During the 10th century, the counts became increasingly independent of the weakening Carolingians. This was publicly acknowledged in 988 when the Count of Barcelona Borrell II declined to swear fealty to Hugh Capet, the first Capetian monarch of the emerging French kingdom. Borell was motivated by Capet's failure to address Borrell's petitions to Capet for assistance against Muslim incursions. During this period, the population of the Catalan counties began to increase for the first time since the Muslim invasion. During the 9th and 10th centuries, the counties increasingly became a society of "aloers", peasant proprietors of small, family-based farms, who lived by subsistence agriculture and owed no formal feudal allegiance.