The Emperor Otho the Great had united the kingdom of Italy to the empire of.
Allemannia.

Overtures had produced their effects amongst the great states.

But in the interior of the kingdom of France, dismemberment had held on its course; and instead of the twenty-nine petty states or great fiefs observable at the end of the ninth century, we find at the end of the tenth, fifty-five actually established.

(_Vide_ Guizot's _Histoire de la Civilisation,_ t.ii., pp.

238-246.) Now, how was this ever-increasing dismemberment accomplished?
What causes determined it, and little by little made it the substitute for the unity of the empire?
Two causes, perfectly natural and independent of all human calculation, one moral and the other political.