relations with the state. Simultaneously
with this, hordes of Germans from the thickly-populated North poured
victoriously in broad streams over the Roman Empire and the decaying
nations of the Ancient World. These masses could not keep their
nationality pure and maintain their position as political powers. The
States which they founded were short-lived. Even then men recognized how
difficult it is for a lower civilization to hold its own against a
higher. The Germans were gradually merged in the subject nations. The
German element, however, instilled new life into these nations, and
offered new opportunities for growth. The stronger the admixture of
German blood, the more vigorous and the more capable of civilization did
the growing nations appear.

In the meantime powerful opponents sprung up in this newly-formed world.
The Latin race grew up by degrees out of the admixture of the Germans
with the Roman world and the nations subdued by them, and separated
itself from the Germans, who kept themselves pure on the north of the
Alps and in the districts of Scandinavia. At the same time the idea of
the Universal Empire, which the Ancient World had embraced, continued to
flourish.

In the East the Byzantine Empire lasted until A.D. 1453. In the West,
however, the last Roman Emperor had been deposed by Odoacer in 476.
Italy had fallen into the hands of the East Goths and Lombards
successively. The Visigoths had established their dominion in Spain, and
the Franks and Burgundians in Gaul.

A new empire rose from the latter quarter. Charles the Great, with his
powerful hand, extended the Frankish Empire far beyond the boundaries of
Gaul. By the subjugation of the Saxons he became lord of the country
between the Rhine and the Elbe; he obtained the sovereignty in Italy by
the conquest of the Lombards, and finally sought to restore the Western
Roman Empire. He was crowned Emperor in Rome in the year 800. His
successors clung to this claim; but the Frankish Empire soon fell to
pieces. In its partition the western half formed what afterwards became
France, and the East Frankish part of the Empire became the later
Germany. While the Germans in the West Frankish Empire, in Italy and
Spain, had abandoned their speech and customs, and had gradually
amalgamated with the Romans, the inhabitants of the East Frankish
Empire, especially the Saxons and their neighbouring tribes, maintained
their Germanic characteristics, language, and cust