French, the new Romance people that had grown up as the result of the amalgamation of conquering Frank and conquered Roman. He spoke the infant French tongue; his ambitions were limited to French soil; he represented the new nationality that soon began to take a foremost place amidst all the nations of Europe. But the triumph of the Capetian was not even in anticipation a simple national triumph. It was only in after ages, when France had become great, that she could look back and see in his accession the beginnings of her separate national monarchy. Personally, Hugh Capet was doubtless, like Harold of England some two generations later, an embodiment of the new national character and energy. But, less fortunate than Harold, he had time enough to live to show how powerless was a national hero, amidst an order of society in which the national ideal could have no place. He was rather the mighty feudatory, raised by his own order to a position of pre-eminence to represent the predominance of feudal ideas. The Carolings had fallen, not because of their own weakness, and still less by reason of any want of sympathy between them and the French nation. They were pushed out of power because France had become so fully feudalised that there was no room for an authority that had no solid basis of feudal support. France had become divided among a series of great fiefs. None of these fiefs fell to the ruling family, which was thus, as the result of the preponderance of the feudal principle, deprived of revenue, army, lands, and reputation. Hugh Capet inherited all that had kept the Carolingian power alive so long; but in addition to that he could supplement the theoretical claims of monarchy by right divine, by the practical arguments drawn from the possession of one of the strongest fiefs. Thus the new dynasty saved the monarchy by strengthening it with a great fief. No doubt the feudatories acted unwisely in having a king at all. But a nominal monarchy was part of the feudal system, and the barons could console themselves by believing that in becoming king of the French, Hugh still remained one of themselves. He was not surrounded with the mystic reverence due to the descendants of Charlemagne. As Harold, in becoming king of the English, did not cease to be earl of the West Saxons, so Hugh, in ascending the French throne, was still in all essentials the duke of the French. Harold and Hugh alike found but a questioning obedience in the great earls and counts, who looked upon the upstart kings as their equals. The Norman Conquest destroyed Harold before it could be early demonstrated what a long step in the direction of feudalism was made by his accession. Hugh Capet and his successors had time to bear the full brunt of the feudal shock. The most powerful of dukes proved the weakest of kings. It was only gradually that the ceremonial centre, round which the cumbrous fabric of French feudalism revolved, became the real heart of French national life.