THE LATER WARS AND CONQUESTS OF CHARLES THE GREAT
785-814
Wide scope of the later conquests of Charles—Outlying provinces governed
by his sons—Conquest of the Baltic Slavs—Subjection of Bohemia—Wars
with the Avars and their final subjection—Hostilities with the
Eastern Empire—Conquest of the Spanish March—Later revolts of the
Saxons—Wars with the Danes.
King Charles had now come to the end of the first of the stages of his
conquests, and the nearer enemies of the Frankish kingdom had been
reduced to subjection. With comparatively little trouble the fertile
Lombard plain had been won; after long toil and exertion the pathless
woods and moors of Saxony had been taken within the boundary of his
realm. But his schemes of conquest had a much wider scope than the
annexation of Lombardy and Saxony. Before Christendom could be reckoned
as safe from all foes without, there were more realms to be won, more
marches to be made secure. By pushing his frontier up to the Elbe and
the Julian Alps, Charles had taken up the ancient feuds of the Lombard
and the Saxon with their eastern neighbours, the Avar and the Slav.
Moreover, there was still the Spanish border to be made firm, for the
expedition of 778 had resulted in no permanent gain; the unstable
allegiance of Barcelona and Gerona was once more being paid to the
Ommeyad king at Cordova, not to the lord of the Franks.
The second period, therefore, in the record of the conquests of Charles
the Great includes the history of the making firm of his new eastern and
south-western borders. But this is not, like the first fifteen years of
his reign, a time of complete conquest and incorporation of races who
were near akin to the Franks. All the Teutonic peoples of central Europe
were already gathered beneath the sceptre of Charles; the tribes with
which he had now to do were strangers to the Franks, not only in
religion, but in blood and language. [Sidenote: Wide scope of Charles’s
schemes.] The work of Charles in the East in the second period of his
reign was to make the Slav and Avar harmless, by compelling their
princes to pay homage and tribute, not by occupying their realms with
Frankish garrisons, or carving them up into countships and marches. In
the West, on the other hand, his task was to build up a strong border
against the Moor, by conquering, one by one, the fortresses between the
Pyrenees and the Ebro. The Moslem had to be driven out, since there was
no hope of converting him. In the towns from which he was expelled a new
population grew up, neither purely Spanish nor purely Frank, but the
mixed race of the Catalans, in whose veins Romano-Spanish, Visigothic,
Aquitanian, and Frankish blood was mingled in various proportions, so
that they have always differed very considerably, both in character and
in language, from the inhabitants of the rest of the peninsula. But the
history of the foreign policy of Charles during the second period of his
reign contains much more besides his dealings with the Slav, the Moor,
and the Avar. He had frequent troubles with the East-Roman Empire,
arising from their disputed boundaries in Italy. In the very end of his
reign he met and turned off the first assault of the Danes on the
Frankish realm, an attack insignificant in itself, but portending the
gravest dangers in the future. We find him interfering beyond the
British sea with the affairs of Northumbria, and at the same time
extending his hand far to the south to seize the Balearic Isles. Even to
the distant Abbasside Caliph at Bagdad his fame was known, and Haroun’s
ambassadors sought the court of Aachen to concert an alliance with him.
In the second half of his reign Charles very frequently took the field
in person, but was not so constantly at the head of his armies as during
the period 773-85. [Sidenote: Charles makes his sons kings.] He had now
three growing sons, whom he intrusted with the charge of three important
sections of his realm, and he looked to them to guard each that portion
of the frontier of the Frankish empire which bordered on his own
sub-kingdom. Charles, the eldest of the three, ruled in western Neustria
(Anjou, Maine, Touraine); Pippin, the second, in Lombardy; Lewis, the
youngest, in Aquitaine. Charles would thus be specially concerned with
the unruly Bretons of Armorica, who twice made unsuccessful risings in
his father’s reign (786 and 799). Lewis was in charge of the Saracen
frontier along the Pyrenees. Pippin had to keep watch over the duke of
Benevento, as well as to turn his attention to the Avars on the
north-east of Italy. But the three princes were not strictly confined
each to his own sphere. Charles was occasionally sent against the
Saxons; Lewis conducted at least one campaign in southern Italy; Pippin
more than once took charge of an attack on the Slavs of Bohemia.
Whenever, in short, the great king could not march in person against a
rebel or a foreign enemy, he would send one of his sons to take his
place. He did not allow them to become completely localised and
engrossed with the affairs of their respective governments, but often
kept them with him at Aachen for many months at a time.
