Historians' History of the World e-bog

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. But it was not only the empire that was dismembered it was also the realm and royalty itself. At the close of Charlemagne's reign, feudalism was not yet founded, but it was almost completely established at the death of Charles the Bald a half century afterwards. And this was because the progress of feudal institutions was Singularly hastened by the historical events we have just been studying. Royal authority at the end of Charles the Bald's reign was ruined, as it had been under the later Merovingians, for the same reasons and in the same fashion. The king had no more money and he had no more land to give away. He tried to take from the church, but the church resisted. The bishops assembled in council at Meaux and at Paris in 846, in the early years of the reign, advised Charles the Bald to send misst' dominici to make a thor ough investigation of the lands of the royal fisc, which had been usurped. You must not, they told him, let a state of poverty, which does not accord with your dignity, push your magnificence to do things you would not wish to do. You cannot have attendants to serve you in your house, unless you have the means to pay them. Here we see royalty reduced to indigence. The king himself recognised it. We wish, he said, one day, to determine, with the advice of our faithful, how we may live in our court honourably and without poverty, as our predecessor did.