But it is very likely that this coming of the Northmen, the Normans, out of France will have caused you to ask a question or two in your minds. You may be wondering how it should be that Normans, Northmen, {125} should be coming to England from Normandy, that is to say from the south. You may be wondering how it is that there are Northmen established there, as Dukes, that is as great rulers. When last we considered the Continent of Europe this Normandy was part of the great Empire of Charlemagne. In order to see how the Northmen came to be there we may go back to the Empire of Charlemagne in the ninth century. We have seen how that Empire was brought about and compacted. It is now a most important thing for the understanding of the great story that we should see how quickly that splendid Empire fell to pieces after Charlemagne's death. The understanding of that will make quite clear how the Normans were able to settle themselves as independent rulers of the part of France which is still, after them, called Normandy. {126} CHAPTER XV THE CRUSADES We have seen that the kings of the date to which this greatest story now has come, do not seem to have realised that if they partitioned up their possessions among several sons the result was likely to be that there would be disunion and righting. Charlemagne had three sons, and would, it appears, have divided his Empire by his will among them, but two of those sons died, so that the whole Empire came into the hands of the survivor. This survivor, however, had, in his turn, three sons, and at his death the Empire was divided amongst the three. In this division we see the beginnings of the present arrangement of the greater part of Europe, for one son took a territory of which the boundaries were nearly the same as those of modern France, another had what corresponds more or less to Germany of to-day, and the third to something very like modern Italy. The Italian brother, the eldest, had the title of Emperor. And now--to state shortly what was the rather natural outcome of that division--the kings, or those who claimed the kingship, of those territories fought over their possessions for at least a century and a half, 150 years.