In spite of the fixity of his purpose and the energy of his action the disorder around him was measureless and insurmountable.  He might check it for a moment at one point; but the evil existed wherever his terrible will did not reach, and wherever it did the evil broke out again as soon as it had been withdrawn.  How could it be otherwise?  Charlemagne had not to grapple with one single nation or with one single system of institutions; he had to deal with different nations, without cohesion, and foreign one to another.  The authority belonged, at one and the same time, to assemblies of free men, to landholders over the dwellers on their domains, and to the king over the leudes and their following.  These three powers appeared and acted side by side in every locality as well as in the totality of the State.  Their relations and their prerogatives were not governed by any generally recognized principle, and none of the three was invested with sufficient might to habitually prevail against the independence or resistance of its rivals.  Force alone, varying according to circumstances and always uncertain, decided matters between them.  Such was France at the accession of the second line.  The coexistence of and the struggle between the three systems of institutions and the three powers just alluded to had as yet had no other result.  Out of this chaos Charlemagne caused to issue a monarchy, strong through him alone and so long as he was by, but powerless and gone like a shadow when the man was lost to the institution.

Whoever is astonished either at this triumph of absolute monarchy through the personal movement of Charlemagne, or at the speedy fall of the fabric on the disappearance of the moving spirit, understands neither what can be done by a great man, when, without him, society sees itself given over to deadly peril, nor how unsubstantial and frail is absolute power when the great man is no longer by, or when society has no longer need of him.

It has just been shown how Charlemagne by his wars, which had for their object and result permanent and well-secured conquests, had stopped the fresh incursions of barbarians, that is, had stopped disorder coming from without.  An attempt will now be made to show by what means he set about suppressing disorder from within and putting his own rule in the place of the anarchy that prevailed in the Roman world which lay in ruins, and in the barbaric world which was a prey to blind and ill-regulated force.

A distinction must be drawn between the local and central governments.

Far from the centre of the State, in what have since been called the provinces, the power of the Emperor was exercised by the medium of two classes of agents, one local and permanent, the other despatched from the centre and transitory.

In the first class we find: 

1st.  The dukes, counts, vicars of counts, centeniers, sheriffs (scabini), officers or magistrates residing on the spot, nominated by the Emperor himself or by his delegates, and charged with the duty of acting in his name for the levying of troops, rendering of justice, maintenance of order, and receipt of imposts.