Page:Western Europe in the Middle Ages.djvu/75

Rh by mutiny and desertion, they extorted grants of land, hereditary countships, and immunity from the authority of the king's representatives. In the turbulent middle zone some of them became petty kings; even in the more stable eastern and western realms they built up semi-independent principalities. By 900 the Carolingians had little direct authority over the kingdoms which they nominally ruled.

To increase the confusion, a new series of invasions struck Europe in the ninth century. Vikings from the North, Magyars from the East, and Saracens from the South plundered the coasts, the plains, and the river valleys. The raiders, who traveled by ship or on horseback, had the advantages of speed and surprise; the bewildered kings were seldom able to concentrate their armies rapidly enough to protect threatened districts. Defense had to be organized on a local basis if it was to be at all effective, and the counts and other great landholders were the obvious leaders of resistance. They raised their own armies; they built castles to protect the open country; they garrisoned the walled towns. Such activities greatly increased their authority over their neighbors and their independence of the central government. In France and in Italy, where the kings had been least successful in repelling the enemy, almost all governmental powers passed into the hands of local lords. In England and Germany, where the kings had a better military record, the growth of lordship was not so spectacular, and the central government retained some authority over local leaders.

The great raids ended during the tenth century, but Europe did not recover immediately from the damage which they had caused. Large areas had been conquered by the invaders; these heathen settlements had to be assimilated or destroyed. The Northmen in England, Ireland, and Normandy accepted Christianity and the western tradition without hesitation, but the Magyars of the Hungarian plain were a more difficult group to absorb. They were not fully converted until the eleventh century and never