the ninth century, when the Catholic emperor Charles the Great held sway, "the French" were of Neolithic stock and that of Celtic, Roman, Frankish, Bur- gundian, and Norman arrivistes. Their initial success, dating from when the Gauls grew wheat and Cistercian monks burned forests to make fertilizer ash, lacked gloiw: They built Europe's first society of independent farmers, an achievement "as specific to France as the network of great trading cities was to Rome and the need for an...