* * * * * ♦The Western Kingdom.♦ The part of the Frankish dominions to which the Frankish name has stuck most lastingly has been the Western kingdom or _Karolingia_, which gradually got the special name of _France_. This came about through the events of the ninth and tenth centuries. ♦Its extent.♦ The Western kingdom, as it was formed under Charles the Bald and as it remained after the division of 887, nominally took in a great part of modern France, namely all west of the Rhone and Saône. It took in nothing to the east of those rivers, and Lotharingia, as we have seen, was a border land which at last settled down as part of the Eastern kingdom. Thus the extent of the old _Karolingia_ to the east was very much smaller than the extent of modern France. But, on the other hand, the Western kingdom took in lands at three points which are not part of modern France. These are the march or county of _Flanders_ in the north, the greater part of which forms part of the modern kingdom of Belgium; the _Spanish March_, or county of _Barcelona_, which is now part of Spain; and the _Norman Islands_ which are now held by the sovereign of England. And it is hardly needful to say that, even within these boundaries, the whole land was not in the hands of the King of the West-Franks. He had only a supremacy, which was apt to become nearly nominal, over the vassal princes who held the great divisions of the kingdom. ♦The great fiefs.♦ South of the Loire the chief of these vassal states were the duchy of _Aquitaine_, a name which now means the land between the Loire and the Garonne—the duchy of _Gascony_ between the Garonne and the Pyrenees—the county of _Toulouse_ to the east of it—the marches of _Septimania_ and _Barcelona_. North of the Loire were _Britanny_, where native Celtic princes still reigned under a very doubtful supremacy on the part of the Frankish kings—the march of _Flanders_ in the north—and the duchy of _Burgundy_, the duchy which had Dijon for its capital, and which must be carefully distinguished from other duchies and kingdoms of the same name. ♦The Duchy of France.♦ And, greatest of all, there was the duchy of _France_, that is _Western_ or _Latin France_, _Francia Occidentalis_ or _Latina_. Its capital was Paris, and its princes were called _Duces Francorum_, a title in which the word _Francus_ is just beginning to change from its older meaning of _Frank_ to its later meaning of _French_. ♦Normandy cut off from France. 912.♦ From this great duchy of France several great fiefs, as _Anjou_ and _Champagne_, were gradually cut off, and the part of France between the Seine and the Epte was granted to the Scandinavian chief Rolf, which, under him and his successors, grew into the great duchy of _Normandy_. Its capital was Rouen, and this settlement of the Normans had the effect of cutting off France and its capital Paris from the sea.