CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028134546 Heroes of the Nations. PER VOLUME, CLOTH, $1.50. HALF MOROCCO, $1.75- I. — Nelson. By W. Clark Russell. II.— Gustavus Adolphus. By C. R. L. Fletcher, M.A. III. — Pericles. By Evelyn Abbott, M.A. IV.— Theodoric the Goth. By Thomas Hodgkin. v.— Sir Philip Sidney. By H. R. Fox-Bourne. VI. — Julius Caesar. By W. Warde Fowler, M.A. VII. — Wyclif. By Lewis Sergeant. VIII. — Napoleon. By William O'Connor Morris. IX.— Henry of Navarre. By P. F. Willekt. X. — Cicero. By J. L. Strachan-Davidson, M.A. XI. — Abraham Lincoln. By Noah Brooks. XII. — Prince Henry. By C. R. Beazley. XIII. — Julian the Philosopher. By Alice Gardner. XIV. — Louis XIV. By Arthur Hassall, M.A. XV.— Charles XII. By R. Nisbet Bain. XVI. — Lorenzo de' Medici. By Edward Armstrong. XVII. — Jeanne d'Arc. By Mrs. Oliphant. XVIII. ^Christopher Columbus. By Washington Irving. XIX. — Robert the Bruce. By Sir Herbert Maxwell, M.P. XX. — Hannibal. By William O'Connor Morris. XXI. — U. S. Grant. By W. Conant Church. XXII.— Robert E. Lee. By Henry A. White. XXIII. — The Cid Campeador. By H. Butler Clarke. XXIV. — Saladin. By Stanley Lane-Poole. XXV.— Bismarck. By J. W. Headlam, M.A. XXVI.— Charlemagne. By H. W. C. Davis. XXVII. — Alexander the Great. By Benjamin I. Wheeler. XXVIII. — Oliver Cromwell. By Charles Firth. XXIX. — Daniel O'Connell. By Robert Dunlop. XXX. — Richelieu. By James B. Perkins. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London. Iberoes of tbe IRations EDITED BY Evel:en Bbbott, /ID.B. FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD FACTA DUCI9 VIVENT 0PER08AQUE GLORIA RERUM.— OVIO, IN LIVIAM 265. THE HERO'S DEEDS AfSD HARD-WON FAME 3HALL LIVE, CHARLEMAGNE + SCSSIMVSV DN I Lt I -y f OO jfeiJ -o W"- p. o" t;>« . ^ o 1+ -S goo ■Sis' i^- ll] rt 'C^ 11) O + ^ "'"^ 11 ^ _(_ J3 O 3 _j3 liH O- — . Lewis IV C. of Franc (+ 954). 3^ C/1 c« z H > I* CD #> /-* i . m J ■ . s # SI ^ i ■1'? v^; ;^0^^ i ^'^<>. 778] Roncesvalles 113 a probable motive for their attack. They laid an ambush for the rear-guard and the baggage-train, took much plunder, and slew certain of the Palatine officials — the " Paladins " of romance — who were in command. Amongst these were Eggihard, the seneschal, and Roland, the warden of the Breton March.* The epitaphs of both these warriors are extant. They tell us, however, nothing definite except the date of the fight (August 15, 778) and the fact that even at the time the tragic occurrence furnished a theme to the national minstrels. The defeat was considered a great calamity, and the King made every effort to retrieve it ; but the aggressors had disappeared under cover of darkness and could never be found. Such is the bare record of history. The romantic story of Ganelon and Marsilio, of Roland's blast upon the " oliphant," and how the sun stood still in heaven for three whole days while Charlemagne pursued his vengeance may best be studied in the Magnanime mensonge of the pseudo- Turpin.f Here, then, we leave this expedition — a mere episode amid the more serious transactions of the re gn, which by the caprice of fortune became the root of a whole epic literature. On other oc- casions in this reign the Frank faced the Saracen, but Charles was not present in any of the later campaigns. In the end the result which he had * The warden of the Breton March was at all times a considerable person ; one of the few great vassals who was allowed a private mint. We reproduce (p. 114) a coin stamped with the name of Roland. f For this romance cf. infra Chap. XIII. 114 Charlemagne [775-778 proposed was gained ; the country between the Pyrenees and the Ebro became the Spanish March of his Empire. The acquisition of it was the great- est exploit of Lewis the Pious, and as such will be noticed in its proper place. The danger from Spain, as we said before, had never been considerable ; and if the renown of the poetic Charlemagne de- pends upon imaginary conflicts with Islam, that of the historic Charles the Great rests on the more solid basis of his actual services to civilisation and the Church in Germany. COIN STRUCK BY ROLAND. (JProu.') CHAPTER VI SECOND SAXON WAR — BAVARIA — SETTLEMENT OF GERMANY (779-800 A.D.) AT Roncesvalles Charles experienced the first check of his career. The spell of good for- tune was broken, and the next twenty years were chequered with domestic sorrows and pub- lic calamities. In Germany, in Italy, in Northern Spain and in the Armorican peninsula, his armies swept all before them, but in these armies, among his own friends and vassals, traitors sprang up ; the cup of success was tinged with gall. It was the price which he had to pay for greatness. Peoples hitherto loosely attached to the Prankish kingdom awoke with alarm to the fact that each conquest riveted the fetters more tightly on them ; at the very heart of the kingdom, in the Rhineland, the nobles chafed against the increasing pressure of the central government. The triumphs of the King placed him too high above them for their safety. He "bestrode their narrow world like a Colossus;" their love turned to fear, and fear to hate. During these years the King walked in an atmosphere of 115 1 1 6 Charlemagne [779- treachery and suspicion ; there were times when his ascendancy seemed undermined, and his life hardly worth an hour's purchase. Few indeed were those whom at this time he could trust, old friends for the most part, and death made havoc among them every year. Sturm of Fulda was killed by the strain and stress of the Saxon troubles.* Hilde- garde the Fair, to whose softening influence upon her husband all contemporaries bear witness, died in childbirth, " the one woman worthy to share the sceptre of so many lands." She was soon followed by the Queen Mother, Bertha, with whose hard rustic visage, coif, and distaff, there vanished from the Court the last check upon the license of her granddaughters, and from the royal council the one voice which could cry " Halt ! " to the King in his most furious moods. Pope Hadrian lived indeed till 795 ; but religious and political differences estranged Charles from this early mentor. Though he mourned the death of Hadrian like that of a father, the King had grown to chafe against the merest suspicion of tutelage. He would think, he would act for himself. Perhaps posterity has benefited by his distrust of others ; it was natural enough at a time when the temper of his wife all but proved his ruin, and a conspiracy was headed by his eldest son. Still it left him a lonely, embittered man ; and this * Sturm died in the winter of 779-780, Charles, during a Saxon campaign, employed him as the castellan of Eresburg ; for he was never content that his ecclesiastics should confine themselves to spiritual warfare. Sturm was very old and sickened rapidly while at his post. He died a few days after the conclusion of the camiDaign. 800] Charles Character Changes 117 period of his life, though to outward appearance more glorious than ever, though witnessing the con- summation of his great life-task in Germany, is stained by cruelties which no considerations of pol- icy can justify. He jested and made riddles with his scholars; he trifled in the arts and sciences with Alcuin ; but the geniality was superficial, and his intervals of learned leisure taught him neither toler- ance nor compassion. With a grim belief in the Tightness of his purpose, and a total incapacity to see the enemy's side of the question, he crushed all opposition by brute force, and waved aside the remonstrances which assailed his ear in varying keys. Alcuin was the only man who claimed his entire confidence ; and even Alcuin shrank aghast from some of the deeds which he heard or saw. Almost, if not altogether, supreme in matters of church reform and education, the Englishman wasted his breath when he delivered sage counsel on the Saxon war and the conversion of the Avars. After Roncesvalles the first apprehension was that the reverse might encourage a rebellious spirit in Aquitaine. Charles had resided there for some weeks early in the year, and this brief visit had taught him how wide a gulf of prejudice still severed the Gallo- Romans from the Teutons of the east and north. In his programme of Germ.an conquest the former could never sympathise ; the annual summons to distant campaigns chafed them beyond measure. To conciliate by an abatement of his requisitions was a plan which never occurred to his mind ; he preferred to strengthen the existing means of coer- 1 1 8 Charlemagne L779- cion. On his homeward way he halted to reorgan- ise more straitly the lands within the Loire. In the northern districts, as Auvergne, Berry, Poitou, Saint- onge, he placed Prankish Counts. Farther to the south he constituted the March or Duchy of Tou- louse, comprising several counties and intended for a barrier against Saracen reprisals. Either the fear was groundless or the precautions were effectual. Danger, when it came, broke upon him from another quarter. The Saxons, who would have paid with alacrity a mere tribute of cattle such as they had promised Pepin, could not endure the presence of Prankish garrisons or the ministrations of Prankish priests. In the summer of 778 Witi- kind returned from Denmark to his own province and received an enthusiastic welcome. In a mo- ment rebellion was in full flood. The fort on the Lippe which Charles had named after himself (Carl- stadt) was stormed and its palisades destroyed by fire. The Franks at Eresburg dared not venture out and take the field. Without waiting to attack them, the war-bands poured into Hesse, burning, ravaging, sparing neither age nor sex. The monks of Fulda, led by Abbot Sturm, took up the bones of St. Boniface and fled to a safe distance. All along the Rhine from Deutz to Andernach the invaders did their will. The Rhine itself could not check them ; a war-band entered Koln and burned St. Martin's church. In fear and trembhng the Austrasians sent to implore the assistance of the King and the army. The year was now far advanced and the time of AN ANQEL APPEARING TO ROLAND FROM THE WINDOW AT CHARTRES. 800] Fighting in Saxony iig military service had expired. Charles therefore sent the Hessians to defend their own homesteads and spent the winter as usual in feasting, hunting, and deliberation. But in June, 799, he collected the whole host at Duren and marched eastward. The season was bad, a famine raging, and pestilence apprehended ; these difficulties he only noticed so far as to order that in each cathedral church the bishop should say three masses and thrice intone the psalter, once for the King, once for the host, and once for the present tribulation.* Marching up the Lippe he found the forces of Witikind entrenched behind strong lines at Bocholt. He instantly attacked and stormed the position ; it was the first pitched battle of the con- quest, and one of the very few in which he was ever personally engaged. The mail, the close array, and the furious onslaught of the Franks made them an easy match for the Saxons in all hand-to-hand en- counters. Some attempt there had been on the part of Witikind to supply the deficiencies of his soldiers' equipment by a secret trade with Prankish merchants. The smugglers were, however, detected in time, and an edict of this very year forbids with heavy penalties the exportation of mail shirts. The army reached the Weser without further opposition. The Westfalians, according to their usual custom, offered homage as a means of gaining time, and their neighbours, who had hitherto kept clear of the revolt, renewed their submission. In the next year the King returned and, as in Aquitaine, proceeded to improve the organisation of his govern- * See the Capitulary of this year in Boretius, i., p. 52. 1 20 Charlemagne [779- ment. More mission-districts were mapped out, more churches built, more priests brought in. New- forts, connected by roads and causeways,* were con- structed on the hills and in the forests. After holding the Mayfield at Lippespring Charles crossed the Weser ; at Orheim he was met by Saxons from the eastern districts and even from north of the Elbe, who tendered their submission. At Hohemburg, just north of the site of the modern Magdeburg, the Prankish host built a fort to mark the eastern boundary and hold the fords against the tribes be- yond. Charles went in person to supervise the work. There on the left bank of the Elbe he came for the first time face to face with the advance- guard of the Slav. One of their tribes, the Abotrites, had already sent their envoys to him at Orheim. The Wiltzes and Sorbs were more bellicose, but not yet formidable to the Teuton. The King turned back without molesting them. He little thought that with this nomad pastoral folk his countrymen would one day wage a struggle for existence. Like Augustus, he had found his Euphra- tes, the natural eastern frontier of his realm ; and the. frontier it remained, with some slight exceptions, * The Annales Francorum distinctly mention the roads, s. a., 785 : " Vias mundavit." References to roads are rare in the Capitular- ies. In Italy and east of the Rhine no new roads appear to have been opened in this reign. The duty of maintaining the old roads and bridges was committed to the counts, and was perhaps rigidly enforced for military reasons. The art of bridge-building was at a low ebb among the Franks. The famous bridge at Mainz was of wood, except the piers, which were stone. Later in the reign bridges of boats were used on the Danube and the Weser. 800] Administration in Saxony 121 until a Trajan appeared in the person of Otto tlie Great.* But within this boundary much remained to be done. The year 781 was devoted to the more press- ing problems of Italy and Bavaria. These settled, Charles returned to Lippespring. His first con- cern was to provide a complete administrative sys- tem. He did not, as in Aquitaine, import Prankish counts nor colonise the land on a large scale with Prankish vassals. He preferred to retain the exist- ing tribal chiefdoms, only bestowing on each chief the title and the powers of a Prankish count. It was the system which his predecessors had pursued in Alemannia and Thuringia, and he himself in Lombardy. Later events showed that Saxony demanded a special treatment, but this original scheme of 78 1 may be defended against the charge of rashness. For the territories of the chiefs were small in extent ; in Westfalia alone we can count upwards of t^^r tnty pagi ; and the chances of a concerted con- spiracy were proportionately slight. The sentiment of independence was weaker among the chiefs than the common people ; comparatively few of his equals had fought on the side of Witikind. It is probable that, like the heads of Irish septs in Tudor times, they added in no small measure to their wealth and power by accepting the overlordship of their power- ful neighbour, and were paid for their complaisance * Later in the reign several expeditions were sent across the Elbe. But the Emperor was content when he had established a protectorate over the nearest tribes ■. they continued to be governed by their own chiefs, merely paying an annual tribute. 12 2 Charlemagne [779- with a general license to appropriate the common- lands of the tribesmen. Many among them, through dwelling as hostages in Frankland, had embraced Christianity and had forgotten their antipathy to foreign manners. Some at least were secured by lavish bribes and gifts of estates beyond the Rhine. Their own countryman tells us that " now for the first time the needy Saxons learned to know the abundance of wealthy Gaul ; for Charles gave to many lands and costly vestments, heaps of silver and rivers of mellow wine."* In this year, or shortly afterwards, Charles issued a Saxon Capitulary which is equally remarkable for its drastic severity and for the completeness with which it placed the conquered nation beneath the yoke of the Church. The following articles need no comment: " I. If any man despise the Lenten fast for con- tempt of Christianity, let him die the death. " 2. If any man among the Saxons, being not yet baptised, shall hide himself and refuse to come to baptism, let him die the death." A number of offences against the Church, the officials of the State, and overlords are enumerated and marked as capital. Then follows a measure of wholesale confiscation for the endowment of missions: " I. Let the men of every hundred give to their church a house, two hides of land, a male and a female slave. * The Saxon Poet, s.a. 803. Alcuin, in a letter of 790 to Colgh the Irishman, acknowledges in general terms that bribes and threats were used. Bouquet, v., p. 607. 800] The Tithe in Saxony 123 "2. Let all men, whether nobles, free, or serfs, give to the churches and the priests the tenth part of their substance and labour."* Among the other articles one may be quoted for its ingenuity. " If any man having committed one of these mortal crimes in secret shall fly to the priest and after confession offer penance, by the witness of that priest let him be excused from death." The intention was to conciliate the affections of the converts for the priests who could thus shield them from the rigours of the law. To attack at once the religion and property of a nation is dangerous. The Saxons, thus plundered in the name of Christianity, hardly waited for the conqueror's departure to rebel. Again Witikind appeared to lead them, and if the other chiefs could have been brought to follow his lead, it would have gone hard with the Franks. As it was, the pagan champion found himself supported only by the middle and lower classes. The weakness of his party led him to adopt the dangerous expedient of an alliance with the Sorbs beyond the river Saale. They crossed the frontier into Thuringia and by their ravages created a diversion which was useful for the moment. But generations of border warfare made the Slav more hateful than the Frank to the Saxons of the border, and a rhere minority threw in their lot with Witikind. For a short time, indeed, he carried all before him. The missionaries * The Capitulary of 779 had already made the payment of tithes a legal obligation throughout the Frankish realm. 124 Charlemagne [779- were hunted from Westfalia and the northern dis- tricts ; the converts were murdered with atrocious tortures. At Suntal on the Weser, the rebels re- pulsed and almost exterminated a body of Prankish horsemen which had attacked them without waiting for the support of the main army. Two tnissi, five counts, and about twenty nobles of the first Prank- ish families were left upon the field. It was the most signal of the many checks which the King's operations experienced through want of skill and caution in his adjutants. In spite of this success, the bulk of the nation remained estranged from the would-be deliverer. Some were jealous of his aspiring ambitions ; some, again, were moved with pity for the persecuted Christians ; all were weary of the war. When Charles, on hearing how his punitive expedition had been handled, collected a small force and at the close of the year hurried back to Saxony, he found that Witikind and his friends had scattered to the four winds. The other chiefs came to excuse them- selves and deprecate his vengeance. They laid all the blame upon Witikind. The royal answer was that if Witikind could not be produced his aiders and abettors must suffer. Pour thousand five huji- dred men were pointed out to Charles as having voted in the councils of the nation for rebellion. They were at once seized, collected at Verden, and massacred in cold blood. The letter of the law sanctioned this enormity ; for in the recent Capitu- lary death had been fixed as the penalty for those who slew a royal official. And those who remem- BAPTISM OF WITIKIND AND OF THE SAXONS CONQUERED BY CHARLEMAGNE. FROM A XVTH CENTURY MS. ILLUMINATION IN THE BURGUNDIAN LIBRARY AT BRUSSELS. 800] Massacre at Verden 125 ber how Sepoys were treated after Cawnpore will find the execution at least intelligible. But in all ages the unbiassed moral sentiment of mankind has revolted from that logic which proscribes the rank and file of a rebellion equally with its leaders. Considered coldly and as a mere question of policy, the day of Verden was one of those blunders which are worse than crimes. The nation was less cal- lous than its hereditary leaders. Cowardice was not among the faults of the Saxon character ; fury rather than terror was the predominant feeling among those who had escaped. For the first time tribal distinctions were forgotten ; the entire people rose in arms and prepared to meet the Frank in the open field. The next three years tasked all the strength of Charles. So intense was the heat in the campaign of 783 that his soldiers dropped and died upon the march. He lost Queen Hildegarde before he set forth, and his mother, Bertha, while he was still in the field ; but the "fierce wrath," which the annals, forsaking their usual brevity, expressly mention, left him no time to think of private griefs. In a fight at Detmold he overthrew the Westfalian army ; in another, near Osnabruck, that of the Angrarii. Long after his age the last-named field bore the ominous name of the " Hill of Slaughter." Next year there were no battles ; slowly and deliberately the villages were burned, the cultivated fields laid waste. Nor did the winter bring any respite to the unhappy land. The army kept their Christmas with the King in the open plains along the Ems. After- 126 Charlemagne [779- wards Charles took up his abode at Eresburg. By this time he had taken a new wife, Fastrada, the daughter of an Austrasian Count. She came to him now with her step-children and all the Court remained till spring in Saxony. Meanwhile the army, camped in the country round about, sallied forth at intervals to forage and destroy, the King sometimes directing them in person. In the spring reinforcements and supplies came from Frankland. The toil-worn host was marshalled at Paderborn and conducted over the Weser to destroy the last of the Saxon strongholds. So at length, as the exultant scribe records, " with open roads and no man to gainsay him, he went where he would through Sax- ony." The missionaries crept back from the refuges which they had found in Gaul, in Frisia, and Thurin- gia. Some resumed their labour at once. One, Willehad by name, had doubts and fears. He came and asked what he should do. " Do ! " said Charles, " go back to your diocese in the name of Christ." * He went back and in due course was promoted to be the first bishop of Bremen (789). The Saxons had learned the strength of Christen- dom ; and for ten years the work of the missionaries suffered no further check. At Verden and Mun- ster, as well as at Bremen, bishops were placed in charge of the missions. Parochial churches arose on every hand ; and religious houses in Frankland were especially enjoined to furnish labourers for the harvest field. * The story is told in the life of Willehad (quoted in Bouquet, v., 451)- 800] Submisswit of Witikind 1 2 7 Charles, warned by previous experience, saw in Witikind the great danger to the peace thus estab- lished. The high-spirited patriot was still at large in the Bardengau ; and the wild tribes beyond the Elbe were his devoted followers. The King sent envoys of Saxon blood to treat with him, asked for a conference, and offered hostages in pledge of good faith. Witikind and his bosom friend, Abbio, ac- cepted the invitation. They came to the royal palace at Attigni and there, on Prankish soil, sub- mitted to the formality of baptism. Charles stood sponsor to his former rival and loaded him with christening gifts. Witikind was allowed to take up his abode in Westfalia, where he lived to a green old age, faithful amidst all the rebellions of later years.* It was a conclusion to the struggle at least as creditable to the victor as the vanquished. From the line of Witikind sprang, in after days, Matilda, the mother of the first Otto. Her husband traced his descent on the distaff side from Charles. Thus in the Saxon dynasty met and mingled the blood of the two heroes whose conflicts were the birth-throes of united Germany ; for the subjection of Saxony was assured when Witikind became a Christian. Sporadic and intermittent outbreaks, due in most cases to the burden of the tithe, caused Charles some trouble. In 793 and 797 the disturbances were almost universal, and Alcuin in despair ex- * Such, at least, is the legendary account. The church at Pader- born was said to have been endowed by Witikind. In the contem- porary Frankish annals there is no further mention of the Saxon hero after his baptism. 128 Charlemagne [779- claimed that all the work must be done over again. But there was no leader and no unity of purpose. The rebels invariably scattered at the approach of the King with his host. Each outbreak was fol- lowed by extensive transportations and the settle- ment of Prankish colonies within the mutinous districts. In 794 Charles took away seven thousand Saxons ; in 797, every third household ; in 798, sixteen hundred of the chief men ; in 799, "a great multitude." Thus each year saw the national ele- ment weakened, and the cords of bondage tightened. Although the northern tribes, encouraged by the example of their friends and neighbours, the Danes, remained in a state of ferment, they, no less than the Saxons of the Lippe, were by the year 800 an integral part of the Prankish kingdom. Roads and bridges, forts and "vills," churches and monasteries, were steadily constructed. Paganism still lurked in the forests ; but the day of its ascendancy was over. A second Capitulary, issued in 797, reveals a com- paratively settled country. The King is perfectly satisfied with his rough principles of administration as fixed in 782. He can even afford to mitigate the laws by which they were enforced. A double wer- gild is now sufficient to protect the priest ; the usual fine of sixty shillings takes the place of death as an adequate compensation for breaches of the King's peace. Pive years later Saxony shares with the other provinces of the realm in the benefits of a great legislative reform ; the national laws are amended and reduced to writing. At this point we 800] LapitiUary of Mantua 129 have clearly passed beyond the period of conquest and the reign of force. Meanwhile, in the less turbulent parts of his do- minions Charles pursued with unflagging energy the work of consolidation. The Italian expedition of 781 had important consequences for the peninsula. A Capitulary issued at Mantua dealt with crying evils both in Church and State. On the one hand it invested the Lombard episcopate with the neces- sary powers for maintaining ecclesiastical discipline, authorising them to inhibit the ministrations of vagrant and unlicensed clergy, and, when necessary, to demand the support of the secular arm in the per- son of the count. On the other it came to the relief of the poor freeholders who, under stress of famine, had sold their lands and goods at nominal prices, or commended them to a religious house; it struck at the growing abuse of vassalage, placing the royal vassals under the jurisdiction of the count, and forbidding the magnates to receive as their clients any men whose antecedents were unknown ; it fa- voured commerce by the introduction of a new coinage and the abolition of all unauthorised tolls ; and at the same time prohibited two thriving trades of which the first, that with the Saracens in Christ- ian slaves, was a scandal to religion, and the sec- ond, that with the Greeks and Avars in arms and horses, was a treason against the State. These in- novations were not all. Conscious that German af- fairs would engross more and more of his attention, the King had furthermore resolved to make two de- pendent kingdoms of the Latin lands beneath his 6 130 Charlemagne [779- sway. In the future there should be three sovereigns in place of one ; Pavia and Toulouse should have the rank of provincial capitals. For himself and his eldest son after him he would reserve the immediate rule of the German races, and a general suzerainty over the others. They should obey the laws which he made for them, march in his army when he called upon them, and receive from time to time the visits of his iiiissi, but otherwise they should enjoy autonomy. In pursuance of this project he brought with him to Italy his second son, Pepin, now five years of age, and Lewis, who was younger still. Shortly after Easter they were taken to Rome and crowned, Pepin as King of the Lombards, Lewis as King of the Aqui- tanians. Immediately afterwards their father sent them with large retinues and trusty guardians to their respective kingdoms that they might grow to manhood among their own subjects. To con- ciliate the latter no pains were spared. Contrary to all the religious feeling of the age, the baptism of Pepin had been delayed till now that Italy might be the scene at least of his second and spiritual birth. Already the Court genealogists were at work tra- cing the descent of Lewis from the national heroes of Southern Gaul ; this boy of three years old_ rode into his new kingdom on a war-horse in the dress and armour of an Aquitanian warrior. National feeling was not the only obstacle to the settlement of Italy. The ambitions of the Pope Hadrian for his See had not slumbered in the last few years. Already forgetful of the mission which he had given to his patron, he showed signs of fret- 800] Hadrians Difficulties 1 3 1 fulness that the King, hi the pressure of his Saxon wars, neglected to extend the Patrimony of Peter. That Charles should come in person to Italy; that he should expel the Duke of Clusium and force Hildebrand of Spoletum to acknowledge the suzer- ainty of St. Peter; that he should plunge into war with the Patrician of Sicily and Areghis of Beneven- tum because they refused to recognise the papal claims within their provinces — such are the modest demands to be found in his correspondence. Those whom he threatened were not passive in their resist- ance. Areghis and the Patrician conferred together. The latter took up his quarters in the neighbour- hood of Naples ; and the allied forces prosecuted a vigorous border warfare round the disputed towns of Terracina and Gaeta. Rumour said that Adal- ghis was once more to be despatched from Constan- tinople to arouse the discontent of the Lombards, and in this apprehension we have the immediate occasion of Charles's present visit. For the moment the danger passed away. By- zantine policy was in a state of flux. The great Emperor Constantine Copronymus had died in 775. His successor, Leo IV., followed him to the grave in September, 780. The Imperial crown devolved upon Constantine VI., a boy of ten years old, whose mother, the Athenian Irene, assumed the Regency and the whole direction of affairs. Intent upon reversing the religious policy of her»husband's house, she was eager for a friendly arrangement with the Frank, which would leave her completely free for the revolution at home. When Charles 132 Charlemagne [779- reached Rome all signs of warlike intention in Southern Italy had disappeared. Had Charles been free from other preoccupations he might even now have seen a truth which forced itself upon him in later years, that the general tradi- tions of Byzantine policy would always clash with Prankish interests ; and that his only permanent safeguard lay in the reduction of Beneventum and the maintenance of a strong fleet in the Mediter- ranean. For the present he pinned his faith to a less drastic policy. His first step was to revise the Donation in such a way as to define more precisely the rights of St. Peter and to allay the apprehen- sions of the Lombard dukes ; his second, to accept the overtures which Irene made to him through Hadrian. She proposed a marriage between her own son and Rotrude, the daughter of Charles. Her envoys found a ready welcome. Arrangements were made to instruct the little princess in the lan- guage and etiquette of the Byzantine Court. Paul the Deacon was summoned from his cell at Monte Casino to give her attendants a similar education. We may hope that the good monk underrated his own accomplishments, for he assured Charles that two or three syllables of Greek were all he had ever known, and that old age had made sad inroads on these acquirements of his youth ; if the Franks depended upon his lessons they would be like dumb images among the mocking Greeks.