To the westward lies the architectural province of Normandy, one of the most vigorous offshoots of the Frankish style: and from the power of the Norman dukes in the 11th and 12th centuries, and the accidental circumstance of its prosperity in those centuries when the rest of France was prostrate from their ravages and torn by internal dissensions, the Romanesque style shows itself here with a vigour and completeness not found elsewhere. It is, however, evidently only the Frankish style based remotely on Roman tradition, but which the Barbarians used with a freedom and boldness which soon converted it into a purely national form. This soon ripened into the complete Gothic style of the 13th century, which was so admired that it soon spread over the whole face of Europe, and became the type of all Gothic architecture. Alsace is not included in this enumeration, as it certainly belongs architecturally to Germany. Lorraine too is more German than French, and if included at all, must be so as an exceptional transitional province. French Flanders belonged, in the Middle Ages, to the Belgian provinces behind it, and may therefore also be disregarded at present: but even after rejecting all these, enough is still left to render it difficult to remember and follow all the changes in style introduced by these different races, and which marked not only the artistic but the political state of France during the Middle Ages, when the six territorial peers of France, the Counts of Toulouse, Aquitaine, Normandy, Burgundy, Champagne, and Flanders, represented the six principal provinces of the kingdom, under their suzerain, the Count or King of Paris. These very divisions might now be taken to represent the architectural distinctions, were it not that the pre-eminence of these great princes belongs to a later epoch than the architectural divisions which we have pointed out, and which we must now describe somewhat more at length. POINTED ARCHES. Before proceeding to describe these various styles in detail, it may add to the clearness of what follows if the mode in which the pointed arch was first introduced into Christian architecture is previously explained. It has already been shown that the pointed arch with radiating voussoirs was used by the Assyrians as early as the time of Sargon in the 8th century B.C., and by the Ethiopians as early as that of Tirhakah. The Etrurians and Pelasgi used the form probably twelve centuries before the Christian era, but constructed it with horizontal courses. To come nearer, however, to our own time, the Saracens certainly adopted it at Cairo in the first century of the Hegira,[19] and employed it generally if not universally, and never apparently used a round arch after the erection of the mosque of Ebn Tulûn, A.D. 879.