In reviewing the later conquests of Charles the Great it will be most
convenient to follow the geographical order from north to south, rather
than the chronological order of each campaign, for his arms were engaged
in so many quarters at once that an attempt to tell his doings in a
purely annalistic form leads to dire confusion.
On the North-East the Frankish border, after 785, was fringed by
Slavonic tribes, all ancient enemies of the Saxon. [Sidenote: Conquest
of the Northern Slavs.] These were the Abotrites in the north—in the
modern Mecklemburg—the Wiltzes beyond them in western Pomerania, and the
Sorbes in Brandenburg, on the Havel and Spree. These tribes, like their
kindred whom we have already met in the Balkan peninsula, were rude
peoples, and not very formidable enemies, owing to their subdivisions
under petty princes, and their incapacity for union. Though numerous and
not unwarlike, all the Slavs between Elbe and Oder were subdued by
Charles in a single campaign. He crossed the Elbe in 789 with an
Austrasian army, strengthened by levies of Frisians and of Saxons, who
served gladly against their ancestral foes. The terror of his name seems
to have stricken the Slavs with dismay. After a very slight resistance,
first the Abotrites and their chief king Witzin, then the Wiltzes and
their chief king Dragovit did homage to Charles, gave him as many
hostages as he chose to demand, and consented to pay him a tribute and
to receive the Christian missionaries whom he prepared to send among
them. The Frankish army marched through moors and woods till it saw the
Baltic at the mouth of the Peene in Pomerania, and then returned with
some booty and no loss to the banks of the Rhine. So thoroughly were the
Slavs subdued that during the next revolt of the Saxons they did not
take the opportunity of disowning their homage to Charles, but came to
help him against the rebels (795). Witzin, prince of the Abotrites, was
actually slain by the Eastphalians while in arms for the Franks, and his
death was well revenged by the king, who harried the lands along the
Elbe with exceptional severity to atone for his ally’s slaughter. In a
later Saxon rising (798) we again find the Abotrites taking arms at the
bidding of Charles. Their new king Thrasuco reconquered the
Nordalbingians without Frankish aid, and brought their chiefs in bonds
to the king’s feet, ‘whereupon Charles honoured him marvellously, and
gave the Slavs great gifts.’ [Sidenote: Wars of Dane and Slav.] Ten
years later the same prince and people fought valiantly against the
Danes when they invaded the northern frontier of Charles’s realm, though
their neighbours the Wiltzes on this occasion deserted to the enemy. The
latter people, however, were subdued again in 812, at the very end of
the great king’s reign, so that he left his eastern boundary
undiminished at his death. On the whole the Slavs of the North were not
by any means the most difficult to rule of the many races with whom
Charles had to deal.
With their fellow Slavs more to the south, the Czechs of [Sidenote:
Subjection of Bohemia.] Bohemia, the Franks had comparatively few
relations. The vast uninhabited tract of forest and mountain called the
Böhmerwald seems to have long kept them apart. But in 805-6 the king
sent against them his son and namesake Charles the Younger, who twice
wasted all the valley of the upper Elbe, and finally compelled the
chiefs of the Czechs to acknowledge their dependence on the Frankish
empire by paying tribute.
South of Bohemia, along the Danube and the Raab and Leithe, the realms
of Charles bordered on the Tartar tribe of the Avars, ancient enemies
both of the Lombards and of the emperors of Constantinople. The Avars
had of late years fallen on evil times. [Sidenote: War with the Avars.]
They were vexed with civil wars so much that none of their princes any
longer ruled the whole race, or could call himself by the title of
Chagan, the old name of their supreme ruler. Yet, though wasted by their
own dissensions, and by the revolts of the Slavonic tribes who were
their vassals, the Avars could not keep from their old habit of making
descents on their neighbours. They drew down their doom on themselves by
invading, in 788, at once the Lombard march of Friuli and the vassal
duchy of Bavaria. When next he had leisure, two years later, Charles
planned an invasion of their land on the largest scale. He himself
marched down the Danube with an Austrasian and Saxon army, burst through
the long line of fortifications with which the Avars had strengthened
their border, and wasted their lands as far as the Raab. At the same
moment a great Lombard host entered the valley of the Drave, pushed into
the heart of Pannonia, beat the Avars in the field, and stormed their
great circular camps. The complete subjection of the whole tribe would
have followed in the next year if Charles had not been called away by a
Saxon revolt, which kept him employed during the two next campaigning
seasons. The king himself never again took the field against the Avars,
but his son Pippin and Eric duke of Friuli continued the war on his
behalf. Twice they captured the great ‘ring,’ or royal camp, between
Danube and Theiss, the central stronghold of the Avar race, and sent its
spoils to Aachen in such quantities that Charles was able to send Avaric
trophies as gifts to all his friends, even to such distant kings as Offa
of Mercia. [Sidenote: The Avars subdued.] At last the spirit of the
Avars was so much broken that their chiefs, or ‘Tuduns,’ came of their
own accord to Aachen to do homage to Charles, and offered to receive
Christianity. Their submission was accepted. The king appointed one of
them to rule the whole race as his vassal, and bade him assume the
ancient title of Chagan (805). This prince was baptized by the name of
Abraham, paid a regular tribute to the Franks, and kept his subjects for
the future from the dangerous temptation of meddling with the Lombard or
Bavarian border. The Avars were, however, in a state of decay at this
time, and their race and kingdom were ere long to be swept away by the
invading Magyars.
