BOOK III.

CHAPTER I.

VIEW OF THE STATE OF EUROPE AT THE TIME OF THE NORMAN INVASION.

Before the period of which we are going to treat, England was little known or considered in Europe.  Their situation, their domestic calamities, and their ignorance circumscribed the views and politics of the English within the bounds of their own island.  But the Norman conqueror threw down all these barriers.  The English laws, manners, and maxims were suddenly changed; the scene was enlarged; and the communication with the rest of Europe, being thus opened, has been preserved ever since in a continued series of wars and negotiations.  That we may, therefore, enter more fully into the matters which lie before us, it is necessary that we understand the state of the neighboring continent at the time when this island first came to be interested in its affairs.

The Northern nations who had overran the Roman Empire were at first rather actuated by avarice than ambition, and were more intent upon plunder than conquest; they were carried beyond their original purposes, when they began, to form regular governments, for which they had been prepared by no just ideas of legislation.  For a long time, therefore, there was little of order in their affairs or foresight in their designs.  The Goths, the Burgundians, the Franks, the Vandals, the Suevi, after they had prevailed over the Roman Empire, by turns prevailed over each other in continual wars, which were carried on upon no principles of a determinate policy, entered into upon motives of brutality and caprice, and ended as fortune and rude violence chanced to prevail.  Tumult, anarchy, confusion, overspread the face of Europe; and an obscurity rests upon the transactions of that time which suffers us to discover nothing but its extreme barbarity.

Before this cloud could be dispersed, the Saracens, another body of barbarians from the South, animated by a fury not unlike that which gave strength to the Northern irruptions, but heightened by enthusiasm, and regulated by subordination and an uniform policy, began to carry their arms, their manners, and religion, into every part of the universe.  Spain was entirely overwhelmed by the torrent of their armies, Italy and the islands were harassed by their fleets, and all Europe alarmed by their vigorous and frequent enterprises.  Italy, who had so long sat the mistress of the world, was by turns the slave of all nations.  The possession of that fine country was hotly disputed between the Greek Emperor and the Lombards, and it suffered infinitely by that contention.  Germany, the parent of so many nations, was exhausted by the swarms she had sent abroad.

However, in the midst of this chaos there were principles at work which reduced things to a certain form, and gradually unfolded a system in which the chief movers and main springs were the Papal and the Imperial powers,—­the aggrandizement or diminution of which have been the drift of almost all the politics, intrigues, and wars which have employed and distracted Europe to this day.