CHARLES MARTEL AND HIS WARS
720-41
Wars with the Saxons and Frisians—Missionary enterprises of St.
Boniface—The Saracens in Septimania and Aquitaine—Charles wins the
battle of Poictiers—Revolt and subjection of duke Hunold of
Aquitaine—Charles and the Papacy.
The name of Charles Martel is generally remembered as that of the victor
of Poictiers, but although the defeat of the invasion of the Saracens of
Spain was destined to be the greatest of his achievements, his struggle
with them was but one of a long series of wars waged against all the
races of infidels who surrounded the Frankish realm. It was not till the
twelfth year of his mayoralty that he himself took the field to face the
invader from the south. Up to that year he had been far more concerned
with the heathen neighbours of his own Austrasia, and must have spared
comparatively few thoughts for the danger of distant Aquitaine, and its
half-independent duke.
Charles had first to deal with the Saxons. To punish them for their
interference in the Frankish civil war of 714-20 he led several
expeditions into the valley of the Weser, and pushed the Frankish
frontier up to the Teutoburgerwald and the head waters of the Lippe and
the Ruhr. The Frisians had already submitted to him, but he had come to
the conclusion that their homage was worth little until they should have
adopted Christianity, and he therefore employed all his influence to
make their duke Aldgisl co-operate in the conversion of his subjects.
[Sidenote: Wars of Charles in Germany, 730.] The duke, a just and
peace-loving prince, was not averse to the scheme, and under his
guarantee missionaries were despatched by bishop Willibrord of Utrecht
over all the Frisian districts. In the course of a generation they had
christianised the greater part of the country, but the East Frisians
were far behind the rest in accepting the gospel, and their conversion
was to be reserved till the reign of Charles’s son.
Frisia and Saxony having been dealt with, it was the next task of the
great mayor to restore the Frankish suzerainty over Bavaria, which had
disappeared for more than eighty years. But before he could complete
this task he was summoned into the West to suppress a Neustrian
rebellion. The nobles of northern Gaul, in spite of their deep
humiliation at Vincy and Soissons, rose once more under Raginfred, the
late mayor of Chilperich II. But the rising collapsed at the first
appearance of Charles, and the enemy laid down their arms, Raginfred
only stipulating that he should retain his countship of Angers on giving
up his sons as hostages (724).
The next three years were occupied in the subjugation of south-eastern
Germany. Marching eastward through Suabia, whose warriors he compelled
to accompany him to the field, Charles advanced against the Bavarians.
After severe fighting, lasting over three campaigns, he returned in
triumph with much plunder, a troop of hostages, and the submission of
duke Hukbert. The allegiance of the Bavarians was still very insecure,
but something had been done to enforce the long-forgotten suzerainty of
the Franks. Alarmed by the subjection of Bavaria, the Suabian duke
Lantfrid rebelled, but Charles slew him in battle, and refused to
appoint any duke in his stead, in order that Suabia might more easily
amalgamate with the neighbouring districts when it had lost the prince
whose title symbolised its separate unity (730).
While Charles worked with the sword against the eastern Germans, he did
not neglect the other great means of binding them to the Frankish realm.
[Sidenote: Mission of Boniface to Germany.] It was during the time of
his Saxon and Bavarian wars that he lent his protection to the zealous
West-Saxon monk Winfrith, the indefatigable preacher and organiser who
won the name of the ‘Apostle of Germany’ by his long life-work among the
Bavarians, Thuringians, and Hessians. After spending some time with
bishop Willibrord at Utrecht, Winfrith had started eastward to find
newer and wilder fields for his activity. He fixed himself first among
the Hessians where no missionary had been seen since the death of St.
Suidbert.[44] Here he met with such success that the whole land was soon
reckoned Christian. Pope Gregory II., hearing of his triumphs, sent for
him to Rome, and consecrated him missionary bishop of all Transrhenane
Germany. After swearing implicit obedience to the Apostolic See for
himself and all his converts, Winfrith—or as he is more often called in
his later years Boniface—returned to the North with a papal letter of
credence recommending him to the Mayor of Austrasia. Charles undertook
the support of the new bishop with the greatest zeal: ‘without the aid
of the prince of the Franks,’ wrote Boniface, ‘I should not be able to
rule my church nor defend the lives of my priests and nuns, nor keep my
converts from lapsing into pagan rites and observances.’ It was the fear
of the wrath of Charles that kept the wild Hessians and Thuringians from
murdering the unarmed missionary, when he came among them with his life
in his hand, and hewed down the holy oak of Woden at Fritzlar in the
presence of thousands of heathen spectators. For the next thirty-one
years (723-54) Boniface went forth conquering and to conquer, churches
and abbeys rising everywhere beneath his hand, in the regions where the
Christian name had never before been known.
