At the same time the king, in France and England at least, was becoming a power that made for order in the modern sense of the word. He endeavored to prevent the customary resort to arms to settle every sort of difficulty between rival vassals. By increasing the military force that he had at his command he compelled the submission of cases of dispute to his tribunals. But even St. Louis (d. 1270), who made the greatest efforts to secure peace, did not succeed in accomplishing his end. The gradual bettering of conditions was due chiefly to general progress and to the development of commerce and industry, which made the bellicose aristocracy more and more intolerable. General Reading.--The older accounts of feudalism, such as that given by Guizot or Hallam, should be avoided as the reader is likely to be misled by them. The earlier writers appear, from the standpoint of recent investigations, to have been seriously mistaken upon many important points. In French, LUCHAIRE, _Manuel des Institutions Françaises_ (Hachette & Co., Paris, $3.00), and ESMEIN, _Cours Élémentaire d'Histoire du Droit Français_ ($2.00), are excellent. In English there is EMERTON'S Chapter XIV on "Feudal Institutions" in his _Mediæval Europe_, and ADAMS, _Civilization_, Chapter IX, devoted especially to the origin of feudalism. CHEYNEY gives a selection of documents relating to the subject in _Translations and Reprints_, Vol. IV, No. 3. CHAPTER X THE DEVELOPMENT OF FRANCE [Sidenote: Importance of studying the beginnings of the modern European states.] 46. There is no more interesting or important phase of mediæval history than the gradual emergence of the modern national state from the feudal anarchy into which the great empire of Charlemagne fell during the century after his death. No one should flatter himself that he has grasped the elements of the history of western Europe unless he can trace in a clear, if general, way the various stages by which the states which appear now upon the map of Europe--the French republic, the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, and the kingdoms of Italy, Great Britain, and Spain--have grown out of the disorganized Europe of the ninth century. It might be inferred from what has been said in the preceding chapters that the political history of western Europe during the two or three centuries following the deposition of Charles the Fat was really only the history of innumerable feudal lords. Yet even if the kings of mediæval Europe were sometimes less powerful than some of their mighty subjects, still their history is more important than that of their vassals. It was the kings, and not their rivals, the dukes and counts, who were to win in the long run and to establish national governments in the modern sense of the term. It was about them that the great European states, especially France, Spain, and England, grew up.