Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/563

Rh gained the ascendancy over the numerous dialects of the country, and became the national speech, just as in France the Langue d'Oil finally crowded out all other dialects. By the conquests and colonizations of the sixteenth century this Castilian speech was destined to become only less widely spread than the English tongue.

The Poem of the Cid.—Castilian, or Spanish literature begins in the twelfth century with the romance-poem of the Cid (that is, Chief, the title of the hero of the poem), one of the great literary productions of the mediæval period. This grand national poem was the outgrowth of the sentiments inspired by the long struggle between the Spanish Christians and the Mohammedan Moors.

Beginnings of the Kingdom of Germany.—The history of Germany as a separate kingdom begins with the break-up of the empire of Charlemagne (see p. 408). Germany at that time comprised several groups of tribes,—the Saxons, the Suabians, the Thuringians, the Bavarians, and the Franks. Closely allied in race, speech, manners, and social arrangements, all these peoples seemed ready to be welded into a close and firm nation; but,