* His pupils * We derive this information from a poetical correspondence on the subject between Paul and Peter of Pisa, It is printed in EUmmler, Poetce Medii ALvi^ vol. i,, p. 49. Prtn^'''^ ITALY (768-813 A.D Territories of the Papacy. L ombord Kingdom S Duchies I"*' -"I Byzantine Territories. 800] Charles and Irene 133 however, were not put to the test. Six years later the project fell to the ground, either, as the Franks say, because Charles could not bear to part with his daughter, or, according to the Greek version, be- cause the purpose of Irene had been sufificiently served by the truce which her proposals secured. Apparently the motives of Irene were at first unknown to Charles, and their declaration did much to produce the later estrangement. While in Ha- drian the Empress had found a sympathetic con- fidant,* the Prankish Church still clung to the middle opinion of Gregory the Great, who, re- jecting equally the extreme puritanism of the Iconoclasts and the extreme materialism of the Iconodoulics, permitted the use of images as aids to devotion but forbade their actual adoration. This opinion Charles was prepared to maintain even against the See of Peter. With a little reflection, he might in 781 have divined the reason for the unexpected friendliness of Irene. The fact appears to be that he was dazzled by the alliance offered to him. The dream of linking Rome to Constantino- ple, of uniting beneath his descendants the divided hemispheres of civilisation, was to Charles what the dream of an Asiatic Empire was to Napoleon. This is attested both by legend and by the course of his later diplomacy. f * For this fact and the whole subject, v. Hefele, vii. (Eng. trans.). Also Mansi, Concilia, xii., 984, 1056, 1057. f The monk of St. Gall, i., 28, quotes Charles as saying of the Eastern Emperor; "O utinam non esset inter nos ille gurgiculus ! Forsitan divitias Orientales aut partiremur aut pariter participando communiter haberemus." 1 34 Charlemagne [779- These were not the only results of the Italian journey. We date from it the commencement of the Carolingian Renaissance; for it was during the Easter of 781 that Charles met at Parma and en- listed in his service the famous Alcuin. Now, too, the first step was taken towards the reduction of Bavaria. Although Tassilo showed remarkable forbearance in the course of the Saxon war, he had been more active on the side of Italy. His wife, Liutberga, eager for revenge and the restoration of her exiled brother, was urgent that Bavaria should combine, to this end, with Areghis and with the Greeks. She spoke to willing ears; her dower lands in South- ern Tyrol formed a bone of contention between her husband and the counts of the Lombard border. The Duke had ceased to acknowledge his obhgation as a vassal. Like a king he held assemblies of the Bavarian nation; like a king he issued laws. In his charters the name of Charles is never men- tioned ; they are dated " in such and such a year of the reign of Tassilo." Equally independent was his Church ; the bishops of Bavaria owned no Metro- politan but the Pope. Want of leisure compelled Charles to try diplo- macy before resorting to force. He brought the influence of the Pope to bear upon his adversary. The manoeuvre was dexterous for Tassilo was com- pletely in the hands of the Church. The bishops of Passau, Freising, Ratisbon, and Salzburg dictated his laws ; their representatives sat beside him on the judgment seat; the Bavarians looked to them, 800] Tassilo of Bavaria. 135 rather than to the Duke, for orders.* Tassilo sub- mitted to the orders which they now imposed. He appeared in the autumn assembly of the magnates at Worms, renewed his oath, and gave hostages for its observance. Here matters rested until the conclusion of the Saxon war. The year 785-786 suddenly revealed a network of conspiracies and intrigues, in all of which the influence or example of Tassilo might be seen at work. First came a secret union of the Thuringian nobles ; a certain Count Hardrad took the lead among them ; their object was the murder or deposition of Charles. Some unspecified acts of severity formed the provocation, and Eginhard traces these to the harsh influence of Queen Fastrada, herself a coun- trywoman of the conspirators. The King was in- formed in time and seized the ringleaders. Three perished in a vain attempt at resistance ; of the others a few were blinded, and all were banished to distant quarters of the kingdom. Immediately afterwards the designs of Areghis called Charles to Italy in the depths of winter (786-787). The Lombard duke had renewed his alliance with the Patrician of Sicily, had built a new and strongly fortified capital at Salerno, and finally had caused himself to be crowned and anointed by the bishops of his realm. This last measure could only be regarded as an open defiance of the Franks, and a repudiation of their claim to suzerainty. After spending his Christmas at Flor- ence, Charles marched in full force to the borders of * See for these facts the Bavarian synods under Tassilo. Pertz, Leges, iii, 458 folioed. 136 Charlemagne [779- Beneventum. It happened that the preparations of Areghis were still incomplete. He therefore hunnbled himself, offering his younger son, Grimvald, as a host- age and agreeing to pay a yearly tribute, to rase the walls of his strong places, and to make his subjects abandon their national garb and shave their long, flowing beards. The terms were accepted and in part fulfilled. They were accepted because Charles had discovered that Areghis was not the only or the most dangerous opponent. Treachery was at work among the allies and the subjects of the Franks. The abruptness with which at this moment the King broke off the betrothal of Rotrude to Irene's son betokens a conviction that Areghis had received her support. The northern Lombards were also involved ; on his return from the south, the King held an assembly at Pavia and condemned several to death. Last, but not least, he received reasons for suspecting that Tassilo had shown more than a passive sympathy with the cause of his brother- in-law. " The whole earth," says a contemporary poem, " rang with the news " of Tassilo's treachery.* Tassilo saw his danger. The conquest of Saxony, the pacification of Thuringia, and the submission of Areghis left him alone to face the forces of the Franks. Sorely against his will, he stooped to ask for the Pope's mediation ; two envoys, one of them Bishop Arno of Salzburg, came to Rome to vindi- *Cf. the poem by an Irish exile in praise of Charles. Dlimmler, P. M. AL., i,, 396. According to this author, Charles was for long unwilling to believe the stories ; the apparent object of the poem is to say the best of both sides. 800] Suhnission of Tassilo 137 cate their master's innocence. Hadrian was moved by their tale. But Charles coldly replied that the breach was none of his making. He asked the en- voys what satisfaction they were prepared to offer. On receiving the answer that they had no power to make a final treaty he turned to the Pope and insisted on the duplicity of Tassilo. Hadrian, also, was convinced ; he threatened the Bavarians with his anathema unless they forthwith submitted. With this weapon in his hand Charles returned to the north and summoned Tassilo to the autumn council at Worms. Met by a contemptuous refusal, he put in motion three armies against Bavaria. One, commanded by himself, marched to Augsburg, a second, composed of Thuringians, Austrasians, and Saxons, to Ingolstadt, while that of the Lombards came up the vale of Trent to Bozen. Only the reluctance of the Bavarians prevented the Duke from pursuing the conflict to the bitter end. The anathema had done its work; they re- fused to march against the Franks. Accordingly he submitted, came in person to meet the King, and surrendered the Duchy into his hand. With this humiliation of his adversary Charles was satisfied. He restored the Duchy in return for homage and fealty, and in the presence of the assembly handed to Tassilo a staff carved with the head of a man, the old Frankish symbol of possession. Tassilo gave hostages, among them his own son, and received splendid gifts — a war-horse and armour and a large estate on the Bavarian border (October, 787). The last act of this somewhat tedious drama was 1 38 Charlemagne [779- played in 788. Tassilo returned home smarting under his defeat, and still, encouraged by his wife, began to plot rebellion. When reminded that his son was a pledge for his good conduct, he said with an oath that if he had ten sons to lose they should not stand in his way ; better to die a free man than to live a slave ! As the first step he planned the expulsion of the King's immediate vassals, who formed no inconsiderable party in Bavaria, and sent to the chiefs of the Avars asking for their assistance. It was a fatal step to his prestige among his own subjects. Rather than admit the heathen to their land, the men to whom Tassilo had imparted his designs denounced him to the King. Charles kept his knowledge a secret. On appearing, as usual, at the annual Mayfield — it was held this year in Ingol- heim — Tassilo was instantly arrested and put on trial before a tribunal of his peers. They unani- mously declared him worthy of death, this being the usual punishment for treason. Charles, however, remembering his relationship to Tassilo, begged for a mitigation of the sentence. The Duke and his family were accordingly compelled to take the vows in separate convents. From that time forward Bava- ria became an integral part of the Prankish kingdom. It was divided into counties, all of whose governors owed obedience for military purposes to a single "prefect," but the ducal dignity remained in abey- ance. On the eastern border was formed, a few years later, the Nord-Ostmark as a bulwark against the Bohemians and Moravians. The four bishoprics remained for some time in their original anomalous 800] Treatment of Tassilo Criticised 139 position. Finally, in 798, at tlie request of Charles, Leo raised Salzburg to the rank of a metropolitan see. The first archbishop was Arno, whom we have already mentioned. A friend of Alcuin, an acute thinker and learned theologian, he is nevertheless more to be remembered for his missionary work in the lower Danube plain than for his meagre contri- butions to the literature of his age. Thus if Charles had given Saxony to the Church, the Church gave Bavaria to him. If Tassilo saw in the King merely the leader of those Austra- sians whom the Agilolfings had so long defied, to the Bavarians Charles came as a champion of the Papacy against a traitor to the Catholic communion. It must be owned that there is another side to the question. Some, even among the Franks, were not afraid to give it as their opinion that Tassilo had been unfairly treated. The wide-spread rumours of treachery upon which the King had acted in 786 were attributed to the agency of the devil. Nor is it possible to avoid the suspicion that Charles had from the first determined to oust his cousin and to annex Bavaria. The league with the Avars may have been to him a neither unwelcome nor unfore- seen event. We may even see in the clemency of the victor some natural emotion of remorse. But such purely personal questions cannot be decided at this distance of time. One thing is certain — that Charles found some difficulty in representing the conquest of Bavaria as part of his great scheme for the extension of Christianity. In Carinthia and 140 Charlemagne [779- Carniola the Bavarian bishops, encouraged and as- sisted by their duke, had done for the Church a work which might not unfairly claim comparison with that of the Franks in Saxony. It was as though to justify himself by greater feats than any which Tassilo had ever contemplated that the King now undertook the conquest of the Avars. This is one of the lost peoples of history. The Slavs use a proverb "to disappear like the Avars"; and in fact these once formidable invaders have left behind them nothing but a name. The Franks were mistaken in identifying them with the Huns of Attila. Both nations came from the hive of X^en- tral Asia, but the Huns preceded the Avars by a century and the first swarm had almost disappeared before the second came upon the scene. It is to be regretted that no Frankish author describes the Avars. Theodulf or Eginhard might have done so with ease, for the envoys of the Khakhan appeared more than once at the Court of Aachen. Their plaited pigtails are the only feature of their appear- ance which we find expressly mentioned. We may, however, suppose them to have been, hke other Mongols, yellow-skinned and almond-eyed, with flat noses and high-cheek bones. Giant and Avar are to this day synonymous terms in the valley of the Danube. But here tradition seems to be at fault; the Mongol is rarely conspicuous for his stature. The Avars were skilled in archery and horseman- ship ; a nomad life was that best suited to the genius of the nation. Of political organisation they were almost destitute ; each tribe possessed a patri- THE TRIUMPH OF CHRIST. FROM A CAROLINGIAN GOSPEL BOOK. {From Middleton^s '"''Illuminated Manuscripts.^^) 800] The Avars 141 archal chief, and all acknowledged the general su- premacy of the Khakhan. When they first invaded Europe, in the latter half of the sixth century, they displayed a certain capacity for common action. They overran Pannonia, seriously alarmed the Em- pire, and more than once threatened to attack Constantinople. Justinian paid them tribute, and the Emperor Maurice only saved his army from destruction by negotiating an inglorious treaty. But the tide of victory soon turned the other way. For civilised armies led by competent generals, the Avars were no match. The vigorous policy of Heraclius made the northern frontier of the Em- pire secure against them. Settling between the rivers Theiss and Enns, they devoted themselves partly to a pastoral life and partly to raids upon the west. Then the power of Bavaria grew up by degrees as a barrier between their greed and Italy. They sank into inertia, and lost their primitive unity. The several tribes built their own kraals, or rings, and became self-centred. The Khakhan lived west of the river Raab in the greatest ring of all and exercised a nominal suzerainty, which did not preclude his inferiors from negotiating with foreign powers and concluding treaties as their fancy led them. The great ring was the wonder of their western neighbours. Immense treasures, the plunder of two centuries, were stored in it. It was protected by nine concentric ramparts, and whole villages were comprised within its circuit. Long after the con- quest an old warrior who had helped to sack the 1^2 Charlemagne [779- ring described it to a little boy. The boy tells us that he found the story tedious and yawned and tried to run away whenever it began. But when he, in his turn, grew old and garrulous he wrote down what he remembered of it for the en- tertainment of the reigning Emperor, Charles the Bald. " He said that the ring was fortified with nine hedges. One circle was as wide across as it is from Zurich to Constance. The hedge was made with stakes of oak and beech and pine. It was twenty feet in width, and the same in height. The middle space was filled with stones or clay, and the top was covered with green growing turf, and bushes were planted between. Inside these ramparts were villages and farms, so placed that a man could shout from one to another and be heard. Over against the dwelling-places narrow gates were set, both in the outer and the inner rings. The second hedge was built like the first; from thence to the third was twenty German miles, and so on up to the ninth, the circles growing smaller as one advanced. On both sides of each hedge were farms and houses so near together that they could signal with a trumpet one to another."* Such was the nation to which Tassilo had turned for help. His appeal roused them to new plans of conquest and plunder. They did not appear in time to save him. But late in y2>2, they took the field. They were divided into two hosts. One directed its march towards the Bavarian frontier *The Monk of St. Gall, Bk. II., chap. 2 (ed. Bouquet Rer Script., v.). 1 . • 800] War with the Avars 143 while the other entered FriuH. Both were repulsed with great slaughter by the counts of the Marches. But so much was their return apprehended that Charles went in person to Regensburg and made preparations for the defence of the frontier, con- stituting Count Ceroid, the brother of Queen Hil- degarde, prefect, or commander-in-chief, of the Bavarian forces. His designs went further than mere defence. All through 789 men were waiting to see " what he would do concerning the Avars," Although, as it happened, the restless movements of the Wiltzes called him back for the present to the Elbe, he sent an ultimatum to the Khakhan — the chief of his demands being toleration for the Christians of the border-land, and the withdrawal of the Avars from all the territories to which the Bavarians laid claim. Having exacted tribute from the Wiltzes, he returned to find, as he had probably expected, that the Avars remained obdurate. The year 790 was spent in preparations for an expedition greater than any which he had hitherto put into the field. In 791 he marched down the Danube and conquered the lands of the Avars as far as the con- fluence of the Raab. Few of his campaigns are so minutely described or present so many points of interest. As usual, he arranged that several divisions should converge from different points of the compass upon the ene- my's country. One under his son, Pepin, marched from Italy ; it failed to come into touch with the main body, and therefore we have no detailed record of its movements. We are only told that it 144 Charlemagne ^"9 achieved complete success. Another, comprising the forces from east of the Rhine, came through southern Bohemia. They were joined by a large force of the Czechs. In the upper valley of the Main, this people had already opened peaceful re- lations with the Frank ; moreover they had griev- ances of their own to avenge upon the Avars. Charles himself marched with a third division along the southern bank of the Danube. The Bavarians descended the stream in boats, bringing with them the supplies of the host. At the confluence of the Enns all met and halted for three days to observe a solemn fast and sing litanies for victory. Then a formal declaration of war was sent to the Khakhan, and the armies continued their march on both sides of the river. The Avars, in consternation, abandoned their first line of forts (in the Wiener Wald). Some escaped, many more were slain or surrendered themselves. Thus the Raab was reached without serious difificulty, and half of the enemy's realm lay at the feet of Charles. At this point the approach of winter forced him to retreat. He had been fifty-two days in the field and had demonstrated the contemptibility of the Avars. No loss had been suffered by the Franks, except that of their horses which were in great part carried off by disease.* m a * For this expedition we have, besides the annals, an account ... - letter from Charles to Queen Fastrada (Jaffe Mon. Carol, p. 349). The letter is brief and soldier-like, but contains more than merely formal expressions of affection. The King complains that he has received no letter from his wife, and refers to her ill-health 800] Rebellions and Conspiracies 145 A statesman merely intent on the advantage of his kingdom would have been satisfied. No more was to be apprehended from the Avars ; on the other hand, it was not practicable to incorporate them in the Prankish kingdom. He who would hold the vast plain in which they dwelt must first subdue the teeming lands by which it was flanked on either side. And this Charles realised. But the idea possessed his mind that Europe must be re- venged for the injuries of the remote past, and that loyalty to the Church required him to give the heathen the choice between conversion and ex- termination. To the remonstrances of Alcuin, who pressed upon his notice the worthier duties which awaited his attention nearer home, he turned a deaf ear until the logic of facts convinced him. He re- mained that winter at Regensburg, fully intending to resume the war in the next year. Various circumstances combined to defeat this resolution. At Urgel, in the Spanish Marches, a new form of the Arian heresy * had taken root and grown to formidable proportions. There was some danger that Gaul would be affected, and a synod was therefore held at Regensburg in the summer of 792 to refute the arch-heretic, Felix, Bishop of Urgel, and to reassert the doctrines of the Athana- sian creed. Simultaneously there arose, among the nobles who had followed the King to Regensburg, a conspiracy of an alarming nature. The discovery of the design necessitated further delays and an autumn assembly to sit in judgment upon the of- * Sue infra. Chapter vii. 146 Charlemagne [779- fenders. After this there were ominous signs of discontent in Saxony, and news arrived that a de- tachment of the Franks, while sailing up the Elbe, had been taken in ambush and cut off to a man. It was impossible to undertake a distant expedition with discontent thus seething through the length and breadth of Germany. Nothing was done to further the war with the Avars except that the King caused a bridge of boats for the transport of troops to be built upon the Danube. The plot which we have mentioned bore a strik- ing resemblance to that of the Thuringians. It was originally framed during the Avar campaign by certain Prankish magnates who, on one pretext or another, had remained in Bavaria.* Like the Thu- ringians, they alleged as their excuse the intolerable cruelty of Queen Fastrada. We may speculate whether behind this particular complaint there did not lurk much more general grievances, as, for in- stance, the growing burden of military service and the stricter collection of royal dues. Yet the char- acter of the Queen was a matter of no slight im- portance to a subject of Charles. To his wife, * The authorities for the most part leave the place of the con- spiracy in doubt. The Annals of Fulda say expressly that it was formed in Bavaria. The Vita Eginhardi, written thirty years after the events, betrays some confusion as to the circumstances ; the author imagines that the conspiracy was detected in the winter. He may also be construed, though this is not necessary, as asserting that Pepin had remained behind in Austrasia on the plea of sickness. That Fardulf discovered the conspiracy is a fact, well authenticated. We have given in the text the popular version of his conduct as recorded in the Monk of St. Gall. The monk makes the mistake of supposing that the King was in Aachen at the time. COVER OF CAROLINQIAN GOSPEL BOOK OF THE IXth CENTURY. 800] Pepin the Htinchback 147 however young or unfitted for the task, the King invariably left the management not only of the royal households, but even of the royal demesnes. Such had been the practice of German chiefs in the days of tribal sovereignty ; and in this among other respects, Charles was faithful to the traditions of his race. That Fastrada abused her position ap- pears certain. To prove the fact we have, besides the explicit statement of Eginhard, the significant reticence of Theodulf of Orleans. Commissioned to write her epitaph, Theodulf, not usually languid in his praises of royalty, can only remark that she has left her subjects the better half of herself, that is to say, the King. The new feature of this plot is that a pretender had been provided. Pepin the Hunchback, the son of the King's first mistress, Himiltrude, chafed against the customary law which forbade him to hope for a share of the kingdom at his father's death, and was easily persuaded to join the rebels. They met one night in a church at Regensburg to mature their plans. A Lombard monk, Fardulf by name, happening to be there when they entered, concealed himself behind an altar and overheard their consultations. As an afterthought they searched the church and discovered him, but in- stead of putting him to death they merely imposed an oath of secrecy upon him. The monk, on their departure, hurried to the palace, clamoured for an audience, and, breaking through the sleepy guards, disclosed the urgent peril to the conqueror of his nation. The guilty persons were immediately ap- j.g Charlemagne '^^^^' prehended and put upon their trial before the as- sembly of the magnates. As in the case of Tassilo, the verdict was for death. The King showed him- self less merciful than on previous occasions of the kind. Since the path of clemency had been tried with such ill success he is hardly to be blamed. He interceded for no one but his unnatural .son, and this he did less from pity than from a politic reluc- tance to place the royal house on the same level with ordinary subjects. The Franks gave Pepin their permission to take the tonsure. He lived for twenty years in the monastery of Prum, and when he died hardly a single annalist thought the fact worthy of mention. He had been the puppet of a faction, and his friends perished long before him; some were hanged and the rest beheaded immedi- ately after their condemnation. The example pro- duced the expected result. Fastrada was the pretext of no more rebellions. Yet it was well for the peace of the Franks that she died only two years later, and that her place was taken by the gentler and more popular Liutgarde. Fardulf, the one re- maining actor in this tragic incident, obtained in re- ward for his honest perjury the fat abbey of St. Denis. We hear of him in after-years as bearing the relics of the Neustrian saint before the host in Saxony. It seemed as though the plot were to be the signal for disturbances in every part of Europe. The Saxons had sent envoys to the Avars and hoped great things from this alliance. In 798 all Saxony was up in arms. Meanwhile the Emir 800] The Bavarian Canal 149 Hischam raised in Spain the old war-cry of Islam, and sent the faithful to invade the lands north of Pyrenees. They ravaged Septimania, and Christian captives were led away to labour at the great mosque of Cordova. In Italy a new enemy had ap- peared. When Areghis, of Beneventum, died in 787 his subjects asked and obtained from Charles the restoration of his son, the hostage Grimvald. It was an imprudent concession. Grimvald swore allegiance and promised tribute like his father. But he took the earliest opportunity of renouncing his obligations. Pepin and Lewis were sent to coerce him. The united forces of their kingdoms marched on Beneventum and achieved a very in- different success. The simultaneous outbreak on so many sides was not fortuitous. Charles had presumed too much upon his resources. He had involved himself in too difificult and distant enterprises. The result had been to irritate his subjects and to encourage external enemies. The moral was that he must waste no more time upon the Danube. It was not without hesitation that he bowed to the inevitable. About this time he undertook to connect the val- leys of the Main and Danube by a canal three hundred feet wide. The object seems to have been that he might use the naval forces of Frisia and the Rhineland in any future campaign. The problem of transports would have been greatly simplified by the success of the scheme. He surveyed the ground, collected many workmen, and, commencing at Bubenheim on the Altmiihl, which is a stream Charlemagne^^ ^779- u -nanube system, pushed his excavations in the iJ;«j.