Footnote 44:
See p. 263.
While Charles had been busied on the Austrasian frontier a new storm was
rising in the South. The Saracens of Spain were once more crossing the
Rhone and the Cevennes to overrun southern Gaul. Luckily for the Franks
the efforts of the Moslems were most spasmodic; the governors of Spain
were, as a rule, more concerned with preserving their own authority
against revolted lieutenants than with extending the bounds of Islam.
The centre of government at Damascus was so far away that the Caliph’s
authority was only displayed at rare intervals, and as a rule the
various Arab and Berber chiefs who represented the sovereign were busily
engaged in deposing and murdering each other. In the first forty years
of Mussulman rule in Spain there were no less than twenty viceroys, of
whom seven came to violent ends.
We have already related the disastrous issue of the expedition of
El-Samah against Toulouse in 721. [Sidenote: Conquests of the Arabs in
Gaul.] It was not till 725 that the Saracens stirred again; in that year
the Emir Anbasa-ibn-Johim set out from Narbonne with a large army, and
subdued Carcassonne, Nismes, and the rest of northern Septimania as far
as the Rhone. He placed garrisons in the newly-conquered cities, and
then crossed the river and executed a rapid raid through Burgundy as far
as Aûtun in the heat of the summer. After sacking Aûtun he returned with
such speed to Spain that the Franks were totally unable to overtake him.
But Anbasa died before the year was out, and for seven years his
successors were too much engaged in strife with each other to renew the
attack on Christendom. Eudo, duke of Aquitaine, employed the respite in
conciliating the friendship of Othman-ben-abu-Neza, the Moslem governor
of Septimania, whom he won to his side by giving him his daughter in
marriage. It was probably in reliance on the aid of his son-in-law that
Eudo in 731 rebelled against the Franks, and once more declared himself
independent duke of Aquitaine. [Sidenote: Wars with Eudo of Aquitaine.]
Charles crossed the Loire, beat Eudo in the field, and ravaged the
country up to the gates of Bordeaux. The duke, however, persisted in his
resistance, till he learnt that another foe was about to attack him. His
son-in-law Othman had rebelled against Abderahman the viceroy of Spain,
and had been defeated and slain. After subduing the rebel, Abderahman
resolved to march against Othman’s ally and father-in-law. This drove
Eudo into making an abject and instant submission to his Frankish
suzerain.
In 732 the viceroy crossed the western Pyrenees at the head of the
largest Saracen army that Spain had yet seen, strengthened by
reinforcements from Africa and the East. Eudo stood on the defensive
against him and endeavoured to defend the line of the Garonne, but was
routed with the loss of almost the whole of his army. [Sidenote:
Abderahman invades Gaul, 732.] He fled beyond the Loire and threw
himself on the mercy of Charles Martel; meanwhile the Saracens stormed
Bordeaux, and moved slowly forward, ravaging the country on all sides
till they drew near to Poictiers. It was for no mere raid that they had
come on this occasion, but for the permanent conquest of Aquitaine,
perhaps even with the design of attacking Neustria also. Headed by the
strongest and most popular viceroy that Moslem Spain had yet known, and
mustering not less than seventy or eighty thousand men, they set no
limit to their desires.
In the hour of danger the great Mayor of the Palace was not wanting. He
did not rush hastily into the field, but drew together the whole force
of both the Frankish realms, though his firmest reliance was on his own
Austrasians. Leading an army whose like had not been seen since the
earliest days of the monarchy—for never had Neustria and Austrasia
combined for an expedition of such moment—he crossed the Loire near
Tours and advanced to meet Abderahman. It was close to Poictiers ‘_in
suburbio Pictaviensi_’ that the two great hosts faced each other, though
by some freak of the chronicler it is Tours that has given its name to
the battle in the pages of many of our histories. Abderahman and Charles
both felt that they were about to engage in no common contest. The fate
of Aquitaine, possibly of all Gaul, might be largely influenced by the
result of the oncoming battle between Christian and Moslem. For seven
days the two hosts lay opposite each other, each waiting for the enemy
to advance; at last Abderahman took the offensive, and his host poured
out from their camp to assail the Frankish line. Hardly a detail of the
great struggle has survived: we only know that the Saracen horsemen
surged in vain around the impenetrable masses of the Frankish infantry,
whose firm shield-wall ‘was frozen to the earth like a rampart of ice.’
