FROM CHARLEMAGNE TO HILDEBRAND 157 The dukes of Normandy ranked with the great dukes and counts of France; those of Paris, Flanders, Vermandois, Burgundy, Aquitaine. The royal estate did not The laBt suffice to make the king a match for any of his French own great nobles, among whom the counts of Paris, Carolingians. Robert, his son Hugh the Great and grandson Hugh Capet, generally succeeded in holding the leading position and control- ling the Crown for their own purposes ; while the king was always endeavouring to free himself from their mastery. Hence to compare the position of the French king and his inability to rule with a strong hand, with the position of Henry the Fowler or Otto in Germany, who did rule with a strong hand, is scarcely fair ; for the strength of the Saxon kings of Germany had the foundation of their powerful dukedom of Saxony to rest on. It was not till the counts of Paris made themselves kings of France that the French king was so much as the most powerful among the French nobility. For more than a century after the accession of Hugh Capet, the dynasty was mainly occupied in gradually confirming its supremacy amongst the nobility. If William of Normandy had elected to strike for the Crown of France instead of the Crown of England, it is not impossible that the Norman dynasty would have replaced the Capets. After the death of Charles the Fat, France stood outside the empire to which we must give our attention. The Carolingian line closed in 911. Conrad of Franconia was Germany elected German king, and was followed by Henry Henry the the Fowler of Saxony in 918. His great work was Towler - mainly to check the advance of the Slavonic and Mongol tribes on the east, and to organise the frontier ' mark of Schleswig as a barrier against the Danes. The two greatest divisions of the German peoples in Germany were the Saxons and the Franks of Franconia, and their agreement in electing the Saxon duke to the German kingship probably prevented a further rending of Germany. Henry's son Otto restored the empire as a living force, but he had reigned for five and twenty years as King of Germany before he claimed the Imperial Crown. The vigour of his rule which he intended to make supreme, a reality throughout