— Delay me the coming of cuckoo ! The father of toils is he ; And battles he brings, and all men in the world, however weary they be. Must rouse them from rest at his trumpet to brave land-farings and perils at sea. "F26 Charlemagne popular law-courts could work well only while law- suits were few and social relations simple. They werq an anachronism in the comparatively civilised Empire. Their decay was accelerated by the im- mense expansion of that Empire, which offered to able men a great official career and made the pro- vincial courts appear a paltry, contemptible field of action. The life-blood of the province was drained to recruit the Court and the ofificial hierarchy. Re- form, to be effectual, should have been undertaken on a bolder scale, by appointing, for instance, a number of judicial officers remunerated on a fixed scale, and not according to results. Popular con- servatism and an empty exchequer were, however, a fatal bar to such a project. The reform of the law was no less superficial than that of the courts. Before the year 8oo the Salic and the Bavarian codes, and perhaps the other na- tional codes, had already been reduced to writing. The Gallo-Roman had his Breviarium Alarici, an abridgment of the Theodosian code, compiled orig- inally for the Visigoths of Aquitaine (a.D. 506), and afterwards taken as the universal handbook ; he had also various compilations of the common forms for conveyances, contracts, and settlements. All these texts were unofificial, defective, and full of archaisms. Like the Twelve Tables in the age of Cicero, their most frequent use must have been that of a peg on which to hang new laws. Of the Capitularies issued by Charles and his predecessors, authoritative copies were in circulation. But these ordinances dealt, for the most part, with administrative matters and church Codification of Laws 227 discipline ; their authors hardly dared to invade that sanctuary of custom, the private law. It was, consequently, a step in advance when Charles, in 802, reduced to writing all the national codes, introduced such alterations as the missi rec- ommended, and caused the county courts to swear that they would follow no other version than his. Subsequently he published several lists of " capitida Icgibiis addenda." One applied equally to all the codes, others to those of particular nations only. But the change was slighter than it seemed. We learn that the use of the new version could not be enforced. Judges turned away from it to follow their own instincts or prejudices. To the end of the Middle Ages, the lands in which the Breviariuui had taken root continued, as of old, to be the only "lands of written law." The failure of the code was not entirely a disaster. The compiler had been too pedantic in his adhesion to the letter of tradition. We do aot expect in the ninth century a Code Napoleon, abolishing the di- versity of local customs, and reverting to the simple principles which underlie them. We do, however, look for the abolition of practices which were no less repugnant to the best minds of the period than they are to us ; and in this we are disappointed. Theodulf heaps invective on the cruel anomalies of the criminal law, under which "theft might be punished by death, and a murder by a trifling fine." These anomalies were left untouched, so far as their principle was concerned. The "wergilds" of religious persons are raised in all the laws; the expediency of wergilds, 2 28 Charlemagne in themselves, is a question which does not trouble the Emperor. We may say, then, of the Empire at its best and highest that it had little in common with the Respub- lica Romana which it professed to represent. The trappings are Roman, the substance underlying them is Teutonic. What Latin elements existed in the scheme of Charles came from the canons of the Church, or from the customary private law of Gaul. Charles may be called a Roman in so far as he grasped, more than most men before or since his time, the ethical significance and justification of the Roman system. The statecraft by which the Romans had reached their great results he was in- capable of comprehending; in his methods of war, diplomacy, and government he remained to the last a true Austrasian. The Empire, even when definitely recognised as an Empire of the West alone, carried with it obliga- tions towards all defenceless Christians in whatever part of the world they might reside ; so at least Charles conceived the situation. Already before the coronation he had taken under his patronage several communities which were in a special manner exposed to the violence of Islam. In 798 he received from Alphonso, the independent sovereign of the Asturias (791-810), a part of the spoils taken in a raid upon Lisbon ; letters passed between them, and we are told that Alphonso became the man of Charles. The con- tract was more than a ceremonious fiction. In the year 801, when Lewis was besieging Barcelona, Al- phonso led out his army and inflicted a severe defeat Protection of Oppressed Churches 229 upon the relieving force which El Hakem of Cordova had despatched to the north. Several circumstances prove that the Emperor was on terms of close friend- ship with the Christian subjects of the Emir. He borrowed from them the Athanasian Creed, also the Filioque clause of the Nicene. During the era of persecution which commenced with the reign of the Emir Hisham (787-796) numbers of Spanish Christ- ians crossed the borders of the mark, and were planted by the Emperor's orders in agrarian colonies enjoying his special protection. They retained their own laws and customs and were exempt from all dues except that of military service. The churches which at Carthage, Jerusalem, Alex- andria, and elsewhere in the East enjoyed a pre- carious toleration beneath the Khalifate received more than one proof of the Emperor's affection. The Patriarch of Jerusalem sent him in 799 a number of relics, in 800 a banner and the keys of the Holy Sepulchre. Both gifts were graciously received. The latter looks like a symbolic offer of the Patri- ciate over Jerusalem ; it was thus, with the banner of Rome and the keys of Peter's shrine, that the Roman Patriciate had been conferred on Pepin and on Charles himself. But the Emperor avoided the too literal interpretation which might be placed upon his act. He had no thought of entering upon a war with Haroun al Raschid. Some years before 800 he sent envoys to that sovereign ; and in 803 did so a second time. The object in each case was to inter- cede for the Eastern Christians ; and this pacific policy was completely successful. Haroun replied 2 30 Charlemagne by sending his own ambassadors to Charles in 8oi and 807. They brought him splendid gifts: on the first occasion an elephant which was for nine years* the chief glory of the Imperial sumpter-train ; on the second a marvellous water-clock which struck the hours ; there were twelve windows round it, from which at the hour twelve horsemen issued ; the win- dows closed behind them as they came out and opened again to let them return. Eginhard tells us that a gift of much greater value, that of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre, was conferred by Haroun at the same time as the water-clock. f The Monk of St. Gall appears to go much nearer to the truth when he makes Haroun say to the Prankish envoys : " I will give the Holy Land into his power and I will be his proxy, and let him send his missi to me when he thinks fit, and he will find me a faithful steward." Charles never claimed sovereign rights in Jerusalem ; but he was allowed to send envoys and make donations to the Churches of Africa and the East whenever he wished. Both in Eginhard and the Capitularies we are told of his liberality to them. A traveller of the next century mentions in particu- lar the hospital for Latin pilgrims which he founded and endowed in the Holy City.:|: It may be conject- ured that Haroun intended by his courtesy to guard * He died in 810 at Lippeheim on the way to Saxony. He was to have been used in the war against the Danes. f Eginhard, Vita, c, 16. "Sacrum illmn et salutarem locum, ut illius potestati adscriberetur. concessit.'' \ Bernhard, a Frankish monl<, in his Itinerarium (circ. 865) ; Richter, Annalen, p. 174. Charles and Ha rowt 231 against the danger of an aggressive alliance between the Eastern and Western Empires, or hoped to plant a thorn in the side of the Ommeiads. It is certain that Charles had no such ulterior motives. He entertained a respect half chivalrous, half child-like, for the brilliant Empire of Islam which had so many points of resemblance with his own. But he looked for no personal advantages from the connexion. Therein he differs most markedly from the kings of France who, under the cover of his example, made the protectorate of the Eastern Christians the excuse for a close political alliance with the Crescent. HEAD OF CHARLES THE GREAT. FROM A SEAL. CHAPTER X THE EMPEROR AND HIS COURT THE epics present Charlemagne as a Nestor among the warriors — an old man with a snowy beard whose fighting days are a memory of the past, and who, according to the bias of each poet, becomes either the master-mind directing the pala- dins, or the sport and plaything of their passions. The reason is not far to seek : the Emperor had grown old, he had become a man of peace before any author of note sat down to describe him. Our know- ledge of his personality comes from Eginhard, who was born after he began to reign, and from the Monk of St. Gall, who was of a still younger generation. Only in the pseudo-Turpin and romances based upon that authority do we meet with echoes of earlier sagas describing Charles at the prime of life ; and these are mingled with imaginary elements. Art helps us no more than literature. Although the seals of Charles give what profess to be portraits of him, they differ among themselves ; in one at least we recognise the features of Jupiter Serapis, and the others may be equally valueless as evidence. Coins come to our help only after 800 A.D., and some of these are obvious copies from Byzantine models. 232 Personal Appearance of diaries 233 They present the Emperor now with a straight, now with an aquihne nose ; in some he is close shaven, in others he wears the long German moustache. These last probably come nearer to the truth than the others. They agree fairly well with the bronze equestrian statuette of the Musee Carnavalet, and also with the Lateran mosaics which, as we have said above, were made by the order of Leo soon after his elevation to the Pontificate. The originals have per- ished, but we have several copies made by skilled artists in the eighteenth century ; since they confirm in every detail the descriptions of his dress as given by the biographers, they may be assumed to give a tolerable representation of his personal appearance. They show us a hawk-nosed man, with a broad, mous- tachioed face, high forehead and shaven chin, tall, square-shouldered, and strongly built.* Eginhard tells us that Charles was tall above the common ; his height was seven times the length of his foot. His voice was clear and weaker than one would have ex- pected from his build. His eyes were large and keen, his general expression cheerful. A short bull- neck somewhat spoiled his appearance, and in later life he grew corpulent. But there was about him an indescribable air of dignity which caused these defects to be forgotten. His character may, in part, be gathered from the *Montfaucon, Monumens, vol. i., gives a picture from an ancient manuscript which represents the Emperor holding in his hand a model of the church at Aachen. He is bearded and wears a long cloak buttoned in front. It can hardly be a contemporary portrait, although the editor is of that opinion. 234 Charlemagne events of his public life. Like all his country- men, he was easily moved by great ideas; unlike most of them, he was tenacious of impressions when once he had formed them, and possessed the power of concentrating all his energies upon the purpose of the moment. Possessing, in an eminent degree, the qualities of daring and promptitude, he is still more to be admired for the deliberation with which he conceived his great designs and the undaunted resolution which he manifested in executing them ; for the open-mindedness with which he asked ad- vice, for the unbiassed sagacity with which he sifted it when given. His mastery of detail was amazing; he kept himself informed of everything which hap- pened, and what he had heard never escaped his memory. His comprehensive glance took in all the interests of his wide Empire, and saw each in its true proportions. Inventive we cannot call him ; but no man of his day knew better how to make the most of existing conditions ; his innovations were few, but they were well adapted to the needs of his time. His common sense protected him from an un- reasoning love of novelties, and from the extrav- gances which defaced the career of his would-be imitator. Otto HI. Charles wished to prepare for the reign of the Catholic Church and the Universal Empire, not by sweeping away national traditions, but by infusing a new spirit into the ancient forms. He would have his subjects become Latins in their love of the Church and of justice, while remaining Teutons in dress, and law, and their daily life. Of his aversion to new-fangled fashions we have BRONZE STATUETTE OF PRANKISH HORSEMAN, NOW IN THE MUSEE CARNAVALET, PARIS. The horse is of antique workmanship \ the rider by a IXth century artist. The orb denotes a sovereign. Possibly we have here a portrait of Charles the Great. The Emperor's Dress 235 more than one witness. " He would have nothing to do with foreign clothes, however fine," says Egin- hard, "and never put them on, except that once at Rome, to please Pope Hadrian, and another time, at the prayer of Leo, he dressed himself in the long tunic, the overmantle, and sandals of Roman pat- tern." The Monk of St. Gall has preserved a vigor- ous tirade which the Emperor delivered on the subject of the fantastic cloaks affected by his court- iers: "What is the use of those rags? They will not cover me in bed, they will not shield me from the wind and rain when I ride." The same author describes Charles as he had seen him, dressed in the old Prankish costume, with high laced boots, cross- gartered scarlet hose, a linen tunic girt with a sword- belt, a white or blue mantle, square in shape, and so buckled on his shoulders that in front and behind it reached to his feet and at the sides barely touched his knees. To his unwearying zeal, there are many witnesses. "No man cried out to him," says the poet, "but straightway he should have good justice." The romancers supposed that his omniscience could only be explained by supernatural agencies ; they said that the brazen eagle on the palace roof veered and shifted by magic art, pointing always to the quarter where there was need of the Emperor ; so that he was aware of any danger the moment it arose.* Hincmar tells us that he would never endure to be * Another account [K'arlamagnus Saga^ c. 20) says, more prosa- ically : " He caused a great eagle to be set upon the hall, for a sign that France is highest in the Emperor's realm," 236 Cha rlemagne without two or three of his wisest counsellors, and conferred with them in all his leisure moments.* Under his pillow he kept writing materials, and whenever a useful thought occurred to him at night — for he was always a light sleeper — he would note it down for discussion the following day. Although cases belonging to the royal court of justice were, in general, left to the Counts of the Palace, he would snatch a few moments to advise them on any doubt- ful point of law, and even listen to the pleadings of the disputants while he was dressing himself. As was natural for a busy man, he avoided ban- quets and entertainments. When he gave them at all, they were splendid and large numbers were in- vited ; in general, however, the duty of feasting his vassals and keeping them in good humour devolved upon his ministers. Eginhard lays great stress on the simplicity of his life and habits. "He was temperate in meat and drink, especially the latter ; he had the greatest aversion to drunkenness in any man, much more in himself and his companions. From solid food he could not abstain in the same de- gree, and often complained that fasts were injurious to his health. At his usual dinner were served no more than four courses, not counting the game with which his hunters served him from the spit ; he preferred this to any other kind of food. During dinner he listened to a recitation or reading. The readings were taken from histories and the lives of the ancients. He delighted also in the books of St. Augustine, especially in those entitled The City of God. He was so sparing in the use of wine * Opera Hincniari (ed. Migne), i., 1084-5. Reliability of Eginhard 237 and other beverages that he rarely took more than three draughts during dinner. In summer he would take after dinner some fruit and a cup of liquor; then he would undress and pass two or three hours in sleep." This is one side of the picture; there is another, over which Eginhard glides more lightly. Historic truth was not his only, nor perhaps his chief object ; the Carolingian Court must be propitiated and the devout must be edified by his biography. Moreover, he had taken for his model the life of Augustus, by Suetonius, and, not content with imitating that au- thor's style, was fain to display his erudition by borrowing from him whole phrases and sentences. Some critics contend that these plagiarisms vitiate the general effect of Eginhard's work. It is more natural to suppose that, without absolutely forsaking the truth, he laid an emphasis upon those traits of the first Prankish Caesar which most recalled the founder of the Empire.* Such parallels with an- tiquity were very usual in the literature of the Dark Ages ; we find, for example, that the Saxons are de- scribed in the very words of Tacitus by an author who had every means of studying his subject at first hand.f But the fact is that Charles was by no means * It is to be noticed tiiat Eginhard also borrows plirases from the other biographies of Suetonius ; especially those of Vespasian, Ti- berius, and Claudius. In any case, these imitations affect the truth of one section only in the biography, viz., cc. 22-27. Chapter 24 is that to be regarded with the most suspicion ; but the facts there given relate merely to personal habits ; and the passage combines reminiscences from widely scattered passages of Suetonius ; there is nothing which suggests indiscriminate and unreflecting transcription. f Rudolf, in the Translatio Sancti Alexandria M. H. C, ii., 674. He is a writer of the ninth century. ! 3 8 Charlemagne unlike Augustus. In both men we detect the same reverence for the past, the same determination to make the most of existing conditions, the same con- viction that the old traditions of domestic life must, at all costs, be preserved. Like the founder of the Em- pire, Charles dressed in homespun ; in the old Queen, Bertha, the Court of Aachen possessed a second Livia. Unfortunately, there was also more than one Julia in the case ; and as Charles himself lacked the self-restraint and staid decorum of Augustus, so his family went far beyond the license of their Roman prototypes. In the domestic life of the Prankish Court the patriarchal element was not wanting. The tastes of the Emperor were simple, and he regarded splendour as a tiresome necessity of state. But in his own life and in the lives of his chosen friends there was much of Austrasian coarseness and Neustrian profligacy. Eginhard, usually so zealous to defend the fair fame of his patron, cannot rebut this particular impeach- ment. Capitularies, diplomata, and the gossip re- ported by Notker all tell the same story. The household of Charles was notorious for the profli- gacy of its more prominent members ; the purlieus of the palace swarmed with disreputable characters. Feasts naturally degenerated into drunken orgies ; the master of the board might contemn, but dared not prohibit, the revelry of his vassals.* Rival houses ruffled and fought for precedence at every opportun- * Zeumer, Formula:, p. 323. "Our vassal Richard came before us and said that when Queen Fastrada came from Bavaria to Frank- fort for the winter (possibly of 791) his grandfather was killed by Scandals of the Palace 239 ity ; we hear of a stabbing affray in the very audi- ence chamber of the Queen. It was with infinite difficulty that Lewis the Pious extirpated the more flagrant abuses, and the praise elicited by his homage to the elementary laws of morality speaks volumes for their neglect in the lifetime of his father. We do not lay much stress on the somewhat rigid homi- letics of Alcuin after his retirement. Alcuin is vexed by the taste which Anghilbert and others show for theatrical performances ; he warns his friends against the allurements of the " doves " who flutter round the palace. It would have been well if all the amusements of the Court had been as in- nocent, or if all its habitues had merited no harsher names. Also we are prepared to wave aside the dark legend of Roland's parentage and all the rest of the unsavory scandals at which the romances hint ; solar myths repeated and garbled from age to age have seldom failed to fasten on the names and to blacken the reputations of epic heroes ; the tales which are told of Charlemagne were told before his day of Zeus and Periander, and have been told again of the Celtic Arthur. But, when these are re- jected, authentic facts remain which are hardly less unpleasant to an admirer of Charles and his nation. At all periods of his life Charles was susceptible to the influence of women. Sometimes the influence was innocent, sometimes it was the reverse. Now we trace in him a resemblance to the noble savages of mischance in her presence because he himself had killed a man," etc. Other evidence in the Capitulary of Lewis the Pious, '^ De ordine palath." Pertz, Leges, II., i,, 297/. 240 Charlemagne Germania whom Tacitus describes as believing " that there was something holy and prophetic in the souls of womenkind," and manifesting their belief in chiv- alrous reverence ; at other times we cannot fail to remember Dagobert I. with his more than Oriental harem. Charles was a dutiful son, an almost uxori- ous husband, a too indulgent father. The ladies of the royal household followed him in all his travels, and whether he kept Christmas in the camp at Pavia or among the marches and forests of Saxony, they were still to be found at his side. His queens were ministers of State, whose word often had more weight with him than that of their male colleagues. In a less degree his daughters too were factors in the game of Court intrigue. Ambitious men of medi- ocre abilities found their patronage very useful. The Emperor had a keen eye for merit when some post of high responsibility was in question ; but in filling minor offices he allowed himself to be less cautious. The favourite of a princess might reason- ably expect a bishopric to come his way. Notker tells a story which on this head is more instructive than many chronicles. He is a vague and garrulous narrator ; but he had seen the Emperor and had talked with men who knew the seamy side of palace life. There was a poor young man in the school of the palace whom Charles promoted to a place in his chapel. One day, in the young man's hearing, it was told to the Emperor how a certain bishop had died ; and the Emperor asked whether the dead man out of all his wealth had sent anything before him {i. e., in the Petticoat Influence 241 way of alms). The ;/«mz/i- answered : " Sire, no more than two pounds of silver." The young man could not contain himself, and burst out in the King's hearing with the exclamation : " Truly a slight pro- vision for so long a journey." The prudent Charles considered a little and said: "If thou dost receive the bishopric wilt thou lay out a greater store for that same journey ? " The youth caught at the words as if they were grapes falling into his mouth, and said : " Sire, this rests in the will of God and in thy power." Then the Emperor told him to hide behind the curtain at his back and to listen what helpers he would have in his suit. Meanwhile the courtiers, hearing that a bishop was dead, laid themselves out to catch the prize through the help of the Emperor's familiar friends. But the Emperor held his ground and denied them all, saying that he would not be false to that youth. At length Queen Hildegarde sent the chief men of the realm, and afterwards came herself to the King, to ask the bishopric for one of her clerks. And when he took her petition jokingly, and said that he could refuse her nothing, but would not deceive his candidate, then, as women will when they wish to persuade a man, she dropped her voice to a plaintive tone and tried to win over the steadfast soul of the Emperor with caresses, saying to him ; " O my Lord and King, what will it hurt that boy to lose his bishop- ric? O my dearest Lord, my glory and my refuge, prithee give it to that faithful servant whom you wot of." Then the young man who had been told to stand behind the curtain clutched the Emperor 16 242 Charlemagn e through the folds and broke out in a lamentable voice: "Keep your courage up, your Majesty! let no one take from your hands the power which God has given you." Then that brave lover of the truth called him forth and said : "Take that bishopric and look to it that thou sendest before thee and me a good provision for that journey from which there is no returning." * Some ladies of the royal household used their power well. Of Liutgarde and Hildegarde, we hear nothing but good' ; but in Fastrada and the daughters of the Emperor, the system produced the worst results. Fastrada brought to Court the rancorous feuds and savage hatreds of her homeland ; her hus- band indulged her thirst for vengeance, and paid dearly for doing so. Charles would not allow the princesses to marry. Policy may have had some- thing to do with this. Matches were arranged for them with friendly royal houses, and broken off when the friendships cooled. There were good reasons why Rotrude should not wed the Emperor Constantine, nor her sisters the sons of King Offa. And their father may well have feared the conse- quences of marrying them at home. A powerful magnate, when allied in this way to the reigning dynasty, might easily, in course of time, found a sec- ond Mayoralty. But Eginhard suggests that the Emperor was so much attached to his children that he could not bear to part with them. Whatever the motive, he kept them at Court and, as though to make them amends, allowed their most unblushino- * Monk of St. Gall, Book i,, chapter iv. The Emperor s Wives 243 intrigues to pass without reproof. When Lewis the Pious began the reformation of tlie Court, his first step was to send his sisters packing to a nunnery. Two of them had already taken the veil, and Ro- trude, at least, had won the heart of Alcuin by her devotion to theology. But we do not learn that Lewis recognised any distinctions ; all were equally guilty in his sight. In fact, Charles could ill afford to take the tone of a censor. His own conduct was by no means free from reproach. That, after divorcing Desiderata, he married in rapid succession three wives, Hildegarde, Fastrada, and Liutgarde, merely proves him a man of somewhat coarse fibre and callous sensibilities. But both between and during these unions he contracted several " marriages of the second rank," as they are euphemistically termed by his clerical admirers. Several of these belong to the last period of his life, when he was over sixty years of age.* The Church kept silence during his lifetime ; so faithful a de- fender could not be refused some trifling indulgence. When he was dead the pious took their long-de- ferred revenge and castigated his memory at their will. The Emperor in purgatory became the sub- ject of a legend which obtained wide circulation. The most serious attachment of his life was to Hildegarde, by whom he had his only lawful sons. His sorrow for her death finds utterance where we * Eginhard mentions, among his concubines, Gersuinda, Regina, Adelinda. He had children by all of these in his old age. There was also Himiltrude, the mother of Pepin le Bossu, and another, whose name is not given, by whom he had a daughter. 