Page:The Normans in European History.djvu/101

Rh count in Anjou and Maine, duke again in Aquitaine, Henry ruled each of his dominions as its feudal lord—very much as if the German Emperor to-day combined in himself the titles of king of Prussia and of Bavaria, grand duke of Baden, duke of Brunswick, prince of Waldeck, and so on throughout the members of the German confederation. Such a government is not an empire in the sense of the ancient Roman or the modern British empires, for it has no dependencies. It is an empire only in the broader and looser sense of the word, a great composite state, larger than a mere kingdom and imperial in extent if not in organization.

That Henry's realm was in extent imperial can easily be seen from the map. It extended from Scotland to the frontier of Spain, as the empire of his contemporary Frederick I extended from the Baltic and the North Sea to central Italy. And if the kingdoms of Germany, Italy, and Burgundy which made up Frederick's empire covered in the aggregate more territory, the actual authority of the ruler, whether in army, justice, or finance, was decidedly less than in the Anglo-Norman state. Henry had a stronger army, a larger revenue, a more centralized government. Moreover, the Norman empire was less artificial than it seems to us at first sight, accustomed as we are to the associations of the modern map. There was, especially with mediaeval methods of communication, nothing anomalous in a state which straddled the English Channel: Normandy was nearer