[468] Machiavelli points out (Istorie Fiorentine, 1. i) that this was the result of their having, at the death of their tyrant Clef, suspended the election of kings and set up the system of thirty dukes or marquises—an arrangement unfavourable to further conquest.
[469] See Guizot, Essais sur l'histoire de France, 7e édit. pp. 185, 189, 195. But cp. pp. 198-201 as to the rise of hereditary feudality. Cp. also the Histoire de la civilisation en France, 13e édit. iii, 103; iv, 77-79.
[470] Cp. Sismondi, Républiques italiennes, ed. cited, i, 85.
[471] Guizot, Histoire de la civilisation en France, ii, 134, 162; Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, 8th ed. pp. 71-74.
[472] See Guizot's table, pp. 130-32.
[473] For a favourable view of the case see Schröder's Geschichte Karl's des Grossen, 1869, Kapp. 15, 16; Bryce, as cited, pp. 71-74; and Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, B. v, Kap. i, § 2. Gregorovius (p. 20) calls Charlemagne "the Moses of the Middle Ages, who had happily led mankind through the wilderness of barbarism"—a proposition grounded on race-pride rather than on evidence.
[474] Cp. Poole, Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought, 1884, pp. 15-16, 22.
[475] There is reason to infer that the very movement of theological thought which marks the ninth century was due to Moslem contacts. These might have been more fruitful under peace conditions than under those of Charlemagne's campaigns.
[476] Républiques, i, 91. "The Holy Roman Empire, taking the name ... as denoting the sovereignty of Germany and Italy vested in a Germanic prince, is the creation of Otto the Great" (Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, p. 80). Gregorovius, instead of giving Otto some such praise as he bestows on Karl, pronounces this time that "the Roman Empire was now regenerated by the German nation" (B. vi, Kap. iii, § 1).
[477] Guizot, Civilisation, iii, 103; Sismondi, Républiques, i, 87. In his Essais, however (p. 238, etc.), Guizot speaks of the "belle mais stérile tentative de Charlemagne." See the problem discussed in the author's essay on Gibbon, in Pioneer Humanists, p. 335 sq.