''
This strange political creation managed to live to the ripe
old age of eight hundred and thirty-nine years. In the year
1801, (during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson,) it was
most unceremoniously relegated to the historical scrapheap.
The brutal fellow who destroyed the old Germanic Empire was
the son of a Corsican notary-public who had made a brilliant
career in the service of the French Republic. He was ruler
of Europe by the grace of his famous Guard Regiments, but
he desired to be something more. He sent to Rome for the
Pope and the Pope came and stood by while General Napoleon
placed the imperial crown upon his own head and proclaimed
himself heir to the tradition of Charlemagne. For history is
like life. The more things change, the more they remain
the same.
THE NORSEMEN
WHY THE PEOPLE OF THE TENTH CENTURY
PRAYED THE LORD TO PROTECT THEM
FROM THE FURY OF THE NORSEMEN
IN the third and fourth centuries, the Germanic tribes of
central Europe had broken through the defences of the Empire
that they might plunder Rome and live on the fat of the
land. In the eighth century it became the turn of the Germans
to be the ``plundered-ones.'' They did not like this at all, even
if their enemies were their first cousins, the Norsemen, who
lived in Denmark and Sweden and Norway.
What forced these hardy sailors to turn pirate we do not
know, but once they had discovered the advantages and pleasures
of a buccaneering career there was no one who could stop
them.
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