intermingling of Goths and Lombards; France held half-Romanized Gauls,
with a very considerable percentage of the Frankish blood; while Germany
was far more barbaric than the other regions. Its people, whether Frank
or Saxon, were all pure Teuton, and still spoke in their Teutonic or
German tongue.

The Franks themselves, however, did not regard this as a breaking of
their empire. They looked on it as merely a family affair, an
arrangement made for the convenience of government among the descendants
of the great Charles. So firm had been that mighty hero's grasp upon the
national imagination, that the Franks accepted as matter of course that
his family should bear rule, and rallied round the various worthless
members of it with rather pathetic loyalty, fighting for them one
against the other, reuniting and redividing the various fragments of the
empire, until the feeble Carlovingian race died out completely.

It is thus evident that there was a strong tendency toward union among
the Franks. But there was also an outside influence to disrupt their
empire. Charlemagne had not carried far enough their career of conquest.
He subdued the Teutons within the limits of Germany, but he did not
reach their weaker Scandinavian brethren to the north, the Danes and
Norsemen. He chastised the Avars, a vague non-Aryan people east of
Germany, but he could not make provision against future Asiatic swarms.
He humbled the Arabs in Spain, but he did not break their African
dominion. From all these sources, as the Franks grew weaker instead of
stronger, their lands became exposed to new invasion.


THE LAST INVADERS