nks soon restored quiet and carried Leo back to the Lateran
Palace which ever since the days of Constantine, had been the home of
the Pope. That was in December of the year 799. On Christmas day of the
next year, Charlemagne, who was staying in Rome, attended the service
in the ancient church of St. Peter. When he arose from prayer, the
Pope placed a crown upon his head, called him Emperor of the Romans and
hailed him once more with the title of "Augustus" which had not been
heard for hundreds of years.

Once more Northern Europe was part of a Roman Empire, but the dignity
was held by a German chieftain who could read just a little and never
learned to write. But he could fight and for a short while there was
order and even the rival emperor in Constantinople sent a letter of
approval to his "dear Brother."

Unfortunately this splendid old man died in the year 814. His sons
and his grandsons at once began to fight for the largest share of the
imperial inheritance. Twice the Carolingian lands were divided, by
the treaties of Verdun in the year 843 and by the treaty of
Mersen-on-the-Meuse in the year 870. The latter treaty divided the
entire Frankish Kingdom into two parts. Charles the Bold received the
western half. It contained the old Roman province called Gaul where the
language of the people had become thoroughly romanized. The Franks soon
learned to speak this language and this accounts for the strange fact
that a purely Germanic land like France should speak a Latin tongue.

The other grandson got the eastern part, the land which the Romans had
called Germania. Those inhospitable regions had never been part of
the old Empire. Augustus had tried to conquer this "far east," but his
legions had been annihilated in the Teutoburg Wood in the year 9 and the
people had never been influenced by the higher Roman civilisation. They
spoke the popular Germanic tongue. The Teuton word for "people" was
"thiot." The Christian missionaries therefore called the German language
the "lingua theotisca" or the "lingua teutisca," the "popular dialect"
and this word "teutisca" was changed into "Deutsch" which accounts for
the name "Deutschland."

As for the famous Imperial Crown, it very soon slipped off the heads of
the Carolingian successors and rolled back onto the Italian plain, where
it became a sort of plaything of a number of little potentates who stole
the crown from each other amidst much bloodshed and wore it (with or
witho