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Medieval Europe by H. W. C. (Henry William Carless) Davis
page 43 of 163 (26%)
clerical statesmen; but they did not succeed in making many converts.
When the last of the Carolingian Emperors was deposed (887), there were
cries of lamentation from ecclesiastics. But among lay statesmen not a
hand was raised to stay the process of disintegration. This Emperor,
Charles the Fat, had succeeded by mere longevity in uniting all the
dominions of his family under his immediate rule; but in three short
years he dissipated whatever lingering respect attached to the idea for
which he stood. In the words of the annalist "a crop of many kinglets
sprang up over Europe." All the new pretenders came from the class of
the great feudatories. Among the West Franks it was Eude the Count of
Paris who seized the royal diadem; the East Franks elected Arnulf, Duke
of Carinthia; Italy became an apple of discord between the margraves of
Spoleto and Friuli; Burgundy was partitioned by two native families.

Yet within a hundred years there arose a reaction in favour of the
imperial idea--a reaction of which Germany was the apostle, which Italy
accepted, which made many converts in West Francia. There were new and
sufficient reasons for returning to the discarded system. The national
hierarchies, who had undermined the Frankish Empire to broaden the
foundations of ecclesiastical privilege and influence, were discovering
that they had set up King Stork in place of King Log; the exactions of
an Augustus were as nothing compared with the lawless pillaging of the
new feudalism; and elective sovereigns, ruling by the grace of their
chief subjects, were powerless for good as well as harm. The lower ranks
of laymen had no better cause to be content with the new order under
which the small freeholder was oppressed, the peasant enslaved, the
merchant robbed and held to ransom. The freedom of the aristocracy
spelled misery for every other class. These self-constituted tyrants
passed their lives in devastating faction fights. Worst of all, their
divisions and their absorption in petty schemes of personal
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