occupied at the time the code was formulated. Later the Salian Franks,
as the tribe was designated, built on the left bank of the Seine rude
fortresses and a collection of wattled huts which became the ancestor of
the present-day city of Paris.

The Salic Law was a complete code. It governed all matters, civil and
military. It prescribed rules of war; it fixed the salaries of
officials; it designated the exact amount of blood money the family of a
slain man might collect from the family of the slayer; it regu lated
conditions under which individuals might travel from one village to
another; it governed matters of property transfer and inheritance.

The Salian Franks are dust; their might has perished, their annals are
forgotten, their cities are leveled, their mightiest kings sleep in
unmarked graves, their code has passed out of existence, almost indeed
out of the memory of man,--all except one paragraph of one division of
one law. The law related to inheritance of property; the special
division distinguished between real and personal property, and the
paragraph ruled that a woman might inherit movable property, but that
she might not inherit land.

There was not a syllable in the law relating to the inheritance of a
throne. Nevertheless, centuries after the last Salian king was laid in
his barbarous grave a French prince successfully contested with an
English prince the crown of France, his claim resting on that obscure
paragraph in the Salic code. The Hundred Years' War was fought on this
issue, and the final outcome of the war established the Salic Law
permanently in France, and with more or less rigor in most of the
European states.