Note (46) — Chapter I

The instances in which a great kingdom has been broken up into a number of small states practically independent, but owning a nominal superiority in the successor of the original Sovereign, are not few. In the case of the Empire I have found something to say about it in my Historical Essays, 151, and in the case of the Caliphate in my History and Conquest of the Saracens, 137. How the same process took place with the Mogul Empire in India is set forth by Lord Macaulay in his Essays on Lord Clive and Warren Hastings. But he should not have compared the great Mogul, with his nominal sovereignty, to “the most helpless driveller among the later Carlovingians,” a class whom Sir Francis Palgrave has rescued from undeserved contempt. But the breaking up of the Western Kingdom is none the less an example of the same law. The most remarkable thing is the way, or rather the three different ways, in which the scattered members have been brought together again in Germany, Italy, and France.

This process of dismemberment, where a nominal supremacy is still kept by the original Sovereign, must be distinguished from that of falling back upon Dukes or Ealdormen after a period of kingly rule. In this latter case it would seem that no central sovereignty went on.