COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS. _All rights reserved._ [Illustration] CHAPTER I. THE LATER CARLOVINGIANS CHARLES THE BALD (843-877 A.D.) [Sidenote: [843-877 A.D.]] Up to the present we have told the history of the Gauls, the Gallo-Romans, and the Franks; with the Treaty of Verdun we begin the history of the French people. There now existed in France, except the Northmen, who already were beginning to appear on its coast and who established themselves there only in small numbers, all the races of which her people are formed, and all the elements, Celtic, Roman, Christian, and Germanic, whose combination goes to make up her civilisation. The medley is even already too sufficiently advanced for one to distinguish any longer the Gallo-Roman from the Frank, the civilised man from the barbarian. All have the same customs and almost all the same tongue. The French idiom showed itself officially in the Treaty of Verdun. Law ceases to be personal and becomes local; national custom replaces the Roman or barbaric codes; there are scarcely any slaves; there are but few free men--we shall soon see nothing but serfs and lords. But this France has no longer the extent of Gaul; the Treaty of Verdun has confined it to the Schelde and the Maas, the Saône and the Rhone, and the population within these narrow limits finds them still too broad; they wish to live apart, for themselves alone, and not to sustain a vast dominion which is crushing them and which they do not understand. The son of Judith and Louis le Débonnaire, Charles the Bald, king of France since 840, was nothing but an ambitious man of the people. Length of days was generously bestowed upon him, as it had been with Charlemagne, for he reigned thirty-seven years--but he knew how to do nothing with his life. Difficulties, it is true, were great. The same year when the destinies of the empire were moulded at Fontenailles, Asnar, count of Jaca, helped himself to the sovereignty of Navarre, and the Northmen burned Rouen--in 843 they pillaged Nantes, Saintes, and Bordeaux. At the same time the Aquitanians rose up for a national king. The Bretons had found theirs in Noménoë, whom Charles had excommunicated by the bishops, but who defeated his lieutenants; and Septimania had its chief in Bernhard. The Saracens and the Greek pirates ravaged the south while the Northmen devastated the north and the west. And as if to fill the cup of misfortune of which this age was the bearer, the Hungarians, successors of the Huns and Avars, were putting in an appearance in the east. THE NORTHMEN [Sidenote: [843 A.D.]]