244 Charlemagne should least expect it, in a formal deed of gift. Be- queathing to St. Arnulf of Metz an estate for the good of her soul, he forbids the abbot and his successors, as they shall answer for it at the bar of God, to turn their trust to any other uses : " for we know how charity waxes cold and duties sedulously performed of old, fall afterwards into oblivion." To the end of time, the laws comprised in the grant shall serve to furnish candles for the sepulchre of his " most beloved wife " ; and if anything remain over, it shall be spent in masses and prayers for the health of her soul. Fin- ally, he entreats his successors and posterity to re- spect his wishes. The deed is dated " on the day of the Lord's ascension, on the vigil of which our sweet wife passed away." * It must be added, however, that in a few months from this date the Emperor was happy in a new marriage with a woman in- finitely the inferior of Hildegarde in beauty and in character. This is human enough; it is not heroic. Nor is it a hero whose passages of wit are recorded by Notker. The humour of the Emperor was not above the standard of the age. His coarse and pithy sayings exactly hit the taste of the Franks ; there was not a vassal at Court so unpolished that he could not appreciate a practical joke at the expense of some fat bishop. There is nearly always a bishop in these stories. The coenobitic biographer has a grudge against these enemies of his order, and will wander * Bouquet, Rerum Scriptores, v., 748. The Church of St. Ar- nulf was, like that of St. Denis, a favourite burying-place of the Carolingians. The Emperor s Humour 245 any distance from his subject to raise a laugh against them. But we need not, therefore, neglect his stories altogether ; Charles, too, had a poor opinion of bish- ops. He never comes so near to eloquence as when he is rating them in a general synod. These philip- pics, we know, had little effect upon the subjects of them. But, if Notker may be believed, Charles was amply revenged upon their stolid self-complacency. " Having related how Charles, in his wisdom, exalted the humble, let us also show how he humbled the proud. There was a vainglorious bishop, who was overfond of vanities. Perceiving this, Charles took a Jewish mer- chant, who often travelled to the Promised Land, bring- ing back to this side of the sea many strange and costly wares, and he told him to play this bishop a trick. The Jew caught a mouse and painted it with colours and of- fered it for sale to the aforesaid bishop, saying : 'This valuable creature comes from Judaea and has never been seen before.' The Bishop offered three pounds of silver for so rare an animal. The Jew replied, ' A pretty price, indeed! I had rather throw it into the deep sea than let any man have it so cheaply.' The bishop, who had great possessions and never gave any- thing to the poor, made an offer of ten pounds. Then the roguish Jew pretended indignation ; he said, ' O God of Abraham, let me not lose my labour and cost of carriage.' At length the bishop paid down a bushel of silver and got the mouse. The Jew told the Emperor, who then called his bishops together, showed them the silver, and said, ' See what one of you has paid a Jew for a painted mouse.' " The story goes on to say that he improved the 246 Charlemagne occasion with a discourse on apostolic poverty, and that the luckless purchaser of .the mouse was covered with confusion. When the morals and humour of the Emperor were so primitive it is not surprising that he adhered to the nomadic life affected by the Merovingians and his own ancestors. The royal residences were scat- tered far and wide over his dominions. We find four of them in Aquitaine, namely, in Cassineuil, Theoduad, Audiac, and Ebreuil ; two in Bavaria, at Ingolstadt and Regensburg; others in Italy at Milan, Pavia, Parma, Verona ; and very many in the valleys of the Meuse, the Rhine, and the Main, as for ex- ample, Thionville,Kiersi, Herstal, Attigni, Frankfort, Worms, Mainz, Ingolheim, and Aachen. All appear to be visited at some period of the reign. A very usual custom was to spend Christmas in one " vill," and Easter in another. The whole Court moved with the Emperor ; his library, his treasures, and his archives followed him from place to place ; even the Palatine School was not allowed to be stationary. To some extent this restlessness was politic. The ruler of rude and restless peoples did well to show his state in every part of the realm. Much more, however, was Charles influenced by the motives of his bar- barian ancestors. His household depended for maintenance upon the produce of his vast estates ; it was a part of good husbandry to distribute the burden equitably between them. The more distant and rarely visited " vills " sent annually long processions of provision carts to those which the Emperor honoured by his presence. Tlie Imperial Capital 247 Except in Italy the palaces were nothing more than country-houses on a magnificent scale. Those which Charles preferred stood upon the verge of some royal forest, such as the Ardennes, or the southern Bohmerwald, where he could pursue to his heart's content the royal sport of hunting. Aachen, which he took for his capital, owed this favour to the warm medicinal springs in which it abounds rather than to the advantages of its position. Standing ofT the great highways of war and commerce in one of the wildest parts of the kingdom, it could not under any circumstances become a great centre of popula- tion ; and although Charles and his courtiers loved to call it " the new Rome," we cannot suppose that they expected to found an important city. The palace, the senate-house, and the church attached to the palace formed the nucleus of Aachen. The entire population was engaged in ministering to the wants of the palace. The buildings at Aachen were no doubt begun as early as 784 ; for in that year Charles fetched from the palace of the Exarchs at Ravenna the marble columns, the pavements, and the mosaics which were used to adorn the church. But even the church was still unfinished in 799.* The art of architecture had long been forgotten north of the Alps, and the Franks were slow learners. The builders took for their model the church of San Vitale at Ravenna — an octagonal structure surrounded by a cloister and * The building is described as still in progress in the epic fragment, "Concerning the interview of Charles and Leo,'" in Bouquet v. 388/. 248 Charlemagne capped by a dome, plain and massive, round arches, and little ornament. The design is perpetuated in the present cathedral at Aachen ; but the original church was burned by the Northmen in the tenth century. To complete the work many relics of antiquity were destroyed, particularly the Roman walls of Verdun ; the Franks lacked skill or patience to hew their own building-stone. The colossal equestrian statue which adorned the square before the church came from Ravenna and was a monument of Theodoric the Ostrogoth. The only ornaments which the church owed to native workmanship were the chancel-screen, the candelabra, and the doors, all of solid bronze. The palace followed the traditional lines of a Prankish " vill," though stone and marble took the place of wood ; the salient features — the quadrangle, the portico, the upper chamber where the master of the house gave audience and from whose windows he surveyed the scene below — take us back to the days of Clovis. It had two remarkable adjuncts: a great swimming-bath where one might sometimes see the Emperor disporting himself with more than a hun- dred of his warriors * ; and a park well stocked with trees and game which recalled that of the Merovin- gians at Paris. Of the other " vills," Ingolheim approached most * Eginhard, Vita, u. 22 ; also the Karlamagmis Saga, c. 12. " It is told that there was there a very pleasant grassy valley, and there he had a bath made so that it might be at one's pleasure either cold or hot, and round it a marble wall. He bade the smiths work well and said their wages would be all the better.'' The latter reference I owe to the kindness of Professor W. P. Ker. CATHEDRAL AT AACHEN, SHOWING RESTORATION OF THE DOME OF CHARLES. (X r~'i' r ^<^M\':x:i.i- s, Buildings and Public Works 249 nearly to Aachen in magnificence. We are assured that its portico had a hundred columns and the win- dows were counted by the thousand. The mosaics which adorned the interior were its crowning glory. In them were depicted, probably by Italian artists, all the stories of famous- men and nations : the -wars of Ninus and Cyrus, the conquests of Alexander, Han- nibal defeated by the Romans ; Romulus founding the Old Rome and Constantine the New ; Charles Martel hewing down the Arabs on the field of Tours ; Pepin triumphant beneath the walls of Pavia, and, last of all, Charles sitting in state upon the Imperial throne. Hard by the palace was a church resplendent with marble, metal-work, and gilding ; and here again were mosaics dealing in like manner with the sub- jects of sacred history.* Of their style we may form some idea from the illuminations in the Bible of Charles the Bald, The Emperor delighted in architecture and en- gineering ; perhaps the comparative simpleness of their ideas and the enduring nature of their produc- tions account for his taste. At Mainz he built for the convenience of the army a wooden bridge upon stone piers. Unfortunately some days before his death a blazing ship was driven against it by the current and the whole superstructure disappeared in a few hours. Besides the palaces on which he spent so much labour and treasure, he engaged in many works of a more useful character. We hear of military bridges built of boats on the Weser, the Elbe, and the Danube. A series of carefully en- * This description is taken from Ermoldus Nigellus, c. iv. 250 Charlemagne trenched strongholds defended the north-eastern frontier against the Dane and Slav. Others, as we have seen, were made from time to time in various parts of Saxony. It may be wondered that the Emperor stopped here, when he might have per- petuated his renown by works of this kind in every part of his dominions. Vast armies of workmen were at his disposal when required. All Europe, we are told, was set to work at the bridge of Mainz ; every count in the Empire sent the best masons and car- penters of his province. Precise details with regard to the Bavarian canal are wanting ; but a great mul- titude was employed long enough to dig a consider- able channel two miles in length. With such resources Charles might have repaired the Roman roads, of which he constantly availed himself in his marches. It is true that he actually made new highways or rpended the old in Saxony ; but others were needed in Thuringia, Suabia, and Bavaria. In districts of doubtful fidelity walled towns such as those of the Lombards would have been a great advantage to him. More harbours were needed for the fleets which he got together on the northern littoral ; merely to restore that of Boulogne was insufficient. If we ask why these things were not done, the answer is not that Charles was insensible to their advantages. Rather, we think, it was because he could not afford the expense of hiring workmen. Money was at all times hard to find ; very little came into the royal exchequer from any source. The an- nual gifts of the royal vassals, the poll-tax paid by the free, the profits of the royal estates, the amerce- Public Works 251 ments of the law-courts, were usually paid in kind — in horses, weapons, armour, cattle, in chattels of every description, in anything rather than specie. And it must be remembered that for the greater part of the reign Pepin took the revenues of Italy, and Lewis those of Aquitaine. We are expressly told of Aquitaine that its revenues barely sufficed with careful management to maintain the Court of Lewis in fitting state ; and Aquitaine was by no means the poorest province of the Empire. It would have been possible to exact unpaid labour. Indeed, some such expedient appears to have been adopted in a few cases. Every man was bound in addition to military service to render help in the building of roads and bridges. Of this obligation Charles, as it seems, availed himself in carrying out the work at Mainz. But the customary interpreta- tion limited each man's duty to the roads and bridges of his own county. The action of the King in this case was high-handed and excited bitter com- plaints. Generally speaking, he left such works to each Count individually ; they were then done badly or not at all. The Monk of St. Gall accuses the Emperor's master- builders of gross corruption and injustice. At Mainz he says, the director of the works sold exemp- tions to all who would buy ; those who would not were saddled with double tasks and treated worse than Pharaoh's slaves. The incident is a small one. It shows, however, the fatal flaw in the government of Charles. He had few agents upon whose honesty he could rely. Where he could not 252 Chaidemagne give his constant and personal supervision every- thing went wrong. A list of about thirty names would include all the men who achieved distinction in his reign by their administrative ability. If we analyse the list we soon discover that in most cases this distinction was achieved by warlike exploits. The men of peace are very few. Double or treble the number would not have sufificed to fill the more important of^ces in the palaces and the provinces. The bulk of these offices were filled with incapables ; the better sort of officials were overwhelmed by the weight of their responsibilities. Charles realised the evil. He exhausted his ener- gies in the attempt to do the work of many men. One is apt to forget the extreme simplicity of his system ; for there existed in his Court all the apparatus of a complex central administration. He had his " apo- crisiarius " and arch-chaplain to manage all business relating to the Church ; they were supposed to control the royal patronage, to decide unimportant matters without referring to their master.* He had also his Counts of the Palace who occupied an equally important position in secular business; there was one for each nation of the Empire ; a suitor or petitioner was directed to approach the Count of his own nation, so that only the most difficult questions might filter through to the Emperor's audience- chamber. He had his household officers, the treas- urer, the constable, the marshal, who reported to the * These two offices were frequently, perhaps usually, combined in the same person. Thus in 794 Anghilbert is called the arch-chaplain, but Hildebold, Archbishop of Koln, was apocrisiarius at the time. The Executive and Legislature 253 Queen and were controlled by her. He had, finally, his chancery in which the manufacture of writs and charters proceeded according to set forms, and for which the chancellor was entirely responsible.* We find, however, that in practice these high officials are treated as merest clerks and secretaries. The Em- peror — perhaps with good reason — refused to give them a free hand ; he waved them aside, heard every- thing, and decided everything. We are reminded of Louis XIV., of Napoleon, and of many another great autocrat. It is an old story, the passion for detail, the distrust of all subordinates, preying upon a masterful mind. The general placita play an important part in the scheme of Prankish government. They are aristo- cratic in their constitution ; for the host at the Mayfield does not deliberate ; that is a privilege or rather a duty which is left to the chiefs. We are apt indeed to suppose that even an aristocratic gathering would constitute an important check upon the sovereign ; that in the magnates the gen- eral body of freemen were roughly but fairly repre- sented ; and that since two separate sessions were held in most years, and no important measures were taken without the assent of the magnates, the government of Charles was thus rendered as popular, as democratic, as government can be in a half-civilised age. But this view will not bear ex- * These details are given by Hincmar, De Ordine Palatii. He is a writer of the ninth century, but copies from Adalhard's work on the subject. Adalhard was one of the Emperor's most trusted coun- cillors. 254 Charlemagne amination. The government of Charles was popular in spite of, not because of, the assemblies. The magnates who enjoyed a seat and a vote in them, were all ofificials of the Empire — bishops, abbots, counts, dukes, margraves ; and the laymen held their offices during the good pleasure of the sovereign. Their interests by no means impelled them to pro- tect the commonalty ; still less would they risk their status and emoluments in the interests of that body. In fact, they come into conflict with the Emperor because he represents the people and they do not. It is he who clamours against tyranny and oppres- sion ; they are the guilty persons whom he accuses. And even in their own private quarrel they are incapable of checking their master. If he insists on a measure it is passed. Of underhand resistance, of wilful neglect to execute the laws when made, there is naturally a good deal ; of open protest, of opposition in debate, little or nothing. Nor does this assembly take the initiative in legislation. Sometimes it is invited to suggest reforms, and it suggests them; the Emperor then considers what he wUl do in the matter. More often he proposes to them a list of ordinances, and leaves them to debate. If they ask for explanations or suggest amendments he returns to argue with them. We get the impres- sion that this was of comparatively rare occurrence. As a rule the Emperor is the moving spirit and has the last word. Legislation is not the sole purpose for which he holds these assemblies. At those of the autumn the missi present their formal reports to him ; at both Democratic Aspect of the Empire 255 he looks to receive any information which may be useful to him. On the basis of the news received he will make his laws and settle his policy. The government of Charles was not a tyranny. Upon the will of his vassals and of the national militia all his power depended. The nominal sovereignty of the people is explicitly recognised. They are not usually asked for their assent to laws. Still there is a theory that their presence and confirmation are needed. The autumn council, we are told, merely prepared resolutions which acquired the force of law when confirmed by the magnates in the midst of the host at the Mayfield. This is not always the case ; it was in the autumn of 802 that Charles and the magnates codified the national laws ; and we can hardly suppose that all freemen were present at that time of year. We learn, however, even from this instance, that any change in the customary law re- quired the assent of the people, if not at the May- field, then at least in their several county courts. Capitularies which touched lightly on the private relations of life might come into force as the arbi- trary injunctions of the Emperor; very important changes in the administration might be effecte'd by a private instruction from Charles to a missus. Arch- bishop Hincmar gives a description of the Mayfield which is valuable as proving how completely per- sonal was the Emperor's government. He built for the magnates halls of meeting, and set them to de- bate upon subjects proposed by himself. Sometimes he divided the assembly in two, a lay and a spiritual, which were united only when matters of common 256 Charlemagne concern came in question. Meanwhile he walked about among the warriors of the host, dressed like any Frank of noble birth, and distinguished from others only by the gold-headed staff which he carried in his hand. He received in person the annual gifts of his vassals, and ingratiated himself by every means with these and all other men. He jested with the young and was sympathetic with the old. He singled out for special notice those whom he rarely saw. And all the while his ears were open to hear every whisper which threw light on the currents of popular feeling ; and he asked all with whom he talked, about the state of their country — whether there were rebellions, and if so what was the cause, and what the enemies of the Empire were doing on the frontier. All men might see him and press close to him ; everyone of mark could exchange a word or two with him. The picture is perhaps a little over- drawn. But it gives us the whole secret of the Emperor's power. He was an autocrat who con- ciliated his people and studied their wishes, of whom they felt that he was a man of like sympathies and prejudices with themselves, a man who would apply pressure to them for their own good and not other- wise. The Capitularies, which they did not help to make, were still an answer to their petitions and complaints. That beneath all his courtesy he was stern and proud merely added to their good opinion of him. The warriors who had bought the Empire with their blood loved to feel the iron hand of a master. Of soft-heartedness there was little enough in their own composition ; they despised a monkish THE PALADINS ROLAND AND OLIVER. BAS-RELIEFS OF XIITH CENTURY, IN THE CATHEDRAL AT VERONA. {From Manet's " Verona Illustrata.^^^ Condescension of the Emperor 257 meekness. The man who had proved greater in battle than Charles Martel, wiser in council than Pepin the Short, did well to bear himself haughtily. He owed it to his own achievements ; he owed it to the conquering nation which he led and represented. COIN OF CHARLES. ON A ROMAN MODEL. CHAPTER XI 800-814 A.D. WITH the approach of old age Charles showed an increasing inclination to restrict the sphere of his activities. The government of Aquitaine he left, as before, to Lewis. In Italy, Pepin enjoyed the same freedom ; when he died, in 810, the peninsula was, for a time, administered by Imperial commissioners ; finally, in 812, the youth- ful Bernhard was permitted to succeed his father. The Emperor showed himself in neither kingdom^ although at intervals he sent his missi, issued an admonition to the royal vassals and local magis- trates, or changed the regulations of military service. Among the Capitularies we find a letter addressed by him to Pepin, from which we infer that the viceroys were constantly advised, encouraged, or reproved. Also we are sometimes told in the pre- ambles to Italian laws that they are issued at his command. If our sources for the history of Aqui- taine were more complete we should probably find the same thing happening there. It is understood that the subjects of Pepin and Lewis are also the subjects of the Emperor, and that administrative orders for the whole realm of the Franks may, at 258 800-814] Occupations of the Emperor 259 need, be issued at Aachen. But it does not appear that the Capitularies, to which the Emperor devoted so mucli time and thought, were intended to run throughout the Empire, unless it was expressly stated that they should do so. To this rule there are exceptions : in particular, the revised codes of the national laws and the additions made to them from time to time were binding everywhere. These, how- ever, received the assent of an unusually comprehen- sive assembly, in which were included the magnates of all the nations in the Empire. Ordinary Capitu- laries were promulgated in assemblies comprising only the men of those provinces which were im- mediately governed by the Emperor. Autocrat as he was, Charles would not seem to override the old maxim that laws are always made by those who have to obey them. And it was easy for him, when he conceived some more general reform to be advisable, to procure the adoption of it in the placita of the dependent kingdoms. Next to legislation, the problems of the German frontier claimed his chief attention. Even here he was usually content to act through a lieutenant. To place his eldest son on a footing of equality with Pepin and Lewis, he had, in 790, invested him with the title of King of Western Neustria, and ten years later had caused him to be crowned by the Pope at Rome. But in Neustria there was little scope for an active warrior such as Charles the Young proved himself to be. On this side, the Bretons were the only enemies, and VVido, the Warden of the Marches, was fully equal to the duty of holding them in check. 26o Charlemagne [800 Charles was, therefore, usually to be found in his father's kingdom. He was destined to succeed hinn, if not in the Empire itself, at least in the hegemony of the Prankish dominions ; and it was only fitting that he should serve a rigorous apprenticeship. His tastes were military, and we are told that his house- hold resembled nothing so much as a camp. In the border-wars of Germany he found the occupation best suited to his tastes, although it must be owned that he conducted these operations with much more energy than skill. Except to hunt, the Emperor seldom wandered far from Aachen. In 803 we find him at Regens- burg, engaged in settling the Bavarian frontier. In 804 he led the host into Wigmod and Transalbingia, but returned without fighting any battles. In 810 he pitched his camp at Verden, expecting a descent of the Northmen upon the Saxon Marches ; but the murder of the Danish King Godefrid and the pacific disposition of Godefrid's successor. Hemming, soon left him free to return. In 811 he inspected his fleets at Boulogne and Ghent. These are the only important occasions on which he left the Rhineland. The death of Charles the Young in 812 did not rouse his father to reassume the duty of leading the host. On the contrary, he made haste to end the wars which were still in progress. Conscious that his own time was short, he wished to leave his suc- cessor perfectly unhampered. But his desire for peace was more than a sudden impulse. He gloried in the title of " Pacific," which he had assumed at the same time as the Imperial 814] A General Peace 261 crown. He felt that his dominions were already too extensive. The annals tell us of many wars during the last thirteen years of the reign. But the object is not further conquest ; the acquisitions of new ter- ritory are insignificant and incidental. It was to secure the peace of the frontier that Lewis waged his wars in Spain, that Pepin ravaged Beneventum, that Charles descended upon Bohemia. They were directed to surround the Empire with a ring of trib- utary nations, or, if this were impossible, to secure a line of strong natural positions where camps and fortified posts could be established. Substantially, this result had been achieved by the year 810; and the time had then come for friendly relations with all neighbouring powers. Accordingly, negotiations are opened with the Eastern Empire, with El Hakem, of Cordova, and with Hemming, King of the Danes. By 812 they had all been brought to a prosperous conclusion, and, as the final step, a treaty was ar- ranged with Beneventum. From one point of view, these treaties are a con- fession of weakness. In every case the Emperor contents himself with something less than he had desired. To Beneventum and the Eastern Empire he made considerable concessions. The Saracens were far less anxious than himself for a settlement. The complaisance of the Danes was due merely to the civil wars by which their power was for the mo- ment enfeebled. Both these enemies had good cause to know the weakness which underlay the fair ex- terior of the Prankish power. United, the forces of Charles could laugh them to scorn ; but the chances 262 Charlemagne [800- that they would be united in time to meet any given attack were of the slightest. The Western Empire had become too unwieldy for an aggressive policy ; it was scarcely better fitted to defend what it already possessed. No prophet was needed to foresee that it must fall to pieces as soon as it passed into the hands of mediocre statesmen. The humili- ations which it experienced in these thirteen years, though veiled by some brilliant triumphs, were omin- ous of future calamity. They bore witness to im- perfect centralisation, to the inefificiency of local government, to a faulty system of tactics and strat- egy, to the exhaustion of the warlike races which had won the victories of the past. When the vult- ures begin to settle it is a sign that the death agonies have begun. The political history of these years deals then with attempts to conceal and to stave off the inevit- able dissolution of a polity which had outgrown its strength. The process of decay and its causes do not lie upon the surface. Deep-seated causes are silently at work, and they become apparent only when their work is nearly done. The nascent Em- pire emerged triumphantly from long and exhaust- ing struggles. The same Empire, in its period of full development, quivers at the slightest impact from outside, nor is there anything in the events narrated by the chroniclers to explain the swift trans- ition from youth to decrepitude. Compared with the Saxons and the Avars, the Danes were not a numerous people ; the Saracens beneath El Hakem were measurably weaker than they had been in the 814] Causes of the Empire s Fall 1^ 263 days of Abderrahman. The danger lay in the new mode of warfare which these enemies employed. Their