CHARLES THE GREAT—EARLY YEARS 768-785—CONQUEST OF LOMBARDY AND SAXONY.
Charles and Carloman—Final conquest of Aquitaine—Death of
Carloman—Character and habits of Charles—State of the Frankish
Empire—Charles interferes in Italy on behalf of the Pope—He subdues
the Lombard monarchy—His later expeditions into Italy—First conquest
of Saxony—Expedition to Spain—Rebellions of Saxony followed by its
reconquest and permanent subjection.
The moment that king Pippin had been laid beneath his marble slab near
the high altar of St. Denis, his two sons drew apart, and after retiring
a few leagues from the place of their father’s death hastily had
themselves saluted as kings by their counts and dukes, and anointed by
their bishops—Charles at Noyon, Carloman at Soissons (Oct. 9th, 768).
Now for the second time it appeared likely that the greatness of the
house of St. Arnulf might be wrecked by the old and evil Frankish custom
which prescribed the division of the kingdom among the sons of the king.
How that custom had worked under the Merovings we have already seen. At
the death of Charles Martel it had already threatened to break up the
power of his house, a danger which was only averted by the unexpected
abdication of the elder Carloman. Untaught by the experience of his own
youth Pippin the Short had committed the same mistake: old habit was too
much for him. On his deathbed, as we have seen, he divided his realm
between his two sons. He had, however, done his best to leave his
first-born so superior in strength to his brother, that the younger king
should not be able to compete with him. [Sidenote: Joint rule of Charles
and Carloman. 768-72.] Charles was left the warlike half of the kingdom,
all those Frankish lands, both Austrasian and Neustrian, from the Main
to the Channel, which supplied the chief fighting element in the
Frankish armies. In addition he obtained the western half of the
newly-conquered Aquitaine. Carloman’s share consisted of Burgundy, the
Suabian lands on both sides of the upper Rhine, and the whole
Mediterranean coast from the Maritime Alps to the border of Spain—the
old Provincia and Septimania. Moreover, he took the eastern half of
Aquitaine,—the country about Clermont, Rodez, Albi, and Toulouse. Though
well-nigh as large as the share of Charles, his kingdom was not nearly
so powerful, for the king who could command the swords of the Franks was
the one who could give law to the whole realm.
For reasons which we know not, Charles and Carloman had never been
friendly—perhaps the younger son as born after his father’s coronation
may have claimed some precedence over the elder, who was the son merely
of a Mayor of the Palace. We know at any rate that throughout the three
years of their joint reign they were always on the edge of a quarrel.
Nothing but the influence and advice of their worthy mother Bertha kept
them from an open rupture. Luckily for the realm both were good sons,
and listened to the maternal pleadings: still more luckily for the
Franks the life of the younger king was destined to be a short one. If
Carloman had been granted many days on earth, we may be sure that the
history of the last quarter of the ninth century would have repeated the
old fratricidal wars of the Merovings. The historians who wrote the life
of the great Charles are never tired of insisting on the many
provocations which his brother gave him. If Carloman had chanced to find
an apologist we might perhaps have learnt that Charles also gave
subjects for offence.
The commencement of the joint reign of the two kings was followed by the
prompt revolt of the newly subdued Aquitaine. Duke Waifer, the leader of
the Southerners in their long war with Pippin, being dead, his old
father Hunold emerged from his monastery to put himself at the head of
the insurrection. [Sidenote: Charles subdues Aquitaine 769.] The country
as far north as Angoulême—which was kept down by a Frankish garrison—at
once fell away to him, for the Gascons trusted that the two jealous
brothers would be too much occupied with their grievances against each
other to spare time for the reconquest of the south. Charles immediately
marched against the rebels, and invited Carloman to accompany him: the
younger king appeared for a moment, but only to hold an angry colloquy
with his senior and then to return to Burgundy. He did not, however,
take the opportunity to attack Charles, and the latter was able to
pursue, unaided but also unhindered, his campaign against the
Aquitanians. It was completely successful: he forced his way in arms as
far as Bordeaux, built a great fortified camp at Fronsac, which was
destined to remain as the central stronghold of the Garonne for many
generations, and so thoroughly beat Hunold that the old man fled for
refuge to Lupus, duke of the Gascons. But Lupus fearing the wrath of
Charles submitted to the conqueror, surrendered the fugitive, and asked
and obtained peace. Charles went home in triumph, replaced Hunold in a
cloister, and was henceforth undisputably king in Aquitaine. He divided
the country into countships on the usual Frankish system, and placed
these provinces in the hands not of natives, but of men from north of
the Loire whose fidelity he could trust. For the future Aquitaine gave
no trouble.
