere of decaying central authority, civil war, invasion, and economic stagnation that feudalism developed. It was not a system; it was based on no theory; it was an improvisation to meet a desperate emergency. Formed out of materials ready to hand, shaped by dissimilar events and by individuals of varying ability, it could not be uniform, consistent, or logical. It was a means of preserving the rudiments of social organization in a period of confusion, a way of getting the essential work of government done on a local basis when larger political units had proved ineffectual. Essentially it was the rule of bosses (or lords) and their gangs (or vassals). Strong men surrounded by groups of armed retainers took over the government of relatively small districts, and supplied the armed forces and ran the courts which
