| | Provinces from the | of Italy and Roman | | | | Saracens by the | Emperor. The Holy Roman | | | | Byzantine Empire. | Empire is from this time | | | | | definitely German. | | | | | FRANCE: The Capet dynasty | | | | | replaces the Carolingian. | | | | | Slavs driven back by Eastern| | | | | Emperors. Russians | | | | | Christianised. Slav | | |1000 | | dominion established in |1000 | |A.D. | | Poland. |A.D. | +-----+--------------------------+-----------------------------+-----+ [Sidenote: England and France] In England, where a Norman dynasty and Norman aristocracy established themselves, the unifying process was astonishingly rapid. The country was comparatively shielded from Papal interposition by distance. A series of vigorous and able monarchs prevented pure feudalism from ever getting developed; it resulted that in the thirteenth century baronage and people made common cause in imposing not feudalism, but constitutional control over the kings. In France, the victory of the crown over feudalism was far slower; the feudatories were too powerful, and among them were the kings of England, as dukes or counts of great territories within France. The Hundred Years’ War was, in fact, not so much a contest for the French crown as a struggle between the French kings and their mightiest vassals. It was not till the English had been finally expelled that Louis XI. was enabled to make the crown supreme in France. There, as in England, the monarchy never submitted to the Papacy; it was so far victorious in that struggle that in the fourteenth century the seat of the Roman pontificate was transferred to Avignon, and the Pontiff himself became literally the creature of France. [Sidenote: Christendom and the Crusades]