In the second half of the twelfth century limits had already been set to the worst forms of feudal anarchy, and strong and well-ordered states ruled by powerful kings had replaced the chaos of the Dark Ages. Frederick Barbarossa, if no effective lord of the world, exercised a very real authority over Germany, and even over Italy. Louis VI. and Louis VII. had put the resources of the French monarchy on a solid basis, and Philip Augustus was now preparing the way for still greater triumphs. Henry II. had bound together his vast but heterogeneous empire so firmly that the power of Anjou was able to survive the blind knight-errantry of his successor. Even in the remoter parts of Europe the same tendency manifested itself towards the growth of strong monarchies. The kingdoms of the east and north, barely redeemed from barbarism, saw rulers like Valdemar of Denmark and Ottocar of Bohemia. The kingdoms of divided Spain, the Norman dominion of Sicily, show the universal drift of the tide. Even the greater feudatories of the larger kingdoms were making themselves centres of an authority that was not far from being national. States like Toulouse and Provence, representing the growing national feeling of the south French nation; opulent and manufacturing Flanders, cutting itself apart from France and Germany alike, and even mere dynastic powers, like the house of Champagne and Blois, show how authority was becoming concentrated into few hands. If the unity of the German kingdom was still rather illusory, the dukes, counts, and margraves, who ruled over its larger subdivisions, were making themselves, like the great French feudatories, centres of a local feeling and of a local order, which, in days when the strongest king’s arm did not reach very far, were real securities for peace and prosperity.