THE EARLIER FRANKISH KINGS AND THEIR ORGANISATION OF GAUL
511-561.
The Sons of Chlodovech—Theuderich conquers Thuringia, 531—Childebert
and Chlothar conquer Burgundy, 532—Their war with the
Visigoths—Theudebert invades Italy—Chlothar reunites the Frankish
kingdoms, 558—Organisation of the Frankish realm—The great
officials—Mayors of the Palace—Counts and Dukes—Local government,
the Mallus—Legal and financial arrangement.
Chlodovech left four sons: one, Theuderich, borne to him by a Frankish
wife in early youth; three, Chlodomer, Childebert, and Chlothar, the
offspring of his Burgundian spouse, Chrotechildis. In accordance with
the old Teutonic custom of heritage-partition, the four young men
divided among themselves their father’s newly-won realms, though the
division threatened to wreck the Frankish power in its earliest youth.
Theuderich, the eldest son, took the most compact and most Teutonic of
the parts of Chlodovech’s realm, the old kingdom of the Ripuarian Franks
along the Rhine bank from Köln as far south as Basle, with the new
Frankish settlements east of the Rhine in the valley of the Main.
[Sidenote: The sons of Chlodovech.] He fixed his residence, however, not
at Köln, the old Ripuarian capital, but in the more southerly town of
Metz on the Moselle, an ancient Roman city, though one less hitherto
famous than its greater neighbour Trier. In addition to Ripuaria
Theuderich took a half share of the newly-conquered Aquitaine, its
eastern half from Clermont and Limoges to Albi.
[Illustration:
THE FRANKISH KINGDOMS. 511.
]
While Ripuaria was given to Theuderich, his brother Chlothar obtained
the other old Frankish realm, the ancient territory of the Salian Franks
from the Scheldt-mouth to the Somme, together with his father’s first
conquests from the Gallo-Romans in the valley of the Aisne. His capital
was Soissons, the old stronghold of Syagrius, in the extreme southern
angle of his realm. The remaining two brothers, Chlodomer and
Childebert, reigned respectively at Orleans and Paris, and ruled the
lands on the Seine, Loire, and Garonne which Chlodovech had won from
Syagrius and Alaric. Their kingdoms must have been far less strong,
because far less thickly settled by the Franks, than those of Theuderich
and Chlothar. Chlodomer’s dominion comprised the whole valley of the
middle and lower Loire, and Western Aquitaine, including Bordeaux and
Toulouse. Childebert had a smaller share—the Seine valley and the coasts
of the Channel from the mouth of the Somme westward.
The four brother kings were all worthy sons of their wicked
father—daring unscrupulous men of war, destitute of natural affection,
cruel, lustful, and treacherous. But they were eminently suited to
extend, by the same means that Chlodovech had used, the realms that he
had left them. The times, too, were propitious, for during their lives
was removed the single bar that hindered the progress of the Franks, the
power of the strong Gothic realm that obeyed Theodoric the Great.
Although the sons of Chlodovech not unfrequently plotted each other’s
deposition or murder, yet they generally turned their arms against
external enemies, and even on occasion joined to aid each other. The
object which each set before himself was the subjection of the nearest
independent state. Theuderich therefore looked towards inner Germany and
the kingdom of the Thuringians, on the Saal and upper Weser; Childebert
and Chlodomer turned their attention towards their southern neighbours
the Burgundians.
Both these states were destined to fall before the sons of Chlodovech,
but neither of them without a hardly fought struggle. Theuderich was
distracted from his first attempts against Thuringia by a great
piratical invasion of the Lower Rhineland by predatory bands from
Scandinavia, led by the Danish king Hygelac (Chrocholaicus), who is
mainly remembered as the brother of that Beowulf whom the earliest
Anglo-Saxon epic celebrates (515). [Sidenote: Theuderich conquers
Thuringia.] The son of the king of the Ripuarians slew the pirate, and
next year the Thuringian war began. It did not terminate till 531, when
Theuderich, calling in the aid of his brother Chlothar, utterly
destroyed the Thuringian realm, and made it tributary to himself. The
Frank celebrated his victory first by an unsuccessful attempt to murder
his brother and helper Chlothar, who was fain to fly home in haste, and
next by the treacherous murder of Hermanfrid, the vanquished Thuringian
king, who had surrendered on promise of life. Theuderich led him in
conversation around the walls of the city of Zülpich, and suddenly bade
his servants push him over the rampart, so that his neck was broken.