[Sidenote: Battle of Poictiers, 732.] The Austrasians bore the brunt of
the fighting; ‘the men of the East huge in stature and iron-handed hewed
on long and fiercely; it was they who sought out and slew the Saracen
chief.’ The fight endured till night fell, when the invaders withdrew,
leaving Abderahman and many thousands more lying dead in front of the
Frankish line. In the darkness the Arabs had time to count up their
losses, which were so appalling that they hastily fled rather than face
another day’s fighting. Their tents, crammed with all the booty of
Aquitaine, their baggage and military stores, with thousands of horses
and enormous piles of arms, fell into the hands of the victorious
Franks. So ended the danger of western Christendom from the Moslem
invader, a danger which has not unfrequently been exaggerated,
especially by French writers anxious to glorify the Austrasian mayor,
whom they have chosen to make into a French national hero. It is
probable that even if Abderahman had been victorious nothing more than
the duchy of Aquitaine would have fallen into his hands, for this
invasion after leaving Bordeaux was degenerating into an incursion for
plunder, like that which in 725 had ended with the sack of Aûtun. The
Moslems of Spain had proved themselves during the last forty years so
factious and unruly, that we cannot believe that even under a leader of
exceptional ability they would have held together long and loyally
enough to ensure the conquest of central Gaul. Neustria, and still more
Austrasia, were states of a very different degree of vigour from the
decrepit Visigothic monarchy which fell in 711. Even if Poictiers had
fared as Aûtun, there was strength and courage enough in the Franks to
face many such another blow, and we may doubt the judgment of Gibbon
when he draws his gloomy forecast of the probable results of a victory
for Abderahman, ending in a picture of the Muezzin calling the True
Believers to prayer in the Highlands of Scotland, and the Mollahs of
Oxford disputing on the attributes of a Unitarian Godhead.
The remnants of the Saracen host made no attempt to hold Aquitaine, but
fled hastily across the Pyrenees, so that duke Eudo was able to reoccupy
Bordeaux and Toulouse, and rule once more over the whole of his former
dominions as the vassal of the Frank. Meanwhile, Charles returned to
Austrasia laden with booty, and was hailed by all western Christendom as
the greatest conqueror since Constantine. The Frankish poets and
chroniclers continued to celebrate his triumph with such fervour that
ere long the world was told and believed that he had slain 375,000
Saracens, with the loss of no more than 1500 men on his own side! If
only he had been more of a favourite with the Church he would have been
enshrined in history as the equal of his grandson, Charles the Great.
But the zeal with which he forwarded the conversion of Germany, and
smote the infidel, did not atone, in the eyes of the monkish historians,
for the high-handed way in which he had dealt with the Gaulish church.
Because he banished bishops, and forbade synods to be held without his
leave, and occasionally laid military burdens on church-land, he
received a very half-hearted blessing from the annalists of his day.
Charles spent the years that followed his great victory in regulating
the government of Burgundy, where he replaced most of the counts and
dukes by followers of his own, and in completing the subjection of
Frisia. The peaceful duke Aldgisl had been succeeded by a fierce pagan
named Boddo, whom the great mayor was soon forced to attack, when he
commenced to kill or drive away the missionaries of Willibrord and
Boniface. After slaying Boddo in battle, and burning every heathen
shrine in Friesland, Charles left the country so tamed that it did not
revolt again for full twenty years.
In 735, however, new troubles began in the south. Duke Eudo died, and
Charles thought the time was ripe for the complete incorporation of
the great southern duchy with the Frankish realm. He rode through the
land and forced its inhabitants to do him homage, but their subjection
was only the result of fear, and when he had returned home the
southerners proclaimed Eudo’s son Hunold as their duke. Hunold would
probably have been put down had not the Saracens begun once more to
stir. [Sidenote: Wars with Hunold of Aquitaine, 735-40.] Headed by
Yussuf-aben-Abderahman, the son of the chief who had fallen at
Poictiers four years before, they sallied out of Narbonne, crossed the
Rhone, and seized the old Roman city of Arles. The years 736-39 were
mainly occupied in driving back three successive Moslem inroads into
south-eastern Gaul, and Charles was so engrossed in this strife that
he consented to recognise Hunold as duke of Aquitaine, so that he
might have his hands entirely free for the greater struggle. Complete
success at last crowned his arms: Provence was swept clear of the
Arabs; Arles and Avignon, which the Infidels had seized and held for a
space, were recovered; Nismes, Agde, and Béziers, which they had
possessed since the great invasion of Septimania in 725, were taken,
dismantled, and burnt, and a great host was defeated in front of
Narbonne. That city, however, did not yet fall into the hands of the
Franks; together with the southern half of Septimania it still
remained a Saracen outpost, covering the passes of the eastern
Pyrenees. For twenty years more it was fated to remain unconquered;
not Charles but his son was destined to move forward the Frankish
boundary to the foot of the mountains. Meanwhile the Saracens of
Spain, cowed by the crushing blows of Charles the Hammer, abandoned
their attempt to push northward, and plunged into a weary series of
civil wars.
