Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/691

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 675

feudal regime a regime not only national, but international constituted, during a certain period, a static state, an equilibrium, but an unstable one, as all organic, and especially social, equilibria are.

In the tenth century alterations in the political map of Europe continued. In the south the kingdom of France extended to the west of the Rhone to the detriment of Provence, which was ceded in 932 to Burgundy; this kingdom or that of Aries was itself annexed to the kingdom of Germany in 1032; the latter, more- over, recovered Lorraine which for a moment had been lost. The Austrian march was overthrown by the Hungarian invasion; but on the northeast there were organized the marches of the Elbe, which had been taken from the Slavs, and the duchy of Bohemia passed under the suzerainty of the empire. In 967 the kingdom of Italy was reunited to the kingdom of Germany, and to the Empire of the West under Otto the Great in 962. In the tenth century the Empire of the West passed to the north of the Eider, where the Danish march was established. The Empire of the East, after having lost Crete and almost all of Sicily, extended its boundaries in the south of Italy. On the other hand, the king- doms of Bulgaria, Croatia, and Servia were formed at its expense. In northeast Europe, in the middle of the ninth century, the duchy of Poland and the grand duchy of Russia were set up. The Norwegians formed in Iceland a colony independent of their kingdom. Danish pirates founded the duchy of Normandy about the year 912. While the frontiers were mobile, the populations became more and more settled in the territories which they occupied.

At the accession of Hugo Capet in 987, the old division of Gaul into pagi, such as existed under the Merovingians, who themselves had found them in Roman Gaul, still persisted, but they were henceforth nothing more than administrative districts. In the regions where Germanic customs prevailed, the pagi multi- plied through the parceling out of the cities or primitive pagi. The count was at once the administrative, judicial, and military chief of thq pagus; from the eighth century the name of comi- catus, county, tended to be substituted for that of pagus. In the