with the assistance of the clergy, who had then already become very powerful, they made him contemptible to all the people; and though royal authority was restored to him, yet as he was now too weak and worn out to proceed against such children with fatherly severity, their rebellions and mutual contentions still continued, till at length weary of life, and of a government saturated with the most painful and humiliating experiences, he ended his days, in the year 840.* Could the blessing of God attend such sons as these? Immediately after the death of their father, they renewed their wars with one another, and Lotharius was totally defeated at the battle

* We supply, chiefly from Tytler, the following more particular summary of these transactions. To Pepin, his second son, he gave Aquitaine, the southern third of France; to Lewis, surnamed the German, who was youngest, Bavaria ; and he associated his eldest son Lotharius with himself in the government of the rest. The three princes quarrelled among themselves, agreeing in nothing but in hostility against their father, who thus proved the unintentional author of most serious civil troubles. They made open war against him, supported by pope Gregory iv.; the pretence was, that the emperor having a younger son, Charles, born to him by a second wife, and after this partition of the states, wanted to provide this child likewise with a share, which could not be done but at the expense of his elder brothers. Lewis was compelled to surrender himself a prisoner to his rebellious children. They confined him for a year to a monastery, and treated him with great contempt; till, on a new quarrel between Lewis the younger and Pepin, Lotharius once more restored his father to the throne. But his spirits were broken, and his health decayed, so as to disable` him from exercising any paternal severity or royal firmness; thus the rebellions and dissensions of the brothers still continued, and he finished soon after by his death an inglorious and turbulent reign, A.D. 840.-TRANS.

But

of Fontenay, in France. However, in the year 843, a new partition of the empire was made by the treaty of Verdun. Lotharius retained the imperial dignity, the possession of Italy, and a tract of country on the left bank of the Rhine, stretching to the coast of the North Sea. The province of Lothringen (Lorraine) was so called from his name. But his family became extinct a few years after his death, and his territory, with the imperial dignity, came into the hands of Charles the Bald, to whom France, and a portion of Spain extending to the Ebro, had been assigned by the abovementioned partition of the empire. this prince was unable to defend his territory against the invasions of the Normans, who poured in upon it from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden; and who, upon their arrival, gave immediate independence to several powerful vassals of the emperor, and established new kingdoms in Lower Burgundy, (the south-east part of France,) and in Upper Burgundy, (France, east and west of Mount Jura, including Switzerland ;) while another part of them settled in the northwest part of France, which is still called Normandy. His successors, Lewis the Stammerer, Charles the Gross, Charles the Simple, and Lewis the Lazy, were weak princes. The last had at length no more than the territories of two cities remaining to him; and, upon his death, in 987, Hugh Capet, count of Paris, the father of the Capetian race of monarchs, established himself on the throne, and from him are descended the present royal families of France.

In Germany, the Carlovingian line had even

earlier become extinct. At the abovementioned partition of the empire, the best part of Germany had fallen to the share of Lewis the German. But he and his successors had to encounter perpetual incursions from the Hungarians, Slavonians, Moravians, and Normans; and the last of his line, namely, Lewis surnamed the Child, died in A.D. 911. The incessant invasions from these foreigners occasioned the erection of innumerable fortresses and castles, many ruins of which to this day still hang about the hills and heights of Germany. The original tenants of these once fortified places bade defiance not only to the invading foe, but sometimes even to the power of their own lawful sovereign. The evil of the Germanic feodal system had been all along more and more discovering itself in dissensions, internal weakness, lawlessness, and anarchy; and the chasm between the haughty nobles and the oppressed vassals, as having no industrious and educated middle class to fill it up, became more and more observable. It was in Italy that the struggle was first made to remedy this evil. In that country, during the feeble government of the Carlovingians, several powerful vassals rebelled, and contended for independent possession of their lands; while the poor people at large groaned under their oppression, as also under that of the clergy. As in Germany, castles and fortresses were multiplied for protection against the plunder of foreign invaders; so in Italy, for the same object, were large towns newly built, while others were enlarged and fortified. Extended traffic produced affluence, and affluence,

with the living together of large bodies of population, called forth new wants and necessities. Hence arts and manufactures began to flourish. And although in these free towns the partition wall between nobility and common citizens made its appearance, and temporal power upon a lesser scale was here as much the object of ambition and struggle as it had been in the great empires, yet the circumstances of the middling and lower classes were not so oppressive, and the way was opened to a better adjustment of the various ranks of society. While, in the south of Europe, the new nations had gradually become established, disturbing and unsettling changes still continued in its northern and eastern parts. These were chiefly occasioned by the Normans, who were looking about in various directions for a new home. One branch of their nation had planted itself in the north of France: they made desolating incursions into Germany; in Russia, they established, in 862, a distinct Norman state; they peopled Iceland; and, in England, they maintained severe contests against Alfred the Great, (an excellent prince, who restored tranquillity and order to his country,) but they could not prevail against him. A large part of them embraced Christianity, and settled in England; but, at a later period, they at length obtained the perpetual sovereignty of that country.

In the ninth century, during the itinerancy of Ansgarius as the apostle of the north, Christianity from Constantinople was planted in Bohemia and Moravia, which two countries at that

period formed one powerful kingdom, that often troubled Germany with invasions.

II. GERMANY UNDER CONRAD 1. AND THE SAXON
EMPERORS.

AFTER the extinction of the Carlovingian family, Conrad, duke of the Franks, was chosen king in Germany. He was a brave and able prince, but reigned only seven years, and was succeeded by Henry the Fowler, duke of Saxony, A.D. 918-936, the most powerful and best qualified German prince of the age. The dukes of Swabia and Bavaria, who opposed him, he soon found means to reduce to subjection, and reunited to Germany the dukedom of Lorraine, which had formed part of France; for as these two countries were manifestly distinct by their languages, so the separation between them had been all along becoming more and more apparent. He concluded a treaty of peace with the Hungarians, a barbarous and fierce nation, who from time to time had invaded Germany, and had made frightful ravages; and he availed himself of this interval to fortify his cities, discipline his troops, commence obstinate skirmishes with the Slavonian tribes, and habituate his Germans to this kind of warfare. When the stipulated period for cessation of hostilities with the Hungarians had elapsed, and Henry had refused to pay them any further tribute, they invaded Saxony