That extraordinary phenomenon which, being neither Holy, nor Roman, nor yet strictly speaking an Empire, was yet called the Holy Roman Empire, began when Charlemagne crossed the Alps to rescue the reigning Pope from the Lombards in A.D. 800. The Pope crowned him Roman Emperor of the West, a title which had been extinct since the time of Odoacer more than three hundred years before. The revival of the resplendent title caused the unhappy people of the Dark Ages to think for a moment in their misery that the mighty days of Augustus and Marcus Aurelius had returned; it seemed to add the power of God to the romance of ages and the brute power of kings. During the next two centuries the peoples of France and Germany gradually evolved into two separate nations, but it was impossible for men to forget the great brooding power which had given the _Pax Romana_ to the world, and its hallowed memory survived more beneficent than possibly it really was; it appeared to their imaginations that if it were possible to unite the sanctity of the Pope with the organizing power of Rome the blessed times might again return when a man might reap in peace what he had sown in peace, and the long agony of the Dark Ages might be lifted from mankind. When Henry the Fowler had welded the Germans into a people with a powerful king the time appeared to have arisen, and his son Otto was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. He was not Emperor of Germany, nor German Emperor; he was _Holy Roman Emperor_ of the German people, wielding power, partly derived from the religious power of the Pope, and partly from the military resources of whatever fiefs he might hold; and this enormous and loosely knit organization persisted until 1806--nearly seven hundred years from the time of Otto, and more than 1,000 years after the time of Charlemagne.