[Sidenote: The Dark Ages.] We begin in a time of gloom and sorrow. The Carolingian Empire, which had united the vigour of the barbarians with the civilisation of the Roman world, had broken up. The sacred name of Emperor had been assumed so constantly by weaklings that it had ceased to have much hold upon the minds of men. The great kingdoms, into which the Carolingian Empire had resolved itself, seemed destined to undergo the process that had destroyed the parent state. The East Frankish realm—the later Germany—was breaking up into its four national duchies of Saxony, Franconia, Bavaria, and Swabia. The West Frankish realm was the prey of the rivalry of the Carolings and the Robertians. The Middle Kingdom was in still worse plight. Italy had fallen away under a line of nominal Italian or Lombard kings, but the south was Greek or Saracen, and the north was in hopeless confusion. The northern parts of the Middle Kingdom, to which alone the name Lotharingia clung, were tending towards their ultimate destiny of becoming a fifth national duchy of the German realm, though their loyalty for the Carolingian house brought them more than once back to the West Frankish kingdom. The lands between this restricted Lotharingia and the Mediterranean had become the kingdom of Arles or Burgundy by the union, in 932, of the two Burgundian states that had grown up in the days of chaos. But of the six kingdoms which now represented the ancient Empire, not one was effectively governed. The administrative system of the Carolingians had altogether disappeared. The kings were powerless, the Church was corrupt, the people miserable and oppressed, the nobles self-seeking and brutal. The barbarian invader had profited by the weakness of civilisation. The restored Rome of Charlemagne, like the old Rome of Constantine and Theodosius, was threatened with annihilation by pagan hordes. The Norsemen threatened the coasts of the west; the Saracens dominated the Mediterranean, captured the islands, and established outposts in southern Gaul and Italy. The Slavs overran Germany. The Magyars threatened alike Germany and Italy. Everywhere civilisation and Christianity were on the wane.