Different Ways of dividing the Land.
AFTER the Goths and Burgundians had under various pretences penetrated into the heart of the empire, the Romans, in order to put a stop to their devastations, were obliged to provide for their subsistence. At first they allowed them corn; but afterwards chose to give them lands. The emperors, or the Roman magistrates in their name, made particular conventions with them concerning the division of lands, as we find in the chronicles and in the codes of the Visigoths and Burgundians.
The Franks did not follow the same plan. In the Salic and Ripuarian laws we find not the least vestige of any such division of lands: they had conquered the country, and so took what they pleased, making no regulations but amongst themselves.
Let us therefore distinguish between the conduct of the Burgundians and Visigoths in Gaul, of those same Visigoths in Spain, of the auxiliary troops under Augustulus and Odoacer in Italy, and that of the Franks in Gaul, as also of the Vandals in Africa. The former entered into conventions with the antient inhabitants, and in consequence thereof made a division of lands between them; the latter did no such thing.