command of the sea and their guerrilla tactics enabled them to despise the weight of numbers. If we ask the reason why the Franks, so long preem- inent in the military art, failed either to meet the pirates with their own weapons or to pursue them back into their lairs, we shall find it in the disordered state of their society, which left them little leisure to reflect on the experience of the past and to lay more skilful plans for the future. If we press the enquiry a stage further we perceive that this para- lysing anarchy is the direct outcome of incapacity and selfishness in the ruling caste. The Count and the Bishop were the source and fountainhead of all the evil. Mutual jealousies — the eternal conflict of the State and Church in its most degraded and degrading form — accounted for much of this ; nar- row minds and exclusively personal ambitions for the rest. Trained for a life of war and doomed by their own successes to one of comparative quietude, the Prankish magnates lost the qualities which had made them the rulers of Europe and became un- fitted for their high position in the very moment of attaining it. It is the Emperor himself who gives this diagnosis of the degeneration which he saw around him. His Capitularies, after the year 800, are often melancholy reading ; they are full of diatribes against the high- est officials. Charles complains that these persons spend their time in thwarting one another ; the bishop spies on the count and the count refuses 264 Charlemagne [800- justice to the bishop. It is even worse when they act in unison, for then we may be sure that a con- spiracy is on foot against the estates and hberty of their defenceless inferiors. The Emperor finds that year by year the free landholders, who had been the backbone of his army, are diminishing in numbers; he enquires the reason and he learns that some have commended themselves to the counts and others have sold their lands to the churches ; they were obliged to do so if they would escape oppression. Of those who remain, some make interest with the count to buy or beg exemptions from military service ; others, less wise in their generation, are harried and amerced until they have no longer the wherewithal to find themselves in arms and rations. Turning to the Church, he finds that the monks are idle vaga- bonds, the priests illiterate and dissolute. They do not preach, they do not teach. Again he asks, why is this permitted ? It is because the bishops have more pressing business of their own to follow up. More general complaints abound. Commerce and agriculture are unprotected from the bandit and blackmailer ; thieves and sturdy beggars multiply without a check. There is no law-court to be trusted ; the judges are drunkards when they are not dishonest. Corruption is everywhere ; to eradi- cate it impossible. As a last resort the Emperor encourages the formation of feudal groups, tightens the hold of the lay lord upon his vassal and multi- plies ecclesiastical immunities. When the few are made responsible for the many, surely, he thinks, there will be less difficulty in making the law obeyed. □ Shaded- portion' uvoUcatesBretorvMarch^. ^ ForMt ofBroceluind&. Brittany and the Breton o March (circ. 800) ^ OOMNONEE LIMES 814] Growth of Feudalism '^ 265 The experiment has often been attempted and never with success. In such cases the State is ruined by the allies whose assistance it invites. The official heads of the nation become in their official capacity impotent. The vassal and the church-tenant no longer look for orders to the Emperor ; they will obey only when their lord gives the word. So the wheel comes full circle, and_theCarolingian sinks to the same position of empty titular superiority as his defeated IVlerovingian rival. Soon he will be but one among many chiefs, his effective force merely that of the war-band, the vassals, whom he has gathered round him. Last of all will come the time when this war-band no longer overawes the others, when its members will fall away and aspire like other nobles to independence. Changes of this kind are not wrought in a few years. So long as the founder of the Empire lived the disintegration and recrystallisation of society proceeded very slowly. But they have begun under his very eyes and they continue in spite of his most strenuous efforts to the contrary. Individual offend- ers are punished and those who have escaped detec- tion become more cautious for a time. But the Emperor cannot watch everyone, nor can he punish everything that comes to his knowledge. The institution of vassalage had already played a mighty part in the making of history. The House of St. Arnulf rose to power on the shoulders of their vassals. Such stability as their government at the first possessed was due to the discrimination with which they used these vassals in the administration of State 266 Charlemagne [800- and Church. Every count, every duke, every missus, was pledged to be their faithful man. He held his post, like a benefice of lands, during his good behaviour. Other vassals of less consequence were quartered on the crown-demesnes through the length and breadth of the Empire. In theory they were all the creatures of the royal favour. In fact they tended to become a dangerously independent class. When the central authority is weak, possession is nine points of the law; the owner is nothing, the usufructuary is every- thing; the overlord cannot enforce the conditions upon which he leased his estate, unless the tenant is actually within his reach. So it became the practice that the office of the count and the lands of the simple vassal should descend as of right to his son ; the fear of offending the old aristocracy and the difficulty of finding capable new men left the sover- eign no choice but to tolerate the fatal doctrine of heredity. At each remove the great families became more thoroughly identified with the provinces over which they ruled. They used official rights to bring the provincials into their own vassal-train and, con- fident in the strength thus acquired, ignored their official duties. At the beginning of the ninth cent- ury the Carolingian county is already on the high road to become the mediaeval fief. The count in virtue of his office has the high, the low, and the mid- dle justice ; when, no longer content with the third penny, which is his rightful due, he insolently usurps the whole profit of amercement ; when, instead of the royal law, he administers that which local custom and his own good pleasure have framed ; when the 814] The Chttrch and Feudalism 267 missus no longer appears to revise his sentences and to remove the "royal pleas" to a higher court, then the transformation will be complete ; instead of royal we shall have seignorial justice. And it needed only the reign of one weak Emperor for all these steps to be taken and for the central power to be reduced to a shadow. The one power which was able permanently to hold its ground against the self-aggrandising policy of the counts, was that of the national Church. We see her, after the death of Charles the Great, holding the balance of power between the Crown and the aristocracy. At the centre of the realm she makes and unmakes emperors. In the provinces she saves her immunities from the grasp of the count : nay, more, she actually extends their limits. But this process was equally fatal to the Crown. Royal jurisdiction over immunities had been exercised through the counts and inissi. When the missi cease to make their rounds, and the bishops to pre- sent their criminals in the court of the count, then the Crown ceases to be a factor in the daily life of the bishops' tenants. Church fiefs and lay fiefs grow together ; soon all that they render to the State will be an uncertain quota of military service, with still more uncertain aids and dues. Decentralisation was of course accelerated by that intense national and local feeling which we had occa- sion to notice in earlier chapters. From its first origin to its fall the Carolingian State was a federa- tion of races, governed in great measure by their own countrymen under their own laws, habitually en- 268 Charlemagne [800- grossed in the pursuit of their own parochial inter- ests, and rarely aroused to a sense of fellowship in a larger community except when the tumult of some great peril, or the fascination exercised by some vista of conquest brought them to serve har- moniously under the banner of one trusted general. When the obvious dangers were removed, when no more worlds remained to conquer, when the burden of military service was incurred merely to defend one's neighbours against sporadic depredations, the disposition to seek a more enduring union immedi- ately disappeared. National jealousies were intensified as the force which had so long controlled them dwindled away. In the ninth century the minds of men were cut to a pattern of such narrowness that the higher advant- ages to be secured by universal peace and unity of government passed their comprehension. The Em- pire of Justice and Religion which had been the life- dream of Charles and Alcuin was to their subordin- ates and successors a dream without a meaning. When Theodulf pictured the Empire as based on conquest and invigorated by perpetual crusades, he was propounding a coarse ideal, but the only one adapted to the times. For a concrete illustration of the general tenden- cies at work within the Empire let us take a passing glance at the woes of one single province, as re- corded by the sufferers themselves. Istria, which about the year 789 had been wrested from the By- zantines, was, as a mark of the Empire lying face to face with the Greeks of Dalmatia and the Slavonic 8141 Misgovernment of Istria 269 mountaineers of Carniola, committed to the charge of a duke enjoying unusual powers and privileges. Remote alike from Aachen and Pavia, peopled by poor and simple country-folk, the province fell an easy prey to the rapacity of this official. At length after many years of silent misery the Istrians made known their woes to the Emperor. He sent his niissi to hold an enquiry. They empanelled a jury of inquest whose very words have by a fortunate accident come down to us ; and this is the story told by the jury: Through the oppression of the Duke Johannes they have all come to poverty. If the Emperor will help them they may be saved ; if he will not, it were better for them to die than live. Johannes parcels out the people as serfs to his sons, to his daughters, and to his son-in-law. The poor people are forced to labour at building palaces for him and his aforesaid kin. He has seized great tracts of land which belonged to them and has brought in Slavs from across the border to till them. " They plough our fields, they reap our crops, they pasture their kine upon our grass, and from our lands they pay rent to the Duke." Johannes and his kin take cattle and horses from the Istrians without payment, and " if we say anything they say that they will kill us." The jurors have been forced to dig for him, to prune his vines, to feed his hounds, to burn his lime ■ — all of which are monstrous exactions such as they never suffered in the days of Greek rule. Moreover, he makes them voyage on his business not only up the rivers, but even across the sea to Venice, to Dal- matia, and to distant Ravenna. He has taken away 270 Charlemagne 1800- their woods and common-lands. When he marches on the Emperor's service he must have their horses to carry the baggage and their sons to lead the horses. When he has made them go with him thirty miles and more he will take from each man all that he has ; so they return on foot naked and empty- handed, and their horses are sent into Frankland or given to the vassals of Duke Johannes. He said once to the people : " Let us collect presents for the Emperor as we did in the days of the Greeks, and one of you shall come with me to offer them." Then the Istrians with great good will, as they aver, made a collection. But the Duke, when setting out to the Emperor, turned on them and said : " You cannot come with me ; I myself will intercede for you with the Emperor." Off he went and won with their gifts great honour for himself and his sons at court, and the deponents were left in great oppression and sorrow. They are nowhere safe from wrong ; they dare not even fish in the public meres as they used to do of old, for the men of Duke Johannes come and beat them with clubs and tear their nets to pieces. So they ramble on, and Johannes is forced to al- low the substantial truth of these very miscellaneous accusations. One rejoices to learn that the viissi brought him to reason. He had to disgorge his spoils and abate his unheard-of claims; securities were taken for the good behaviour of himself, his daughters, and his son-in-law. Yet, one fears that it went hardly with the Istrians after the departure of the niissi. To accuse one's local superior was 814] Redressing Misgovernment 271 distinctly dangerous, and in the long run the pro- vincials found their own interests better served by a discreet silence. Of this timidity Charles complains in the Capitularies, because it casts a doubt upon his own ability to protect the sufferers ; but we do not learn that confidence was restored by his exhort- ations. The counts and dukes not infrequently played upon the provincial patriotism of their sub- jects. What, they asked, had these foreign viissi to do with the private quarrels of neighbours and kins- men? Better to wait until they were gone and settle everything in a friendly fashion. For these reasons we are left to infer the plight of many provinces from a single instance. The Istrians were no worse off than their neighbours. Duke Johannes appears to have been no unfavourable specimen of the Prankish mag- nate. In the wars of Italy he had so distinguished himself as to win special praise from Charles. And we may imagine how, when rulers of this type abounded, the provincials lost all regard for the central government and gave thought to nothing but the propitiation of their petty tyrant. It was better, they reasoned, to share the profits of iniquity than to be its victim. If they became vassals of Duke Johannes might not horses, lands, rights of common, and other perquisites come their way, even as in the good old times ? Such were the allurements of feudalism to the weak-minded. A clear proof of increasing particularism is to be found in the new and violent distaste for military service. Time was when this service had been ren- dered cheerfully, and the stout warriors of the Em- 272 Charlemagne [800- peror clamoured that he should find them enemies worthy of their steel.* The private instructions which Charles addressed to the niissi in his later years unfold a very different tale. He warns them repeatedly of shifts and evasions with which they will be met, and against which they must be firm. The men of Aquitaine and Italy will protest that service in Germany is no part of their duty ; that they are the men of Pepin and Lewis, rather than of the Emperor. Others will point to those of their fellows who have obtained exemption and ask why they should not have a like privilege. The missi will find that the great vassals leave their tenants at home ; the lesser folk either pay the count to find substitutes for them (in which case the count appro- priates the money), or else affirm that they will stay behind and take their chance of being condemned to pay the fine for default of service ("heriban"). Some even sell themselves into slavery, that they may live in ignominious peace. Those who come are inadequately equipped and desert at the earliest opportunity. It was in vain that Charles defined their obligations more precisely and exacted the "heriban " with all rigour; in vain that he privately advised the missi to be content if they could raise one soldier from every three, four, or five "mansi" of land. Year by year the host grew more discon- tented and less efficient. Between the lines of the official narrative we read of expeditions abandoned * See an amusing story in The Monk of St. Gall, II., xx. A boastful veteran complains that "the Emperor andj " have to fight with such " tadpoles" as the Wiltzes and Bohemians. 814] Decay of Religion ^ 273 when only just begun, of checks inflicted by puny foes; we suspect that the Emperor's pacific dis- position arises from a wholesome distrust of his sol- diers. Already the time is at hand when men will rejoice at the fall of the Empire which they had ex- pected to bring about a golden age, just because the collapse will free them from this unwelcome burden.* It is disappointing to find that the mea ns by which Charles sought to secure the duration of his Empire, far from being adequate to these deep-seated maladies, are purely m e chanica l. H e-gtrei ij jLhei ied- tH e outworks and left the inner structure to m oulder unregarded. Even the revised system of education was allowed to languish after the death of Alcuin. Religious reforms continued, indeed, but they were of comparatively slight moment. The school of Boni- face died out, and their place was filled by inferior men upon whom the Emperor failed to impress his ideals. The galvanic shock which had, for a time, re- vivified the Prankish Church was passing away. Old abuses reappeared, new ones sprang up. The Em- peror complains bitterly and can devise no reme- dies. The one cheering ray of light which was still to be discerned came from the realm- of Lewis the Pious, where Benedict, of Aniaiie, continued to train monks under his new Rule and to send them forth in detachments as the founders of new and the leaven of older religious houses. This was a local revival, carried on with encouragement from Charles and his Court, but depending for its success upon the facili- * Bouquet, Reruin Scriptores^ vii, 302. Quoted by Guizot. 18 2 74 Charlemagne [Boo- ties afforded by Lewis and the nobles of Aquitaine. The Benedictines of the new order diffused them- selves for the most part through the provinces south and west of the Loire; some of their settlements are to be found in the valley of the Rhone; one only (that of Marmiinster, in Alsace) in the Germanic lands of the Empire. And, as Guizot well remarks, the Rule of Aniane, when compared with that of St. Benedict, upon which it was modelled, proves most convincingly the growth of formalism and the de- cline of spiritual fervour within the ranks of the regular profession. It is true that in the east, in Germany the Church, during the Imperial epoch, expanded her boundaries and introduced a better organisation. The see of Salzburg was raised at the prayer of Charles to metropolitan rank and the other Bavarian bishoprics were placed beneath its jurisdiction (798); at Seben on the southern frontier of the province a new bish- opric was founded ; the Czechs, the Avars and the Slavs, both those within the Ostmark and those bor- dering upon it, were converted in great numbers by the missionaries of St. Arno, the first Bavarian arch- bishop. In Saxony were planted the sees of Bremen, Minden, Verden, Munster, Paderborn, possibly also those of Hildesheim and Halberstadt. East of the Rhine sprang up a profusion of new religious houses ; the names of thirty are preserved, the actual number was probably far greater. By Charles and his nobles both the new and the old foundations were endowed with broad lands and wide immunities. In the cartu- lary of Fulda alone we find mention of 248 donations 814] Growth of the German Church 275 made in the course of the Emperor's reign. The neighbouring house of Hersfeld possessed at this time estates in 195 places; the lands which Charles conferred upon it exceeded 40,000 acres in extent. With such wealth and local influence at command the German Church might well feel prepared to meet and crush any recrudescence of paganism. The chains of Christianity were riveted for ever upon the German nation. But the power thus acquired was essentially mun- dane. It was a doubtful advantage to the Church. To the laity it was fraught with evil consequences. The ecclesiastical policy of Charles and his successors indefinitely retarded the growth of that national feel- ing to which their secular policy had given birth. While the one created a State the other set the Church upon the road to becoming a State within the State. To Charles the archbishops of Koln; Trier and Mainz, owed their vast provinces, and conse- quently their predominance in the councils of the Empire. Before his time the jurisdiction of Mainz was both precarious and limited in extent, while those of Koln and Trier date altogether from the year 794. For the ecclesiastical principalities which were com- prised in those provinces he must also take the re- sponsibility ; since he created those of Saxony and aggrandised those of Hesse, Franconia, Alemannia. Except Otto the Great there is no German ruler whose services to the material power of the National Church can compare for a moment with those of Charles. Even Otto yields the palm to his predeces- sor. Otto merely added Denmark and the province 2 76 Charlemagne [800- of Magdeburg to the great hierarchical system which he found already in existence at his accession ; he merely enlarged the estates and amplified the immu- nities which the Carolingians had founded. One may add that he followed reluctantly in the path which they had chosen spontaneously for themselves. It was with reluctance and misgiving, after long de- lay and as a last resource, that he took the Church for the partner of his authority both on the frontiers and at the heart of the Empire. Charles had rooted the clerical aristocracy so firmly to the soil that for his successors there was no third alternative between absolute complaisance and absolute ruin. It is true that a century of feeble government was needed to develop the dangers of the Carolingian system. In the lifetime of Charles the abbots and bishops still lacked sovereign jurisdiction over their tenants ; but when once the first immunities had been granted, sovereign jurisdiction was the inevitable though dis- tant result. And then the Church would be found implacably hostile to any regime in which her own pre-eminence was not assured. While Charles lived he kept the Church in hand. Her councils were his councils, and his word was their law. The bishops and abbots were always his nominees and offen his own kindred. All over the Empire the great churchmen counted as his most faithful vassals. Time was to show and the son of Charles was to learn by sharp experience how little those minor precautions would avail when the iron hand of their inventor was relaxed in death. The rebellious sons of Lewis the Pious found no allies 814] Danger from the Hierarchy 277 more zealous than Wala and Adalhard, both of high rank in the German Church, both the cousins and trusted ministers of the first Emperor. In vain did Charles watch with jealous care the encroachments of the Church in the field of justice ; in vain did he con- fer upon the inissi the important power of choosing the advocati through whom the bishops exercised their powers of jurisdiction; in vain did he limit the right of sanctuary, and impose the strictest conditions upon the growing practice of commendation to the saints. Such purely defensive policies are rarely suc- cessful and this was no exception to the rule. The danger arising from the hierarchy was nothing new. At the beginning of the eighth century it had confronted Prankish statesmen in an aggravated form. In the days of Charles Martel the Prankish Church had been what that of German}? was to be in the future — a dangerous foe, a doubtful friend, a leech sucking the life-blood of the society on which it hung. At the cost of much odium the mighty Mayor reclaimed to the service of the State wide lands inconsiderately bestowed upon the Church. In a more conciliatory spirit Pepin the Short and Charles the Great had continued the same policy westward of the Rhine. It was inconsistent, one might almost say inexcusable, in the Emperor to repeat in another quarter the mistake of the Mero- vingians. Granting that the Church assisted the consolidation of the Empire and that she developed the resources of a virgin soil which but for her might have remained a waste, the price was too high and the dangers were too patent. 278 Charlemagne [800- On the other hand, it must be remembered that the Church owed ahuost as much to private as to royal liberahty. That Charles should found bishop- rics and abbacies in the lands which he had con- quered for the Church was inevitable ; having done so, he could not, even if he wished it, prevent the fears and the hopes of his subjects from heaping gifts upon these corporations. In his private capacity and from no motives -of state he gave lands and privileges to many churches ; it was thus that he returned thanks for a victory, guarded against defeat, averted the divine wrath from his kingdom, or inter- ceded for the souls of his dead wives and children ; he could not well forbid his followers to do the like. The Church grew through the operation of forces, which no ruler nor dynasty could hope to suppress. Her opponents were mortal, she was immortal ; their interest in the struggle was prospective and hard to bear in mind while hers was obvious and immediate. Her motives commanded general sympathy, theirs savoured of impiety. They could not fail to rever- ence her, and she had no reverence at all for them. Thus in the Prankish Empire at the zenith of its fame we already see the signs of eclipse and fall. Therefore, when one lingers to describe however shortly the last wars of its founder, and to trace however roughlj^ the final boundaries which it at- tained, one may fear to be accused of needless pro- lixity. To those, however, who have realised that medieval Europe is little more than the wreckage of the Carolingian Empire, and have discovered how many strands of history run back to this starting 814] The Breions 279 point, such a survey must needs be of interest. Let us therefore see the furthest points to which this Empire extended, and the precautions by which they were secured. We will begin with Brittany. It plays a small part in the history of the time, but it has literary associations which make it perennially interesting. We cannot afford to ignore the school in which Roland learned the art of war, the last foothold of the continental Celt, the cradle of Celtic poetry and romance. We cannot forget that to the policy of Charles and the rude forays of his wardens was due that community of interests and sympathies which made of the discordant septs of Cornouaille and Dol, Leon and Domnonee,a united nationality ; or that to this nationality medieval France was indebted for a Bertrand du Guesclin and medieval Europe for the most attractive elements in her literature. The Bretons,* originally subdued by Dagobert the Good, had vindicated their independence in 695. For this good fortune they had to thank the Mero- vingians rather than them.selves. Never was Brit- tany so much divided as then. Of all the four provinces Cornouaille alone preserved the semblance of unity. Even here the true unit of society was the " plou " or sept, the only recognised authority that of the " machtiern," the chief of the " plou." The bulk of the tribesmen were serfs tied to the soil, who paid the chief for their holdings in labour or in kind. But the chief, absolute as he seemed, had * For the facts of Breton history anterior to the reign of Charles, La Borderie, Histoire de Breiagne^ Vols. I and II. 28o Charlemagne [800- little real power. To administer justice was his prime, almost his only function ; when sitting in the law-court he was advised and controlled by his kins- men and the tribal aristocracy. It is surprising that such a political system could withstand tlie slightest assault. Yet the Bretons were no contemptible opponents. Pepin the Short could not reduce them though he took their fortress at Vannes and taught them to respect the Prankish borders (752). Charles himself had no easy task to complete the conquest. In his reign the three Counts of Vannes, Rennes, and Nantes kept, under the Warden of the Marches, a vigilant watch upon the unfriendly tribes. In 786 the seneschal Audulf marched into the country, stormed many strongholds protected by marsh and forest, and led away many distinguished chieftains to do homage at his master's feet. In 799 Wido was equally successful ; in 800 the Breton aristocracy came together at Tours and offered their allegiance to the King in person. Once again, in 8n there was war in the country round St. Malo. The rebels, though they boasted themselves the finest horsemen in the world, recoiled before the heavy squadrons of their masters. Their army was routed, their villages were sacked, and their monasteries burnt. After that there was abundance of sullen discontent but no tribe dared to raise a finger against the Emperor. The men of the border submitted to the jurisdiction of the Imperial counts, and Broceliande, the dark, mysterious forest celebrated in so many myths and legends, lost all its terrors for the Prankish wayfarer. Lewis the Pious carried on his father's work. But with QJ -^ .