Page:A Short History of the World.djvu/274

 254 A Short History of The World Peter's on Christmas Day a.d. 800. He produced a crown, put it on the head of Charlemagne and hailed him Caesar and Augustus. There was great applause among the people. Charlemagne was by no means pleased at the way in which the thing was done, it rankled in his mind as a defeat ; and he left the most careful instructions to his son that he was not to let the Pope crown him Emperor ; he was to seize the crown into his own hands and put it on his own head him- self. So at the very outset of this Imperial revival we see beginning the age-long dispute of pope and emperor for priority. But Louis the Pious, the son of Charlemagne, disregarded his father's instruc- tions and was entirely submissive to the Pope. The empire of Charlemagne fell apart at the death of Louis the Pious, and the split between the French-speaking Franks and the German-speaking Franks widened. The next emperor to arise was Otto, the son of a certain Henry the Fowler, a Saxon, who had been elected King of Germany by an assembly of German princes and pre- lates in 919. Otto descended upon Rome and was crowned emperor there in 962. This Saxon line came to an end early in the eleventh century and gave place to other German rulers. The feudal princes and nobles to the west who spoke various French dialects did not fall under the sway of these German emperors after the Carlovingian line, the line that is descended from Charlemagne, had come to an end, and no part of Britain ever came into the Holy Roman Empire. The Duke of Normandy, the King of France, and a number of lesser feudal rulers remained outside. In 987 the Kingdom of France passed out of the possession of the Carlovingian line into the hands of Hugh Capet, whose descen- dants were still reigning in the eighteenth century. At the time of Hugh Capet, the King of France ruled only a comparatively small territory round Paris. In 1066 England was attacked almost simultaneously by an in- vasion of the Norwegian Northmen under King Harold Hardrada and by the Latinized Northmen under the Duke of Normandy. Harold King of England defeated the former at the battle of Stamford Bridge, and was defeated by the latter at Hastings. England was conquered by the Normans, and so cut off from Scandinavian, Teu- tonic, and Russian affairs, and brought into the most intimate rela- tions and conflicts with the French. For the next four centuries the English were entangled in the conflicts of the French feudal princes and wasted upon the fields of France.