Note 76 — Chapter XIII · RESULTS.

Of “the famous oath of Strassburg,” by which a dispute between Louis the German and his brother Charles the Bald was adjusted, Professor Freeman says: “That precious document ... shows that in 841 the distinctions of race and language were beginning to make themselves felt. The Austrasian soldiers of King Louis swear in the Old-German tongue, of which the oath is an early monument;” while the Neustrian soldiers of King Charles swear “in the lingua Romana ... a tongue essentially of Roman origin, and yet a tongue which has departed too far from the Roman model to be any longer called Latin. It has ceased to be Latin, but we cannot yet call it French, even Old French.... In the course of the next century it became nationalized as lingua Gallica.” See Historical Essays, I., 184.