r the common people in France at this time led through heavy shadows. But a darker time was approachin

later Normans, were the scourge of the kingdom. Noth

the poor were utterly defenceless against this perennial destroyer. The result was a compact between the powerful and th

ubstance and the fruit of your toil-and we will in exchange give you our fortified castles as a refuge fr

ling an entire people. The conditions upon which was engrafted this compact were of great antiquity, had indeed been brought acro

not have conceived of a result such as this, the most oppressive system ever fastened u

als again to them repeating the pledge; and so on in descending chain, until at last the serf, that wretched being whom none looks up to nor fears, is ground to powder beneath the superimposed mass; no appeal from the authority, no escape from the

each other without authorization from the king, by the time this nominal head of the entire system was reached there remained nothing for him to do. In fact, there was not left one vestig

e religion and submission to the laws of the realm. Rollo, the disreputable robber-chief, took the oath of fealty to the

ral authority had passed to the feudal magnates. Many of the feudal states had actually organized into independent governing bodies. The struggle with the Northmen ended, France, dismembered, exhausted, was lying prostrate. A king stripped of every kingly attribute at one extreme of the social system, and a people trampled into the very dust by feudal oppression at the other. Owners of nothin

ert the Strong, a man of obscure family, who had laid down his life in a very heroic resistance to the Northmen, had won t

Pepin disappeared, and Hugh Capet, Count of Paris and Abbot, was declared by the Pope of Rome to be "King of France, in virtue of his great deeds." It was the ecclesiastical office of this descendant of Robert

uries, covering that dreary twilight known as the Dark Ages-a time when, had it not been for the Christian Church and for the torch of the Saracen

itude without life or hope in the world, she offered refuge, peace, consolation, and thus forever bound to her the poor of Chr

entle Bertha, his cousin fourth removed, suffered the punishment of excommunication; was treated as a moral leper in his own palace; cut off from contact with human kind and from sou

rich nor poor could escape, conscience-stricken barons also trembled. A belief began to prevail that the end of the world was at hand. Did not th

he hope of appeasing an avenging God, forbade private wars during certain periods in the ecclesiastical year. Repentant barons, with a similar hope, made peace with their neighbors, and their swords rusted as they built monasteries and chapels; or

that Duke of Normandy known as "Robert the Devil," whose pagan ancestor only a century before had been t

were sent by an avenging God. These were the first stirrings of the breath of the coming storm which in eight

the most perfect blending of grace and grandeur, characteristic of the early style. The marvel to which this is intended to draw attention is the preeminent position swiftly attained in France by this brilliant race, in every department of living. It would seem that France did not adopt this t

aymen and robbers by profession. His mother, a Norman peasant girl, daughter of a tanner, won the love of that gay duke known as "Robert the Devil." William, the child of this unconsecrated union, upon the death of his father succeeded to the dukedom. One of the steps in the rapid climb of this family of Rollo ha

nging a higher civilization, and under the banner of the Church! In a few weeks Harold, last

, and his own vassal wearing a crown with power superior to his own! A door had thus op

tre of power was developing at Rome, where the monk Hildebrand, who had now become Pope Gregory VII., claimed a universal sovereignty from

efore Gregory VII. If Charlemagne had worn the Church as a precious jewel in his crown in the ninth century, now in the eleventh the Church wore all the European states as a tiara of j