^ ? '^ 814] The Breton Chirch 281 his usual indiscretion he entrusted the administra- tion of the peninsula to one Nomenoe, a native chief. Nomenoe on the death of his patron assumed the royal title with the consent of the Bretons ; in the third generation his dynasty came to an end, but the idea of unity survived and later on gave birth to the proud and independent Duchy which for five cent- uries was to hold its own against Norman and Ange- vin and Capet. Already in the first decade of the eighth century the best elements of the Breton char- acter existed in the germ. Their Christianity was in the main derived from those of their English kins- men who had fled across the Channel to escape the Teutonic invader. It was less aggressive, less ec- static, and less learned than that of the Irish monks who colonised lona and wandered to the sources of the Rhine. Yet in St. Samson and St. Teilo, St. Gildas and St. Magloire, the sympathetic reader of their legends may discern the same attractive type of character as that which is depicted in the auto- biography of St. Patrick or the history of Venerable Bede. In Brittany as in Ireland the Church was un- disciplined ; the tribal monastery and the wandering preacher were everything. The Celtic monks cared little for the realisation of political unity. Yet in Brittany they did much in other ways to advance the cause of civilisation. The orchards which they planted for a league round Dol were still to be seen in the twelfth century. Others of their settlements were in the forests ; here in the intervals of medita- tion they cleared away the brushwood, ploughed the virgin soil, and sowed the cornfields from which they 282 Charlemagne [800- fed their converts in the days of famine. Thus their teaching went beyond the creed and the paternoster ; the virtues of thrift and industry, and the arts through which alone a Hfe of peace is possible, followed in their wake. Nor was theirs the only civilising influ- ence. The tribal communities with all their feuds and narrowness of sympathies were the cradles of valour, loyalty, and many of the social virtues. Poetry already flourished in these wild surroundings. Talking birds, prophetic trees, elusive elves, all the tales of natural magic, which delight us in the frag- ments of Celtic literature were themes well known to the earliest Breton minstrels. In an atmosphere of dim tradition and unconscious yearnings for na- tional unity the legend of Arthur was taking shape as the rallying point of a new patriotism. From Brittany we turn to its neighbour Aquitaine and to the Spanish frontier. Though Lewis the Pious was no warrior and his Court seemed, so the Prankish nobles said, like nothing so much as a monastery, still he had learned from his father to regard the Saracen as his natural enemy and the Ebro as the proper boundary of his kingdom. In Duke William of Toulouse he possessed for a time a general capable of pursuing a vigorous frontier pol- icy. From 800 to 806 King and Duke pressed hard upon the Saracen. The unbelievers had shot their last bolt in 793 : animated for a moment by the fiery Emir Hischam they devastated Septimania and dashed themselves against the gates of Narbonne. But Hischam died in 796 and his successors could act only on the defensive. The border towns of 814] The Spanish March 283 Islam wavered in their allegiance ; the Franks added force to persuasion. Lerida surrendered in 800, Barcelona in 801 after a siege of seven months and a desparate attempt on the part of Emir El Hakem to relieve the garrison. During the next five years Duke William consolidated in a Spanish March not merely this acquisition, but also Cerdagne and Ampurias, Gerona and Ausona, Urgel and Besalu, Navarre and Pampelona. This done, he retired to end his days in the monastery which, inspired by the example of his friend St. Benedict, he had founded at Gellona (806). No man of equal ability could be found to succeed him and the further advance of the frontier was checked, except that in 811 Tortosa fell to the arms of Lewis. Immediately afterwards a truce was concluded with El Hakem, and it continued unbroken till the Emperor's death. During the next reign the March was broken up ; the largest fragment became the marquisate of Barcelona ; out of the re- mainder were formed upwards of a dozen counties. Of these a western group was welded into the Christian kingdom of Navarre by Sancho the Great (970-1035), another somewhat later into that of Aragon (1035). The north-east lands of the March — Barce- lona, Ampurias, Urgel, Narbonne — were peopled by a mixed race and therefore long remained in an ambi- guous attitude, now leaning to the side of Spain, now to that of France. In this vacillation we may trace the influence of those colonies of Spanish Christians with which they were planted by Charles the Great. The frontier wars of Italy had less momentous 284 Charlemagne [800- consequences for the future. Until his death in 810 Pepin was almost continuously at strife with the Byzantines and their dependents, with Beneventum, and with the Moorish pirates. But these wars were defensive and resulted in no acquisition of territory. Venice and Dalmatia, which in 805 had placed themselves under the protection of his father, soon repented of this step and returned to their old alle- giance. Somewhat later a Prankish fleet crossed over to Dalmatia only to retreat before that of the Greeks ; meanwhile the Prankish army in vain block- aded the Venetians for six months within their lagoons (809). At the peace of 812 the Empire re- nounced all claims upon these provinces and Venice was left to pursue her policy of neutrality between the West and East, until at the end of the tenth century she absorbed Dalmatia and started upon her career of eastward expansion. That the Pranks should have failed on this side was natural. Backward at the best of times in the art of naval warfare, they were hampered in all opera- tions on the Adriatic by the need of maintaining a large fleet at Genoa and Pisa for the defence of the western Httoral. Even the admirals of this fleet were content with desultory operations. On more than one occasion the Moors were expelled from Sardinia and Corsica ; in 808 Burchard the constable of the Imperial palace slew 3000 and destroyed or captured 13 ships. But no attempt was made to retaliate by attacks upon the Spanish harbours, and the Moors returned again and again to plunder. Though the peace with Emir El Hakem in 812 produced a 814] Grimvald of Benevenhim 285 temporary lull, Sardinia and Corsica remained for the whole of the Carolingian period at the mercy of such assailants. It is more surprising that the operations against Beneventum proved ineffectual. Grimvald, whom Charles in 786 had taken as a hostage for the good behaviour of his father Areghis, was in 788 allowed to return that he might succeed his father, but he proved by no means grateful. He promised on his accession that he would stamp his coinage with the name and date his charters by the years of Charles, would force his subjects to shave their beards and renounce the national dress, and would pay an annual tribute of 7000 soldi. The first two condi- tions he observed intermittently, the others not at all ; within a few years his thoughts turned like those of Areghis towards war with the Frank. No doubt he looked to Constantinople for help ; the envoys of Constantine had promised that Adalghis should come with a fleet to attack Treviso and Ravenna. At all events Charles was sufficiently alarmed to send in 792 the united forces of Italy and Aquitaine against his contumacious vassal. In 800 the war broke out again and raged continuously until the death of Grimvald in 807. He was, the national chronicler remarks, a martial prince and of a high courage. Certainly in these campaigns he showed a prudence and ability which contrasted most favourably with the impetuous and ill-regulated operations of Pepin. Trusting to his walled towns and mountain fastnesses he lured the Franks to spend their energy in sieges and forced marches, and 286 Charlemagne [800- yet, when occasion offered, he knew how to strike a decisive blow. His opponents, after reducing three of his cities (Theate in 8oi, Ortona and Luceria in 802), found themselves no nearer to conquest than before : in 803 these successes were more than count- erbalanced by the defeat and capture of a Prankish general Winighis, the dependent Duke of Spoletum. After the death of Pepin his father retired from an undertaking which had plainly become hopeless. Peace was concluded in the year 812. Under the terms arranged Grimvald III. retained the lands of the duchy in their ancient extent, promising in re- turn to make good the arrears and to continue the annual payment of tribute. But this promise was never fulfilled and in the stormy reign of Lewis the Pious the breach of faith passed unpunished. The subsequent history of Beneventum, though inglori- ous, was eventful. She oscillated between the Eastern and Western Empires, using the one as a check upon the other, and paying very little respect to either. Beneventum in fact endeavoured to imitate the policy of Venice, but she was not equally successful: she had neither the strong natural position nor the inherent vitality of her model. Exposed on three sides to the attacks of enemies more powerful than herself, she steadily declined. The first downward step was taken in 840 when Capua and Salerno broke away to form independent principalities. On a smaller scale the process of fission was often re- peated ; younger branches of the ducal house were endowed with appanages and cut themselves loose from the parent stem. Simultaneously began a 814] Southerji Italy and the Pope 287 series of encroachments from without. Laying hold of Bari and Monte Gargano in the year 840, the Saracen pirates remained a thorn in her side for thirty years. When they disappeared the Eastern Empire stepped into the vacant provinces. Apulia and the Capitanata were entirely merged in a Byzant- ine province. The dukes of Beneventum were com- pelled to pay tribute at Constantinople, and during an interregnum (891-895) the duchy was adminis- tered by Byzantine officials. A brief period of revival followed. Capua and Beneventum were reunited in the year 900: Pandulf Tete de Fer (943-981) added to them Salerno and Spoletum. Learning wisdom from the story of the past, he wished to sever the connection with the Eastern Empire whose European provinces were fast becom- ing the prey of the Saracens. For a moment there was a likelihood that the last of the Lombard States would be merged in the Holy Roman Empire of the Ottos. But with the death of Pandulf (981) vacillation and decline set in once more. The Nor- mans appeared in Southern Italy and marked his dominions for their prey. Capua fell before them in 1062; Salerno in 1075. The successors of Pandulf threw themselves upon the protection of the Holy See ; but in 1077 their line became extinct and their possessions escheated to St. Peter. The same fate was shared in the thirteenth century by Spoleto. Thus at length those claims upon Southern Italy, which Hadrian had formulated in 774, found their realisation,, and the " immunity " which the Caro- lingians had granted to the Popes threatened to Charlemagne [800- assume the proportions and prerogatives of an in- dependent kingdom. Unlike Beneventum the Duchy of Spoletum al- ways formed a part of the Empire. It was one of the five margraviates which in the ninth century usurped almost the whole of the Imperial power in Italy. The other four were Ivrea, Turin, or as it is sometimes called the Mark of Italy, Tuscany, and Friuli. Three of the four were built up by heredi- tary counts in the course of the ninth century. Tuscany, for example, was gradually acquired by the family which ruled over Lucca and the neigh- bourhood. Friuli, on the contrary, was a Lombard duchy which Charles had spared when he parcelled out the rest of Northern Italy in counties of com- paratively small extent. Friuli formed a bridge between the German and Italian lands of the Em- pire ; it reached on the north-east to the valley of the Danube and on the south it touched the coast line of the Adriatic. It was too large for safety and underwent a gradual process of dismemberment. In 828 the counties of Carinthia, Carniola, and Istria were removed from its jurisdiction. Out of what remained Otto the Great constituted the Mark of Verona-Aquileia. But here, as in the rest of North- ern Italy, communes soon sprang up ; the power of the Imperial representative was undermined by them. Verona, Padua, Vicenza, and other cities were granted or usurped the rights of self-government ; Treviso became the centre of another and a smaller mark in the hands of whose governor were united what fragments of Imperial jurisdiction yet remained. In 814] Later Developments in Italy 289 the twelfth century this Mark also was abolished, and the prerogatives formerly exercised by its governors were transferred to the House of Este. The transmutations of the other Italian margravi- ates were even more important in determining the future course of history. Until the advent of the Saxon Emperors the struggles of their owners for the Crown of Italy are almost the sole traces of po- litical activity in the peninsula. Berenger of Ivrea, his namesake of Friuli, and Lambert of Spoletum all had their brief day of greatness. Otto I. reduced these upstart principalities to their old position, but their story is far from ending with his coronation. In 1027 Spoletum and Tuscany were united in the hands of Bonifacio, a staunch adherent of the Franc- onian Emperors. His family became extinct in the fourth generation : its accumulated possessions drifted out as a derelict upon the troubled sea of Italian politics, and through the bequest of the Countess Matilda became an additional source of feud between the Papacy and Empire. In like man- ner Turin and Ivrea were brought together when, in 1060, Adelaide of Turin wedded Oddone of Savoy. Their union proved the starting point of the only dynasty which has survived all the vicissitudes of Italian history. To pursue this fascinating subject further would demand a separate volume. It is enough to have illustrated what the future had in store for the king- dom of Lombardy. All these developments and revolutions followed as the inevitable consequence of the arrangements made by Charles. From the 290 Charlemagne [800- first moment that a single province became a heredi- tary fief the rest was merely a matter of time. We may blame the son and the grandsons of the Em- peror ; but we must bear in lind that he bequeathed to them a vicious system. We pass on to consider the settlement of the Ger- man frontier. On the south-east this was effected once for all in the year 803. During the summer of that year, which he passed at Regensburg with the ostensible object of hunting in the Bohmerwald, Charles formed the Ostmark, and permitted the Avars who dwelled outside it to be ruled by their own national chiefs on condition of accepting Christianity and acknow- ledging his overlordship. After the year 826 we hear no more of the Avars; they are swallowed up in the hordes of Slavonic immigrants. From the latter the Empire had nothing to fear. It is not before the opening years of the tenth century that Ger- many finds herself again confronted by a barbarian invader coming in from the lower valley of the Danube. Of the two margraves, by whom the Ost- mark was administered, one kept watch upon the Bohemians and Moravians, while the other held his station in the valley, where to-day stand Pressburg and Vienna. South of the Mark and outside its limits were the Carentanians in Styria, Carniola, and Carinthia. The Margrave of Friuli was in a general sense responsible for their tranquillity, but they had a count and a bishop of their own. The Ostmark retained its original constitution until the year 876. The two margraviates were then united in the hands il.jmimviisiiR jicfj. RELIQUARY AT AACHEN; SAID TO CONTAIN THE BONES OF CHARLES. i^From VHault^ '^ Ckarlemagne.^^) 814] Expeditions to Boliemia 291 of a single duke. Conquered by the Magyars, re- conquered by Otto the Great, the duchy retained its individuality intact through all changes of ownership and became in due time, under the name of Austria, the nucleus of the Hapsburg dominions. The Bohemian question was settled with more difficulty and less finality. The Emperor sent two expeditions against the Czechs and neither achieved a very definite result. In 805 three armies entered Bohemia from three several quarters. One from Saxony crossed the Elbe and marched through the Erzgebirge ; a second from Bavaria came down the valley of the Moldau ; Charles the Young brought a third from Franconia to the sources of the Eger and there effected a junction with the other two. For forty days they wasted the cultivated lands on both sides of the Elbe. Some of the Czechs found refuge in fortified camps, at Wysehrad and elsewhere, from which the invader vainly tried to dislodge them ; others, taking to the woods, carried on an effective warfare of skirmish and surprise. The provisions of the Franks were soon exhausted and they retreated homewards. Next year the Burgundians, Aleman- nians, and Bavarians were sent to make a demon- stration in Bohemia; they returned, we are told " without any grave disaster," and presumably with- out any considerable success. Charles abandoned these aggressive tactics for the future. West of the Fichtelgebirge he formed a Bohemian Mark which he committed to the charge of Audulf, the Seneschal, whose previous success against the Bretons had given him a reputation of quite another kind than one might 292 Charlemagne [800- expect from his literary surname of " Menalcas. It is possible that Audulf's vigorous methods extended Prankish influence beyond the mountains ; for Bo- hemian tradition speaks of an annual tribute — ^00 silver marks, 120 head of cattle — paid annually at Aachen, and the name of Charles has to this day, in the language of the Czechs, the significance of "King." Bohemia is mentioned in the will of Lewis the Pious (817) as forming a part of the Empire.* We gather from our scanty evidence that Bohemia was more vigorously and persistently assailed both by Charles and by his successors than any other of the eastern lands. As yet the Teuton saw little to be gained by migrating in this direction. The early conquests of the Emperor were regarded as more than sufficient. The population of Germany was sparse, and it seemed mere folly to acquire new territories while in Saxony, Pranconia, and Suabia there remained so many unoccupied tracts which would richly repay the cultivator. Thus the country of the Avars was abandoned alnx)st as soon as won. The Margraves of the Elbe were not expected, like their successors under the Ottos, to carry the Im- perial eagle further to the east. It was enough to hold what had been already won and to chastise from time to time the presumption of Germany's barbarous neighbours. Only in the case of Bohemia was this moderation cast aside. The valley of the Moldau was fertile and easy of access. From early times it had been the haunt of adventurous Prankish merchants. One of these, Samo by name, had actu- * Vide W. W. Tomek, Geschichte Bohtnens (Prag, 1S75), PP- 16 foil. 814) The Slav and the Teuton 293 ally raised himself to the position of a powerful king (623). Others returned to tell of his good fortune and to indicate the vulnerable points of this servile people. It was, therefore, only natural to regard the Czech as fore-doomed to be the subject of the Frank. From the first the latter laid his plans without fear and without compunction. On this conquest the first Emperor was less passion- ately bent than his descendants and imitators. Im- portant as they were, the campaigns of Charles the Young and of Audulf, the Seneschal, pale into in- significance when compared with those which Lewis the German undertook. At the beginning of the ninth century racial antipathies were merely nascent. Many years have yet to elapse before we catch the first notes of the now familiar diatribes against " the stinking race," the born helots of the Teutonic peoples, who are to be " tempted with hay like oxen and driven with blows like asses." Nor was the Slav a political danger in the reign of Charles. It is true that vagrant colonies of the Czechs drifted into the valley of the Main and settled there ; but the Moravian Empire and the Pan-Slavonic federation were undreamed of. The intention of Charles was indeed to annex Bohemia and to denationalise the inhabitants ; but he found the missionary more serviceable than armies : he planned a peaceable and gradual assimilation. By the year 824 German and Italian priests were already preaching beyond the Bohmerwald under the paternal guidance of Papacy and Empire. In Moravia and all the adjacent lands the German party became so strong that Cyril and 294 Charlemagne [800- Methodius, the "apostles of the Slav," found it ex- pedient, Greeks of Byzantium though they were, to acknowledge the Papal supremacy and to fall into line with the German hierarchy. At a later period these peaceful weapons failed the Teuton. Mojmir and Svatopluk brought beneath their sway Bohemia, Silesia, the land of the Sorbs, and eastern Galicia. Vigorously assailed by the armies and the diplo- macy of Lewis the German their power held its own, and tlireatened to form no inconsiderable barrier to the further expansion of the Teutonic races. The invasion of the Magyars, while it shook to the foundations the political edifice of Charles the Great, at least averted the Slavonic peril. The realm of Svatopluk fell asunder: part went to the iVIagyar, part to the rising power of Poland ; the remnants became the Bohemian duchy and this a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, ruled by a dynasty of Ger- man sympathies and a Church in which the German element was predominant. Radical indeed was the change in the eastern situation between the years 800 and 1000, and the policy of the Empire changed in like measure. But with regard to Bohemia the ideas originated by Charles the Great were never abandoned until the time when the influence of the Luxemburgs fostered a new outburst of the national Czechish sentiment and withdrew Bohemia from its more intimate contact with Germany. Of the lands between the Elbe, the Saale, and the Oder there is less to say. Charles the Great found and left them peopled by scattered tribes, among whom the Sorbs, the Wiltzes, and the Abotrites were 814] The Elbe Frontier 295 the most prominent. Some of these tribes were warlike and obstinately devoted to paganism ; none were 'Sufficiently numerous to cause grave anxiety. They were overawed by occasional raids and paid tribute to the Emperor. The Abotrites, as being the most peaceful of them all, were encouraged to estab- lish a hegemony over their neighbours and to colon- ise those parts of Transalbingian Saxony which the ruthless deportations of 804 had left a solitude. For the defence of the borders the Emperor built with Prankish labour and garrisoned with Prankish troops a line of forts extending from Magdeburg to Forcheim in the upper valley of the Main. Over this boundary line the Slavs came unhindered to exchange amber and other rarities for the wares of Prankish mer- chants. But the latter were forbidden to cross it ; the danger of an illicit trade in weapons was too great. Thus in Northern Germany the Teuton stood purely on the defensive : the formless agglomerate of tribes to the eastward was left to be subdued in the future by the Saxon nobles, the Hansa cities, the knights of the Teutonic order, and the archbishops of the see of Magdeburg. The advance to the Oder begins with Otto I. rather than with Charles. But on this side an enemy more terrible than the Slav had now appeared. From the peninsula of Denmark the Northmen were watching uneasily the movements of the Pranks in the Transalbingian Mark. A hostile power had replaced their old allies, the Saxons : a power which not improbably would be tempted to retaliate for maritime piracies by an overwhelming irruption on the landward side. 296 Charlemagne [800- Their fears would seem to have been groundless ; it was enough for the Emperor that he had stationed upon the coast of Frisia and Neustria a fleet suf- ficiently numerous to repel the buccaneers ; at that moment nothing was further from his thoughts than a campaign beyond the Eider. The time was still far distant when Denmark should pay tribute to the Holy Roman Empire. But from the moment that Charles planted his colonies of Abotrites in Transal- bingia, King Godefrid began to show signs of un- easiness (804). In 808 the Northman attacked his new neighbours with the support of their rivals the Wiltzes. He followed up his campaign by con- structing, south of the Eider, an immense earthen rampart reaching from sea to sea. It had only one gate large enough to admit waggons and horses; nothing of the kind had been seen in Germany since the daj's of the Romans ; known as the Dane- work, it long survived its builder and remained the boundary line between the Teuton and the Scandina- vian until the year 934.* For more security Godefrid destroyed at the same time the neighbouring em- porium of Ruric which had hitherto formed the meeting-ground of Prankish and Danish merchants. The Emperor showed great willingness to treat with the Northmen. In 804 he had assented to pro- posals for a conference between his counts and their chiefs ; he did the same in 809, although the other side had failed to keep the first appointment. Only when he found a peaceful settlement impracticable did he think of war. Even then he showed an in- * Giesebrecht I. p. 234 (5th edition). 814] Charles and the Danes 297 clination to stand upon the defensive. He ordered new ships to guard the coast ; he stationed garrisons at all the principal harbours and landing places ; in the centre of Nordalbingia he founded the important stronghold of Itzehoe to watch the Danework. The courage of Godefrid rose when he saw the patience of his foe. He is said to have boasted that he would go with his army to Aachen and see if the Emperor would fight to defend his own palace. At his insti- gation a fleet of two hundred corsairs fell upon Frisia, ravaged far and wide, and departed only on receiving tribute from the inhabitants. The Emperor was roused at length. He projected a serious attack upon the Danework. At the head of a large army he marched out to Verden — it was the last occasion on which he took the field. Fortunately his enfeebled frame was not subjected to the test of a campaign. At Verden he received the news that Godefrid had fallen by the hand of an injured jarl. The King's fall was followed by a civil war of the kind familiar to readers of Scandinavian history. His son and heir, Hemming by name, gladly offered peace to the Franks that he might be undisturbed in dealing with his rebellious subjects (811). He fell in battle only a year later, but Harold and Raginfrid, his successors, renewed the treaty ; they, too, had difficulties at home — their Norwegian dominions were in revolt. The Emperor accepted the respite and left the Northmen unmolested. All that he did was to concentrate new fleets at Ghent and Boulogne. On the sea coast naval was substituted for military service. At Boulogne the old Roman harbour and 298 Charlemagne [800- lighthouse were repaired. This was something, but not enough. He hardly realised that the time had come when the Franks must at any cost hold the command of the North Sea. The Monk of St. Gall is responsible for two stories respecting his relations with the pirates, which have obtained wide currency. One relates how, in a cer- tain campaign, the Emperor took the young children of the Northmen and slew all of them who were taller than his sword ; the other, in a gentler vein, that one day sitting at meat in his hall at Narbonne he saw from the window the flash of white sails far out on the horizon, and said : " These are no mer- chants," and rose from his seat and watched them out of sight, and shed bitter tears, saying: "I am very sorrowful, for I see what woes these men will bring upon my posterity and their subjects." Both the tales appear to be fabrications. The Emperor never attacked the Danes in their own country, nor did the long ships of the vikings pass, in his day, through the Pillars of Hercules. The narrators of after generations read his life in the light of their own experience ; they could not but suppose that their hero had foretold and had striven to avert the most fatal calamity which ever befell his Empire. True it is that the future caused him much anxiety. But the danger which he feared was that of dynastic dissensions. He appears to have thought that, could these be avoided, enemies beyond the frontier and a feeble administration within it were dangers of sec- ondary moment. His own experience and the history of the Merovingians taught him the danger 814] The Partition of 806 299 of a divided succession, yet he shrank from disinherit- ing his younger sons. To satisfy their claims, and at the same time avoid the total dismemberment of the Empire, he drew up in 806 a deed of partition, which was approved by the Prankish magnates and the Pope.