In spite of Carloman’s denial of help during the war in the south,
Charles was ere long persuaded by his mother to be reconciled to his
brother. But he took measures to keep him in check for the future by
making alliance with the neighbours of Carloman to north and south. He
concluded a treaty with Tassilo, duke of Bavaria, whose dependence on
the Frankish realm had of late grown very loose, and allied himself yet
more closely with Desiderius, the king of the Lombards, by wedding his
daughter Desiderata. This marriage was concluded in spite of the most
undignified shrieks of wrath on the part of the Pope, who besought
Charles ‘not to mix the famous Frankish blood with the perfidious, foul,
and leprous Lombard stock—a truly diabolical coupling, which no true man
could call a marriage.’ The Papacy had learnt so well how to utilise the
distant monarch of the Gauls against the neighbouring lord of Pavia,
that Stephen III. looked upon an alliance between Frank and Lombard as
high treason against the Holy See. The marriage, however, was
consummated in spite of Stephen’s threats, whereupon, with more prudence
than consistency, he suddenly forgot his fundamental objections to the
Lombard race, and made his peace with king Desiderius, lest he should be
left unaided to feel the weight of the Lombard arm.
Within a year, however, Charles suddenly repudiated his wife, alleging
that she was sickly and barren. Whether this was his real motive, or
whether political causes also influenced his action, we cannot tell; but
as Charles wedded immediately after his divorce a fair Suabian lady,
named Hildegarde, we may suspect that his motives were possibly those
which guided Henry VIII. of England in a similar circumstance. Be this
as it may, he won by this divorce the unrelenting and not unjustifiable
hatred of Desiderata’s father, the king of the Lombards. Trouble was
soon in the air. There was again a rumour that war was about to break
out between Charles and Carloman, in which Desiderius would have taken
part. [Sidenote: Death of Carloman.] Just in time to prevent such an
outbreak, king Carloman died (December 771). He left an infant son, but
the nobles and bishops of Burgundy and Alamannia made no attempt to set
the child on his father’s throne. Wisely suppressing any particularist
yearnings, they betook themselves to Charles at Corbeny-sur-Aisne, and
there did homage to him as king of all the Frankish realms. Gerberga,
the widow of Carloman, fled with her child and a handful of followers to
Lombardy, where Desiderius was now in a state of mind which made him
glad to receive any enemy of Charles’s, and more especially one who had
such a plausible claim to a share in the Frankish kingdom.
Once more, then, all the lands between the mouth of the Rhine and the
mouth of the Rhone, and from the Main to the Bay of Biscay, were united
under a single king. [Sidenote: Character of Charles.] And this was a
king such as none of those realms had ever seen before—a heroic figure,
whose like we have not met in all the three centuries with which we have
had to deal. Theodoric the Ostrogoth alone deserves a mention by his
side, and Theodoric had a smaller task and less success than the great
Charles. For the first time since we began to tell the tale of the Dark
Ages we have come upon a man whose form and mind, whose plans and method
of life, have been so well recorded that we can build up for ourselves a
clear and tangible image of him. Charles the Hammer, king Pippin, Leo
the Isaurian, and even the good Theodoric himself, are but shadowy
figures, whose outlines we can but dimly seize, but Charles stands
before us firm and masterful, a living man, whom we can understand and
admire.
[Sidenote: Charles’s person and habits.] ‘He was tall and stoutly
built,’ writes his chronicler, Einhard; ‘his height just seven times the
length of his own foot. His head was round, his eyes large and lively,
his nose somewhat above the common size, his expression bright and
cheerful. Whether he stood or sat his form was full of dignity; for the
good proportion and grace of his body prevented the observer from
noticing that his neck was rather short and his person rather too
fleshy. His tread was firm, his aspect manly; his voice was clear, but
rather high-pitched for so splendid a body. His health was excellent;
only for the last four years of his life he suffered from intermittent
fever. To the very last he consulted his own goodwill rather than the
orders of his doctors, whom he detested, because they bade him give up
the roast meats that his soul loved.’
Charles was always of an active habit of body. He delighted in riding
and hunting, and was skilled in swimming above other men. One of the
chief reasons that induced him to make Aachen his capital was that he
loved to take his sport in the great swimming-bath that was supplied by
its hot springs.
He always used the Frankish costume, and loved not foreign apparel. Next
his skin he wore a linen shirt and drawers, over these a woollen tunic,
with a silk border, and breeches. He wrapped his calves and feet with
the linen bandages that were worn ere stockings were invented, and drew
high boots over them. In winter he wore a coat of the fur of otter or
ermine, and over that a bright blue cloak. A sword with a golden hilt
was always at his side. On great days of state he assumed a tunic and
cloak embroidered with gold and clasped with gold buckles, girt his head
with a jewelled crown, and carried a sword with a jewelled hilt. But for
every-day wear his clothes were not more splendid than those of his
courtiers.
