Thus again the Netherlands, for the first time since the fall of Rome, were united under one crown imperial.  They had already been once united, in their slavery to Rome.  Eight centuries pass away, and they are again united, in subjection to Charlemagne.  Their union was but in forming a single link in the chain of a new realm.  The reign of Charlemagne had at last accomplished the promise of the sorceress Velleda and other soothsayers.  A German race had re-established the empire of the world.  The Netherlands, like-the other provinces of the great monarch’s dominion, were governed by crown-appointed functionaries, military and judicial.  In the northeastern, or Frisian portion, however; the grants of land were never in the form of revocable benefices or feuds.  With this important exception, the whole country shared the fate, and enjoyed the general organization of the Empire.

But Charlemagne came an age too soon.  The chaos which had brooded over Europe since the dissolution of the Roman world, was still too absolute.  It was not to be fashioned into permanent forms, even by his bold and constructive genius.  A soil, exhausted by the long culture of Pagan empires, was to lie fallow for a still longer period.  The discordant elements out of which the Emperor had compounded his realm, did not coalesce during his life-time.  They were only held together by the vigorous grasp of the hand which had combined them.  When the great statesman died, his Empire necessarily fell to pieces.  Society had need of farther disintegration before it could begin to reconstruct itself locally.  A new civilization was not to be improvised by a single mind.  When did one man ever civilize a people?  In the eighth and ninth centuries there was not even a people to be civilized.  The construction of Charles was, of necessity, temporary.  His Empire was supported by artificial columns, resting upon the earth, which fell prostrate almost as soon as the hand of their architect was cold.  His institutions had not struck down into the soil.  There were no extensive and vigorous roots to nourish, from below, a flourishing Empire through time and tempest.

Moreover, the Carlovingian race had been exhausted by producing a race of heroes like the Pepins and the Charleses.  The family became, soon, as contemptible as the ox-drawn, long-haired “do-nothings” whom it had expelled; but it is not our task to describe the fortunes of the Emperor’s ignoble descendants.  The realm was divided, sub-divided, at times partially reunited, like a family farm, among monarchs incompetent alike to hold, to delegate, or—­to resign the inheritance of the great warrior and lawgiver.  The meek, bald, fat, stammering, simple Charles, or Louis, who successively sat upon his throne—­princes, whose only historic individuality consists in these insipid appellations—­had not the sense to comprehend, far less to develop, the plans of their ancestor.