These examples are not numerous, but their importance is decisive, and they carry us to the time when the church came to intervene positively in the education of the German _miles_. The time was rough, and it is not easy to picture a more distracted period than that in the ninth and tenth centuries. The great idea of the Roman Empire no longer, in the minds of the people, coincided with the idea of the Frankish kingdom, but rather inclined, so to speak, to the side of Germany, where it tended to fix itself. Countries were on the way to be formed, and people were asking to which country they could best belong. Independent kingdoms were founded which had no precedents and were not destined to have a long life. The Saracens were for the last time harassing the southern French coasts, but it was not so with the Norman pirates, for they did not cease for a single year to ravage the littoral which is now represented by the Picardy and Normandy coasts, until the day it became necessary to cede the greater part of it to them. People were fighting everywhere more or less--family against family--man to man. No road was safe, the churches were burned, there was universal terror, and everyone sought protection. The king had no longer strength to resist anyone, and the counts made themselves kings. The sun of the realm was set, and one had to look at the stars for light. As soon as the people perceived a strong man-at-arms, resolute, defiant, well established in his wooden keep, well fortified within the lines of his hedge, behind his palisade of dead branches, or within his barriers of planks; well posted on his hill, against his rock, or on his hillock, and dominating all the surrounding country--as soon as they saw this each said to him, "I am your man"; and all these weak ones grouped themselves around the strong one, who next day proceeded to wage war with his neighbors. Thence supervened a terrible series of private wars. Everyone was fighting or thinking of fighting. In addition to this, the still green memory of the grand figure of Charlemagne and the old empire, and I can't tell what imperial splendors, were still felt in the air of great cities; all hearts throbbed at the mere thought of the Saracens and the Holy Sepulchre; the crusade gathered strength of preparation far in advance, in the rage and indignation of all the Christian race; all eyes were turned toward Jerusalem, and in the midst of so many disbandments and so much darkness, the unity of the church survived fallen majesty! It was then, it was in that horrible hour--the decisive epoch in our history--that the church undertook the education of the Christian soldier; and it was at that time, by a resolute step, she found the feudal baron in his rude wooden citadel, and proposed to him an ideal. This ideal was chivalry!