2. The House of Paris.--The great danger which this Neustrian kingdom
had to meet came from the Northmen, or as they were called in England
the Danes. These ravaged in Neustria as they ravaged in England; and a
large part of the northern coast, including the mouth of the Seine, was
given by Charles the Bald to Rolf or Rollo, one of their leaders, whose
land became known as the Northman's land, or Normandy. What most checked
the ravages of these pirates was the resistance of Paris, a town which
commanded the road along the river Seine; and it was in defending the
city of Paris from the Northmen, that a warrior named Robert the Strong
gained the trust and affection of the inhabitants of the Neustrian
kingdom. He and his family became Counts (_i.e._, judges and protectors)
of Paris, and Dukes (or leaders) of the Franks. Three generations of
them were really great men--Robert the Strong, Odo, and Hugh the White;
and when the descendants of Charles the Great had died out, a Duke of
the Franks, _Hugh Capet_, was in 987 crowned King of the Franks. All the
after kings of France down to Louis Philippe were descendants of Hugh
Capet. By this change, however, he gained little in real power; for,
though he claimed to rule over the whole country of the Neustrian
Franks, his authority was little heeded, save in the domain which he had
possessed as Count of Paris, including the cities of Paris, Orleans,
Amiens, and Rheims (the coronation place). He was guardian, too, of the
great Abbeys of St. Denys and St. Martin of Tours. The Duke of Normandy
and the Count of Anjou to the west, the Count of Flanders to the north,
the Count of Champagne to the east, and the Duke of Aquitaine to the
south, paid him homage, but were the only actual rulers in their own
domains.


3. The Kingdom of Hugh Capet.--The language of Hugh's kingdom was
clipped Latin; the peasantry and townsmen were mostly Gaulish; the