Note {44} — I. THE GERMANS AND THE EMPIRE TO 1073

The war against the Saxons and their conquest practically completed the unification of the German tribes on the continent, there remaining outside of the empire of Karl only the Scandinavian peoples in the north and the Angles and Saxons in England. By the conquest of the Saxons a vigorous race of pure German blood was added to the empire; their addition tended to increase the differences between the German and the Gallic portions of the empire, which was the natural basis of the division between France and Germany. The Saxons in the tenth and eleventh centuries were perhaps the chief race of the German kingdom, furnishing the rulers from the accession of Henry I in 919 to the death of Henry II in 1024. Karl’s insistence upon the conversion of the Saxons to Christianity is in line with the policy of his predecessors to Christianize all the Germans.