The same fate which befell the Tartar Avars fell also upon their
southern neighbours and former vassals, the Slavs of the Save and Drave.
These Carantanians (Carinthians) and Slovenians were subdued by the arms
of Charles’s Bavarian and Lombard subjects, and became dependants of the
Frankish empire, forced to pay tribute and do homage, but not wholly
incorporated with the realm.
We have already spoken in a previous chapter of the dealings of Charles
with Italy. He never succeeded in fully subduing the duchy of Benevento,
though its dukes were several times compelled to do him homage when he
marched in person against them. Italy was finally put under charge of
Pippin, the king’s second son, who was given the royal title and
authority there as his father’s delegate. Pippin, besides the task of
striving to hold down Benevento, had also to cope with the intrigues of
the East-Romans in Italy. The Constantinopolitan emperor had still a
foothold in the peninsula at Naples, Reggio, and Brindisi, and still
enjoyed the homage of the half-independent peoples of Venice and Istria.
Luckily for the Franks the Eastern realm was during the most important
years of Charles’s reign, under the weak hands of the empress Irene
(780-90 and 797-802) and the usurper Nicephorus I. (802-11.) They
bitterly resented the establishment of a new power in Italy, and the
assumption of the imperial title by the Frankish king, which they
regarded as the worst insult that could be put upon the majesty of the
Eastern Empire, which claimed to be the sole and legitimate heir of
Augustus and Constantine. [Sidenote: Wars with the East-Romans.] But
their efforts went little further than endeavouring to stir up trouble
in Italy by means of the Lombard prince Adelchis, the son of king
Desiderius, who had fled to Constantinople and become a Byzantine
patrician. He tried to make more than one descent on Italy, but met with
uniform ill-success. The only serious fighting between Frank and
East-Roman was in the years 804-10, when Nicephorus I. undertook several
expeditions against Italy to avenge the revolt of Venice. In the
first-named year, a party among the Venetians, who were torn by civil
strife, called in the Franks and transferred their allegiance to
Charles. Nicephorus sent out a fleet which harried the coasts of Tuscany
and the Exarchate, but could make no solid impression on the Lombard
kingdom. A little later the East-Roman party in Venice got the upper
hand, and once more handed the city over to the Byzantines. Contented
with the recovery of his vassal-state, Nicephorus then made peace with
Charles. The only net result of the war had been that the Franks got
permanent possession of Pola and the other coast-cities of Istria, which
had hitherto been East-Roman. Michael Rhangabe, the successor of
Nicephorus, went so far in allying himself with Charles, that he
consented to recognise him as Emperor of the West, a concession accepted
with pride by the Franks, and regarded as a lamentable token of weakness
by the Constantinopolitans (812).
One of the consequences of the conquests of Charles in Italy was to
bring the Franks into collision with the Saracen pirates, who infested
the central Mediterranean, making their harbourage in the ports of the
islands which face the western coast of the peninsula. [Sidenote: Wars
with Saracen pirates.] At a date which cannot be accurately fixed, the
Franks took possession of Corsica and Sardinia, hunting out the Saracen
colonists who had conquered the islands from the East-Romans some fifty
or sixty years before. In 799 the Franks also took possession of the
Balearic islands. These distant dependencies were attacked and ravaged
by fleets from Spain on more than one occasion, but they were held down
to the close of the reign of Charles. They were given in charge to the
counts of Genoa and Tuscany, who seem to have been able to raise a
considerable fleet, and more than once gained naval victories over the
plundering Moor.