Southern Thuringia, the region on the Werra and Unstrut, was for the
future a tributary province of the Franks. Northern Thuringia, between
Elbe and Werra, was overrun by the Saxons, and never came under
Theuderich’s power.
While the king of Ripuaria was warring in Germany, his younger brothers
had assaulted Burgundy. In 523 Childebert and Chlodomer attacked the
unpopular king Sigismund, the slayer of his own son, as we have
elsewhere related.[15] They beat him in battle, took him prisoner, and
threw him with his wife and son down a well. [Sidenote: Frankish
invasion of Burgundy.] But Gondomar, brother of Sigismund, restored the
forture of war in the next year, and routed the Franks at Véséronce, in
a battle where Chlodomer was slain (524). Before pursuing the Burgundian
war the brothers of the dead man resolved to plunder his realm. The king
of Orleans had only left infant children, so Childebert and Chlothar
found no difficulty in overrunning his lands on the Loire. The three
young boys, to whom the realm should have fallen, were captured and
brought before their uncles. Childebert, the ruffian who was of a milder
mood, proposed to spare their lives, but Chlothar actually dragged them
away while they clung to his brother’s knees, and cut the throats of the
two eldest with his own hands. The youngest was snatched up and hidden
by a faithful servant, and lived to become a monk, and leave his name to
the ‘monastery of Chlodovald’ (St. Cloud).
Footnote 15:
See p. 27.
Of Chlodomer’s realm Childebert took the lands on the upper Loire and
the capital city Orleans, Chlothar the Loire-mouth and the part of
Aquitaine south of it. Hearing a false report that his eldest brother,
Theuderich had fallen in battle with the Thuringians, Childebert now
invaded East Aquitaine, a part of his brother’s heritage. But Theuderich
returned in wrath, and the king of Paris and Orleans resolved to go
instead against the Visigoths, and to drive them from the land between
the Cevennes and the Pyrenees. The great Theodoric was just dead, so no
help from Italy could be expected by the Visigothic king Amalric, the
grandson of the departed hero. Childebert found his pretext in the
complaint that his sister Chrotechildis, the wife of Amalric, had been
debarred from the exercise of the Catholic religion and cruelly ill
treated by her Arian husband. With this holy plea as his _casus belli_
he marched against Narbonne, defeated Amalric in battle, and drove him
over the Pyrenees to the gates of Barcelona. [Sidenote: War with the
Visigoths, 531.] There he was slain, either by the sword of the pursuing
Franks, or by the Visigothic army, enraged at the cowardice which he had
displayed in the struggle. On his death the Goths raised on the shield
and saluted as king the aged count Theudis, the regent who had ruled
Spain for Theodoric the Great during the minority of Amalric. Thus ended
the race of the Baltings as rulers of the Visigoths; their succeeding
kings were not of the old royal house. Theudis, who was suspected of
having had some hand in his late pupil’s murder, soon justified the
choice of the Goths, by recovering Narbonne and the other cities of
Septimania from the Franks. Childebert had turned off to another quest,
and the old Visigothic possessions north of the Pyrenees were retaken
without much trouble (531).
The enterprise which had called away Childebert was a new attempt to
conquer Burgundy, in which his brother Chlothar had promised to join
him. [Sidenote: Burgundy conquered, 532.] In the spring of 532 the kings
of Paris and Soissons united their forces, and marched up the valley of
the Yonne. They laid siege to Autun, and when Gondomar the Burgundian
monarch came to its relief, beat him with such decisive results that he
fled into Italy and abandoned his kingdom. A few sieges put the
victorious Frankish brethren in possession of the whole Burgundian realm
as far as the borders of the Ostrogoths on the Alps and the Drôme.
