The county of Flanders grew up in the flat country between the Scheldt and the sea. Like Brittany, it had suffered terribly from Norman invasions. Like Brittany, it was not homogeneous in language and custom. In all the northern and eastern districts the Low Dutch tongue prevailed, but in the south-east, round Lille and Douai, French was spoken. Baldwin of the Iron Arm, a Carolingian official who became the son-in-law of Charles the Bald, distinguished himself by leading the Flemings to victory against the Normans, and obtained from his father-in-law an hereditary supremacy over the whole district bounded by the Scheldt, the North Sea, and the Canche, and therefore including the modern Artois with the homage of great barons like the counts of Boulogne and Saint-Pol. Four other Counts Baldwin continued their ancestor’s exploits. Of these the most famous was Baldwin V., the uncle and guardian of Philip I., and the father-in-law of William the Conqueror. It was under Baldwin V. that the Flemish towns, whose strong walls had served to shelter previous generations from the Viking marauders, first enter upon their long career of political liberty and industrial prosperity. When Baldwin V. died in 1067, the year after his son-in-law’s establishment in England, mediæval Flanders had well begun its glorious but tumultuous and blood-stained career. [Sidenote: Vermandois.] To the south of Flanders lay the Vermandois, round its chief town of Saint Quentin, and including the northern parts of the restricted ‘Francia’ of the tenth century. We have seen the importance of its counts in the days of the struggle of Carolingians and Capetians, and the establishment of a Capetian line of counts of Vermandois in the person of Hugh the Great, the brother of Philip I. [Sidenote: Champagne and Blois.] Champagne became the chief fief of north-eastern France. A special feature in this district was the power of the bishops, and in consequence the influence of the crown. The metropolitans of Reims played a great local as well as a great national part. The bishops of Châlons became counts of their cathedral city; the bishops of Troyes, the local capital, only just failed in attaining the same end. ‘Everywhere,’ we are told, ‘the mighty oppressed the feeble, and men, like fishes, swallowed each other up.’ In the course of the tenth century a strong lay power arose in this district under the counts of Troyes. During the tenth century the country was held by a branch of the house of Vermandois. In 1019 it passed, as we have seen, to the house of Blois. However, the power of the family was soon endangered by the separation of Champagne and Blois under the two elder sons of Odo II., after his death in 1037.