Excerpt from The History of the Middle Ages This translation is published in the confident belief that it will prove as valuable a book for school use and general reading among us as it has proved itself in France. Care has been taken to distinguish the editor's work from the author's, in both text and notes. Some few omissions have been made from the author's text without notice, chiefly for the purpose of simplifying the narrative, and corrections of dates and of manifest typographical errors have not been marked, but in every case where the author's meaning has been changed the fact is indicated by the use of brackets, and the editor's notes are signed, while theauthor's are left unsigned. In general, the intention has been to confine changes and notes to points of sufficient importance to justify notice, but in a book of this kind it is hardly possible that every statement in need of revision has been detected, and I am conscious to myself of unequal knowledge of the different subjects dealt with. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.