[Jasmin: Barber by Samuel Smiles]@TWC D-Link bookJasmin: Barber CHAPTER V 7/26
The English language consists mostly of Saxon, Norse, and Norman-French with a mixture of Welsh or Ancient British.
That language is, however, no test of the genealogy of a people, is illustrated by the history of France itself. In the fourth and fifth centuries, the Franks, a powerful German race, from the banks of the Rhine, invaded and conquered the people north of the Somme, and eventually gave the name of France to the entire country. The Burgundians and Visigoths, also a German race, invaded France, and settled themselves in the south-east.
In the year 464, Childeric the Frank took Paris. The whole history of the occupation of France is told by Augustin Thierry, in his 'Narratives of the Merovingian Times.' "There are Franks," he says in his Preface, "who remained pure Germans in Gaul; Gallo-Romans, irritated and disgusted by the barbarian rule; Franks more or less influenced by the manners and customs of civilised life; and 'Romans more or less barbarian in mind and manners.' The contrast may be followed in all its shades through the sixth century, and into the middle of the seventh; later, the Germanic and Gallo-Roman stamp seemed effaced and lost in a semi-barbarism clothed in theocratic forms." The Franks, when they had completed the conquest of the entire country, gave it the name of Franken-ric--the Franks' kingdom.
Eventually, Charles the Great, or Charlemagne, descended from Childeric the Frank, was in 800 crowned Emperor of the West.
Towards the end of his reign, the Norsemen began to devastate the northern coast of Franken-ric. Aix-la-Chapelle was Charlemagne's capital, and there he died and was buried.
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