ould establish
Normandy. When his son, Richard sans Peur, became chief of the Normans,
A. D. 943, Normandy was a power in Europe, and virtually a free
state,--for its rulers were "independent as the kings of France, whose
superiority they acknowledged, but whose behests they never held
themselves bound to obey."

The Normans soon made themselves felt in Europe. They became the
foremost of Christian communities, and were distinguished in arts and
arms and letters. They were the politest people of their time, and in
their manners and modes of life they presented strong contrasts to the
general coarseness of the period in which they flourished. Their valor
seemed to increase with their culture; and if they were admired by the
few because of their intellectual superiority, they were dreaded by the
many because of their dauntless bravery and the energy and success which
characterized their military exploits. Though often fighting at great
odds, they were rarely defeated. They furnished the most distinguished
adventurers of an adventurous age. There is nothing more romantic than
the history of the Norman family of Hauteville, which sent forth a
number of men whose exertions in Southern Europe had great effect in the
eleventh century. Foremost of his countrymen in courage and capacity was
the adventurer Robert de Hauteville, better known as Robert Guiscard,
substantially the founder of that Neapolitan kingdom which we have seen
absorbed into the new kingdom of Italy. His daughter married a son of
one of the Byzantine Emperors, who was dethroned; and Robert was thus
enabled to enter on a series of Eastern conquests, which would have
ended in the taking of Constantinople had not imperative circumstances
compelled him to return to Italy. A few years later he resumed his
Oriental schemes, but died before he could complete them, and when
everything promised him success. Had a Norman dynasty been established
at Constantinople, at the close of the eleventh century, by so able a
man as Robert Guiscard, it is probable the Lower Empire would have
renewed its life, and that the Normans would have become as influential
in the East as their contemporary conquest of England had made them in
the West. The feudal system, of which they were the great masters, might
as easily have been introduced into Greece as it was into England, and
with the effect of producing an order of men who would have proved
themselves more than a match for any force