But in the eleventh century there was no strong national government in Europe; kingship and imperialism existed rather in name than in such power as we are accustomed to associate with the words. At the opening of the tenth century France was parcelled out into twenty-nine petty states, each controlled by its feudal lord. Hugh Capet (987-996) succeeded in temporarily combining under his sceptre these fragments of Charlemagne’s estate; but his successors were unable to perpetuate the common dominion. In the year 1000 there were fifty-five great Frankish lords who were independent of the nominal sovereign. Indeed, some of these nobles exercised authority more weighty than that of the throne. Louis VI. (1108) first succeeded in making his lordly vassals respect his kingship, but his domain was small. “Île de France, properly so called, and a part of Orléannais, pretty nearly the five departments of the Seine, French Vexin, half the countship of Sens, and the countship of Bourges—such was the whole of it. But this limited state was as liable to agitation, and often as troublous and toilsome to govern, as the very greatest of modern states. It was full of petty lords, almost sovereign in their own estates, and sufficiently strong to struggle against their kingly suzerain, who had, besides, all around his domains several neighbors more powerful than himself in the extent and population of their states” (Guizot). In Spain much of the land was still held by the Moors. That which had been wrested from them was divided among the Christian heroes who conquered it, and who, though feudal rules were not formally recognized, held it with an aristocratic pretension commensurate with the leagues they shadowed with their swords. In Germany, though imperialism had been established firmly by Otho the Great, the throne was forced to continual compromise with the ambition of its chief vassals, like the dukes of Saxony, Bavaria, Swabia, and Franconia. A papal appeal to such magnates was sufficient at any time to paralyze, or at least to neutralize, the imperial authority. The Norman holdings in the south of Italy, the independence of the cities of Lombardy in the north, the claims of the German emperor and of the popes to landed control, were typical of the divisions of that unhappy peninsula. Later than the age we are studying, Frederick Barbarossa (1152-90) enjoined that “in every oath of fealty to an inferior lord the vassal’s duty to the emperor should be expressly reserved.” But it was not so elsewhere. When Henry II. (1154-89) and Richard I. (1189-99) claimed lands in France, their French vassals never hesitated to adhere to these English lords, nor “do they appear to have incurred any blame on that account. St. Louis (1226-70) declared in his laws that if ‘justice be refused by the king to one of his vassals, the vassal may summon his own tenants, under penalty of forfeiting their fiefs, to assist him in obtaining redress by arms’” (Hallam).