He was temperate in food and drink, more, however, in drink than in
food. No one ever saw him drink more than three cups at his dinner, and
he hated drunkenness, and chastised it among his suite. But eating he
loved in moderation, and would often say that church fasts were bad for
his health. There were never more than four dishes on his table, besides
a roast, which was brought him hot from the kitchen on its spit, and
this was his favourite food.
At dinner he used to listen to a reciter or a reader. He loved histories
and tales of the ancients, and also the works of St. Augustine, whose
_De Civitate Dei_ delighted him especially. He caused to be written out
and committed to memory the ancient Frankish epics about the deeds and
wars of the kings of old. He himself was well skilled in reading aloud
and singing to the harp, and took much pains in instructing others in
those accomplishments. All the liberal arts were dear to him, and he
loved learned men, and summoned them from all quarters of the world. To
study grammar he sent for the deacon Peter of Pisa. In most other arts
he had as his preceptor Alcuin, the Englishman, the most learned of all
men, with whom he studied rhetoric and dialectic, and spent much time in
acquiring a knowledge of astronomy; for he was curious about the times
and motions of the stars. He invented German names for the twelve months
of the year, and the twelve winds. He tried, too, to learn the art of
the scribe,[48] and used to keep paper and notebooks under his pillow in
bed, to practise his fingers at odd moments in forming the characters;
but he began too late in life to get very forward in this undertaking.
Moreover, he loved building, and designed the splendid cathedral of
Aachen, glorious with lamps and candlesticks of gold and silver, and
doors and railings of solid bronze. When he was erecting it, and could
not get marble columns near at hand, he had them brought all the way
from Ravenna and Rome. He was a great churchgoer, and always took care
that the service in his presence should be conducted with decorum. He
used to pray both in Frankish and in Latin, being equally skilled in
both tongues. For he had a great power of acquiring languages, and spoke
Latin excellently. Greek he learnt, but understood it better than he
spoke it. He had a free and fluent power of speech, and always expressed
his meaning in the clearest way.
Footnote 48:
We know that he could at least sign his name.
He slept lightly, and would often rise three or four times in the night.
When he was dressing for the work of the morning he would have not only
his friends in his chamber, but would bid the count of the palace bring
in litigants before him, and give a decision from his chair just as if
he was in a court of law.
Charles had one lamentable failing—he was too careless of the teachings
of Christianity about the relation of the sexes. He divorced his first
wife over-lightly, and when his third wife died he took to himself three
concubines at once, who bore him many bastard children. There were
scandals at his court, and two of his own daughters were known to be
living in open sin with two of his courtiers. Charles treated their
offence lightly, and never visited them with any rebuke. Not so his son,
Lewis the Pious, who regarded his sisters’ shame as so heinous that he
banished them when he came to the throne. It was the shortcomings of the
great king in respect of sexual morality which prevented the Church from
decreeing the beatification of its protector after his death. The spirit
of the times was well shown by the strange vision of the monk Wettin of
Reichenau, who, falling into a trance and wandering through the other
world, saw Charles in Purgatory, kept in purifying flames for a space,
till this sin should be purged from his soul.
So much do the chronicles tell us concerning the person and the manner
of life of Charles the Great; but there are other points which impress
us more than they did the contemporary observer. Considering that he was
so far in advance of his age in the cultivation of literature, art,
science, and architecture, that in administration and organisation of
his realm he so far surpassed all that had lived before him, and that he
rose in most of his conduct to such a high conception, alike of his
kingly office and of his personal responsibility for all his actions, it
is disappointing, though not surprising, to find that in some matters he
was not above the standard of his time. We have already alluded to his
loose living, but a worse failing was his occasional liability to
outbursts of inhumanity. The most savage of them was his massacre of
4500 unarmed prisoners of war at Verden, in 782. If the majority of his
wars were defensive, or at least necessary, there were a few—notably the
Lombard war—in which aggressive ambition was the main operating cause,
but this was a small failing in the unscrupulous eighth century. On the
whole we stand amazed at the magnanimity of the man, and are so much
struck with his splendid qualities, that we are perhaps in danger of
doing him wrong by judging him from our own moral standpoint. He rises
so far above that of the Dark Ages, that it scarcely occurs to the
historian to judge him by their low standard. Yet it is by remembering
what was the spirit of those times that his greatness is most readily
recognised.
We shall have to deal with Charles in three main aspects, as conqueror,
as organiser, and as the introducer of new theories of political life
into the mind of Christendom. It is difficult to keep the three lines of
activity clearly separate; for all through his reign, from first to
last, Charles was equally busy in each of these capacities. To make
clear the logical sequence of his doings it is sometimes necessary to
override their chronological order.
