coalesce during his life-time. They were only held together by the
vigorous grasp of the hand which had combined them. When the great
statesman died, his Empire necessarily fell to pieces. Society had need
of farther disintegration before it could begin to reconstruct itself
locally. A new civilization was not to be improvised by a single mind.
When did one man ever civilize a people? In the eighth and ninth
centuries there was not even a people to be civilized. The construction
of Charles was, of necessity, temporary. His Empire was supported by
artificial columns, resting upon the earth, which fell prostrate almost
as soon as the hand of their architect was cold. His institutions had
not struck down into the soil. There were no extensive and vigorous
roots to nourish, from below, a flourishing Empire through time and
tempest.

Moreover, the Carlovingian race had been exhausted by producing a race
of heroes like the Pepins and the Charleses. The family became, soon,
as contemptible as the ox-drawn, long-haired "do-nothings" whom it had
expelled; but it is not our task to describe the fortunes of the
Emperor's ignoble descendants. The realm was divided, sub-divided, at
times partially reunited, like a family farm, among monarchs incompetent
alike to hold, to delegate, or--to resign the inheritance of the great
warrior and lawgiver. The meek, bald, fat, stammering, simple Charles,
or Louis, who successively sat upon his throne--princes, whose only
historic individuality consists in these insipid appellations--had not
the sense to comprehend, far less to develop, the plans of their
ancestor.

Charles the Simple was the last Carlovingian who governed Lotharingia,
in which were comprised most of the Netherlands and Friesland. The
German monarch, Henry the Fowler, at that period called King of the East