When Burgundy had been conquered, the Franks began to prepare for a new
campaign against the Visigoths, in which Theuderich intended to share no
less than his brothers. But this scheme was frustrated by the death of
the king of Ripuaria early in the year 533. He left a son, Theudebert,
already a grown man and a good warrior, but in true Merovingian fashion
the uncles of the heir made a vigorous attempt to seize and divide his
realm. It was only the prompt and enthusiastic way in which the
Ripuarians rallied around their young king that saved him from the fate
of his cousins, the princes of Orleans. Not merely, however, did
Theudebert hold his own, but he compelled his uncles to give him a share
of the newly-conquered Burgundy, when the partition of that country was
finally made.
Theudebert was, in fact, well able to take care of himself, and soon
showed that he was as unscrupulous and enterprising, if not quite so
bloodthirsty, as his father and uncles. Yet he was, for a Meroving, not
an unfavourable specimen of a monarch, and the chroniclers tell us that
he ruled his kingdom with justice, venerated the clergy, built churches,
and gave much alms to the poor. That as a politician he was shifty and
treacherous was soon to be shown by his dealings with Italy. [Sidenote:
Theudebert invades Italy, 535.] In 535 the emperor Justinian, on the eve
of his invasion of the Ostrogothic kingdom, bribed the three Frankish
monarchs, by a gift of 50,000 solidi, to attack Italy from the rear.
Uncles and nephew alike were ready to take the money and join in the
plunder of the peninsula. But in the next year the Gothic king Witiges,
eager to free himself from a second war, offered to cede Provence and
Rhaetia to the Franks if they would make peace with him, and grant him
the aid of their arms. The three kings gladly agreed, and lent him an
auxiliary force of 10,000 men, who joined the Goths in recovering Milan.
Theudebert and Childebert are said to have cheated Chlothar of his third
of the gains, the former having got the money and the latter the land
which Witiges made over.
In 539 Witiges and Belisarius were locked in such deadly conflict that
the Franks thought it a good opportunity to endeavour to invade Italy on
their own behalf. Theudebert came over the Alps in person, with an army
of 100,000 men, all footmen armed with lance and axe, save 300 nobles
who rode around the king with shield and spear. First falling on his
friends the Goths, then attacking the East-Romans in turn, Theudebert
drove across the north of Italy, sacking Genoa, and wasting all the
valley of the Po as far as Venetia. All the open country was in his
hands, and the Goths and Romans had to shut themselves up in their
fortresses. But a disease brought on by foul living fell upon the
Franks, and so thinned their ranks that Theudebert had to retire
homeward, relinquishing all he had gained save the possession of the
passes of the Cottian Alps. It was, however, with his Italian plunder
that he struck the first gold money which any barbarian king coined in
his own name. Instead of placing the head of the emperor on his solidi,
as had hitherto been the practice of Goth, Frank, and Burgundian, he
represented his own image with shield and buckler, and the inscription
_Dominus Noster Theudebertus Victor_, without any reference to Justinian
as emperor or over-lord. Some of the pieces make him assume the more
startling title of _Dominus Theudebertus Augustus_, as if he had aimed
at uniting Gaul and Italy, and taking the style of Western Emperor; and,
strange as this design may appear, it receives some countenance from a
chronicler who declares that, after his Italian conquests, Theudebert
was so uplifted in spirit that he designed to march against
Constantinople, and make himself lord of the world (539).