* It bequeathed to Lewis Aquitaine, Gas- cony, Septimania, Provence, and Southern Burgundy : to Pepin, Lombardy, Italy, Bavaria, and Alemannia south of the Danube ; to their elder brother, Charles^ all the remaining dominions, namely, Frankland, and Northern Burgundia, Frisia, Saxony, Hesse, and Franconia. In making the partition Charles had a delicate problem to solve. Like his father before him, he wished to draw the lines of demarcation in such a way that they might be easily obliterated when the opportunity should arise. But the situation with which he started was more complex than that of 768. Three under-kingdoms were already in exist- ence, and there were good reasons why they should not change hands at his death. Each must therefore form the nucleus of the portion assigned to its pre- sent owner. It followed that the federal kingdoms would be far more homogeneous than had been those of Charles himself and Carloman his brother. To prevent the growth of national antipathies certain precautions were observed. The first was to place the elder brother in a position of distinct superiority. * Probably the assent of the Pope was asked because the testament provided for the descent of the Patriciate. The document is printed by Boretius Capp. Vol. i, p. 126 (M. H. G.J and by Bouquet, lierum Script. V. p. 771. 300 Charlemagne [800- He was to have the Rhine-land and ancient Francia with all their strongholds and proud associations. Moreover, the area of his kingdom was roughly speak- ing equal to that of the other two taken together. Legally Pepin and Lewis could not be bound to ac- cept their brother's lead ; but in fact they would be too weak to venture on a course of open opposition. The second precaution was to give all three in com- mon the dignity of the Patriciate, by which they would be pledged to act harmoniously for the pro- tection of the Papacy and the common interests of Christendom. The third was copied from the par- tition effected by Pepin. To each of the existing under-kingdoms were annexed certain provinces of a different race and of doubtful allegiance ; all the brothers were burdened in equal measure with the duty of maintaining some part of the frontier. To Charles the Young were assigned Saxony and Brit- tany, to Pepin Bavaria and the Mark of Spoletum, to Lewis the Spanish provinces and the dependent Duchy of Gascony. Lest we should suppose this arrangement fortuitous, the Emperor expresses his intention in the clearest terms. The brothers are to live in peace and concord ; their disputes are to be settled by arbitration ; each shall help the others at need against the attacks of foreign enemies. The realm of the Franks, though divided into three sec- tions, is to preserve an essential unity. One clause of the deed recommends that intermarriages be en- couraged between the subjects of the several king- doms. The possibility of a disputed succession is foreseen and a definite rule laid down. Should one 8141 Details of the Partition 301 of the brothers die his subjects shall have the power of choosing whether they will be ruled by one of his children ; and the uncles are forbidden to question the title of their nephew. Should there be no heir whom the people will accept, the vacant kingdom is to accrue in equal shares to the surviving brothers. Nor does the Emperor leave the mode of division indeterminate. He defines the shares into which each one of the three kingdoms shall, when necessary, be divided and thus provides for every possible con- tingency. He appears to have expected that, as in previous cases of partition, two of the three collateral dynasties would be extinguished or repudiated at no great distance of time. Altogether, the articles of partition are a remarkable instance of natural sagacity struggling against inherited prejudice and mischiev- ous tradition. It is a little strange that no attempt should be made to devise the Imperial dignity. Con- ferred upon the elder son it would have greatly strengthened his claim to suzerainty over his juniors. It would seem that Charles had not yet learned to think of the Empire as hereditary, or even as a per- manent institution. He himself had been elected ; the Franks and Romans might, if they chose, find him a successor. That these precautions would have proved effect- ual is hardly probable. They were, however, not put to the proof ; only four years later Charles the Young died leaving no heir, and Pepin soon followed him. There remained to share the inheritance only Lewis and his nephew the young Bernhard of Italy. The latter was a mere boy, and the legitimacy of his 302 Charlemagne [800- birth was a matter of dispute ; it would have been easy to avoid a divided succession by setting him aside. The Emperor, however, refused to take the opportunity; he treated Bernhard as the lawful heir of Pepin, only stipulating that Italy should be treated as a fief of the Prankish crown. This arrangement was received with general approbation. Charles had no further occasion to legislate respecting his in- heritance. It was well for his peace of mind that he could not forecast the future ; otherwise he would have known that within a few years the nephew would be stripped of his share by the uncle, and that the latter would in his turn fall a victim to the jealousies and unnatural ambitions of his own child- ren. Till the moment of his father's death Lewis remained an unknown quantity. His career in Aqui- taine had been so chequered that little information as to his character could be deduced from it. In all fiscal matters his administration had been disastrously negligent, and the utmost efforts of the Imperial missi were once required to extricate the finances of Aqui- taine from their embarrassments. On the other hand, his frontier policy had been well conceived and the results were creditable to his generalship. And if he had shown some weakness in the face of Aquitanian feudalism, he could point with legitimate pride to the wholesome reformation which, with the help of St. Benedict, he had effected in the Aqui- tanian Church. The Couronnement de Louis assures us that already the Prince was despised by the Prankish warriors as an effeminate devotee ; but this poem was written in the light of later events. 814] Character of Lewis 303 We know that Charles had on several occasions ex- pressed his satisfaction with the bearing of his second son. There is no reason to beHeve that his heart misgave him when he committed the fortunes of the Franks to that feeble hand. The character of Lewis was a complex one, and his good or evil fortune had endowed him, far more richly than his father, with certain of the softer vir- tues. But the general impression with which we are left by the panegyrics of his admirers borders very nearly on contempt. They show us a man eminently fitted to be the ornament of a cloister cell, and by his very virtues disqualified for a position of command. His learning was more profound than that of Charles; but while the father displayed in matters intellectual an omnivorous curiosity which spurred the scholars of his Court into every branch of useful study, the son had the narrow interests of a commentator, and loved the best those branches of knowledge from which no advantage of any kind could reasonably be expected. We are told that Lewis abhorred the classical poets for their paganism. The trait reveals the obedient disciple of Alcuin ; only the instincts of Alcuin had been sounder than his reason, and his austere orthodoxy was tempered by a genuine taste for literature. Charles maintained his personal as- cendancy over the most turbulent of aristocracies partly through his tact and genial humour, partly by the stern dignity which made an angry word or an offended glance from him more terrible to the object of it than a flash of lightning. Lewis could neither conciliate nor overawe. Demure, silent, unassuming, 304 Charleina^ne [800- he was the least conspicuous figure in his own Court ; no man ever heard him jest ; he knew not how to laugh. Both father and son were pious at heart. But the piety of the old Emperor was martial, that of a man having authority ; he went to church as to a parade-ground ; he went to learn whether his cho- risters sang in tune, whether their vestments were properly worn, whether they knew the words of command and the orders of the day. Lewis from the introit to the recessional was wholly absorbed in his own pious meditations. At the church door he invariably fell upon his face and before God and his own servants confessed himself a miserable sinner. As he prayed in his stall one might see his face working with emotion and the tears streaming down his cheeks. In business the methods of the two men were equally dissimilar. The father enquired into every affair, mastered all its details, and cut the knot of every difficulty which it involved ; whatever might be his faults, indolence and indecision were not among their number. The son distrusted his own judgment and loathed the burden of responsibility. He was never so happy as when he could leave everything to his ministers and devote himself to the pursuits of a student. This indolence was the more serious because his agents were rarely chosen with discre- tion. Those of his father passed through a long and severe probation ; his own confidence was reck- lessly bestowed on the companions of the mo- ment. Charles had been steadfast in his policy and in his friendships ; Lewis was fickleness itself. To make the matter worse, Lewis was weakly lavish 314] Weakness of Letvis 305 where his father had been wisely generous. The gifts of the one were a reward for faithful services ; Lewis would give away his very crown to propitiate a worthless friend or regain the affection of a disobe- dient son. It may have been the hope of strengthening his successor's position, but more probably emulation of Byzantium was the chief motive which now induced the old Emperor to forego his former moderation and to declare the Imperial title hereditary. Before the year 812 there had been the danger that such a step would involve his descendants in an awkward feud with their rivals on the Bosphorus. Their legiti- mate responsibilities were serious enough without the addition of a dubious title to be defended. The treaty of 812 removed these apprehensions. Since the Greeks had acknowledged Charles as the equal of their own Basileus, they could not well complain if he exercised the same prerogative of nominating his successor. A legal sanction had been given to the second Empire by those who had at first impugned it as a usurpation. If legal it had a right to be per- manent. If permanent it ought to descend in the same way as the power on which it was modelled. And it was too valuable as an embellishment of the royal dignity to be lightly abandoned. Accordingly, the magnates were convened at Aachen and invited to express their opinion as to the disposal of the Empire. They knew what answer was expected of them. Eginhard, acting as their spokesman, fell on his knees before his master's footstool and suggested the name of Lewis. The latter was then summoned 3o6 Charlemagne [800- from Aquitaine to receive the decision. A coronation in the church at Aachen followed immediately after- wards (Sept. II, 813). Warned by his own experi- ence of papal pretensions, Charles asked neither the consent nor the assistance of Leo. Father and son were the only actors in the ceremony, which, as far as possible, was divested of ecclesiastical formalities. After prayers appropriate to the occasion had been offered, the old Emperor made a long address to his son. The substance of it, as given by the biographer of Lewis, was this : that he should love God and protect the churches ; that he should show unfailing kindness to all members of the royal house ; that he should respect the clergy as his fathers and love the people as his children. Having given a solemn promise to observe these admonitions Lewis, at his father's bidding, took the crown from off the altar and placed it on his own head. Of this remarkable proceeding all the nobles and superior clergy were the witnesses. It was a symbolical protest that the future Emperor held his dignity of no superior save God alone. In fact, everything was done that forms could do to confer an unencumbered title or to de- fend a man from the weakness of his own resolution. Such as the advantage was, three years had not passed before Lewis bartered it for the inconstant friendship of the Holy See* ; and in the course of his unhappy * The Papacy resented the action of Charles in crowning Lewis. In 816 Stephen IV. came to Rheims and persuaded Lewis to be crowned a second time by him. So, too, when Lewis ci-owned his eldest son Lothaire in 817 : in 823 Pascal enticed Lothaire to Rome and crowned him again. 8H] Last Hours of the Emperor 307 reign he did not blush to avow himself the creature of his own episcopate. From the coronation Lewis returned immediately to his own kingdom. So long as his father lived his new powers were to remain in abeyance. But the sands of his father's life were almost run. Charles hunted and did business as usual after the departure of his son ; but gout and the prodigious labours of forty years had enfeebled his mighty frame. He had reached the span allotted by the Psalmist to humanity ; he had lasted full twenty years longer than most great statesmen of the Middle Ages. It is little wonder that the romancers speak of him as a hundred or two hundred years old ; among the men of that day he was indeed a Methuselah. He felt that his work was done, and contemplated retiring to a monastery for a brief period of rest before he should go to his last account. Already, two years before the coronation of Lewis, he had made his testament. The substance of it is preserved in Eginhard's bio- graphy. He directed that three-fourths of the gold and silver in his treasury should be immediately sealed up and reserved for distribution at his death among the twenty-one metropolitan churches of the Empire. The remaining fourth continued to be used for current expenses: when he died or retired to a religious house it was to be divided in four. One of these parts was to be added to the share of the churches, a second to be divided among his children, a third was assigned to the slaves and servants of the Palace, while the fourth was to be expended in alms- giving. To the poor he also bequeathed whatever 3o8 Charlemagne [800- might be realised by the sale of his books and house- hold furniture. A special clause was added respect- ing three tables of silver, and a fourth of gold, which were the most prized of his possessions. The first was engraved with a plan of Constantinople ; he left it to the basilica of St. Peter in Rome. The second, bearing a plan of Rome, was for the church of St. ApoUinaris at Ravenna — a town with which as Patri- cian he was closely associated. The third was a planisphere representing the courses of the stars, and the universe as conceived in the Ptolemaic system ; it was curiously wrought out of three discs joined to- gether. Together with the golden tablet, of which the design is not specified, it was to be broken up, and the metal equally divided between his heirs and the poor.* The Emperor spent the last weeks of the year 813 at Aachen. He occupied his time in almsgiving, in prayer, and in correcting his manuscripts of the sacred texts. Late in the month of January he was seized by a violent fever on which a pleurisy soon supervened. He had never placed his faith in physicians and now refused their advice, preferring to try his favourite remedy of starvation. This only made him weaker ; on the seventh day his condition was so plainly hopeless that the arch-chaplain was called in to give him the eucharist. Next morning, a little before sunrise, he passed quietly away. His last audible words are said to have been : " Lord, * Lewis executed the will with the exception of these three be- quests. The maps and the golden tablet remained in the Imperial treasury until 842, when they were melted down by Lothaire. PLANISPHERE SHOWING THE PTOLEMAIC SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSE, WITH HELL AT THE CENTRE. Charlemagne owned one of these, and it is mentioned in his wilL 8141 His Death and Burial 309 into thy hands I commend my spirit." That same day he was buried in the church of the Virgin ; we may perhaps infer from this uncourtly haste that like his father he had developed dropsical symptoms. Tradition affirms that he was placed on a chair of state, within a little shrine or chapel of stone, and that his sword Joyeuse was laid unsheathed across his knees. Tel sepulture n'ara mais rois en terre II ne gist mie, ain^ois i siet acertes, Sur ses genolx I'espee en son poing destre Encore menace la pute gent averse. In the year looo A.D. an idle curiosity led Otto III. to test the truth of the legend. One who claims to have been present on that occasion informs us that they found the body still in a sitting position, the garments intact, the flesh uncorrupted. The dead Emperor grasped a sceptre, and about his neck there was a gold chain. The nails on his fingers had grown so long that they had pierced the gauatlets which he wore. There was no sign of decay except that the tip of the nose had disappeared. Otto caused the disfigurement to be repaired with gold, and the corpse to be clad in white raiment. He took away the chain, also one of the Emperor's teeth for a relic. The story is not without its diffi- culties. It is evident from the hurried nature of the funeral that the body was not embalmed ; and anti- quarians have failed to discover at Aachen any traces of a vault such as the epics and the historian of Otto III. describe. If so conspicuous a tomb had 3IO Charlemagne [800- ever existed it would hardly escape pillage by the Northmen at the end of the ninth and beginning of the tenth centuries. Eginhard has preserved the epitaph which was inscribed on a triumphal arch above the tomb : " Beneath this covering lies the body of Charles, the Great and Orthodox Emperor, who nobly enlarged the realm of the Franks and reigned happily for 47 years. He died at the age of 70, in the year of the Incarnation 814." The lamentations of his subjects were long and loud. The Empire which he had founded was still popular; the prospect of its dissolution filled all men with dismay. " Woe to thee, Rome, and woe to the people of Rome. The great and glorious Charles is taken from you. Woe to thee, Italy, and to all thy fair cities. Many are the afflictions that Frankland has known, but never knew she such a sorrow as when at Aachen she laid in the earth the august and eloquent Charles." Such was the threnody which an obscure monk com- posed for him. The only censures which jarred with the chorus of panegyric proceeded from the Church in whose service the best years of the Emperor had been spent. Two legends concerning him, to which she set the seal of her approval, are both depreciatory. One told how the monk Wettin, being carried over purgatory in a vision, saw Charles tortured there by the worm which dieth not, and lamenting for the sins which he had committed in the flesh. The second, of Spanish origin, related that when his vir- THE CHARLEMAGNE OF EFIC. FROM THE PAINTING BV ALBRECHT OURER. 814] Posthumotts Verdicts 3 1 1 tues were weighed against his vices the latter would have sunk the beam, had not St. James of Com- postella thrown into the opposite scale the churches which his champion had built. The Papacy long refused to canonise the man who had exalted the secular above the spiritual power. Even before the Protestants of the Reformation had taunted her with the Libri Carolini she cherished a deep though unspoken resentment against the mighty Emperor whose examples of contumacy had nerved the Hohenstauffen. It was Frederic Bar- barossa who at length obtained place in the calendar for Charlemagne, and it was an anti-Pope who acceded to his prayer. Only a Ghibelline poet could, even in the fourteenth century, have set Charlemagne in Paradise by the side of Joshua and Godfrey of Boulogne. That he ranked until the present century as a Father of the Church, and that his name remained upon the roll of saints, must be attributed entirely to the strength of popular feel- ing in his favour, and to the deep policy of Louis XL, who thought that the idea of the French monarchy could not be better served than by link- ing it with the name and cult of Charlemagne. The laity judged better than the priesthood. The Catho- lic Church had never a more faithful servant, and the national Church of Germany was the proudest monument of his regime. S^^SS ^^^^^ ^' ^ ^w ^^^^^fo ^eji^- ?^'^ CHAPTER XII FATE OF THE FRANKS — THE LEGEND OF CHARLEMAGNE TO all intents and purposes the Prankish Empire w as buried in the grave prCharieFat Aa chen. Five of his descendants wore the imperial title : Lewis the Pious (840), Lothaire (855), Lewis IL (87s), Charles the Bald (877), Charles the Fat (888). Theoretically the Empire only came to an end when the German nobles deposed Charles the Fat and chose Arnulf of Carinthia to be their king. In reality the last seventy years of its history had been one long death-agony ; its fall was welcomed with delight by the nations which had belonged to it ; oxily at th e Papal Court and amo ng some families claiming descent from the first Emperor was there any affection for the old idea of European unity. As we have seen above, the caus es of decay are principally to be found in the in ternal organisation of^the Empire. Charles the Great ruled by the help of the Church and of a rude feudalism. Presuming on his control of the hierarchy, trusting to his per- sonal influence with the Holy See and with national 312 Dozvnfall of the Franks 3 1 3 synods, he allowed the wealth and power of the clerg y to increase without lim it ; conscious that all the nobles were his vassals, and over-confident that their special oath of fealty would keep them loyal to his successors, he wa tched wi th indifference, or at least neglected to check, the_ process B y which all freeh olders were forced to group themselves round the banner of count or bishop. It was the dllke an"c rtKe count, the abbot and .theJblsh.apZivJio.-Sapped | the _ vigour of _t_he C_arolingian Empire. . ' But special and accidental causes accelerated the downfall. The Prankish nation, which for so many generations had imposed its yoke upon Teuton and Latin alike ; which had furnished Charles with war- riors, administrators, ecclesiastics; which more than any other race had assimilated the Imperial idea — this nation came to a sudden and a violent end through the weakness of Lewis the Pious and the savage am- bitions of his family. Bewildered by the arguments with which they were plied by the several factions of the royal house, loving the Empire, but uncertain in which line the Empire should rightfully descend, the flower of the race were drawn some to this camp and some to that ; Fj^Jlk^.^HiLS'^'' ^g^-ii'^st Franks for the possession of the Empire, and knew not that the prize^fot" which~thry-fau-giit was crumbling away to nothingness. These fatal feuds began in the year 817 when Lewis the Pious first broached the calami- tous project of admitting his children into partner- ship ; like Lear, he put off his clothes before he went to bed, and the fate of Lear was his reward. The Franks, among whom he had thrown the apple of 314 Charlemagne discord, survived him but a few years. Their power as a nation was broken on the field of Fontanet (841). At Fontanet the sons of Lewis fought for supremacy ; it was the bloodiest battle remembered in the annals of the Franks ; forty thousand of their best and bravest were left upon the field. Regino of Prum remarks that from that day they who had been the conquerors of the world could barely mus- ter men enough to guard their own frontiers.* The result is seen in the treaty of Verdun (843). It recognises three kingdoms. The greater part of Gaul, the greater part of Germany, have broken away from the Frankish supremacy ; though ruled by princes of the Carolingian stem, they owe no obedience to the Emperor Lothaire. He and his Franks were left to content themselves with a strag- gling Middle Kingdom. This kingdom was indeed of no inconsiderable extent. It reached from the Rhine to the borders of the Papal States ; it included the Lombard Plain and the valley of the Rhone, Alsace and Lorraine, the country between the Rhine and Meuse, also, westward of that river, the province known as Old Francia, from which Clovis had started on his career of conquest. But for the nation of Charles and the heir of his title the treaty of Verdun was a cruel humiliation. There was, however, worse to come. The Franks were paralysed by the weight of two hostile nations on their frontiers. They could not hold even the Middle Kingdom. On the death of Lothaire in 855 it was divided between his three sons. Italy be- *M. H. G. Scriptores, i,, 568. Downfall of the Franks 315 came a separate state ; the Rhone valley followed suit.* Only Lotharingia remained to the men of Aachen and Tournay. They had ceased to be the masters of the other nations ; next they ceased to be masters of themselves. On the death of their king, Lothaire II., in 869, his uncles, Lewis the German and Charles the Bald, made haste to divide the prey. They were the sovereigns of Germany and Gaul re- spectively — or, to use the deceptive terminology of that age., of the East Franks and the West Franks. By the treaty of Mersen in 870 they completed the partition of Lotharingia. The boundary as then de- fined ran from Herstal on the Meuse to Metz upon the Rhine. The Franks living west of that line were incorporated with France ; those to the east with Ger- many. Henceforth the struggle for the Empire was to be waged, not between the Austrasian and his sub- jects, but between the kings of the various national states which had taken shape within the husk of the Empire. The Imperial pretensions of Lewis II. (855- 875) were based upon the kingdom of Italy, those of his successor, Charles the Bald (875-877), upon the kingdom of the West Franks. Charles the Fat enjoyed his brief supremacy (882-887) only because the three kingdoms, France, Germany, and Italy, one after another, chose him for their sovereign and lord. *The sons of Lothaire I. were : Ludwig II., who obtained Italy with the title of Emperor, Lothaire, from whom the kingdom of Lotharingia took its name, and Charles. The latter took the king- dom of Provence, comprising Provence proper, the Duchy of Lyons, and Upper Burgundy. In 856 Upper Burgundy was wrested from liim by his brothers ; in 888 by the great treaty of partition it became an independent kingdom. 3 1 6 Charlemagne The Empire had come to be the merest gewgaw, an empty title of honour, conferring on the holder no accession of power, entailing no new responsibilities. As for the Franks, the Northmen completed what fraternal strife had begun. About the year 880 the long ships came to Frisia. The invaders found the land defenceless. They pitched their camp at Maestricht and sallied unhindered up the Meuse and up the Rhine where their fancy led them. All the great cities and strongholds of the Franks — Tongres, Liege, Julich, Koln, Trier, Nimeguen — fell before them. The flames consumed what the spoilers could not carry away. As a crowning outrage, the vikings plundered Aachen and stabled their horses in the dome which Charles had built.