The modern French kingdom gradually came into being during the century after the deposition of Charles the Fat. ♦Fluctuations between the Duchy of the French at Paris and the Karlings at Laon. 888-987.♦ During this time the crown of the Western kingdom passed to and fro more than once between the Dukes of the French at Paris and the princes of the house of Charles the Great, whose only immediate dominion was the city and district of _Laon_ near the Lotharingian border. Thus, for a hundred years, the royal city of the Western kingdom was sometimes Laon and sometimes Paris, and the King of the West-Franks was sometimes the same person as the Duke of the French and sometimes not. ♦Union of the French Duchy with the West-Frankish kingdom. 987.♦ But after the election of Hugh Capet, the kingdom and the duchy were never again separated. The Kings of _Karolingia_ or the Western kingdom, and the Dukes of the _Western Francia_, were now the same persons. ♦New meaning of the word _France_.♦ _France_ then—the Western or Latin _Francia_, as distinguished from the German _Francia_ or _Franken_—properly meant only the King’s immediate dominions. Though Normandy, Aquitaine, and the Duchy of Burgundy, all owed homage to the French king, no one would have spoken of them as parts of France. ♦Advance of the French kingdom.♦ But, as the French kings, step by step, got possession of the dominions of their vassals and other neighbours, the name of _France_ gradually spread, till it took in, as it now does, by far the greater part of Gaul. On the other hand, Flanders, Barcelona, and the Norman islands, though once under the homage of the French kings, have fallen altogether away, and have therefore never been reckoned as parts of France. Thus the name of _France_ supplanted the name of _Karolingia_ as the name of the Western kingdom. ♦Title of _Rex Francorum_.♦ And, as it so happened that the Western kings kept on the title of _Rex Francorum_ after it had been dropped in the Eastern kingdom, that title gradually came to mean, not King of the _Franks_, but King of the _French_, King of the new Romance-speaking nation which grew up under them. ♦Origin of the French nation.♦ Thus it was that the modern kingdom and nation of France arose through the crown of the Western kingdom passing to the Dukes of the Western _Francia_. ♦Paris the kernel of France.♦ Paris is not only the capital of the kingdom; it is the kernel round which the kingdom and nation grew. * * * * * ♦The Middle Kingdom or Burgundy.♦