Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/305

 FEUDAL STATES OF EUROPE 261 remote ruins of castles and with dull towns of depleted population, which in the Middle Ages were booming centers of military, political, economic, and artistic life. We must therefore not approach the feudal period with the assump- tion that a modern "national" state is necessarily vastly superior to a "feudal" state, still less with the idea that the national state is the guiding star of all European history and the goal toward which everything moved. We must be care- ful not to see modern nationalities before they really exist. If one is studying the history of some one European country, like France or Germany, it is well enough to go back to Julius Caesar or to men of the old stone age in that region, if one wants to ; but as for the states that we call France and Germany and Italy to-day, there was nothing like them in the feudal period. There was an England even then, it is true, but no United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, much less a British Empire. What we now turn to, therefore, is a survey of the feudal states of western Europe during the period from the end of the Frankish Empire to the twelfth century. Cer- Kingdoms tain kings traced back their claim to authority i^ iv f d from to the Frankish Empire, which, as we have seen, magne's had split into several divisions. There came in the empire ninth century to be two kings of the Franks; one of the East Franks, and one of the West Franks. These vague des- ignations, which replace the old Austrasia and Neustria, leave the exact location of their kingdoms discreetly doubt- ful. As for the third Merovingian Kingdom, Burgundy, it was for a time divided into an Upper Burgundy in the mountains and a Lower Burgundy down the Rhone. In 934 the two were reunited, but henceforth were known as the Kingdom of Aries, from the capital city. This kingdom lasted for a century to 1032. In Italy practically no one was king in any real sense from the death of Louis II in 875 until the coronation of Otto I as emperor at Rome in 962, although a Hugo of Provence for some time claimed the title. Among the East Franks, Arnulf of Carinthia succeeded the deposed Charles in 887. A contemporary has well