It is easy to see now what was then so incomprehensible: that from the chaos of barbarism left by the Teuton flood, there were emerging in that ninth century a group of states with definite outlines, and the larger organism of Europe was coming into form.

The treaty of Verdun (843) had roughly separated _Italy_, _France_, and _Germany_.

At the same time the Heptarchy in Britain had been consolidated into _England_ under King Alfred; while an obscure Scandinavian adventurer named Rurik, quite unobserved, was bringing into political unity, and reigning at Kieff as Grand Duke over what was to become _Russia_.

_Spain_, quite apart from all this movement, had entered upon those seven centuries of struggle with Saracen and Moor, that struggle of unmatched devotion and tenacity of purpose which is really the great epic of history.
Those ambitious and too powerful vassals were not the greatest evils menacing the Carlovingian kings.

It was the incessant invasions of a race of barbarians coming out of the north, which was going to bury the past under a ruin of a different sort.