Holy Roman empire and before that of Lotharingia. There were many lords who founded their powerful position on extensive allodial estates in the eastern Alpine countries and the lands of the Bohemian Crown. The king as lord paramount never exercised lordship over the whole Empire. An allodial estate could also be created when a lord renounced his rights in favour of his vassal. Deforested land was considered allodial by the princes. Conversely, free territorial lords were sometimes punished by the Emperor by converting their allodial land into fiefs. The differences between the two forms of medieval ownership - the fief and the allod - diminished over time. Firstly, vassals were no longer required to render services from the 17th century at the latest, and vassals’ rights of inheritance became much stronger in the early modern period, and, secondly, the territorial princes were able to force freemen in the 16th century to make regular tax payments. In the 19th century, feudal law was finally gradually abolished in most European countries largely due to the Napoleonic wars and the influence of the Napoleonic Code. It fully integrated the ius commune system of ownership as a full right in rem. While in France the régime féodal was ended in 1789 by the stroke of the pen under the Revolutionary legislature, in Germany it was not until the mid-20th century that feudal law was formally abolished in 1947 by Allied Control Council law. In most of Scotland, the feudal system was abolished in the early 21st century; allodial tenure still exists in Shetland and Orkney. See also Commons Feudalism in the Holy Roman Empire Crown land Imperial estate Droit de régale Allodial title Odal Udal law Literature Otto Brunner: Land und Herrschaft. Grundfragen der territorialen Verfassungsgeschichte Österreichs im Mittelalter. 5th edition, Rohrer, Vienna, 1965 (Unamended reprographic copy of the 5th edition: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1984, ). References Feudalism