Westward was France under Lewis VII., divided from Germany by the long narrow range of the Lotharingian provinces, over which the imperial rule was recognized as nominal only. These provinces formed a debatable boundary line, which had for one of its chief functions the maintenance of peace between the descendants of Hugh Capet and the representatives of the majesty of Charles and Otto; and which served its turn, for between France and the Hohenstaufen empire there was peace and alliance. But many of the provinces which now form part of France were then imperial, and beyond the Rhone and Meuse the king of Paris had no vassals and but uncertain allies. Within his feudal territory, the count of Flanders to the north, the duke of Aquitaine to the south, the duke of Normandy with his claims over Maine and Brittany, cut him off from the sea; and even the little strip of coast between Flanders and Normandy was held by the count of Boulogne, who at the moment was likewise king of England. Yet the kingdom of France was by no means at its deepest degradation. Lewis VI. had kept alive the idea of central power, and had obtained for his son the hand of the heiress of Aquitaine; the schemes were already in operation by which the kings were to offer to the provinces a better and firmer rule than they enjoyed under their petty lords, by which fraud and policy were to split up the principalities and attract them fragment by fragment to the central power, and by which even Normandy itself was in little more than fifty years to be recovered; by which a real central government was to be instituted, and the semblance of national unity to be completed by the formation of a distinct national character. [Sidenote: The Low Countries. ] North of France the imperial provinces of Lower Lorraine, and the debatable lands between Lorraine and Saxony, had much the same indefinite character as belonged to the southern parts of the intermediate kingdom. They seldom took part in the work of the Empire, although they were nominally part of it, and the stronger emperors enforced their right. But as a rule they were too distant from the centre of government to fear much interference, and, enjoying such freedom as they could, they gladly recognized the emperor’s sway when they required his help. We shall see the princes of Lorraine taking no small part in the negotiations between England and Germany under Richard and John, but they generally played a game with Flanders, France, and the Empire which has but an indirect bearing on European politics; and we chiefly hear of these lands as furnishing the hordes of mercenary soldiers for the crusades and internal wars of Europe, until almost suddenly the Flemish cities break upon our eye as centres of commerce and political life. [Sidenote: Spain and Portugal. ]