Hugh Capet was head of the family which was the most illustrious in his time and closest to the throne, on which the personal merits of Counts Eudes and Robert had already twice seated it.

He was also one of the greatest chieftains of feudal society, duke of the country which was already called France, and count of Paris--of that city which Clovis, after his victories, had chosen as the centre of his dominions.

In view of the Roman rather than Germanic pretensions of the Carlovingian heirs and of their admitted decay, the rise of Hugh Capet was the natural consequence of the principal facts as well as of the manners of the period, and the crowning manifestation of the new social condition in France, that is, feudalism.

Accordingly the event reached completion and confirmation without any great obstacle.

The Carlovingian, Charles of Lorraine, vainly attempted to assert his rights; but after some gleams of success, he died in 992, and his descendants fell, if not into obscurity, at least into political insignificance.