The extent of the German kingdom as it stood after the division of 887 has been roughly traced already. ♦Boundaries under the Ottos, 936-1002.♦ It will now be well to go over its frontiers somewhat more minutely, as they stood at the time of final separation between the Empire and the West-Frankish kingdom, the time of final union between the Empire and the East-Frankish kingdom. This marks the great age of the Saxon Ottos. ♦Boundary towards the West.♦ The frontier towards the Western kingdom was now fairly ascertained, and it was subject to dispute only at a few points. ♦Lotharingia.♦ It is hardly needful to insist again on the fact that all Lotharingia, in the sense of those days, taking in all the southern Netherlands except the French fief of Flanders, was now Imperial. ♦Encroachments of France.♦ It is along this line that the German border has in later times most largely fallen back. The advance of France has touched Burgundy more than Germany; but it has, first swallowed up, and afterwards partly restored, a considerable part of the German kingdom. ♦The Netherlands.♦ The Netherlands had been practically so cut off from Germany before the annexations of France in that quarter began, that they will be better spoken of in another section. ♦Lorraine and Elsass.♦ The other points at which the frontier has fluctuated on a great scale have been the border land of _Lorraine_—as distinguished from the Lower _Lotharingia_ which has more to do with the history of the Netherlands—and the Swabian land of _Elsass_. ♦Fluctuations of Bar.♦ The Duchy of _Bar_, the borderland of the borderland, fluctuated more than once. ♦1473.♦ After its union with the Duchy of Lorraine, it followed the fortunes of that state. ♦The Three Bishoprics, 1552.♦ In the next century came the annexation of the three Lotharingian bishoprics of _Metz_, _Toul_, and _Verdun_, which gave France three outlying possessions within the geographical borders of the Lotharingian duchy. ♦Loss of Austrian Elsass, 1648.♦ In the next century, as the result of the Thirty Years’ War, France obtained by the Peace of Westfalia the formal cession of these conquests, and also the great advance of her frontier by the dismemberment of _Elsass_. The cession now made did not take in the whole of Elsass, but only the possessions and rights of the House of Austria in that country. This cession still left both Strassburg and various smaller towns and districts to the Empire; but it naturally opened the way to further French advances in a land where the frontier was so complicated and where difficulties were so easily raised as to treaty-rights. ♦Gradual annexation of Elsass, 1679-1789.♦ A series of annexations, _réunions_ as they were called, gradually united nearly all Elsass to France. ♦Seizure of Strassburg, 1681.♦ _Strassburg_, as all the world knows, was seized by Lewis the Fourteenth in time of peace. ♦Seizure of Lorraine, 1678-1697.♦ During the wars with the