what was the character of the
event? Barbarians, up to that time vagabonds or nearly so, were flooding
in upon populations disorganized and enervated. On the side of the
German victors, no fixity in social life; no general or anything like
regular government; no nation really cemented and constituted; but
individuals in a state of dispersion and of almost absolute independence:
on the side of the vanquished Gallo-Romans, the old political ties
dissolved; no strong power, no vital liberty; the lower classes in
slavery, the middle classes ruined, the upper classes depreciated.
Amongst the barbarians society was scarcely commencing; with the subjects
of the Roman empire it no longer existed; Charlemagne's attempt to
reconstruct it by rallying beneath a new empire both victors and
vanquished was a failure; feudal anarchy was the first and the necessary
step out of barbaric anarchy and towards a renewal of social order.

It was not so in England, when, in the eleventh century, William
transported thither his government and his army. A people but lately
come out of barbarism, conquered, on that occasion, a people still half
barbarous. Their primitive origin was the same; their institutions were,
if not similar, at any rate analogous; there was no fundamental
antagonism in their habits; the English chieftains lived in their domains
an idle, hunting life, surrounded by their liegemen, just as the Norman
barons lived. Society, amongst both the former and the latter, was
founded, however unrefined and irregular it still was; and neither the
former nor the latter had lost the flavor and the usages of their ancient
liberties. A certain superiority, in point of organization and social
discipline, belonged to the Norman conquerors; but the conquered Anglo-
Saxons were neither in a temper to allow themselves to be enslaved nor
out of condition for defending themselves. The conquest was destined to
entail cruel evils, a long oppression, but it could not bring about
either the dissolution of the two peoples into petty lawless groups, or
the permanent humiliation of one in presence of the other. There were,
at one and the same time, elements of government and resistance, causes
of fusion and unity in the very midst of the struggle.

We are now about to anticipate ages, and get a glimpse, in their
development, of the consequences which attended this difference, so
profound, in the position of France and of England, at the time of