Not one of these conditions, not one of these forces, was to be met with in the Roman world reigned over by Charlemagne.

The nation of the Franks and Charlemagne himself were but of yesterday; the new emperor had neither ancient senate to hedge at the same time that it obeyed him, nor old bodies of troops to support him.
Political unity and absolute power were repugnant alike to the intellectual and the social condition, to the national manners and personal sentiments of the victorious barbarians.

The necessity of placing their conquests beyond the reach of a new swarm of barbarians and the personal ascendency of Charlemagne were the only things which gave his government a momentary gleam of success in the way of unity and of factitious despotism under the name of empire.

In 814, Charlemagne had made territorial security an accomplished fact; but the personal power he had exercised disappeared with him.

The new Gallo-Frankish community recovered, under the mighty but gradual influence of Christianity, its proper and natural course, producing disruption into different local communities and bold struggles for individual liberties, either one with another, or against whosoever tried to become their master.
As for the second fact, the formation of the three kingdoms which were the issue of the treaty of Verdun, various explanations have been given of it.