6. The scarcity of money likewise prevented the ruler from securing the services of a great body of able officers, and also made it impossible for him to support a standing army to enforce his will everywhere.
7. The barbarian invasions from the east and the north brought in the Northmen, Slavs, and the Hungarians, while the Saracens were attacking Italy and southern France.[385:1]
Before the ninth century closed, the territorial unity of the Empire of Charles the Great was broken up. Charles the Bald (875-877) ruled France as king, held Italy as Emperor, and sought to gain control of Germany but was prevented by death from doing so. Charles the Fat (881-888) held Germany as king, controlled Italy as Emperor, and was invited to assume the French crown because Charles the Simple, a weak-minded boy of six, could not cope with the marauding Northmen. Charles the Fat, the last legitimate East Frankish male descendant of Charles the Great, accepted the proffered throne (885) and thus reunited all the parts of the Empire of Charles the Great except Burgundy. But Charles the Fat was too weak to hold the reins of government over so
vast an area. He bought off the Northmen by a disgraceful treaty (886) to the disgust of the French, was driven out of Italy (887), and then, deposed and deserted by his German subjects, he crawled off to an unregrettable death on his Swabian estates (888).[386:1] This was the last union of France and Germany under one ruler until Napoleon the Great carved out his vast Empire in western Europe.
When the line of the Carolingian rulers, called into existence by papal coronation in 800, ended with the death of the last legitimate descendant in the male line, Charles the Fat, in 888, a new problem confronted western Europe. The right of appointing a new Emperor reverted to Rome and the Pope. The Empire of Charles the Great fell asunder and from it emerged four kingdoms.[386:2] West France chose Odo of Eudes as king. East France, or Germany, elected Arnulf. The kingdom of Burgundy was divided between two rival rulers. Italy, except the southern part which was still loyal to Constantinople, was also divided between the parties of Berengar of Friuli[386:3] and Guido of Spoleto.[386:4] The former was chosen king by the estates of Lombardy, the latter was crowned Emperor by the Pope Stephen VI. and not long afterwards, to insure the permanency of the imperial title in his family, had his son Lambert crowned co-Emperor in 894 by Pope Formosus.[386:5]
Of all the various knights who appeared in different parts of the Empire immediately after 888, the strongest and most able was Arnulf, a bastard nephew of Charles the Fat, but a warrior of renown, who was raised on the East Frankish throne by the disgusted nobles in 888. A descendant of Charles the Great, he was, for a very brief period, looked upon as the head of the Carolingian Empire. Odo of Eudes, the Count of Paris, placed his royal crown in the hands of Arnulf and received it back as a royal vassal. Berengar of Italy also did homage to Arnulf and received his kingdom as a fief. Soon, however, local kings set up by the people arose and Arnulf restricted his rule to Germany and Italy.[387:1] He defeated the predatory Northmen, checked the inroads of the warlike Magyars, and by storming Rome compelled the Corsican Pope Formosus to crown him as Emperor (896).[387:2] Then he turned his attention to the boy Emperor in Italy, the Duke of Spoleto, but was smitten by disease and hastened back to Germany (d. 899).[387:3] Italy was thus left to sixty years of tumult and anarchy. With the death of his son, Louis the Child, in 911, the Carolingian dynasty passed away in Germany. In 987 the powerful French barons set aside the Carolingian heir and elected Hugh Capet, the Duke of France, as king of the feudal monarchy and the Archbishop of Rheims crowned him.[387:4] The Carolingian Empire was at an end. For more than
half a century now the imperial crown was a reward in the Pope's hands to be bestowed upon this or that Italian noble for "value received."[388:1]
The first half of the tenth century seemed to be the very nadir of political order and conscious culture. It is almost impossible for a modern mind to comprehend the torrents of barbaric destruction sweeping in over western Europe from all sides. As compared with the Teutonic invasion of the Roman Empire five centuries before, the onslaught was more sudden and fiercer while the internal resistance was much more poorly organised and consequently weaker. For several centuries these forces had been gathering. Charles the Great had held the torrent in check. But not long after the dissolution of his Empire the onslaught began. The merciless Saracens roamed the Mediterranean Sea as its masters, laid waste the Christian seacoast towns, and even sacked Rome itself, the seat of Empire and Christian rule. The Danes and Northmen swept the North Sea, the English Channel, the Atlantic coast, and pierced France and Germany by their rivers, almost to the heart, killing, robbing, and taking captives. They even boldly passed Gibraltar into the Mediterranean and fell upon Provence and Italy, where they left an indelible impression.
Meantime on land the Slavic barbarians, the Wends, the Czechs, and the Obotrites, rebelled against the German yoke and threatened the whole north-eastern border of the Empire. Behind them were the Poles and Russians. Farther south came the unruly Hungarian tribes which "dashed over Germany like the flying spray of a new wave of barbarism, and carried
the terror of the battle-axes to the Apennines and the ocean."[389:1] These blows from all sides knocked out the foundations of the imperial structure, already weakened to the point of dissolution by internal decay, and it fell. As a result reliance for protection on a common defence and imperial organisation was abandoned. Feudalism replaced the Empire. The strong built fortress castles, the weak became their vassals. Local authorities—counts, dukes, lords, bishops, and abbots—saw new duties and new opportunities. They took a firmer hold, converted a delegated into an independent power, a personal into a territorial jurisdiction. Recognition of a distant, weak imperial or royal authority was only nominal and feeble at that. The grand dream of a mighty, universal Christian Empire was being rapidly lost in the decentralising forces, and in the increasing localisation of all powers. During this period of weakness and confusion, the mediæval Church, instead of standing forth as the source of strength and intelligence, instead of making further gains of a political and ecclesiastical character for the See of St. Peter, seemed to fall into "a death-sleep of moral and spiritual exhaustion."[389:2] The Papacy as a religious organisation almost disappears from view. The commanding spirits of Gregory the Great and of Nicholas the Great were utterly forgotten. The victories gained through the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals were not followed up. A really great Pope at this time might easily have realised all the dreams of Innocent III., but none such wore the papal tiara.