opinion, however, that they shared an ancestry with the Franks, and
that the highest military prowess belonged particularly to the Turks
and Franks, above all other people.

Having praised the West at the expense of the East in the first book,
in the second he praises the French at the expense of the Teutons,
recounting a conversation he recently held with a German ecclesiastic,
to show himself an ardent defender of ethnicity:

Last year while I was speaking with a certain archdeacon of Mainz
about a rebellion of his people, I heard him vilify our king and our
people, merely because the king had given gracious welcome everywhere
in his kingdom to his Highness Pope Paschalis and his princes; he
called them not merely Franks, but, derisively, "Francones." I said
to him, "If you think them so weak and languid that you can denigrate
a name known and admired as far away as the Indian Ocean, then tell
me upon whom did Pope Urban call for aid against the Turks? Wasn't
it the French? Had they not been present, attacking the barbarians
everywhere, pouring their sturdy energy and fearless strength into
the battle, there would have been no help for your Germans, whose
reputation there amounted to nothing." That is what I said to him.

Guibert then turns to his reader, and provides a more extensive
panegyric for his people, recalling pre-Merovingian accomplishments:

I say truly, and everyone should believe it, that God reserved this
nation for such a task. For we know certainly that, from the time
that they received the sign of faith that blessed Remigius brought to
them, they succumbed to none of the diseases of false faith from
which other nations have remained uncontaminated either with great