When in the next year the faithless Theudebert planned another
expedition to reconquer north Italy, and had the effrontery to offer his
alliance once more to king Witiges, we need not marvel that the
Ostrogoth refused to listen for a moment to the overture, and chose
rather to open negotiation with his East-Roman foes. The surrender of
Ravenna and the triumph of Belisarius followed, and Theudebert found
that, in invading the peninsula, he would have the emperor as his foe
rather than the king of the Goths. He refrained for the time from
following up his first successes, but it is strange to find that when
the Gothic cause had again triumphed in the hands of king Baduila, and
north Italy was once more torn asunder between Roman and Teuton, the
Frank did not take advantage of the renewed troubles to make a second
expedition. [Sidenote: Conquest of Bavaria.] It is probable that in
these years, 541-45, he was occupied in another conquest, that of the
land between the Danube and the Noric Alps, which now bore the name of
Bavaria. The German tribes in the ancient Noricum, who had been subject
to Theodoric in the great days of the Gothic Empire, the remnant of the
Rugians, Scyrri, Turcilingi, and Herules, had lately formed themselves
into a federation under the name of Bavarians, and had chosen a duke
Garibald as their prince[16]. We have no details of Theudebert’s wars
against them, but merely know that by the end of his reign he had made
the Bavarians tributary to the Franks. Their conquest in all probability
fills the unrecorded time between Theudebert’s expedition to Italy and
his death in 548. For some years at the end of this period we know that
he was sick and bedridden, so that it is fair to put the subjection of
Bavaria somewhere about 543, five years before the death-date of the
Ripuarian king. Theudebert left his kingdom to his young son,
Theudebald, a weak and sickly boy, whose accession, knowing the
character of his great-uncles, we are surprised to hear was not troubled
by any opposition.
Footnote 16:
This seems the best way of accounting for the obscure beginnings of
the Bavarian duchy. The derivation of the word Bavaria is hard to
fathom.
While Theudebert had been busied in Italy, the other two Frankish kings,
Childebert and Chlothar, though now they were both advanced in years,
had made a second expedition against the Visigoths, and in 542 overran
the Gothic province north of the Pyrenees, and then crossed into the
valley of the Ebro. They took Pampeluna, and advanced as far as
Saragossa, to which they laid siege, but in front of that city they
received a crushing defeat from Theudigisel, the general of the old
Gothic king, Theudis, and were driven back into Gaul without retaining
one foot of their conquests. Narbonne and the Mediterranean shore still
remained an appendage of the kingdom of Spain.
A similar fate to that which attended the armies of his great-uncles in
Spain was destined to befall the first expedition which Theudebald of
Ripuaria despatched to Italy. The boy-king was too young to head the
army, but the Eastern Frankish magnates who governed in his name had
resolved to renew the enterprise of king Theudebert. Two dukes of
Alamannian race, Buccelin and Chlothar, who seemed to have possessed the
chief influence at the court of Metz, set out in 551, while King Baduila
was engaged in his last desperate struggle with the East-Romans, and
overran part of Venetia. Holding to the alliance of neither Roman nor
Goth, they threatened to attack both; but Narses, when he marched into
Italy from Illyria, left them alone, and proceeded to assault king
Baduila, without paying attention to the northern invaders. [Sidenote:
Battle of Casilinum, 553.] It was only in the next year, when Baduila
and his successor Teia had both been slain, that the armies of the
Franks broke up from their encampments in northern Italy, and marched
down to challenge the supremacy of the victorious Narses in the
desolated peninsula. How they fared we have had to relate in the
preceding chapter. Chlothar and his division perished of want, or
plague, in Apulia. Buccelin and the main body were defeated and
exterminated by Narses at the battle of Casilinum. By the end of 553 all
the gains of the Franks in Italy were gone, and 75,000 Frankish corpses
had been buried in Italian soil or left to the Italian vultures.
Less than two years after the armies of his generals had been
exterminated by Narses the weakly Theudebald died, and, as he left no
brother or uncle, the East-Frankish realm was heirless. It fell by the
choice of the Ripuarian folk-moot to Theudebald’s great-uncle, the aged
Chlothar, king of Soissons, who thus became possessed of three-fourths
of the Frankish Empire. As his brother, the still older Childebert, king
of Paris, was childless, it was now certain that after fifty years of
division the empire of Chlodovech was about to be once more reunited
(555).
