Though cities had been pillaged and the country laid waste, though heaps of ashes and tottering walls were all that remained of the monuments with which Charlemagne and his successors had adorned the cradle of their race, though art and culture had been well-nigh wiped out, the Church laid low and the State shattered almost beyond hope of repair, there was one body of men in the old kingdom of Lotharingia whose interests had been singularly favoured by the coming of the Danes--the great lay proprietors. Thrifty men who for years past by purchase, by marriage, by promises of protection, by means of loans in times of stress, by hook or by crook, by fair means sometimes, and sometimes by foul, had been gradually gathering into their own hands the freehold tenements of their weaker brethren; strong men who, instead of turning tail when Hungarian or Dane threatened them, bared their breasts to the foe, and with their swords in their hands defended alike their own property and the property of their neighbours; astute men, who knew very well, from personal experience, what an exceedingly profitable pastime it sometimes is to fish in troubled waters. For them the coming of the Danes had been almost a godsend; at all events, a blessing in disguise; and their departure left them free to reap the rich harvest which these rude northerners had unwittingly sown--to obtain, that is, a vast increase of their landed estates and a no less vast increase of privileges, immunities, authority, and of political and social prestige. In the first place they had little difficulty in making themselves masters, in fact if not in name, of the abbey lands. Many of the monks had been slain or had fled, and so fearful were the remnant that remained of further depredation that they were glad enough to hand over the administration of their estates to the only men who were strong enough to defend them. Thus, by the close of the eight hundreds almost all the monastic domains of Lotharingia had in reality become the property of laymen who, as the monks' _avoués_ or stewards, took up their abode in their cloisters, received and expended their revenues, became participators in their rights and immunities, and exercised jurisdiction in their name over their vassals and dependants. To obtain control of the secular clergy was a matter no less easy of accomplishment, for although the cathedral chapters still retained the right to choose their own bishops, so great was the power and influence of the landowners that they had become practically irresistible, and were almost always able to secure the election of their own nominees, and thus were enabled, through them, to rule the Church.