In the early years of the twelfth century Louis VI., owning or claiming to own an estate or demesne of land which had Paris as its centre and measured about 140 miles from north to south and about 50 miles from east to west, set himself to establish order and government within his demesne by force of arms. The inhabitants of the demesne valued the good government and the order that was maintained among them by Louis VI. and his grandson Philip II., and when the twelfth century ended they may be counted as forming a small political community or a body of men, possessing not only a common government, but also common interests habits and wishes[13]. In the thirteenth century the king's demesne was increased by the acquisition of Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, Poitou, Champagne in the north of Gaul, and by the distant region of Languedoc in the south. The new parts of the demesne were placed under the same government with the old, and no doubt those of them which lay together in the north of Gaul constantly tended to unite themselves into a single political community. But the work of unification was greatly impeded by causes all closely connected with the independence which the different parts of Gaul had possessed in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and it had not made very great progress in 1415 when France was invaded by the armies of the English. After the expulsion of the invaders the work was taken up again and carried on with better success by Charles VII., Louis XI. and the later kings of France. [13] My statements about Frankish and early French history down to the reign of Philip II. are all based on original authorities: but see Kitchin, _History of France_, Vol. I., and some excellent maps (No. 57) in Droysen, _Historischer Hand-Atlas_. In Germany events followed much the same course as in Gaul; but they occurred later. The extinction of the Emperor's authority and the rise of the local governors and landowners to independence did not come to pass in Germany till the middle of the thirteenth century; and none of the princes who then gained their independence succeeded during the middle ages in rising to preeminence above the rest. In order to complete our survey of the chief political communities of the middle ages we must glance at northern Italy and Switzerland. Northern Italy contained many important towns which had been founded by the Romans: during the early part of the middle ages it became the commercial centre of Europe: the towns grew in wealth and influence, and before the year 1200 they succeeded in making themselves independent, and constituted themselves as city states, resembling the city states of ancient Greece. In Switzerland three tribes of mountaineers in Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, in 1291, agreed to form a league or permanent alliance, which was afterwards joined by many of their neighbours, though no steps towards forming a federal state were taken till about the year 1500[14].