EUROPE 



which remained persistently Latin. 

 At the same time the native cus- 

 toms of the Franks in France, as of 

 the Goths in Spain, fusing with the 

 established Latin system, produced 

 the social and political system 

 known as feudalism. Other Teu- 

 tonic tribes followed ; Burgundians 

 into the Rhone valley, and Lango- 

 bards into the Lombard plain. The 

 latter established their lordship 

 over most of Italy, the Ostrogoths 

 having been extirpated by the 

 generals of Justinian, whose suc- 

 cessors failed to retain the domina- 

 tion of the E. over the W. But no- 

 where did the Teutons effectually 

 Teutonise populations already 

 Latinised. Italy, France, and Spain 

 remained essentially Latin, though 

 Latinism hardly expanded E. of the 

 Rhine or N. of the Danube. 



With the rise of Mahomedan- 

 ism in the 7th century, Europe was 

 once more threatened with Orient- 

 alism. Early in the 8th century 

 the Moors invaded Spain and drove 

 the Christians into its N. corners. 

 But when they flooded over the 

 Pyrenees, their armies were shat- 

 tered by Charles Martel at the 

 battle of Tours or Poitiers, 732, and 

 the tide was rolled back for ever 

 behind the Pyrenees, though 

 Saracen sea-rovers established a 

 footing in Sicily. In the E. the 

 Mahomedan onslaught had been 

 hurled back 14 years before by the 

 emperor Leo the Isaurian under 

 the walls of Constantinople. Ex- 

 cept in the S. of Italy all sem- 

 blance of control by the emperor 

 at Constantinople vanished from 

 W. Europe. 



The Empire of Charlemagne 



Charlemagne now revived the 

 W. Empire. He crossetl the Pyre- 

 nees and drove the Moors S. of the 

 Ebro. He completed his father's 

 work of crushing the Lombards 

 in Italy. His armies smote the 

 heathen Saxons in the N. and the 

 Bavarians in the S., and compelled 

 them to adopt Christianity ; still 

 pushing E., they shattered the 

 Mongolian kingdom of the Avars in 

 Hungary. At the instance of the 

 pope, Charles was crowned emperor 

 in Rome on Christmas Day, 800. 

 When he died in 814, the Elbe and 

 the Adriatic were approximately 

 the E. boundaries of the new Holy 

 Roman Empire which he had 

 created. The Danube still re- 

 mained in effect the N. boundary of 

 the Byzantine empire. 



Under the grandsons of Charle- 

 magne his empire parted into three 

 domains, the W., which shaped it- 

 self into the kingdom of France, the 

 E., which was German, and the in- 

 termediate, " middle," or Burgun- 

 dian, which stretched from the 

 North Sea to the Gulf of Lyons, and 



3017 



included most of Italy, the S. of 

 which, however, still belonged to 

 the E. Empire. The crown of the 

 Holy Roman Empire generally 

 went with the E. or German king- 

 dom. Burgundy broke up, part 

 going with France and part with 

 Germany, but never with a definite 

 bond, while Italy became a con- 

 geries of dukedoms and counties 

 over which the emperor on the 

 other side of the Alps could exer- 

 cise little authority. When the 

 house of Charlemagne died out in 

 Germany, the crown of the German 

 kingdom, of the Holy Roman Em- 

 pire, passed by election to the 

 dukes of Saxony. The first, Henry 

 the Fowler, was never crowned 

 emperor ; but he and his son, Otto 

 the Great, stemmed the onrush of 

 the third Mongolian horde which 

 occupied Hungary, the Magyars, 

 who nevertheless retained perma- 

 nent possession of that tract. 

 The Middle Ages 



The close of the 10th century, 

 then, is the era of transition from 

 the chaos of the earlier Middle 

 Ages to what is generally more dis- 

 tinctively meant by the medieval 

 period. During the 9th and 10th 

 centuries the sea-rovers from Scan- 

 dinavia had planted their colonies 

 of Danes or Northmen in theBritish 

 Isles and in the N. of France, and 

 had shaped their own kingdoms in 

 Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. 

 In the 5th and 6th centuries the 

 Teutonic English had conquered 

 more than hall the island of Britain, 

 and in the 10th century England 

 had become a fairly consolidated 

 state. 



France was on the way to con- 

 solidation under the house of 

 Capet, which had displaced that of 

 Charlemagne, but as yet the king of 

 France was little more than a pre- 

 mier baron amongst many, some of 

 whom ruled wider domains than the 

 king himself. Spain was still 

 mostly under the Saracen sway, 

 though the Christian princes were 

 soon to emerge from their northern 

 fastnesses to win it back, estab- 

 lishing the kingdoms of Castile 

 and Leon, Portugal, Aragon, and 

 Navarre. 



In the Spanish kingdoms, as 

 in France, the king was hardly 

 more than a premier baron. Cen- 

 tral Europe regarded the German 

 king as its head, though scarcely 

 as its ruler, while to W. Christen- 

 dom, in his character of emperor, 

 he represented the idea of Christen- 

 dom as a unity. The popes, as 

 spiritual heads of Christendom, 

 now began gradually to claim an 

 authority higher than that of any 

 lay potentate. Outside the empire 

 on the E. the Slavs were establish- 

 ing the Polish and Bohemian king- 



EUROPE 



doms, and had already given half 

 the Balkan peninsula and the whole 

 Danube basin a Slavonic character, 

 though they owned the supremacy 

 of the emperor at Byzantium. The 

 latter, with his hardly held domin- 

 ion in Asia, barred the door into E. 

 Europe against the Mahomedans. 



The new age was the age of 

 feudalism, which before the end of 

 the llth century had established 

 itself everywhere. Theoretically ,the 

 king owned every inch of soil in his 

 kingdom. He had granted great 

 tracts or small to his servants on 

 condition of military service. They 

 in turn had granted portions upon 

 like conditions, while every one 

 had settled husbandmen upon the 

 soil, allowing them patches on con- 

 dition of agricultural and other 

 services to the lord. 



But outside England, the tenant 

 generally owed his services to his 

 immediate lord and was bound to 

 fight for him against anyone else, 

 even the king. Hence if one of the 

 king's men or barons accumulated 

 enough territory, he had at his 

 back an army of tenants with which 

 he could levy war against the king. 

 The royal authority depended upon 

 the loyalty to the king of a propor- 

 tion of the baronage. Thus the 

 French dynasty and each German 

 dynasty tried to expand the crown 

 estates at the expense of the great 

 barons. In France the counts of 

 Anjou acquired by marriage the 

 dukedoms of Normandy and Aqui- 

 taine as well as the independent 

 kingdom of England. Essentially 

 the Hundred Years' War between 

 England and France in the 14th 

 and 15th centuries was a struggle 

 between the crown and the duke of 

 Aquitaine, who happened also to 

 be king of England. The final vic- 

 tory of the French crown, and its 

 absorption of the duke's dominions, 

 cleared the way for the final estab- 

 lishment of an absolute monarchy 

 in France. 



Pope and Emperor 



In Germany, on the other hand, 

 the monarchy was elective ; each 

 time that the succession changed, 

 the new dynasty had to start afresh 

 the absorption of feudatory terri- 

 tory, and consequently the German 

 kings failed to establish absolute 

 monarchy. Germany remained an 

 aggregation of estates great and 

 small, over which the emperor exer- 

 cised little control. 



The papacy again established its 

 own supreme authority over the 

 whole ecclesiastical organization of 

 W. Christendom, and sought to 

 assert that authority over all lay 

 potentates. Within the empire, in 

 Germany and in Italy, the struggle 

 between the pope as the spiritual 

 head of Christendom, and the 