[Sidenote: Conquests of Charles.] At the first glance the most
extraordinary of the achievements of Charles appear to be his huge
additions to the territory of the Frankish realm by the annexation of
the Lombard kingdom, the Spanish march, Saxony, and the Slavonic lands
of the Elbe and the Drave to the inheritance that he had been left by
his father. These conquests represent a plan of operations deliberately
undertaken, carried out with an unswerving hand, and brought to a
successful finish. Charles had inherited from his father and grandfather
the duty, which they had undertaken, of protecting Christian Europe from
the Saracen, the Slav, and the heathen Saxon, the three enemies whom his
ancestors had driven back, but had not crushed. Closely connected with
this duty was the obligation to convert to Christianity the new subjects
whom he might subdue, to deal with Saxon and Slav as Charles Martel had
already dealt with Frisian and Thuringian, and so to push the outer
defences of Christendom into those parts of central Europe which had
hitherto been sunk in savagery and paganism. The Saracen alone it was
impossible to convert. He might be expelled, but then, as now, it was
found easier to exterminate the Moslem than to make him abandon Islam.
To these altogether useful and salutary tasks, which Charles inherited
from the great Mayors of the Palace, another was added, the less happy
plan of cementing a close union with the Papacy by crushing the nation
of the Lombards. Pippin had committed the Franks to this scheme, and
Charles did but carry out his father’s pledges. But by his action he
destroyed a healthy and vigorous Christian state, the possible base for
a strong Italian nationality, and committed the Frankish kingdom to a
profitless union, which was to bring forth seven centuries of discord.
What was worst of all, he firmly established the temporal power of the
Papacy, a curse to blast Italy for a thousand years. The gains which he
received in return,—the religious sanction bestowed on his royal power
by the Pope, and the imperial title, were but doubtful boons. It was to
be seen, ere the ninth century had expired, that the house of St.
Arnulf, like all the dynasties that succeeded it, lost more than it
gained by putting itself under obligations to the Roman See, and
consenting to accept from the Pope’s hands the style of emperor, and the
vague commission to protect the unity of Christendom,—a commission which
to the Roman pontiff meant little more than the duty of giving the
Church all that she chose to crave.
[Sidenote: Limits of Charles’s realm.] Before proceeding to relate the
earlier conquests of Charles the Great, it is necessary to explain the
boundaries of his realm as it stood at the moment of the death of his
brother Carloman. In Germany the border to north and south was held by
the two vassal peoples of Frisia and Bavaria, both now Christian, and
both reduced during the last fifty years to a more strict obedience to
the Franks than they had ever known before, but still possessing their
own native rulers, and not completely united to the monarchy. East of
Frisia lay the Saxons, the race whom the Merovings, and the great mayors
who succeeded them, had alike failed to tame. After three hundred years
of hard fighting the boundary of the Frank and Saxon remained where it
had stood in the year 500. To the east of Saxony lay races hardly yet
known to the Franks, the Slavonic tribes of the Abotrites, Wiltzes, and
Sorbs.
The duchy of Bavaria had as its eastern neighbours another group of
Slavonic peoples, the races who had once formed the ephemeral kingdom of
Samo,[49] Czechs and Moravians on the upper Elbe, Carentanians on the
Drave. Beyond these Slavs lay the realm of the Avar Chagan, now in a
state of decadence owing both to civil wars and to rebellions of its
Slavonic subjects.
Footnote 49:
See p. 177.
Between Frisia and Bavaria the frontier of the realm of Charles was held
by the Thuringians, now no longer under the rule of native princes, but
divided up into Frankish counties, as the adjacent Suabia had also been,
and forming like Suabia an integral part of Charles’s monarchy. The
neighbours of the Thuringians beyond the border were the Slavonic Sorbs.
The south-east frontier of the Frankish empire was formed by the main
chain of the Alps, beyond which lay the Lombard realm of king
Desiderius. Its south-western limit was the main chain of the Pyrenees,
beyond which lay the Saracens of Spain, over whom at this moment
Abderahman the Ommeyad had just succeeded in establishing his power, and
had formed a state independent of the Abbaside caliphate (755).
Of all the neighbours of king Charles, it was Desiderius the Lombard who
was first destined to feel the weight of the Frankish sword. He had not
only received Carloman’s widow Gerberga, when she fled from Burgundy,
but had shown some intention of proclaiming her son king of the Franks.
