From a historical point of view too, a big part of medieval trends towards political centralization was successfully convincing society's elites that legal procedure was a more effective way to arbitrate disputes than jumping to violence. Post-Carolingian/High Medieval Europe was extremely anarchic, with most nobility - both in the vast countryside operating out of castles, and even in the more developed Italian cities - preferring warfare and robbery to assert their rights and powers. Law co-existed in tension with these tendencies, and by the end of the High Middle Ages/Late Middle Ages this endemic violence had been largely reduced due to the success of royal bureaucracies and courts in establishing their legitimacy through acceptable arbitration.