struggles had led to the growth of independent or semi-independent powers within the states themselves. The Frank landowners had successfully asserted their independence of the jurisdiction of the king (or emperor) and his officials; the imperial officials themselves, dukes or counts, had received grants of lands with similar immunities (beneficia), and these had become hereditary. Thus sprang up a class of great territorial nobles to whom, amid the growing anarchy, men looked for protection rather than to the weak and remote central power; and so, out of the chaos that followed the break-up of the empire of Charlemagne, was born the feudal system of the middle ages (see Feudalism). This organization was admirable for defence; and with its aid, before the close of the first decade of the 10th century, the frontiers of France and Germany had been made safe against the northern barbarians, who had either been driven off and barriers erected against their return—e.g. the marks established by Henry the Fowler along the middle Elbe—or, as in the case of the Normans, absorbed into a system well adapted for such a process. By the treaty of St Claire-sur-Epte (911) between Charles the Simple and Rollo, chief of the Norsemen, the Normans were established in the country since known as Normandy (q.v.), as feudatories of the French crown. In England, by the treaty of Wedmore (878) between Alfred and the Danish king Guthrum, the Danes had already been established in a large part of England.
Feudalism, by the time the Northmen had been subdued by its aid, was quite firmly established in the western part of Europe. During the 11th century it was carried by the Normans into England, into Sicily and southern Italy, and by the nobles of the first crusade into the newly established Royalty and feudalism. kingdom of Jerusalem (1099). By the kings of France, England and Germany, however, who saw themselves in danger of being stripped of all but the semblance of power by its delegation to their more or less nominal vassals, the feudal organization was early recognized as impossible as a form of state government, if the state was to be preserved; and the history of the three great European powers during the succeeding centuries is mainly that of the struggle of the sovereigns against the disruptive ambitions of the great feudal nobles. In England the problem was, from the outset, simplified; for though William the Conqueror introduced the system of feudal land tenure into England in 1066 he refused to set it up as his system of government, retaining alongside of it the old English national policy. In France, on the other hand, feudalism as a system of government had become firmly established; and it was not till the days of Philip Augustus (1180–1223) and Louis IX. (1226–1270) that the monarchy began to get the upper hand. From this time until the 17th century the power of the French monarchy, in spite of occasional lapses, grew steadily stronger. The reverse was the case with the German kingship. Its association with the undefined claims involved in the title of Roman emperor, traditionally attached to it, and notably those to authority in Italy, necessitated concession after concession to the feudal nobles, in order to purchase their support for their assertion. The kingship, moreover, became elective; the imperial title was obtainable only at Rome at the hands of the pope; and the German kings thus became entangled in contests, not only with their own vassals, but with the tremendous spiritual force of the medieval papacy by which, for its own ends, the spirit of feudal insubordination was from time to time fomented. Thus in Germany the feudal nobles gradually acquired a sovereign status which, in some cases, has survived the territorial rearrangements of the 19th century and left its mark on the federal constitution of modern Germany; while the kingship and the imperial title grew more and more shadowy till in 1806 it vanished altogether. (See English History; France: History, Germany: History.)
In France the process by which a strong hereditary monarchy was established was a slow one. During the greater part of the 10th century the Carolingians, stripped of the vast domains which had been the basis of the power of Pippin, owed their continued existence to the forbearance The rise of the house of Capet. of Hugh the Great, count of Paris. In 987, however, the last Carolingian king died, and Hugh Capet, son of Hugh the Great, the most powerful of the territorial magnates, was chosen king of France. With his election dates the real beginning of the French monarchy, and under him and his successors Paris became the capital of France. Hugh’s election, however, was the work of the great feudatories, and France remained divided among a number of great fiefs, of which the chief were Brittany, Anjou, Flanders, Vermandois, Champagne, Burgundy, Aquitaine, Poitou, Gascony, Toulouse and Normandy.
While the central power in France advanced slowly but
steadily, the development of the royal authority in Germany
was in the 10th and 11th centuries more rapid. In
911 the German magnates had elected Conrad the
Franconian to reign over them, and in 919 Henry
The royal power
in Germany.
“the Fowler” of Saxony, “whose reign forms one of
the great turning-points in the history of the German nation.”
He defeated the Hungarians, the Slavs and the Danes, and by
encouraging the growth and development of towns he contributed
greatly to the formation of the German kingdom. His immediate
successors, Otto the Great and Otto II., continued his work,
which was only interrupted for a short time during the reign
of the idealist Otto III., whose “cosmopolitan imperialism”
brought him into collision with the German Church and to some
extent with the German nobles. Henry II. (1002–1025) asserted
with success his authority over Germany, and his successor
Conrad II., who belonged to the Salian or Franconian line, did
much to secure unity and prosperity to the Empire. His son and
successor Henry III. (1039–1056) governed Germany wisely,
and his reign witnessed the culminating point of the Holy Roman
Empire. At the time of his death it seemed probable that
Germany, like England and France, would gradually escape from
the thraldom of the great feudatories. The future of the German
monarchy depended upon the ability of future kings to suppress
the forces of feudal disintegration in Germany, and to withstand
the temptation of struggling to establish their influence over
Italy. Unfortunately for German kingship Henry IV. (1056–1106)
was only six years old on his accession, and when he became
a man he found that the papacy under Hildebrand’s influence was
practically independent of the emperor. Had Henry confined
his efforts to coercing the German barons he might, like the
Normans and Angevins in England, and like the Capetians in
France, have proved successful. Unfortunately for Germany
Henry entered upon the famous contest with the papacy under
Gregory VII. (1073–1080), which ended in the 13th century in
the defeat of the Empire in the person of Frederick II. The
struggle began in 1073 over the question of investiture (q.v.),
and widened into a duel between the spiritual and temporal
powers. During the early years of the contest the influence of
the papacy reached a high pitch and made itself felt in the crusading
movement, which received its first impetus from Pope
Urban II., who appealed to Europe at the council of Clermont
in 1095 to recover the Holy Places from the Turks.
During the 11th century the Eastern Empire was attacked by the Russians, the Normans and the Seljuks. The emperor Alexius Comnenus found himself on his accession in 1081 threatened by the Seljuks (the victors in the decisive battle of Manzikert in 1071) and by the Sicilian The eastern Empire and the Crusades. Normans who in 1081 besieged Durazzo. In 1083 he defeated the Normans in the battle of Durazzo, and with the death of Robert Guiscard in 1085 all danger from a fresh Norman invasion passed away. But the first crusade brought new anxieties to Alexius, for he feared that the crusaders might attack Constantinople. That fear removed, he took advantage of the increased connexion between eastern and western Europe by bestowing commercial privileges upon the Italian trading republics, who thus gained access to the ports of the Empire on easy terms.
With the era of the Crusades, which lasted till the middle of the 13th century, Europe entered upon a period of change, the importance of which is realized by contrasting the condition of western Christendom in the 11th with its condition in the 13th century. Between the opening and close of the crusading movement Europe underwent a complete revolution. While the