While Charles was engaged in his Saracen war, the puppet-king Theuderich
IV., in whose name he had been ruling for the last seventeen years,
chanced to die. [Sidenote: Four kingless years, 737-42.] So little had
the royal name come to mean, that the great mayor did not seek out the
next heir of the childless king and crown him, but ruled for the last
four years of his life without any suzerain. He did not himself,
however, take the kingly title, but continued to be styled mayor,
prince, or duke of the Franks; he cared not for name or style so long as
the real power was in his hands.
The reconquest of Provence and northern Septimania was the last of the
great mayor’s triumphs. But the four years which he had yet to live were
not without their importance. In 738 he compelled the Westphalian Saxons
on the Lippe and Ems to do him homage and pay tribute. In 739 the
organisation of the south German church was completed by the erection of
four bishoprics in Bavaria, which looked to Boniface, now archbishop of
all Transrhenane Germany, as their Metropolitan. Thus Bavaria became
ecclesiastically an integral part of the Frankish Church, even as
politically it had already become an integral part of the Frankish
empire. [Sidenote: The Pope asks aid from Charles, 739.] But though
Charles was a firm supporter of the Church in his own dominions, he
would not interfere in ecclesiastical disputes beyond his frontier. Pope
Gregory III. had plunged into a struggle with the Lombard king
Liutprand, and invited the pious ruler of the Franks to march against
the enemy of the Church. But Charles refused; Liutprand had given him
some aid against the Saracens, and he was not minded to attack an old
ally merely because the Lombard had fallen out with the Pope concerning
the duchy of Spoleto.
In the summer of the next year the great mayor began to feel his health
failing, though he had not yet completed his fifty-fourth year. He
determined to set his house in order ere yet the hand of death was upon
him, and summoned the great council of all the Frankish realms to meet
him. With its approval he proceeded to make over the rule of the kingdom
to his sons. There was no Merovingian king whose rights needed to be
taken into consideration, as Theuderich IV. had died four years back,
and had left no successor. [Sidenote: Charles divides his realm.]
Accordingly Charles and the council dealt with the land as if it had
already become the rightful inheritance of the house of St. Arnulf. The
great mayor had three grown-up sons; two, Carloman and Pippin, were the
offspring of his wife Rothrudis, the third, Grifo, was the son of
Swanhildis, a Bavarian lady whom he had taken as his concubine during
his Bavarian campaign of 725. Their ages appear to have been
twenty-seven, twenty-six, and seventeen. Charles handed over the rule of
Austrasia and Suabia to Carloman, and that of Neustria and Burgundy to
Pippin. It is said that he also contemplated leaving a small appanage on
the border of Neustria and Austrasia to Grifo. Bavaria and Aquitaine,
the two great vassal dukedoms, were not named in the division, though
the former fell under the influence of Carloman, and the latter under
that of Pippin.
Shortly after he had accomplished this division of his realms, Charles
died at Cérisy-on-Oise on the 21st of October 741. He had completed the
work which his father, Pippin the Younger, had taken in hand, for the
ancient boundaries of the Frankish empire had now been everywhere
restored, Aquitaine and Bavaria had been reduced to vassalage,
Christianity was now firmly rooted all over Frisia, Thuringia, and
Hesse. [Sidenote: Life-work of Charles.] The difficulties he had faced
were far greater than those which his father had to encounter. He had
rescued the fortunes of the house of St. Arnulf from the lowest
depths,—though Austrasia had been divided, though Neustria was hostile,
and though an energetic king was for once swaying the Frankish sceptre
and endeavouring to recover the lost privileges of his ancestors. Having
fought his way to power, Charles had then to face the one serious danger
from without which the Franks had yet encountered. He had met it without
flinching, and smitten the intrusive Moslem so hard that the blow did
not need to be repeated. For the future we hear of Frankish invasions of
Spain, not of Saracen invasions of Gaul. Charles then had won peace
without and within, he had reorganised the Frankish realm, raised it to
a pitch of power and glory which it had never attained before, and made
possible the triumphant career of his son and grandson. As the champion
of Christianity and the protector of the evangelist of Germany, he had
won a yet nobler title to honourable memory, and the complaints of the
Gaulish bishops, who murmured that his hand was too hard on the Church,
may be lightly disregarded when we add up the sum of his merits, and
salute him as the inaugurator of a new and better era in the history of
Europe.
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