* In time they de- parted ; in time church and town arose from their ashes. But it was no longer as the capital of the Franks, no longer as the seat of Empire that Aachen was to figure in the history of Europe. The hand of the Danes fell heavily enough upon the rest of Northern Europe. Already they had swept the northern frontier of Germany, burning Hamburg and chasing away its bishop, in the time of Lewis the Pious. The valour of Lewis IIL could only purchase a temporary respite for France ; and a few years later they wrested the duchy of Normandy from his successor to be a lasting trophy of their successes. France and Germany were humbled. *Regino in M. H. G. Scriptores, i., 592, s. a. 781. So the Annals ofFulda: "In capella regis equis suis stabulum fecerunt." The relics were saved by being taken to Stablo ; possibly some of the articles still shown at Aachen, as having been the property of Charlemagne, were among these relics. The Northmen in the Rhineland 3 1 7 But the ancient homeland of Charles the Great was laid completely waste. So far as buildings and land- marks were concerned, the country might almost never have been inhabited since the withdrawal of the Romans. The very name of the Franks was no longer to be found in the lands between the Meuse and Rhine. Franconia on the east, the Isle of France on the west, still serve to remind us of the vanished nation. But the intervening tract of coun- try ceases to be known as Frankland. Lotharingia is the only designation which it bears henceforth. The Franks, however, left behind them memorials of another kind than words and masonry. Through devious paths we can for generations to come trace their influence upon history. Until the year 911 Germany was ruled by a dynasty of the right Frankish blood. The Saxon dukes who took up the sceptre when it fell from the hands of Conrad the Franconian, claimed relationship on the female side with the line of Charles the Great. At Laon until 987 there ruled another Carolingian family speaking the Frankish tongue and cherishing the tradition of the Frankish monarchy divinely ordained and sacrosanct. The House of Capet, which suc- ceeded them, was still at pains to maintain the con- nexion with the past. The Empire which had flourished so gloriously for a short fifteen years was not forgotten. It lent to the two greatest mediaeval European states the support of a romantic idealism, the sanction of a cloudy but imposing political theory. Charlemagne is the chosen saint of rulers so dissimilar as Barbarossa and Louis XI. 3 1 8 Charlemagne The practical statesmanship of the first Prankish Emperor had a surprisingly slight influence upon his successors. His Capitularies and his commissions produced the merest ripples on the surface of the deep waters of customary law. Even in the ninth century the institution of the missi was flung aside as useless; it is by other means that Henry the Fowler and Louis le Gros will curb the centrifugal tendencies of feudalism. His frontier policy is also reversed. France retires from the Ebro ; Germany advances far beyond the Elbe. In some few cases his example has a definite effect. Lewis the Ger- man takes in succession for his counsellors Otgar and Raban Maur, pupils both of Alcuin's schools, the most Frankish of ecclesiastics, the most Caro- lingian of statesmen. \\\ the next century Otto the Great will be guided by his brother Bruno, in whom the ideals of Otgar and Raban Maur are still a living force, and from Bruno will learn the arcanum of the Carolingian Empire — the maxim that the road to universal sovereignty runs through Rome. Later still, in the astute and complaisant Gerbert we can hardly fail to trace the thoughts of Hincmar, his predecessor in the See of Rheims ; the grandiose dreams of Otto HLare fed by distorted recollections of Charles and Alcuin. Even in details there are now and then some imitations. Stray Capitularies are revived by the Saxon emperors. The coinage, the weights and measures, the trade regulations of medieval Germany, bear witness to the influence of Charles upon certain aspects of her social life. But for all this the more ambitious measures and expedi- Influence of Charles 319 ents of Charles lay forgotten, as though they had never been. New nationalities required a new form of government. It is neither surprising nor inappro- priate that Charles, the administrator, should be best remembered in after centuries for his ecclesiastical innovations, for the interpolation of the Nicene, and the vulgarisation of the Athanasian Creed ; for his vigorous, though illogical and incomplete, protest against the more degrading superstitions of Eastern Christianity. He was not a Frenchman ; he was not a German. If his training drew him to the Latins, his origin bound him to the Teutons. His aspira- tions may, perhaps, be termed Latin ; the traditions of social and political life, to which he rendered an unwavering homage, are most certainly Teutonic. Both strains met and mingled in his many-sided nature. He belonged, in fact, to no nation of modern growth, but to the only nation which, in his day, deserved the name, to that nation in which local and racial differences were suppressed or transcended, — to the nation of the Catholic Church. As the servant of the Church he humbled the Saxon, treated with the Dane, and cowed the Slav ; as the servant of the Church he led his armies first across the Alps and then across the Pyrenees. The civilisation which he fostered was catholic, like his religion, and the patri- mony of Christendom at large. "At the prayer of Monseigneur St. Jacques our Lord gave this boon to Charlemagne, that men should speak of him so long as the world endureth." The words are those of a Frenchman. The prophecy found its accomplishment in the lays of French min- 320 Charlemagne strels. The very name by which he is best known in history is the product of French invention. JTO-. his contemporaries the Emperor was Karolus_,er Karl. To us he will always be Charlemagne. The word is a hybrid compound of a Latin with a Teutonic stem ; also it may be reprobated for the " suggestio falsi " which it carries. Still it has earned the right to exist, and the French nation may legiti- mately boast that Charles is theirs by adopd_qn. He owes much to them, and they to him. On the one hand, they invested him with a cycle of romance; on the other, they borrowed from him the more imagin- ative ideas of his policy — the reverence for the Holy See, the interest in the eastern outposts of Christen- dom, the crusading zeal, of which we have seen no obscure traces in his career.* Germany, too, possessed certain legends of Charles, but those of them that entered into popular myth- ology were sparse and bare. He became a pale copy of the gods of Valhalla, he appropriated the mount of Odin f ; the belated traveller heard him riding through the thunder-storm or along the Milky Way in the chariot of Thor. To learn the histories of Roland and of Turpin, of Ganelon and Marsila, of the voyage to Jerusalem, of the twelve peers, of the wars with the Saracen in every land of Europe, we must repair to French poetry. The fact may * In entering upon the poetic history of Charlemagne I must express my obligations to the valuable works of MM. Gaston Paris and Leon Gautier. f Gudensberg in Hesse. It was said that Charles lay there wait- ing for the time of his second appearance. The same legend was afterwards annexed to the name of Frederic Barbarossa. CHARLEMAGNE IN SPAIN. UPPER LIGHTS OF A STAINED WINDOW AT CHARTRES (EARLY XIIITH CENTURY). In the central medallion Roland appears twice. On the left he cleaves the rock with Durendal ; on the right he winds the Oliphant. The Charlemagne Cycle 321 seem strange to those who reflect that Germany did and France did not owe national existence to Charles. It is not so strange when we remember that Charles first appeared before the Germans in the light of a ruthless conqueror, and the destroyer of the individualism which they held so dear. Bavarian and Saxon, Thuringian and Saxon, quickly forgot the peace which he had given them in his de- clining years. They chiefly remembered the period in which he had swept to and fro like a whirlwind through their borders, crushing rebellion and drag- ging their youth away to fight in distant wars. To Gaul, on the other hand, he had been at all times a deliverer and defender. He had warded off an old enemy in the person of the Saracen, a new one in the person of the Dane. In spite of his ceaseless wars, the country had enjoyed comparative security ; and those wars, costly as they were, had been waged in the interests of Gaul, and of ideas with which she was never slow to sympathise. The origins of the Charlemagne cycle are wrapped in obscurity. We can say with certainty only this much : that the foundations of it were laid in the ninth century and the early part of the tenth. Numberless stories concerning the House of Arnulf were current among the inhabitants of Gaul. Min- strels seized upon striking episodes, such as the siege of Pavia or the rout at Roncesvalles, and composed short, stirring lays which took for granted in the auditors a knowledge of the outlines of events. Cycles of ballads clustered round the names of great warriors — of Eric of Friuli, of Gerold of Bavaria, of Charlemagne Eggihard the seneschal, of Duke Wihiam of Tou- louse.* And, far from being content with the bare facts, the authors added episodes from their own fancy, or from stories relating to earlier heroes. The exploits of Dagobert and of Charles Martel were con- fused with those of more modern conquerors. Old tales were frequently passed off under new names. Thus the popular tradition developed almost inde- pendently of literary authorities. The earlier Chan- sons de gestcs reveal some acquaintance with the Court annals, with the biography of Charles by Egin- hard, with that of Lewis the Pious by the Limousin Astronomer. But the information which they draw from these sources is of the vaguest and most gen- eral kind ; it is freely altered to suit poetic require- ments. The teaching of patriotic churchmen such as Hincmar and Notker had a more powerful effect upon the cycle at its commencement ; for these writers moralised upon the character of Charles and made him a type of the perfect warrior and states- man. During the ninth century there is a certain con- tinuity of the hterary tradition respecting Charles. Notker himself, whose book is a mirror of the tales which passed from mouth to mouth among the lower strata of society, nevertheless observes a certain * Of the stories respecting Ceroid we have a trace in the vision of the monk Wettin (Bouquet, v., 399). Wettin saw him in Paradise among the martyrs. Eric of Friuli is tlie subject of a Latin poem attributed to Paulinus of Aquileia. The exploits of Duke William find their way, in a confused form, into the Provencal cycle. We learn from the Astronomer {M . H. G. Scriptores, ii., 60^ that even in the ninth century many stories were current about Roncesvalles. Early Legends 323 caution. He himself had seen the Emperor ; he had also talked much with men who had served in the Emperor's wars. However uncritical he may be, he has had means of information too full and good to admit of his straying very far from the path of history. But after him there comes a break. The literary world loSes touch with the Carolingian period. It has lost sight of all landmarks, and readily lends itself to the task of expanding mere myths and legends. Thus Benedict of Soracte fals- ifies the narrative of Eginhard to prove that the Emperor in person visited Jerusalem. When this is done by a comparatively learned and sober chron- icle, we may imagine what liberties were taken with the elastic framework of oral legends. At length in the eleventh century there comes a time when the literary man takes in hand the popu- lar Chansons de gestes and endeavours to weave a connected story or poem out of them. To the best of our knowledge a Galician monk living about the middle of the eleventh century was the first to make the experiment. He wished to establish a connex- ion between Charlemagne and the shrine of St. James at Compostella, to which he was in some capacity attached. We have seen above how he brings the Emperor into Spain through the interven- tion of St. James. Having led him thither, he is not much concerned with any part of his feats ex- cept the visit to Compostella. He tells of the taking of Pampeluna, and how the walls fell down of them- selves before the Franks. He also informs us that Charles remained three years in Spain and utterly 324 Charlemagne destroyed all the idols except those in Andalusia. Archbishop Turpin makes his appearance in the story, but merely as a missionary who accompanies the Emperor and baptises all those of the Saracens who submit. Obstinate unbelievers are, of course, either put to death or enslaved. Finally Charle- magne returns across the Pyrenees without any re- verses. Apparently the author does not know or does not care to tell of Roncesvalles. A greater success was achieved by the unknown author who in the second half of the same century composed the Song of Roland in the form in which it has come down to us. He was apparently a Norman minstrel of no celebrity who wrote for recitation to a popular audience. Still he is a great literary artist, and his poem has, in addition to its other excellencies, a fine dramatic unity. It is not to be confounded with the ballad which Taillefer sang as he led the Norman charge at Hastings, and which must have been in essentials like the Prankish sagas, written, that is to say, in abrupt strophes with lines of no great length. The Song of Roland contains about four thousand lines and is in a style more adapted to re- citation than song. The author had at his command a number of well known lays to which he occasion- ally refers in passing. His poem is evidently in- tended to fill a place in a long cycle. The Emperor has already been seven years in Spain before the tale begins. With the exception of Marsila's strong- hold of Saragossa, he has conquered Spain from sea to sea. The auditor is presumed to be familiar with the sieges of Noble, Pine, Tudela, Seville, and Cor. 5 ucUrbP n«txc Uijumf HoUriVpafmcu. Siftfcinfirtnoir ft«rft-irtir«rW atfl-tf' I\<'I fJdC (luirffurojif^futi iiifdge'' a elf ftttr-7futt>/ drgltlTlI/tldflfirlAg*^ P^rfun oi^gailtcummcEcminrrt ttiat:; JU'tf faifir^fiin wif^ n I'i'tault' s " CJiarlona^ne.'''') specimen of the Feudal Epics 329 dared that he had repented of his unjust design. He would only ask them for their personal service against the heathen. This request is cheerfully granted ; and King and barons ride off to the Saxon war together. It will be observed that the first part of this ani- mated story is based upon good historical tradition. The Chanson des gestes continually tantalise us in this manner. The authors of the longer poems worked into their fabric all the old material which fell in their way and seemed suitable. In works of so late a date as the Chevalerie Ogier and the Gestes de Charletnagne devant Carcassonne et Narbonne* we find at inter- vals a touch of detail which appears to come direct from the ninth century. Sometimes we recognise an extant authority, — Eginhard, or the Limousin astronomer, or the Acta Sanctorum — often we are left to vain conjectures. Highly ingenious attempts have been made to separate the different strata of legend in particular groups of the cycle; especially in those dealing with the wars of Narbonne, and with the birth of Charlemagne. But our store of historical facts can hardly be said to have been augmented by these researches. Local feeling, the desire to com- pliment great families, the thirst for novelties, the utter disinclination to discriminate between true and false — all these influences have tended to confusion. And the confusion increases as the poems become more pretentious and more systematic. Raimbert * This is a poem of the thirteenth century. It professes to be from the hand of Philomena, the secretary of Charlemagne. 330 Charlemagne of Paris, Aden^s, Gerard of Amiens, Jean Bodel, and their anonymous compeers could lend inter- est to their already well-worn themes only by the lavish use of embroidery. As the Charlemagne cycle reaches its completion in France it begins to find imitators in other lands. About the year 1150 Germany gives birth to the Ruotlands Liet, a free version of our CJianson de Roland ; in the same century a metrical history of Charlemagne, containing an independent version of the war in Spain, is woven into the fabric of the Kaisercronik. In the fourteenth century a German poet paraphrases the tale of Charles Mainet. King Hakon, the destroyer of Norwegian heathenism, in- troduces the Chansons des gestes as a civilising influ- ence among his countrymen. From Norway, Scan- dinavian translations find their way to Iceland and give birth to the Karlamagnus Saga. Spanish chroniclers, resenting the arrogance of their French neighbours, take up the tale of Roncevaux and the wars of Spain in order to prove that the Emperor is overrated. He was, they tell us, no deliverer, but a bandit. He attacked Alphonso the Chaste from ambition and was gloriously repulsed by Bernard de Carpio.* The Italians in a less serious spirit cast ridicule upon the chief events and personages of the cycle. In their hands Charlemagne becomes a dotard, Orlando a bombastic knight-errant. The nature of their treatment of the subject maybe seen * The Cronica general (VEspana compiled by, or at least under the direction of, Alphonso X. of Castile. Parodies of tJie Cycle ii'i- in the Morgante Maggiore of Luigi Pulci and the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto. In short, the legendary Charlemagne was a native of France; transported into other lands, he became a jjale abstraction or a caricature. Cat^oli. 3£. REGIS CLASSICAL SEAL USED BY CHARLES. i^Mont/aucoK.) ^ )i^v-v4 5^ INDEX Aachen, Synods at, i6i, 215 ; palace at, 235, 247, 248 ; men- tioned, 2gl, 306, 308, 316 Abotrites, the, 295 Abderrahman, no Adalghis, 62, 78, 80, 102, 131 Adalhard, 253, 277 Afiarba, Paul, 73 Agilolfings, the, 21, 53 Aistulf, 6, 67 Al Arabi, III-I2 Alboin, 10 Alciiin, 68, 117, 134, 145, 151, 153 ; religious opinions of, 161 /. ; life, 165/".; attain- ments, i6g, 179; teachings, 176, 185 ; mentioned, igo, igi, 195, igg, 200, 202, 2ig, 239, 273, 303 Alemannians, the, 21 Alphonso, King, 228 Anastasius, 86, 202 f. Anghilbcrt, 182, rg4 Aquitaine, 12, 20; revolts of, i'iff., 58; government under Charles, 117, 130, 156, 258 ; mentioned, 273, 274, 282 Areghis, Duke, 68, 102, 131, 135, 149 Arno, Abp., 136, 151, 190, 274 Arnuif, IJiOuse of, 24/., 2g-3i A;5Sembly, ^%e national, 223 /. Audulf, 2S0, 2»JI Augustine, St., 259, 236 Austrasia, kingdom of, 25, 26 Avars, the, 8, 138-45, 150, 151, 274, 290 B Barcelona, 283 Bavaria, duchy of, 21, 92 /»., 134, 138, 139. 274 Benedict of Aniane, 273, 283 Beneventum, duchy of, 78, Sr, 86, 87, 98, 208, 284, 285, 287 Bernhard, Duke, 76, 78, 112 Bernhard of Italy, 301, 302 liertha or Bertrada, mother of Charles the Great, 56, 57 n., 62-64, 116, 125, 238 Bertha, daughter of Charles the Great, 154, 182 Bocholb, battle, 119 Bodel, Jean, 326, 328 Bohemians, 106, 144, 274, 291, 293, 294 Boniface, St., 44, 49, I5g Boulogne, 250, 297 Bremen, 126, 274 Brittany, 21, 22, 208, 259, 279 ff. Burchard, 284 Buriaburg, 98 Campolus, igo-4, 200-2 Canterbury, see of, 217 Capitularies, 61, 122, 128, 12g, 155/-, 221 /■- 333 334 Index Capua, 286, 287 Carinthia, 288, 290 Carloman, uncle of Charles the Great, 53 Carloman, brother of Charles the Great, 55, 56, 58, 62 ff., 70; his family, 70, 71, 80 Carlstadt, 118 Carniola, 288, 290 Cenis, Mt., 76, 77 Charles Martel, 13, 14, 28, 31, 49, 277, 322 Charles the Young, 194, 202, 259-261, 291, 299 jf". Charles the Great, place in his- tory of , i^ff.; appearance of, 57, 232 /. ; character, 18, 234/., 252-6, 302^.; habits, 236, 239 ; wives of, 242 f. ; accession of, 55 ; early years of, 57 ; ally of the Church, 60; first Capitulary of, 61 ; seeks allies against Carloman, 61 ; marriage with Desiderata, 63- 65 ; feelings towards the Lom- bards, 66, 74; succeeds Carloman, 70; first Saxon campaign, 72, 97 ; summoned to help of Hadrian, 73-5 ; in- vades Italy, 76-8 ; besieges Pavia, 78-81 ; visits Rome, 82 ff.; undertakes second Saxon campaign, 100, lOI; defeats Robgaud of Friuli, I02 ; undertakes third Saxon campaign, iig; organises a government in Saxony, 120, 122, 123, 12S; winters in Saxony, 126 ; negotiates ^vith Irene, 133 ; forces Tassilo to submit, 134; Thuringian con- spiracy against, 135 ; visit of, 7S6 A.D., to Italy, 135 ; finally disposes of Tassilo, 136-140 ; makes war on Avars, 143,144 ; plot of Pepin le Bossu against, 146 ; plans the Bavarian Canal, 149 ; enters into relations with English kings, 152-4, 216 ; legislation of, in 774-800 a.d., 155^.; ecclesiastical measures, 159, 174, 276 ; attention of, to education, 170, 171, I74i 184; his own studies, 171-3. 182-3 ; his relations to Pope Leo, liqff., -1^)3 ff., 200 jf.; his coronation, 200 ff. ; his subsequent relations with the Eastern Emperors, 211, 284-6, 305 ; his conception of his im- perial responsibilities, 211, 228 ; legislation of his later years, 221 ff.; personal char- acter of his government, 252-6; events of his later life, 258_^. ; complains of his subordinates, 264 ; dealings with Bretons, 280 ; settlement of Eastern frontier, 290^.; his last cam- paign, Z97 ; his partition of the Empire, 299 ; last illness of, 307 ; his will, 307 ; his death, 308 ; sepulchre, 309 his canonisation, 311 ; his in fluence upon posterity, 318^. his place in epic poetry, '^20 ff. Clovis, 10, 17, 23, 31 Clusium, 102, 131 Coliseum, the, 4 Constantine the Great, 4, 7, 87, 188, 202 Constantine VI., 131, 196 Constantinople, 4, 5 Corsica, 87, 284, 285 Coulanges, M. Fustel de, 26 Cyril, St., 293 D Dagobert, 22, 24, 46, 279, 322 Dalmatia, 284 Desiderata, 63-5 Detmold, battle, 125 Deventer, 98 Didier, King, 14, 61-6, 71-4, 77-81 ; in the epics, 326 Donation of Charles the Great, 84if., 132 Duchesne, the Abbe, 87 Dungal, 1 85 Index 335 Eardulf, King, 217 Ebroin, 27 Egbert of Wessex, 153 Eggihard, 113, 322 Eginhard, the historian, 27, 71, 77, 81, 108, 135, 151, 170, 173, 180 ff., 187, 237, 305, 310, 329 El Hakem, 283 Empire, idea of the, 3, 2IO_^. , 218, 22Sjf., 301, 306 England, g, 152-4, 207, 216^. Eresburg, gi, g8-ioo, 103, 118, 126 Eric of Friuli, 150, 151, 321 Europe, unity of, in eighth cen- tury, 7, 8 Fardulf, 146-S Fastrada, Queen, 126, 135, 144, 146-8, 242 Felix of Urgel, 145, \(yoff., 163 Fontanel, 314 J'rankfort. synod at (794), 154, 161, 162 Franks, the, compared with Lombards, II, 12 ; national church of, 13, 43, 266 ; sub- jects of, 20, 21 ; place in his- tory of, 16, 31, 313 ff. ; ap- pearance of, ig ; origin of, 21 ff.\ social life of, 32 jf,, 45, 46 ; military service of, 75, 76, 222, 272 ; revolts of, against Charles, 135, 146 ff.; legal system of, under Charles, 225 ff; national assemblies of, 75, 253 Friuli, March of, 150, 151, 28S- 290 Fulda, 118, 274 Gerberger, 70, 71, 81 Ceroid, Count, 143, 150, 321 Ghent, 297 Gisla, sister of Charles, 62, 64 Godefrid, King, 296, 297 " Greeks," in Sicily, 8g, 131 ; disliked in west, 5 ; mentioned, 284, 305 Gregory of Tours, 45 Grimvald of Beneventum, 136, 201, 285 Grimvald III., 286 Guizot, 90, 274 H Hadrian, Pope, accession of, 72; resists Didier, 73 ; first meet- ing of, with Charles, 83 ff., 116; policy of, 130, 131; re- lations of, with Charles, 8g, 116, 131, 160, 188 ; with Em- press Irene, 133, 161 ; with Tassilo, 134, 136, 137 ; with Offa, 153 ; his family, 190 Hardard, Count, 135 Haroun al Raschid, ig8_^. , 230, 231 Hemming, King, 297 Hessi, 100 Ilildebrand, Duke, loi, 141 Hildegarde, Queen, 65, 125, 143, 241-5 Ilimiltrude, 147 Hincmar, Archbishop, 253 «., 255 Hischam, Emir, 149, 282 Hunald, 53, 58-60 I Ibn Habib, III Iconoclasm, 5, iblff., 178 n. Irene, Empress, 131, 132, 212 ; religious innovations of, 161^.; dej^oses her son, 196 ff. ; her embassy to Charles, ig7 ; deposed, 211 Irminsul, g5 «., 98 Istria, 288 Istrians, the, 268^. Italy, subkingdom of, 2S3 ff.; NIarch of, 2S8 Ivrea, March of, 288, 289 2i^ Index Jerusalem, patriarch of, ig8, 229 /. K Khakhan, the, of the Avars, 140-4 Koln, 118, 275 Lateran, mosaics of, 216, 233 " Latin " element in Frankish realm, 22 Leo the Isaurian, 5 Leo III., Pope, 161 ; his elec- tion, 189 ; conspiracy against, 191 ; flies to Charles, 193 ; is restored, 194 ; clears himself, 202; crowns Charles, 2o^ff.\ his relations to the Emperor, Lerida, 283 Lewis the Pious, his genealogy, 29 ; King of Aquitaine, 130, 150, 156, 273; in Italy, 149; character of, 171, ■yoiff.; re- form of Palace by, 239, 242, 243 ; crowned Emperor, 306 ff.\ mentioned. 276, 280, 2S2, 283, 299 jf., 308 K., 313 Lewis the German, 293, 294 .318 Libri Carolini, 162 ff., 178 «., 3" Lippespring, 104 Liudger, St., 104 Liutgarde, Queen, 148, 195, 242 Liutprand, King, 13, 66 Lombards, the, 10-13, 66-8 ; re- volt of, loi ; subkingdom of, 130 ; how governed by Charles, 81, gS, 103, 129 Loup of Gascony, 59 Lubbecke, loo-i M Magdeburg, 120, 276, 295 Magyars, 291, 294 Mainz, 249-251 ;- see of, 275 Mallus, the, 34 Mantua, Capitulary of, I2g Mayfleld, Tif.; in time of peace, 253/"- Merovingians, the, 23-7 Methodius, St., 293 Milan, 78 Minden, 274 Missionaries, the, in Germany, 49, 60, 92, 104-6, 126, 293 Missi, the, 156-8, 223^., 277 Moravia, 293, 294 Munster, see of, 126, 274 N Navarre, 283 Neustria, 20, 25 Nicfea, second Council of, 161 ff. Nicene Creed, 213 Nicephorus, Emperor, 211-13 Nomenoe, 281 Northmen, 8, 260, 295 ff., 29S, 316/-. O Offa, of Mercia, 9, 152-4 Osnabruck, battle of, 125 Ostmark, 138, 151, 274, 290 Otger, Duke, 71 n., 79-81 Otto I., Emperor, 207, 275, 288, 291, 295, 318 Otto III., 309, 318 Paderborn, 107, ig3, 274 Paris, 21, 35 Paschalis, 190-4, 201, 202 Patriciate, the, 52,61 «., 82, 89, 90 Patrimony, Papal, 13, 62, 66, 67, 73, 74, Hff-, &8ff., 132, 217/'.; later history, 287, 289 hidex 337 Paulinus of Aquileia, 164, 165, 219 n. Paulus Diaconus, 68, 6g, 102, 132, 164, 165, 170, 174 Pavia, 68, 78 Pepin, King, and son of Charles the Great, 130, 143, 149, 150, 201, 202, 2587284, 285, 299^. Pepin of Herstal, 27 Pepin of Landen, 27 I'epin the Hunchback, 147^. Pepin tlie Short, in Italy, 6, 14, 57 ; coronation of, 28 ; Church reforms of, 49, 174, 277 ; reign of, 5i_^. , 2S0 ; death of, 54; character, 54 ; partition of liis realm, 56 ; marriage of, 57 n.\ Donation of, 74/'. Pope, early relations of, with Frank and Lombard, 12, 13 ; position of under Charles the Great, 88, 160, 188 ; elections of, 88 ; relations with the Em- peror, 214 R Rachimburgs, 34 Ravenna, exarchate of, 4, 66, 87 Regensburg, 147 _^., l6l, 290 Reginald of Clusium, 102, 131 Respublica Romana, 7 Ring, the Avar, 141, 142, 152 Ripuarian Franks, 23 Robgaud of Friuli, 102 Roland, 113, 151 ; Song of, 324 ff.\ Ruotland's Liet, 330 Rome, duchy of, 4, 67 ?«, ; city of, 3, 6, 82, 83, 164/ Roncesvalles, 112, 113 Rotharis, 68 I-lotrude, daughter of Charles the Great, 132, 136, 242, 243 Salerno, 286, 287 Salian Franks, 23 Salzburg, 274 Samo, 282 Saragossa, 112 Sardinia, 284, 285 Saxon poet, the, 94 Saxons, their country, 8 ; first campaign of Charles against, 72, 97 ; later campaigns, 92, 96, 99, 103, 104, 1 18, 128, 146, 148, 198, 199 ; government of, by Charles, 94 ff., 120, 123, 128 Scabini, 34 Seben, 274 Sigiburg, 91, 100, 103 Slavs, the, 8, 120, 123, 274, 393 Spain, 9, 108-110, 228, 229, 261, 263 ; Spanish March, 283 Spoletum, 78, 86, 87, 98, loi, 131, 192, 286, 287 ; later his- tory, 2S8, 289 Stephen II., Pope, 29 Stephen III., Pope, 63-65, 72 Sturm, Abbot, 60, 104, 105, 116, "8, 173 Susa, 77 T Tassilo, Duke, unfaithful to Pepin, 53 ; negotiates with Charles, 61 ; marriage of, 81 ; rebellions, 134-138; deposi- tion, 139 Terracina, 89, 131 Theodulf of Orleans, 176, 179, 182, 185, 218, 227 Thuringians, the, 21, 135 Tilpin, Abp., 324, 326 Tortosa, 283 Treviso, 102, 285 ; March of, 288 Trier, 275 Turin, 288, 289 Turpin, the pseudo-, 108, 113, 326 Tuscany, March of, 288, 289 Venice, 284 Verden, see of, 126, 274 338 Index Verdun, treaty of, 314 Verona, 80 ; March of, 288 W Waifer of Aquitaine, 53 Wala, 277 Wido, 280 Willehad, St., 104, 126 William, Duke, 2S2, 283, 322 Wiltzes, the, 143, 295 Winighis of Spoletum, 192, 286 Witikind the Saxon, 93, 107, 118, 123, 127 ; in epic poetry, 326 York, 166, 217 Zacharias, Pope, 28 Heroes of the Nations. EDITED BY EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A., Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. A Series of biographical studies of the lives and work of a number of representative historical characters about whom have gathered the great traditions of the Nations to which they belonged, and who have been accepted, in many instances, as types of the several National ideals. With the life of each typical character will be presented a picture of the National conditions surrounding him during his career. The narratives are the work of writers who are recog- nized authorities on their several subjects, and, while thoroughly trustworthy as history, will present picturesque and dramatic " stories " of the Men and of the events con- nected with them. To the Life of each " Hero " will be given one duo- decimo volume, handsomely printed in large type, pro- vided with maps and adequately illustrated according to the special requirements of the several subjects. The volumes will be sold separately as follows : Large 12°, cloth extra $15° Half morocco, uncut edges, gilt top . . . i 75 HEROES OF THE NATIONS. A series of biographical studies of the lives and work ot certain representative historical characters, about whom have gathered the great traditions of the Nations to which they belonged, and who have been accepted, in many instances, as types of the several National ideals. The volumes will be sold separately as follows : cloth extra, $1.50 ; half leather, uncut edges, gilt top, fi.75. The following are now ready : NELSON. By W. Clark Russell. GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. By C, R. L. Fletcher. PERICLES. By Evelyn Abbott. THEODORIC THE GOTH. By Thomas Hodgkin, SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. By. H. R. Fox-Bourne. JULIUS CiESAR. By W. Warde Fowler. WYCLIF. By Lewis Sergeant. NAPOLEON. By W. O'Connor Mor- ris. HENRY OF NAVARRE. By P. F. Willert. CICERO. By J. L. Strachan-David- son. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. By Noah Brooks. PRINCE HENRY (OF PORTUGAL) THE NAVIGATOR. By C. R. Beazley, JULIAN THE PHILOSOPHER. By Alice Gardner. LOUIS XIV. By Arthur Hassall. CHARLES XII. By R. Nisbet Bain. LORENZO DE' MEDICI. By Ed- ward Armstrong. JEANNE D'ARC. By Mrs. Oliphant. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. By ■Washington Irving. ROBERT THE BRUCE. By Sir Herbert Maxwell. HANNIBAL. By VJ . O'Connor Mor- ris. ULYSSES S. GRANT. By William Conant Church. ROBERT E. LEE. By Henry Alex- ander White. THE CID CAMPEADOR. By H. Butler Clarke. SALADIN. By Stanley Lane-Poole. BISMARCK. By J. W. Headlam. ALEXANDER THE GREAT. By Benjamin I. ^Vheeler. CHARLEMAGNE. By Davis. OLIVER CROMWELL. Firth. DANIEL O'CONNELL. Dunlop. RICHELIEU. By James B. Perkins. H. W. C. By Charles By Robert Other volumes in preparation are : MOLTKE. By Spencer Wilkinson. JUDAS MACCAB.ffi;US. By Israel Abrahams. HENRY V. By Charles L. Kings- ford. SOBIESKI. By F. A. Pollard. ALFRED THE TRUTHTELLER. By F. York-Powell. FREDERICK II. By A. L. Smith. MARLBOROUGH. By C. W. C Oman. RICHARD THE LION-HEARTED, By T. A. Archer. WILLIAM THE SILENT. By Rut! Putnam. JUSTINIAN. By Edward Jenks. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, Publishers, New York and London.