That Henry’s realm was in extent imperial can easily be seen from the map. It extended from Scotland to the frontier of Spain, as the empire of his contemporary Frederick I extended from the Baltic and the North Sea to central Italy. And if the kingdoms of Germany, Italy, and Burgundy which made up Frederick’s empire covered in the aggregate more territory, the actual authority of the ruler, whether in army, justice, or finance, was decidedly less than in the Anglo-Norman state. Henry had a stronger army, a larger revenue, a more centralized government. Moreover, the Norman empire was less artificial than it seems to us at first sight, accustomed as we are to the associations of the modern map. There was, especially with mediæval methods of communication, nothing anomalous in a state which straddled the English Channel: Normandy was nearer England than was Ireland; it was quite as easy to go from London to Rouen as from London to York. The geographical bonds were also strong between Henry’s continental dominions, for the roads of the twelfth century did not radiate from Paris, but followed mainly the old Roman lines, and from Rouen there was direct and easy connection with LeMans, Tours, Poitiers, and Bordeaux. In the matter of race, too, we must beware of being misled by our modern ideas. The English nation was at most only the vaguest sort of a conception, the French nation did not exist till the fifteenth century, and personal loyalty to the lord of many different lands was a natural expression of the conditions of the age. It is contrary to our prejudices that a single state should be formed out of the hard-headed Norman, the Celtic fisherman of the Breton coast,--the ‘Pêcheur d’Islande’ of a later day,--the Angevin, Tourangeau, Poitevin, the troubadour of Aquitaine, and the Gascon of the far south, with his alien blood and non-Aryan language, already a well-marked type whose swaggering gasconades foreshadow the d’Artagnan of the _Three Musketeers_ and the ‘cadets de Gascogne’ of _Cyrano de Bergerac_. But it was little harder to rule these diverse lands from London or Rouen than from Paris; it was for the time being as easy to make them part of a Norman empire as of a French kingdom. Over the various languages and dialects ran the Latin of law and government and the French of the court and of affairs; while in political matters these countries were, as we shall see, quite capable of united action.