although warlords might claim possession of territory by conquest, they were unlikely to enjoy, in their new-won lands, the networks of élite client relations on whom secure rule depended. As late as the tenth century very powerful kings of Wessex struggled to engender loyalty among peoples recently ‘liberated’ from Viking control. There is a fine

Zilia wondering why the French king, despite levying all sorts of heavy taxes, cannot simply redistribute the wealth in the same manner as the Sapa Inca.