During the reign of Charles the Bald, France first suffered from the
attacks of the Normans, a race of bold and needy adventurers from the
north of Europe. Their plundering invasions were continued for upwards
of seventy years; till at length (912) the French king was compelled
to purchase their amity by yielding to Rollo their leader the country
afterwards from them called Normandy, of which Rouen was the capital.
The first successor of Charles the Bald with whose name history has
associated anything worth remembering, was Charles, surnamed the Fat
(885). He was the son of that Louis to whom Germany had been before
assigned, and was thus enabled to bring that country and France for a
short time once more under a single ruler. In the turbulence of the
times Charles was soon deposed; and during the century which followed,
France, so lately the centre of an empire little less than that of
Rome in the days of its Cæsars, was split up into a multitude of
independencies, by nobles who would own only a very slender subjection
to the kings. Out of these nobles at last sprang Hugh Capet (987), who
was enabled, on the death of Louis V, to place himself on the throne.
He was already possessed of great property, and proved to be also a
prince of much ability and penetration. He established the royal
residence at Paris, which his predecessors had deserted, and became
the founder of a family which, in one of its branches, occupied the
throne of France till the overthrow of monarchy in 1848. He deserves
to be mentioned with honor, as being among the first of European kings
who trusted to prudence, counsel, and moderation, rather than force of
arms, in effecting his purposes. On his death (996), in the
fifty-seventh year of his age and the tenth of his reign, he was
succeeded by his son Robert, who had all his father’s equitable
disposition without his vigor of character. He was subjected to a
degree of tyranny on the part of the church of which perhaps the
history of the world does not afford such another example. Robert had
been guilty of marrying a cousin in the fourth degree without a
_dispensation_ from the Holy See――that is, without paying a fine for
what was only an imaginary offense. Gregory V, who then occupied the
pontifical chair, threatened to excommunicate Robert if he should not
dismiss his wife, and, on Robert’s refusal, actually did so, and laid
all his dominions under an interdict. This punishment proved
tremendous in its effects; for though the king himself showed sense
and courage enough to despise the wrath of the pontiff, yet his
subjects deserted him in terror. The priests, in consequence of the
interdict, refused sacrament to the sick all over the country, and the
dead were everywhere left unburied, when mass was no longer said. In
these circumstances the unfortunate king submitted. A second marriage,
contracted with the consent of the church, proved very unhappy. The
new queen, Constantia, or Constance, made many efforts to embroil her
husband and his family, and in the midst of these Robert died (1031).
His son Henry succeeded, and it was during his reign that those
pilgrimages to the Holy Land, which were so soon to end in the
Crusades, took their rise. Of these we shall speak by themselves. In
the meantime we take leave of France by mentioning that Henry’s
successor was Philip (1060), whose reign is remarkable as having
witnessed the beginning of those contests with England which continued
at intervals till the early part of the nineteenth century.
At this period (1066) the Normans invaded and conquered England, where
their leader, William, Duke of Normandy, became the founder of an
important dynasty.