of Caesar the original clan-constitution still subsisted substantially unaltered among the insular Celts and in the northern cantons of the mainland; the general assembly held the supreme authority; the prince was in essential questions bound by its decrees; the common council was numerous—­it numbered in certain clans six hundred members—­but does not appear to have had more importance than the senate under the Roman kings.  In the more stirring southern portion of the land, again, one or two generations before Caesar—­the children of the last kings were still living in his time—­there had occurred, at least among the larger clans, the Arverni, Haedui, Sequani, Helvetii, a revolution which set aside the royal dominion and gave the power into the hands of the nobility.

Development of Knighthood
Breaking Up of the Old Cantonal Constitution

It is simply the reverse side of the total want of urban commonwealths among the Celts just noticed, that the opposite pole of political development, knighthood, so thoroughly preponderates in the Celtic clan-constitution.  The Celtic aristocracy was to all appearance a high nobility, for the most part perhaps the members of the royal or formerly royal families; as indeed it is remarkable that the heads of the opposite parties in the same clan very frequently belong to the same house.  These great families combined in their hands financial, warlike, and political ascendency.  They monopolized the leases of the profitable rights of the state.  They compelled the free commons, who were oppressed by the burden of taxation, to borrow from them, and to surrender their freedom first de facto as debtors, then de jure as bondmen.  They developed the system of retainers, that is, the privilege of the nobility to surround themselves with a number of hired mounted servants—­ the -ambacti- as they were called (18)—­and thereby to form a state within the state; and, resting on the support of these troops of their own, they defied the legal authorities and the common levy and practically broke up the commonwealth.  If in a clan, which numbered about 80,000 men capable of arms, a single noble could appear at the diet with 10,000 retainers, not reckoning the bondmen and the debtors, it is clear that such an one was more an independent dynast than a burgess of his clan.  Moreover, the leading families of the different clans were closely connected and through intermarriages and special treaties formed virtually a compact league, in presence of which the single clan was powerless.  Therefore the communities were no longer able to maintain the public peace, and the law of the strong arm reigned throughout.  The dependent found protection only from his master, whom duty and interest compelled to redress the injury inflicted on his client; the state had no longer the power to protect those who were free, and consequently these gave themselves over in numbers to some powerful man as clients.

Abolition of the Monarchy