Britain had been consolidated into _England_ under King Alfred; while
an obscure Scandinavian adventurer named Rurik, quite unobserved, was
bringing into political unity, and reigning at Kieff as Grand Duke over
what was to become _Russia_. _Spain_, quite apart from all this
movement, had entered upon those seven centuries of struggle with
Saracen and Moor, that struggle of unmatched devotion and tenacity of
purpose which is really the great epic of history.

Those ambitious and too powerful vassals were not the greatest evils
menacing the Carlovingian kings. It was the incessant invasions of a
race of barbarians coming out of the north, which was going to bury the
past under a ruin of a different sort. There seemed no defence from
these Northmen, as they were called, who swarmed like destroying
insects upon the coast, up the rivers, and over the lands; three times
sacked Paris, the scars to-day being visible in that impressive Roman
ruin, the _Palais des Thermes_, the home of the Caesars, and of the
Merovingian kings, which they partially burned.

Fortified castles with towers and moats and drawbridges sprang up all
over the kingdom for the protection of the rich. After seven invasions
all the old cities, Rouen, Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Orleans,
Beauvais, had been devastated, and France in coat of mail was hiding
behind stone walls.

In looking through the vista of centuries it is easy to read the
eternal purpose in the chain of cause and effect; and also to see that
events, no less than kings, have their pedigrees. The terrible child
of the Northman was the _Feudal System_; which was again the father of
those romantic and picturesque children, the _Crusades_; and these, the
creators of a European civilization, whose children we are!