there remained nothing for him to do. In
fact, there was not left one vestige of kingly authority, and
Carlovingian rulers were almost as insignificant as their Merovingian
predecessors. France had, instead of one great sovereign, one hundred
and fifty petty ones!

In A.D. 911 the Northmen were offered the province henceforth known as
Normandy, upon condition of their acceptance of the religion and
submission to the laws of the realm. Rollo, the disreputable
robber-chief, took the oath of fealty to the King of France, his
suzerain, and Christian baptism transformed him into respectable,
law-abiding Robert, Duke of Normandy.

So, the enemy had become a vassal. The pirate of the North Sea had
taken his place among the Christian chivalry of Europe, as one of the
twelve peers of France. It was less than a century since the death of
Charlemagne, and the office of king had grown almost as helpless as in
the period of the _Rois Faineants_. Under the stress of the continuous
invasions, by perfectly natural process the central authority had
passed to the feudal magnates. Many of the feudal states had actually
organized into independent governing bodies. The struggle with the
Northmen ended, France, dismembered, exhausted, was lying prostrate. A
king stripped of every kingly attribute at one extreme of the social
system, and a people trampled into the very dust by feudal oppression
at the other. Owners of nothing, not even of themselves, they might
not fish in the streams, nor hunt in the forests, unless the privilege
was bestowed; and with their lives spent in fighting the incessant
private wars of their lords, there seemed no room for them in the
world, nor for hope in their hearts. With the king effaced, and the
people effaced, there remained only bands of feudal barons trying to
efface each other!

As in the last days of the Merovingians, light came from an unexpected
quarter. The tide turned toward centralization. Robert the Strong, a
man of obscure family, who had laid down his life in a very heroic
resistance to the Northmen, had won the titles "Count of Paris" and
"Duke of France," which he bequeathed, with the estates attached to
them, to his successors.

Somewhat after the manner of the Pepins, this powerful and resourceful
family by sheer native ability grasped one after another the sources of
power in the state; and in the year 987 the dynasty established by
Pepin disappeared, and Hugh Capet, Count