Though verging on his seventieth year, Chlothar was still energetic
enough to go forth to war. When the dominions of Theudebald passed into
his hands, he took up the scheme which his brother Theuderich, now
twenty years dead, had once entertained, of subduing all the nations of
inner Germany. Beyond the vassal Thuringians lay the independent Saxons,
and against them Chlothar led out, in 555, the full force of both the
Ripuarian and the Salian Franks. The Saxons, on the other hand, induced
many of the Thuringians to rise in rebellion, and endeavour to shake off
the Frankish yoke. The fortune of war was at first favourable to
Chlothar, who put down the Thuringian insurrection without much
difficulty, but when, in the next year, he led his host into the
unexplored woods and moors of Saxony, he suffered such a terrible defeat
that he was fain to flee behind the Rhine, and cover himself by the
walls of Köln. The pursuing Saxons devastated the Trans-Rhenane
possessions of the Franks up to the gates of Deutz. They were not
destined to become the vassals of their western neighbours for another
two hundred years.
The news of Chlothar’s disaster in Germany, and the false report of his
death, which rumour added to the news, brought on trouble in Gaul.
Chramn, the eldest son of Chlothar, and Childebert of Paris, his aged
brother, at once took arms to divide his kingdom. Nor when the news came
that he still lived did they desist from their attempt. They sent to
stir up the Saxons, and persisted in the war. But, before they had
actually crossed swords with Chlothar, the old king of Paris died, and
Chramn, reduced to his own resources, was fain to throw himself on his
father’s mercy (558).
[Sidenote: Chlothar sole King, 558.] Thus Chlothar, by Childebert’s
death, gathered in the last independent fragment of his father’s vast
heritage, and reigned for three years (558-561) over the realm of
Chlodovech, swelled by the conquests of Burgundy, Thuringia, Provence,
and Bavaria, made since the division of the Frankish Empire.
Chlothar was the worst of his house. It will be remembered how his
career had begun by the brutal murder of his nephews. It was destined to
end by an even greater atrocity. His undutiful son, Chramn, though
pardoned in 558, rebelled again in 560, with the aid of the Bretons of
Armorica. Chlothar pursued, defeated, and caught the rebellious prince.
Then he bound him, with his wife and his young sons, to pillars of a
wooden house, and burnt them alive by firing the building. This shocking
deed roused even the brutal Franks to horror, and it was noted as the
judgment of heaven that the king died exactly a year after he had given
his heir to the flames. The wicked old man’s body, however, was buried
in great state in the church of St. Medard, as though he had been the
best of sovereigns (561). His kingdom fell to his four sons, destined to
a new division just fifty years after its first partition among the sons
of Chlodovech.
The realm of the Merovings having now attained to its full growth, and
assumed the shape which it was to keep till the fall of the dynasty, we
may proceed to give the chief facts concerning its social and political
organisation.
[Sidenote: Despotic kingship of the Merovings.] Like all the other
Teutonic states which were erected on the ruins of the western provinces
of the Roman Empire, it possessed a political constitution which had
advanced very far beyond the simple state of things described in the
_Germania_ of Tacitus. The conquests of the Franks had resulted in the
increase of the kingly power to a height which it had never reached in
earlier days. As the permanent war-chief, in a time when war was
incessant, the king had gradually extended his power from supreme
command in the field into supreme command in all things. He and his
war-band of sworn followers had borne the brunt of the fighting, and
naturally reaped the greater part of the profit. The check exercised by
popular assemblies on the royal power seems almost to have disappeared
after the first days of the conquest. In the time of Chlodovech himself
we find some traces of them still remaining. Once or twice the army, in
the capacity of public assembly of the manhood of all the Franks, seems
to assert itself against the king, but even this check gradually
disappeared. The Frankish Empire grew too broad for any public folk-moot
of the nation to be able to meet, and the king only took counsel of such
magnates—high officers of the household, bishops, and provincial
governors—as he chose to summon to his presence. Two additional factors
gave increased strength to the monarch. The first was the high respect
paid to the supreme power by the conquered Gallic provincials, men long
habituated to the despotic government of Rome—a respect far greater than
any that the Franks had been accustomed to give their kings. The habit
of obedience of the Gallo-Roman was soon copied by the Frank. The second
factor was the enriching of the king by the vast extent of the old
imperial domain land in Gaul, which was transferred at the conquest to
the Frankish king, and became his private property, placing a vast store
both of land and money at his disposal.
The Merovings, then, were despotic rulers, little controlled by any
constitutional checks, and only liable to be deposed by their subjects
if their conduct became absolutely unbearable. Their worst danger was
always from their ambitious relatives, not from their people.
