But no _Rex_ ever tried to emancipate himself from the Empire or warred for independence against the Emperor. The _Rex_, the local man, undertook all government simply because the old Government above him, the central Government, had failed. No _Rex_ ever called himself a local _Imperator_ or dreamed of calling himself so; and that is the most significant thing in all the transition between the full civilization of the old Empire and the Dark Ages. The original Roman armies invading Gaul, Spain, the western Germanies and Hungary, fought to conquer, to absorb, to be masters of and makers of the land they seized. No local governor of the later transition, no _Rex_ of Vandal, Goth, Hun, Frank or Berber or Moor troop ever dreamt of such a thing. He might fight another local _Rex_ to get part of his taxing-power or his treasure. He might take part in the great religious quarrels (as in Africa) and act tyrannically against a dissident majority, but to fight against the _Empire_ as such or to attempt _conquest_ and _rule_ over a “subject population” would have meant nothing to him; in theory the Empire was still under one control. There, then, you have the picture of what held the levers of the machine of government during the period of its degradation and transformation, which followed the breakdown of central authority. Clovis, in the north of France, the Burgundian chieftain at Arles, Theodoric in Italy, Athanagild later at Toledo in Spain, were all of them men who had stepped into the shoes of an unbroken local Roman administration, who worked entirely by it, and whose machinery of administration wherever they went was called by the Roman and official name of _Palatium_. Their families were originally of barbaric stock: they had for their small armed forces a military institution descended and derived from the Roman auxiliary forces; often, especially in the early years of their power, they spoke a mixed and partly barbaric tongue [Footnote: The barbaric dialects outside the Empire were already largely latinized through commerce with the Empire and by its influence, and, of course, what we call “Teutonic Languages” are in reality half Roman, long before we get our first full documents in the eighth and ninth centuries.] more easily than pure Latin; but every one of them was a soldier of the declining Empire and regarded himself as a part of it, not as even conceivably an enemy of it. When we appreciate this we can understand how insignificant were those changes of frontier which make so great a show in historical atlases.