272 BALCH— INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS 



Thus on some islands in the river Seine in the northern part of 

 modern France a settlement started which in time developed into the 

 city of Paris. The islands were chosen as a place of settlement 

 in the beginning because the water about them formed a natural 

 boulevard against attack. A line of fighting men gained the local 

 feudal lordship there ; and in the course of time they extended their 

 landed possessions to both banks of the river and then bit by bit in 

 all directions. From one of their number, Hugh Capet, though he 

 was not the first of his line to rule there, the family came to be 

 known as the Capetians. Then, as time passed, the territorial 

 domains of the Capetians and their Valois successors was extended 

 still farther, sometimes by conquest in war, sometimes by marriage. 

 It was by the marriage, for example, of three French kings, with 

 two successive heiresses of Britanny where the Salic Law did not 

 obtain, that the Celtic-speaking Duchy of Britanny was united to 

 the French crown and so politically to France.'^ Slowly but surely, 

 in spite of many checks caused by the English on the one side or 

 the Burgundians on the other, the territorial power of the Capetians 

 grew, until in time, they came to be looked on as kings of France 

 and head of a growing state. More and more the Capetians and 

 their Valois successors absorbed the sovereign power from the feudal 

 barons, whether large or small, about them, until by the time of the 

 peace of Westphalia, the French nation stood out as a clearly cut 

 and fairly harmonious unit. 



Within the Germanic Empire by an apparently reverse process 

 the same result was attained. For within the Holy Roman Empire, 

 which Voltaire aptly said was " neither Holy, Roman, nor an 

 Empire," the great feudal vassals of the emperor, instead of having 

 their feudal sovereign rights gradually curtailed and absorbed by 

 merger in the sovereignty of their overlord, the emperor, as happened 

 in France for instance, on the contrary were able to increase their 

 own sovereign rights at the expense of the emperor, until he became 

 a mere shadow which came to an end in 1806 as a result of Na- 



^ Charles the Eighth and Louis the Twelfth married in succession the 

 Duchess Anne ; and Frangois de Valois, who became Francis the First of 

 France, married Claude de France, Duchess of Brittany. The son of this last 

 pair, Henry the Second, became botli King of France and Duke of Brittany. 