Yet it was not this machination against Charles that was the actual
cause of war, but the relations of the Papacy with Desiderius. Hadrian
I. had just been raised to the Papal throne. He was a Roman by birth,
and a great hater of the Lombards. [Sidenote: Quarrel of the Pope and
the Lombards.] He refused the friendship and alliance which Desiderius
proffered, and very shortly after he was consecrated began to pick a
quarrel with the unfortunate king. He demanded from him the important
towns of Ferrara and Faenza, as part of the Exarchate of Ravenna. They
had been promised to St. Peter, he said, in 757, while Desiderius was
struggling for the crown with king Ratchis, and must be handed over at
once. Desiderius, thinking that Charles would be too much occupied
beyond the Alps in settling the newly-annexed dominions of his brother
to allow of his appearance in Italy, replied to the Pope’s challenge by
sending a host into the Pentapolis, and seizing Sinigaglia and Urbino.
Shortly afterwards he raised the full force of the Lombard realm, and
marched against Rome. Hadrian had expected this. He fortified and
strongly garrisoned the city, and sent in haste to bid the lord of the
Franks to come to the help of St. Peter, and force the unrighteous
Lombards to carry out in full the treaty that king Pippin had imposed
upon them. The news of the despatch of this embassy seems to have
frightened Desiderius. He drew back to Viterbo, and, instead of pressing
the siege of Rome, sent an embassy to Charles, to explain that the
Pope’s charges were unfounded, as he was not keeping back anything that
really belonged to the Exarchate (772, autumn).
Desiderius, when he first attacked Rome, was not wrong in thinking that
Charles was already occupied in the affairs of his own kingdom. He had
that summer commenced the great undertaking of the conquest of Saxony, a
task which was to tax his energies for the next twenty years. In the
summer of 772 he had entered the land, compelled the Mid-Saxons or
Engrians to give him hostages, and cut down in token of triumph the
Irminsul, a holy tree reverenced by all the Saxon tribes, which stood in
a grove near Paderborn, and was adorned with many rich offerings. On his
return to Austrasia, Charles met the ambassadors of Hadrian and
Desiderius at Thionville. He did not swerve for a moment from his
father’s policy of supporting the Papacy through thick and thin. He sent
off ambassadors to bid Desiderius give up all the cities belonging to
the Holy See that he was unlawfully occupying, and told him to do
justice to St. Peter without delay. [Sidenote: Charles invades Lombardy,
773.] The Lombard king was far too angry at this interference to grant
the Frank’s demands. He swore that he would restore nothing. This drew
down Charles into Italy. Marching from Geneva he crossed Mont Cenis with
one division of his army, while his uncle Bernard with the rest followed
the route of the Great St. Bernard. Desiderius on their approach
fortified the Alpine gorges by Susa and Ivrea, and stood upon the
defensive. But a chosen band of Franks turned his position at Susa by
climbing over the hills, and when he saw himself outflanked, the Lombard
king abandoned his lines, and fell back on Pavia, exactly as his
predecessor Aistulf had done in the war with king Pippin. Charles
followed in haste, and laid siege to Pavia, which held out for many
months. Meanwhile Adelchis, the son of Desiderius, raised a second
Lombard army, and took post in front of Verona. Leaving part of his army
to maintain the blockade of Pavia, Charles marched against Adelchis,
compelled him to fly, and captured Verona, and afterwards Brescia and
Bergamo. The Lombard prince took to the sea, and sought Constantinople,
where he endeavoured to obtain help from Constantine Copronymus, then in
the midst of his Bulgarian war.
[Sidenote: Charles at Rome, 774.] As king Desiderius held out in Pavia
with the greatest obstinacy, and the siege was protracted for many
months, Charles resolved to spend the spring of 774 in visiting Rome,
and coming to a complete understanding with pope Hadrian. He reached the
city in Holy Week, and celebrated the Easter festivities with great
splendour: his communings with Hadrian ended in his confirming his
father’s grant to the Papacy of the whole Exarchate of Ravenna, from
Ferrara and Commachio on the north, to Osimo on the south, including all
the places that had been in dispute between the Pope and the Lombard
king. Later Roman writers pretended that Charles had even increased
Pippin’s liberal gift by adding to it north Tuscany, Parma and Modena,
Venice, and even the island of Corsica. But there is no trace of this in
contemporary authorities: the Frank never made over to the Pope the
sovereignty of Tuscany or Æmilia, much less of Venice—which was not his
to give,—or the distant island of Corsica.
[Sidenote: Fall of Pavia, 774.] On returning from Rome to the valley of
the Po, in the early summer of 774, Charles found Pavia ready to submit:
Desiderius and his men of war were wasted by famine and opened the gates
on condition that their lives should be spared. The king was sent as a
prisoner to Neustria, and died many years after as a monk in the abbey
of Corbey. His royal treasure was divided among the Frankish army.
