The destruction of the Vandal kingdom by the armies of the Byzantine Empire, the conquest of Spain by the Moors and finally the overthrow of the Lombards by the Franks were all greatly facilitated by the fact that these barbarians, Vandals, Goths, Suevi and Lombards, with the sole exception of the Franks, were originally Christians of the Arian or Unitarian confession and as such were regarded as heretics by their orthodox Christian subjects. The Franks alone were converted from heathenism directly to the Trinitarian faith to which the old populations of the Roman Empire adhered. From this orthodoxy of the Franks arose the close relation between France, “the eldest daughter of the church,” and the papacy, a connection which lasted for more than a thousand years—in fact nearly to our own day. With the Goths eliminated western Christendom became Frankish. In the year 800 A. D. Charlemagne was crowned at Rome and re-established the Roman Empire in the west, which included all Christendom outside of the Byzantine Empire. In some form or shape this Roman Empire endured until the beginning of the nineteenth century and during all that time it formed the basis of the political concept of European man. This same concept lies to-day at the root of the imperial idea. Kaiser, Tsar and Emperor each takes his name and in some way undertakes to trace his title from Cæsar and the Empire. Charlemagne and his successors claimed and often exercised overlordship as to all the other continental Christian nations and when the Crusades began it was the German Emperor who led the Frankish hosts against the Saracens. Charlemagne was a German Emperor, his capital was at Aachen within the present limits of the German Empire and the language of his court was German. For several centuries after the conquest of Gaul by the Franks their Teutonic tongue held its own against the Latin speech of the Romanized Gauls. The history of all Christian Europe is in some degree interwoven with this Holy Roman Empire. Though the Empire was neither holy nor Roman but altogether secular and Teutonic, it was, nevertheless, the heart of Europe for ages. Holland and Flanders, Lorraine and Alsace, Burgundy and Luxemburg, Lombardy and the Veneto, Switzerland and Austria, Bohemia and Styria are states which were originally component parts of the Empire although many of them have since been torn away by rival nations or have become independent, while much of northern Italy remained under the sway of Austria within the memory of living men. The Empire wasted its strength in imperial ambitions and foreign conquests instead of consolidating, organizing and unifying its own territories and the fact that the imperial crown was elective for many generations before it became hereditary in the House of Hapsburg checked the unification of Germany during the Middle Ages.