The Frankish king was distinguished from his followers by the regal
privilege of wearing long hair,—to shear a king’s head was the best
token of deposing him,—by his royal diadem, and kingly spear.
Occasionally he borrowed trappings from the Romans, as when, for
example, Chlodovech was invested with the robes of Patrician after his
Gothic War.[17] But the national dress was generally adhered to.
Footnote 17:
See p. 63.
The government of the realm was managed by two groups of ministers—the
royal household, or _palatium_, and the provincial governors. [Sidenote:
The Royal Household.] The household followed the person of the king in
all his movements. It was mainly composed of personal companions, bound
by the oath of fidelity, the _comites_ of earlier days, who had once
formed the king’s war-band, but now constituted his ministers and
officials. These personal adherents were called by the Franks
_antrustions_. We have already seen that the Goths called the same class
_saiones_, and the English _gesiths_.
The chief of the royal household, or _palatium_, was the official whom
later generations usually called the _Major Palatii_, or ‘Mayor of the
Palace.’ He was the king’s first servant, charged with the overseeing of
the rest of the household officials, and ready to act at need as the
king’s other self in matters of war, justice, or administration. In the
days of the first warlike Frankish kings the Mayor of the Palace was
kept in his place by the activity of his master, and was no more than an
important official. But, as the Merovings decayed in personal vigour,
their mayors grew more and more important, till at last we shall see
them taking the place of regent and practical substitute for the king.
The old English monarchies had no officials who can be compared in
importance to them, but, under the Anglo-Normans, the position of the
Justiciar was much like that occupied by the Frankish _Major Palatii_.
After the Mayor of the Palace, the chief ministers of the royal
household were the Marshall (_comes stabuli_), charged with the
oversight of the royal stables; the _Comes Palatii_, who acted as legal
adviser and assessor to the king; the Treasurer; and the
_Referendarius_, or royal secretary. Though primarily household
officials, all these are occasionally found detached from the court on
external business, commanding armies, or sent on embassies.
At first all the posts were given to Franks, save that of the
Referendarius, to fill which it would have been hard to find an educated
man of Teutonic blood. But, by the end of the sixth century, men of
Gallo-Roman origin were occasionally found in occupation of them, and in
the seventh century this became quite common. In 605 we find even the
office of _Major Palatii_, the most important of them all, in the hands
of the Gallo-Roman Protadius.
The provincial, as distinguished from the central, government of the
Frankish realm was exercised by officers who bore the names of Count and
Duke (_comes_, _dux_, _Graf_, _Herzog_). The whole realm was divided
into countships. In the purely Teutonic half the unit was the old tribal
district, which the Roman called _Pagus_ and the Frank _Gau_. [Sidenote:
The Counts and Dukes.] A count was appointed to each of these tribal
units. In the Romano-Gallic half of the kingdom the countship was
composed of the _civitas_, or city with its dependent district, which
had survived from the times of the Western Empire, and often represented
the original Celtic tribe. The count was both a military and civil
official. He administered justice, led the armed levy of his district,
and saw to the raising of taxes.
Several countships were often united and placed under a single official
of higher rank, the _dux_, which the counts had to follow and obey.
These unions of countships were most common on the frontier, where a
strong and united defence against foreign enemies would be needed, and
where it would have been unsafe to leave the charge of the border to
half a dozen counts, who might or might not co-operate willingly with
each other. In Provence and Burgundy the _dux_ was also known by the
Roman title of Patrician.
The provincial no less than the household officials of the Frankish
kings were originally all of Teutonic birth. But, in the sixth century
Gallo-Romans are found intrusted with both the lesser and the greater
charges. We shall have to make mention of one of these native dukes, the
Burgundian Eunius Mummolus, more than once, when recounting the history
of the last years of the sixth century.
