A Short History of France

le. Considered as man or sovereign, Charlemagne is one of the most impressive figures in history. His seven feet of stature clad in shining steel, his mast

hout, and anarchy within; Saxon paganism pressing in upon the north, and Asiatic Islamism upon the sout

ristian empire as well. Saxons, Slavs, Huns, Lombards, Arabs, came under his compelling grasp; these antagonistic races all held together by the force of one terrible will, in unnatural combination with Fra

ff in one day, and a whole army compelled to baptism in an afternoon. Here was a champion to be propitia

s to be the spiritual and he the temporal head. Mutually dependent upon each other, the election of the pope would not be valid without his consent. Nor

esses, and the most impressive of human failures. It seems designed as a less

ieces by another Colossus like himself. The vast fabric resting upon one hu

e eighth; from which calamity they were saved, as we have seen, by Pepin. So when the Franks were again appealed to, Charlemagne saw his opportunity. With plans fully matured he responded, and with the consent and acquiescence of the pope he took formal possession of the whole of Italy, annexing to his own dominio

: Coronation

painting

would for centuries be insulted and treated as contumacious vassals by German emperors. And France-France, the centre of this dream of a magnificent unity-in less than

h been immortal! But it was the triple division of the empire brought about by

until his death in 840. Then Charlemagne's three ambitious grandsons fought for the great inheritance. Lothaire, who claimed the whole by right of primogeniture, was defeated at the battle of Fontenay in Burgundy, and by the treaty of Verdun in 8

art into three grand divisions, but France itself was disintegrating, was in fact a mass of rival sta

e larger organism of Europe was coming into form. The treaty of Verdun (843) had roughly separated Italy, France, and Germany. At the same time the Heptarchy in Britain had been consolidated into England under King Alfred; while an obscure Scandinavian adventurer named Rurik, quite unobserved, was bringing

o bury the past under a ruin of a different sort. There seemed no defence from these Northmen, as they were called, who swarmed like destroying insects upon the coast, up the rivers, and over the lan

otection of the rich. After seven invasions all the old cities, Rouen, Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse

t events, no less than kings, have their pedigrees. The terrible child of the Northman was the Feudal System; which was again the fath

removed-each an apparently inevitable step in the unfoldin