One of the reasons of the Emperor's success in keeping his nobles in tolerable obedience was, doubtless, that he kept them so busy, fighting his battles. He subjected the Northmen (later, Normans) who had come down from Scandinavia in their ships and settled {90} themselves along the northern shores of France, facing Britain. Afterwards this land of the Northmen had the name of Normandy. The Saxons, occupying what later were called the Netherlands, put up a surprisingly strong opposition to the great Emperor, but in the end he conquered their independence. Elsewhere, around his ever-extending boundaries, the smaller nations gave him less trouble. In the end it is not too much to say that his Empire included all of what we know as France and Germany with Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and parts of Scandinavia. Southward he held the northern parts of Italy, nearly as far down as Rome. He crossed the Pyrenees, but gained no lasting hold on any of Spain. Indeed, it was on return from a Spanish expedition that he suffered the greatest disaster that ever befel his arms. This was the defeat of a large body of his forces at Roncesvalles, in which fight were killed the great hero Roland and a number of the most illustrious of the Frankish leaders and nobles. In later years both Charlemagne himself and his great men, such as Roland and others, his paladins, and "the twelve peers," were made the subjects of the most extravagant stories. They were related to have performed superhuman exploits, to have been eight feet in height and to have conducted themselves generally in a manner which Cervantes, the Spanish novel writer, caricatured in his famous story of Don Quixote. The twelve peers may remind us of the twelve knights of King Arthur's Round Table, and it is likely that there was some original connection between the stories. But Charlemagne was truly Charles the Great without these fabulous additions to his greatness. He died at Aix la Chapelle in 814 and was succeeded by his only surviving son, whom he had crowned with his own hand the year before his death. {91} CHAPTER XII HOW THE PEOPLE LIVED In this and the next chapters I propose to attempt a sketch of the way in which the tribes of the Goths lived, whether in the Empire of Charlemagne or in our own island. And because the island story must be of the greater interest to us, seeing that it is our own, I shall try to describe the mode of life of the people there, and will ask you to accept that description as giving the type or pattern of the life on the Continent also. The feudal system did not develop in England precisely as it developed on the Continent of Europe.