Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/453

 The Age of Disorder ; Feudalism 383 In the first place, a king found it very hard to get rapidly Bad roads from one part of his realms to another in order to put down rebellions, for the remarkable roads which the Romans had so carefully constructed to enable their armies to move about had fallen into disrepair. To have good roads one must be constantly working on them, for the rains wash them out and the floods carry away the bridges. As there was no longer a body of engineers employed by the government to keep up the roads and repair the bridges, they often became impassable. In the East Frankish kingdom matters must have been worse than in the West Frankish realm, for the Romans had never conquered Germany and consequently no good roads had ever been constructed there. Besides the difficulty of getting about quickly and easily, the Lack of king had very little money. This was one of the chief troubles go°vemment of the Middle Ages. There are not many gold or silver mines officials in western Europe, and there was no supply of precious metals from outside, for commerce had largely died out. So the king had no treasury from which to pay the many officials which an efficient government finds it necessary to employ to do its business and to keep order. As we have seen, he had to give his officers, the counts and margraves, land instead of money, and their land was so extensive that they tended to become rulers themselves within their own possessions. Of course the king had not money enough to support a stand- No perma- ing army, which would have enabled him to put down the con- stant rebellions of his distant officers and of the powerful and resdess nobility, whose chief interest in life consisted in fighting. In addition to the weakness and poverty of the kings there New was another trouble, — and that the worst of all, — namely, the constant new invasions from all directions which kept all three parts of Charlemagne's empire, and England besides, in a con- stant state of terror and disaster. These invasions were almost as bad as those which had occurred before Charlemagne's time ; they prevented western Europe from becoming peaceful and invasions