Putting all our accounts together it is hard to say whether, in a military point of view, the expedition of Otto the Second was a success or a failure. If his design was to take Paris, he certainly failed. If he simply wished to avenge his own wrongs and to show that Germany could not be insulted with impunity, he undoubtedly succeeded. In either case the political gain was wholly on the German side. King and Duke acted together during the campaign; but each, in its course, learned to distrust the other, and each found it expedient to seek the friendship of the Emperor as a check against his rival.[150] And more than all, the Imperial rights over Lotharingia were formally acknowledged by Lothar, and were not disputed again for some ages.[151] This campaign of 976 has a special interest just now, as its earlier stages read, almost word for word, like a forestalling of the events of the present year of wonders. How far its later stages may find their counterpart in the great warfare now going on, it is not for us to guess. But it is a campaign which marks a stage in the history of Europe. It is the first war that we can speak of--a war waged between Germany and anything which has even the feeblest claim to be called an united France. When Otto the Great marched against Paris and Rouen, he was fighting in the cause of the King of the West Franks, the lawful over-lord of the Dukes against whom he was fighting. When Otto the Second marched against Paris, he was fighting against King and Dukes alike, and King and Dukes between them had at their call all the lands of the strictly French speech, the tongue of _oil_. Aquitaine of course, and the other lands of the tongue of _oc_, had no part or lot in the matter; then, as in latter times, there were no Frenchmen south of the Loire. But if the expedition of Otto was in this sense the first German invasion of France, it was also for a long time the last. It is not often that Imperial armies have since that day entered French territory at all. The armies of Otto the Fourth appeared in the thirteenth century at Bouvines, and the armies of Charles the Fifth appeared in the sixteenth century in Provence. But Bouvines, lying in the dominions of a powerful and rebellious vassal, was French only by the most distant external allegiance, and Provence, in the days of Charles the Fifth, was still a land newly won for France, and the Imperial claims over it were not yet wholly forgotten. Both invasions touched only remote parts of the kingdom, and in no way threatened the capital. Since the election of Hugh Capet made Paris for ever the head of France and of all the vassals of the French Kingdom, the city has been besieged and taken by pretenders, native and foreign, to the Capetian Crown, but it has never, till our own century, been assailed by the armies of the old Teutonic realm. The fall of the first Buonaparte was followed by a surrender of Paris to a host which called up the memories alike of Otto of Germany