ear to include the Palais de
Justice and the Cathedral of the present day.

After the four centuries of Roman rule came the incursions of the savage
hordes of northern Europe, and of the great army of Huns, under Attila, who
marched through Gaul in A.D. 451. The Romans with their auxiliaries engaged
Attila at Chalons--the battle in which fabulous numbers of men are said to
have fallen on both sides.

The Roman power was soon completely withdrawn from Gaul, and the Franks
under Clovis, after the battle of Soissons, made themselves complete
masters of the country. In 511 Clovis died. He had embraced Christianity
fifteen years before, having been baptised at Rheims, probably through
the influence of his wife Clothilda. Then for two hundred and fifty
years France was under the Merovingian kings, and throughout much of
this period there was very little settled government, Neustria, together
with the rest of France, suffering from the lawlessness that prevailed
under these "sluggard" kings. Rouen was still the centre of many of the
events connected with the history of Neustria. We know something of the
story of Hilparik, a king of Neustria, whose brutal behaviour to his
various queens and the numerous murders and revenges that darkened his
reign, form a most unsavoury chapter in the story of this portion of
France.

Following this period came the time when France was ruled by the mayors
of the palace who, owing to the weakness of the sovereigns, gradually
assumed the whole of the royal power. After Charles Martel, the most
famous of these mayors, had defeated the Saracens at Tours, came his son
Pepin-le-Bref, the father of Charlemagne. Childeric, the last of the
Merovingian kings, had been put out of the way in a monastery and Pepin
had become the King of France. Charlemagne, however, soon made himself
greater still as Emperor of an enormous portion of Europe--France,
Italy, and Germany all coming under his rule. At his death Charlemagne
divided his empire. His successor Louis le Debonnaire, owing to his
easy-going weakness, fell a prey to Charlemagne's other sons, and at his
death, Charles the Bald became King of France and the country west of
the Rhine. The other portions of the empire falling to Lothaire and the
younger Louis.

During all this period, France had suffered from endless fighting and the
famines that came as an unevitable consequence, and just about this time
Neustria suffered still further owing to the in