[Sidenote: Local Government.] The provincial governor, count or duke,
was assisted by a deputy, or _vicarius_, whom he nominated to fill his
place during his absence at the court or the wars, or while he was
engaged in some specially absorbing task at home. The minor
administration of the countship was carried out by _centenarii_, or
hundred-men, called also on occasion _tribuni_. The countship was
divided into hundreds, and over each of these there presided a
hundred-man, who was appointed by the count to act as a police
magistrate in time of peace, and to head the men of his district in time
of war. Petty law cases came before him, but at stated periods the count
went round all the hundreds in his countship, and administered justice
at a public assembly of the inhabitants.
The count’s tribunal was called the _Mallus_. He sat in company with a
few assessors, chosen from the chief men of the district. These magnates
were called _Rachimburgi_, or _Boni Homines_. They were summoned by the
count, and had no authority independent of his, but by ancient
custom—both Roman and Teutonic—assessors had always been called in to
aid the chief judge. The system is found alike at the tribunal of the
Roman provincial magistrate presiding in his _conventus_, and in the
primitive German law courts described by Tacitus. The count, sitting in
his _Mallus_, had full power of life and death, and authority in all
cases, save where the persons concerned were so great that the case
might be called before the King’s High Court, and tried by the king
himself and the _Comes Palatinus_.
The Franks not unfrequently enforced the death penalty for murder,
arson, brigandage, and other great crimes. But they used also the system
of _weregeld_, like our own Anglo-Saxon forefathers. With the consent of
the family of the victim, almost every murder could be condoned on the
payment of sums varying from 30 gold solidi for a slave to 1800 for a
freeman of high rank. [Sidenote: Weregeld.] In cases when the proof of a
crime was difficult on the evidence produced, the Franks often made use
of oaths and compurgations. The accused for himself, or a body of his
supporters in his behalf, made a solemn oath that he was innocent, and
this sufficed to acquit him if no further evidence was produced.
Judicial combats were also not unfrequent. They appear among the
Burgundians, however, before they were taken up by the Franks. Nor was
the custom unknown of submitting criminals whose conviction was
difficult to the ordeal: that by boiling water, where the accused
plunged his hand into a caldron, was the one most frequently used.
It will be noticed that there was no trace of popular government in this
Frankish administration. The king chose the count and the count the
hundred-man. The king was not controlled or checked by any popular
assembly of the nation, nor the count or hundred-man by any meeting of
the people of his district. The king promulgated edicts and laws on his
own responsibility, and similarly the count administered his countship
without any thought of rendering account to any one save the king. Such
assemblies as took place were summoned to hear the decisions of king or
count, not to debate upon them, or recommend their modification. The
ancient German freedom had disappeared, to give place to an autocracy as
well defined as that of the vanished Roman empire.
Besides dukes and counts, the king kept other officials in the
provinces. These were the _domestici_ who were charged with the control
of the royal domain-land throughout the kingdom. They were the king’s
private bailiffs for his own possessions, acting much as the
‘Procurators of the Fiscus’ had once acted for the Roman emperors in the
ancient provinces. There were other _domestici_ in the palace, whose
offices were also financial, and who must apparently have served as
underlings to the high-treasurer.
The revenue of the Merovings seems chiefly to have fallen under four
heads. [Sidenote: Revenue.] The first was the profits of the royal
domain, worked by the _domestici_. The second was the produce of custom
dues, levied both on the land and the sea-frontier of the empire. The
third was the produce of fines and compositions in the law courts, of
which one-third always went to the king. But the fourth, and most
important, was the regular annual tribute of the countships. Each
district was assessed in the king’s books for a defined sum, and this
the count had to raise and send in, on his own responsibility. It seems
that at first only the Gallo-Roman districts were charged with tribute.
Theudebert, the grandson of Chlodovech, we are told, first subjected the
native Frankish districts to the impost, a grievance so deeply felt
that, when he died, the Austrasians rose, and slew Parthenius, the
minister who had suggested to the king this method of increasing his
revenue.
From this short sketch of the constitution of the Frankish realm it will
be seen that its organisation lay half-way between the almost purely
Teutonic forms of the government of early England and the almost purely
Roman methods employed by Theodoric the Great in Italy. This is what
might have been expected. The Frankish kingdom was by no means a
primitive Teutonic state, but it was far more so than the Ostrogothic
realm in Italy.
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