Adelchis, the heir of the Lombard throne, had, as we have already
mentioned, escaped to the Byzantine court, and died there many years
afterwards as a ‘patrician.’
Instead of following Pippin’s example, and allowing Lombardy to survive
as a vassal state, Charles had himself proclaimed as king in Italy, and
compelled all the Lombard dukes and counts to do homage to him at Pavia.
Only Arichis of Benevento, the son-in-law of Desiderius, persisted in
maintaining his independence. For the future Charles styled himself
‘King of the Franks and Lombards, and Roman Patrician.’ Except that he
left a garrison in the capital, and handed over some of the more
important Italian cities to Frankish counts instead of leaving them in
the hands of their old Lombard governors, he made little change in the
administration of Italy. His rights of conquest were used with such
moderation, that Italy gave him very little trouble for the rest of his
reign. [Sidenote: Later expedition to Italy.] The only serious
disturbance that took place was in 776, when the dukes of Friuli,
Spoleto, and Benevento conspired to send for Adelchis from
Constantinople, and proclaim him as king of the Lombards. Hearing of
their plot, Charles descended upon Italy, slew the duke of Friuli in
battle, and compelled the duke of Spoleto to do him homage. Arichis of
Benevento was not subdued: he maintained his southern duchy intact,
though the Franks sent more than one expedition against him. Apparently
Charles regarded the homage of this distant state as too small a thing
to be worth his attention till 787, when he made another descent into
Italy in person, besieged Arichis in Salerno, and finally compelled him
to become his vassal. But in 792, Arichis being dead, his son Grimoald
shook off the Frankish yoke, and maintained a precarious
semi-independence for the future, though he was several times attacked,
and saw more than one of his chief towns stormed by the armies of
Charles. The great king himself, however, never entered Beneventan
territory again, and it was only his presence that could have sufficed
to subdue the unruly duke.
But we must return to the doings of Charles after his first conquest of
the Lombards in 774. During his absence the Saxons had once more taken
arms, and it was now high time to recommence the campaign against them,
which had been interrupted by the great expedition to Italy. The year
775 saw the first of the many subjections of Saxony which Charles was to
carry out during his long reign.
The Saxons were divided into four great divisions. Nearest the Frankish
frontier were the Westphalians, who dwelt on the Ems and Lippe, and
about the Teutoburger Wald. Beyond them to the east, the Engrians
occupied the valley of the Weser, from its mouth as far as the borders
of Hesse. East of the Engrians again, lay the Eastphalians, on the Aller
and Ocker and Elbe. The latter-named river separated them from the
Slavonic tribes of the Abotrites, who lived in the modern Mecklemburg.
[Sidenote: State of Saxony.] The fourth division of the Saxons were the
Nordalbingians, who dwelt in Holstein, beyond the Elbe, on the borders
of the Danes, and were the least accessible and most savage of their
race. Saxony was a land of wood, heath, and morass: only on its southern
border was there a hilly tract, the spurs of the Harz mountains. The
chief obstacle in the way of conquering the country was the fact that
the Saxons had no towns and very few fortified posts; they took refuge
in woods or swamps when the king’s army appeared, and came forth again
when he was gone. The land was quite roadless, so that the pursuit of
the flying tribes was very difficult. If surrounded and compelled to do
homage to Charles, they gave hostages, and paid great fines in cattle,
but the moment that the Franks had left their neighbourhood took arms
again. Nine times did one or other section of the Saxon race rebel, and
any will less strong than that of the inflexible Charles, would have
yielded before their intractable obstinacy. But he persevered to the end
in leading expedition after expedition against the rebels, punished
their revolts by fire and sword, transplanted incorrigible tribes across
the Rhine, built towns and castles all over the land, erected
bishoprics, and sent forth countless missionaries, till in the last ten
years of his life he had the satisfaction of seeing Saxony both
submissive and Christian.
[Illustration:
SAXONY
in the 9th century.
]
The expedition of 775 began by the invasion of Westphalia; after
dispersing its inhabitants, and storming their great entrenched camp at
Sigiburg, Charles passed on into Engria, defeated the Mid-Saxons and
crossed the Weser. This brought him into Eastphalia, which he ravaged as
far as the river Ocker. The Eastphalians, though the furthest of the
Saxons from the Frankish border, were the first to submit to Charles,
and their chief Hessi eagerly accepted Christianity, and did homage.
