The unfortunate Duke of Lorraine, captured after a vain attempt to gain his inheritance, perished in prison, and with him disappeared the Carolingians. The House of Capet, built on their ruin, survived in the direct line until the fourteenth century, and then in a younger branch, the Valois, until France in modern times was declared a republic. Under the Capets France became not merely a collection of tribes and races as under the Merovingians, nor a section of a European Empire as under the House of Charlemagne, but a nation as we see her to-day, with separate interests and customs to distinguish her from other nations. This process of fusion was slow, and King Hugh and his immediate successors appeared in their own day more as powerful rulers of the small district in which they lived than as overlords of France. When they marched abroad at the head of a large army, achieving victories, outlying provinces hastily recognized them as suzerains, or overlords, but when they turned their backs and went home, the commands they had issued would be ignored and defied. Amongst the most formidable neighbours of these rulers of Paris were the Dukes of Normandy, descendants of a certain Viking chief, Rollo ‘the Ganger’, so called because on account of his size he could find no horse capable of bearing him and must therefore ‘gang afoot’. This Rollo established himself at Rouen, and because Charles ‘the Simple’, one of the later Carolingians,[5] was unable to defeat him in battle he gave him instead the lands which he had won, and created him Duke, hoping that like a poacher turned gamekeeper he might prove as valuable a subject as he had been a troublesome foe. In return Rollo promised to become a Christian and to acknowledge Charles as his overlord. One of the old chronicles says that when Rollo was asked to ratify this allegiance by kissing his toe, the Viking replied indignantly, ‘Not so, by God!’ and that a Dane who consented to do so in his place was so rough that he tumbled Charles from his throne amid the jeers of his companions. This is probably only a tale, for in reality Rollo married a daughter of Charles and settled down in his capital at Rouen as the model ruler of a semi-civilized state, supporting the Church, and administering such law and order that it was said when he left a massive bracelet hanging on a tree and forgot he had done so, that the ornament remained for three years without any one daring to steal it. [Sidenote: William the Conqueror]