The conquests of Charles had thus, among their other results, welded Germany into a single whole. For though the Franks had long been the greatest power in Germany, yet Germany could not be said to form a single whole as long as the Saxons, the greatest people of Northern Germany, remained independent. The conquest of Saxony brought the Frankish power for the first time in contact with the _Danes_ and the other people of _Scandinavia_. ♦Boundary of the Eider.♦ The dominions of Charles took in what was then called Saxony beyond the Elbe, that is the modern Holstein, and the _Eider_ was fixed as the northern boundary of the Empire. More than one Danish king did homage to Charles and to some of the Emperors after him; but Denmark was never incorporated with the Empire or even made permanently dependent. ♦Slavonic allies and neighbours.♦ To the east, the immediate dominions of Charles stretched but a little way beyond the Elbe; but here the Western Empire came in contact, as the Eastern had done at an earlier time and by a different process, with the widely spread nations of the Slavonic race. The same movements which had driven one branch of that race to the south-west had driven another branch to the north-west, and the wars of Charles in those regions gave his Empire a fringe of Slavonic allies and dependents along both sides of the Elbe, forming a barrier between the immediate dominions of the Empire and the independent Slaves to the east. ♦Overthrow of the Avar kingdom. 796.♦ To the south Charles overthrew the kingdom of the _Avars_; he thus extended his dominions on the side of south-eastern Germany, and here he came in contact with the southern branch of the Slaves, a portion of whom, in _Carinthia_ and the neighbouring lands, became subjects of his Empire. ♦The Spanish March. 778.♦ In Spain he acquired the north-eastern corner as far as the Ebro, forming the Spanish March, afterwards the county of Barcelona. ♦Divisions of the Empire.♦