Soon after the Engrians also came in to the king’s camp, and gave up
hostages for their fidelity. [Sidenote: First conquest of Saxony. ] The
Westphalians held out last, and only submitted when Charles, on his
return towards Austrasia, ravaged their land from end to end, and made a
great slaughter of their warriors. The king left garrisons in two great
camps at Sigiburg and Eresburg, to hold down the Westphalians and
Engrians respectively. The hostages whom he brought back were mostly
boys of noble family, whom he sent to be brought up as Christians in
various Austrasian monasteries. Three-fourths of Saxony had thus done
homage to Charles, but their adhesion was of the most unstable sort.
They hated the Franks as ancestral enemies, and detested Christianity as
a Frankish device for subduing them body and soul. It was only the
presence of Charles and the fear of his return that kept them in order
for a moment.
No sooner had Charles started in the next year for his second invasion
of Italy, to put down the dukes of Friuli and Benevento, than the
Westphalians and Engrians at once took arms. They stormed the Frankish
camp at Eresburg, and slaughtered the garrison, but failed in a similar
attempt at Sigiburg. The moment that Charles heard of this rebellion, he
hastened back from Italy with such speed that he was already on the
Lippe before the Saxons suspected that he had crossed the Alps. So great
was their fear of him that the whole race at once asked for peace, and
sent their local chiefs to do him homage, ‘promising that they would all
be baptized, and hold their land as true vassals of the king.’
[Sidenote: Second conquest of Saxony, 776.] Only one chief, named
Witikind, refused to submit, and fled northward, to take refuge with the
Danes (776). Charles replaced his garrison in the fort of Eresburg, and
built another entrenched camp at Karlstadt. That winter he remained in
Austrasia, close to the Saxon border, in order to watch these
untrustworthy subjects. In the next spring he summoned the great
national council of the whole Frankish realm to meet at Paderborn, in
the heart of Engria, in order to mark the fact that Saxony had now
become an integral part of his dominions (777). ‘Then were a great
multitude of the Saxons baptized, and following their national custom,
they swore that they would forfeit their freedom and their lands if ever
they revolted again, according to their old habit, and unless they kept
their Christianity and their loyalty to king Charles and his heirs.’
To this great diet at Paderborn came some ambassadors from Spain,
bearing an unexpected offer of homage to the king. Abderahman, the
Ommeyad, had finally succeeded in conquering well-nigh the whole of the
Spanish peninsula from those of the Saracens who refused to accept him
as king. The last survivors of his opponents, in desperate straits, sent
to offer to become the vassals of Charles if he would preserve them from
the conqueror. These chiefs were Soliman Ibn-al-Arabi and Kasmin
Ibn-Yussuf, who were holding the towns of Barcelona, Gerona, and Huesca,
in the extreme north-east of Spain, on the Frankish border. Charles
determined to accept their offer, and so to thrust forward his frontier
beyond the Pyrenees, as to protect Septimania from Saracen raids by
interposing a new line of fortresses between it and the dominion of the
ruler of Cordova. He believed that Saxony was fully subdued, and might
be safely left alone to settle down into loyalty and Christian ways.
[Sidenote: Charles invades Spain, 778.] Accordingly, in 778, Charles led
his first great expedition into Spain. He himself crossed the Western
Pyrenees with the host of Neustria, while the levy of Austrasia,
Burgundy, and Lombardy, passed the Eastern Pyrenees. The two armies met
in front of Saragossa, and Charles there received the homage of the
rebel Saracen chiefs of Barcelona and Gerona. Saragossa, however, did
not fall, in spite of the great army that had been concentrated against
it, and Charles then wheeled about, and returned to Aquitaine by the
same way that he had come. His expedition had not proved a great
success. The Saracen rebels were untrustworthy vassals, nor was the only
other result of the campaign, the homage paid to Charles by the Spanish
Basques and Navarrese, after he had stormed their town of Pampeluna, a
more solid gain. Indeed, while the Frankish army was returning through
the passes of the Pyrenees, the Basques fell upon the king’s rearguard
and waggon-train, in the famous defile of Roncesvalles. They captured
much booty, and slew three great officials—Eggihard, the seneschal;
Anselm, the count of the palace; and Hruotland (Roland), the warden of
the Breton marches. The last-named, of whom history knows nothing save
his untimely fall at Roncesvalles, must have been a great man among the
Franks, for within a short time after his death he had become the hero
of many legends, which ultimately took shape in the famous _Chanson de
Roland_, wherein the Breton Margrave appears as second only to Charles
the Great among the hosts of Christendom (778).
The king had not long reached Aquitaine when the unwelcome news arrived
that the Saxons had broken their oaths, and were once more up in arms.
The exile Witikind had returned from Denmark, and called the turbulent
youth of Saxony into the field. The greater number of the tribes had
risen at his call, and a great Saxon host had stormed the new fort of
Karlstadt, and harried Hesse and the right bank of the Rhine, as far as
Deutz and the mouth of the Moselle, burning churches, and slaying the
peasantry of the country-side in revenge for the destruction of the
Irminsul and the ravages of Charles in 775-76. On receiving this
disturbing news the king made his way to Austrasia, sent out some troops
to clear the Rhine-bank of the Saxon plunderers, but put off the general
muster of the hosts of the Franks for a third conquest of Saxony till
next year. In the summer of 779, however, he again started on his
endless task, and marched through Westphalia with fire and sword. The
Westphalians once more surrendered, after a defeat in the open field;
the Engrians and Eastphalians yielded without fighting. [Sidenote:
Fourth conquest of Saxony.] In the next spring he returned again, held a
great diet at the headwaters of the Lippe, and divided all Saxony into
missionary districts, each to be worked by a colony of monks from
Austrasia, the first step towards the partition of the land into the
later bishoprics. This activity was rewarded by the conversion and
baptism of many thousand pagans. Charles assisted in person on more than
one occasion, when whole thousands of Saxons were simultaneously passed
through the waters of the Ocker and the Elbe (780).
He then turned off towards Italy. For the first time his departure was
not followed by an immediate outbreak of rebellion. The land remained
quiet for more than two years (780-82), and when he next passed that way
Charles thought it had advanced so far in the paths of peace that he
divided it up into countships, after the model of the rest of his
empire, and gave the charge of many of them to native Saxon chiefs, whom
he honoured with the title of count; the rest were placed under officers
of Frankish blood. He also published a code of laws for Saxony, in which
the harshest punishments were denounced against all those who still
clung to paganism. Such offences as sacrificing to Woden, burning
instead of burying the dead, openly deriding church ceremonies, or
robbing a church, were to be punished with instant death. Even those who
obstinately refused baptism, or who after baptism refused to fast in
Lent, and conform to church discipline, were threatened with capital
punishment.
It was perhaps in consequence of the issue of this cruel code that the
Saxons once more flew to arms in the autumn of 782. The rebel Witikind
returned from Denmark to put himself at their head, and most of the
northern tribes rose at his call. The news quickly brought Charles back
into the country. Once more he came in overwhelming force, and many of
the Saxons at once laid down their arms and submitted. But now for the
first time the king showed signs of violent wrath against the unruly
race. He could not pardon them for slaying priests, burning churches,
and washing off in mockery their marks of baptism. He bade each tribe
send to him in bonds those men who had been most prominent in casting
off Christianity and fomenting the last rising. [Sidenote: Massacre of
Verden.] Four thousand five hundred captives were brought before him by
their submissive countrymen in his camp at Verden, on the Aller.
Yielding to an impulse of revenge, Charles had the whole of this great
body of helpless prisoners beheaded. But, instead of cowing the Saxons,
this cruel execution only roused them to wild wrath. Every man in the
nation had lost some friend or relative in the great massacre, and even
the tribes which had hitherto been most submissive flew to arms. There
followed more than two years of unbroken fighting (783-85). Charles
marched twice through the land, burning and slaughtering over the face
of every Saxon _gau_, from the Ems to the Elbe, but the infuriated
rebels closed in behind him after he had passed, and still held out in
the woods and marshes. But the king only hardened his heart. He refused
to quit the land, and wintered, with all his army, near Minden, in the
heart of Saxony. At last, in the spring of 785, the perseverance of the
rebels began to quail; it was impossible to drive off the inflexible
king of the Franks, and they once more bethought them of submission.
[Sidenote: Fifth conquest of Saxony, 785.] The rebel chief Witikind
obtained a promise of his life if he would surrender and be baptized,
and, when he, with his chosen warriors, submitted, the great rising was
at last at an end. Once more the counts received charge of their old
districts, the missionaries returned to rebuild their ruined churches,
and the surviving Saxons submitted in despair to the yoke of the
Frankish warrior and the Frankish priest.
It was seven years before any further trouble arose in Saxony, though
there were to be four more partial risings between 792 and 804. But none
of these threatened seriously to shake Charles’s domination; they were
merely the last throes of Saxon despair, and cannot be compared to the
great struggle of 783-85, in which the fate of Saxon independence and
Saxon heathendom was really settled.
[Sidenote: Annexation of Bavaria.] It was shortly after the final
annexation of the Germans of the Elbe and Weser that Charles fully
incorporated the Germans of the upper Danube with his empire. His
vassal, Tassilo, duke of Bavaria, had been a somewhat unruly and
disobedient subject. He was pardoned for more than one outburst of
disloyalty, but when he was treated with kindness and consideration he
behaved no better than before. At last, in 788, he was deprived of his
duchy, which was cut up into countships and put under Frankish
governors, while he himself was sent to end his days in the Neustrian
monastery of Jumiéges.
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