But the most serious struggle between Charles and the Moslems took place
in Spain, where during the whole of the second period of his reign the
fighting was almost continuous. The permanent advance of the Christians
beyond the Pyrenees began with the capture of Gerona in 785. The conduct
of the war fell mainly into the hands of Lewis, the third son of
Charles, whom his father had named king of Aquitaine, and trusted with
all the affairs of the south-west. He and his chief captain and
councillor William, count of Toulouse—a great hero in the Frankish
romances—had to deal with the two first Ommeyad kings of Cordova,
Abderahman (755-88) and Hisham (788-897), both strong and capable
rulers, from whom it was by no means easy to win territory. [Sidenote:
Conquests in Spain.] Nevertheless the Christian border slowly advanced,
owing to the seditious and turbulent Moslem governors, who were always
rebelling against their masters, and calling in Frankish aid. In 795 the
newly-won land beyond the Pyrenees—around the towns of Gerona, Cardona,
Urgel, and Ausona—was made into a separate government, the March of
Spain, and intrusted to a Margrave of its own, instead of forming a
dependency of the duchy of Septimania. Barcelona, the greatest town of
Catalonia, was added to the March in 797, by the treachery of its
governor Zeid, who, failing in a rebellion against his master at
Cordova, handed the place over to the Franks. The Moors recovered it for
a moment in 799, but king Lewis then came over the Pyrenees with the
whole levy of Aquitaine, and laid siege to the town. It held out for
nearly two years, but fell in 801, conquered by famine, after the Franks
had walled it in with a circumvallation, and sat before it in their huts
for the whole winter of 800-801. The Moorish population departed _en
masse_ after the surrender, and the great city was re-populated with
‘Goths’ from Septimania. The Franks were now firmly established beyond
the Pyrenees, and in the last ten years of Charles’s reign subdued the
whole southern slope of the mountains from Pampeluna as far as the mouth
of the Ebro. Tarragona, the second town of Catalonia, fell in 809, and
Tortosa, the great fortress which commanded the lower course of the
Ebro, in 811. After this the Franks were able to cross the river, and
ravage the wide plains of Valencia; it was probably their advance in
this direction that induced Al-Hakem, the third Ommeyad ruler of
Cordova, to sue for peace in 812, ceding to the Christians all that they
had gained beyond the Pyrenees. The Franks were not destined to hold
permanently the entirety of their conquests, but Barcelona and all the
towns north of it were lost to Islam and won for Christendom: these
strongholds guarded the Aquitanian frontier against Saracen inroads with
success, and were ultimately to form the nucleus of the more important
half of the Christian kingdom of Arragon.
Such were the foreign conquests of Charles the Great. But his offensive
campaigns were not the only wars in which blood was shed during the
later years of his reign. There were also troubles, though of
comparatively insignificant scope, within the interior of his realm. We
have already alluded to two fruitless attempts of the Bretons of
Armorica to resume their ancient independence. These were easily
crushed, but not so the later Saxon rebellions. [Sidenote: Later Saxon
revolts.] It was seven years after the pacification of 785 before the
unruly dwellers by the Elbe and Weser rose again, but in the eighth
summer some of the districts of the extreme north took arms again and
relapsed into their ancestral heathendom, ‘returning like the dog to his
vomit,’ in the words of the contemporary chronicler. The insurrection
spread widely among the Eastphalians and Nordalbingians in the following
year (793), and was not finally put down till 794, though it never
extended over the whole land, as did the great risings of the early part
of the reign of Charles. Ere two years more were passed there were new
troubles among the Engrians and Nordalbingians, which required the
presence of Charles: but it says much for the growing strength of his
power in the country that he was able to suppress them by means of
armies composed partly of Christian Saxons, and partly of the loyal
Slavs of the Abotrite tribe. The last outbreak in the land was as late
as 804: it extended only over the northern tribes, and was suppressed by
the summary transportation to Gaul of the whole of the unruly
Nordalbingian race, the greatest offenders among the rebels. Charles
settled 10,000 of their families in small colonies among the Neustrians,
and gave their vacant lands as a gift to his vassal, the king of the
Abotrites. This was the last Saxon rebellion: henceforth ‘they abandoned
the worship of evil spirits, and gave up the wicked customs of their
fathers, and received the sacrament of Christian baptism, mingling with
the Franks till at last they were reckoned one race with them.’
[Sidenote: Complete subjection of Saxony.] The complete subjection and
conversion of Saxony is marked by the creation of the first bishoprics
in the country at this period. Charles established bishops at Bremen,
Münster, and Paderborn in 804-6, to serve respectively as the religious
centres of northern, western, and southern Saxony. Others were
afterwards added at Hamburg, Osnabruck, Verden, Hildesheim, Minden, and
Magdeburg, but these foundations belong to the next generation. Round
these bishops’ sees grew up the first towns of Saxony, for hitherto its
inhabitants had lived a purely rural life, and never gathered within
walls.
The possession of Saxony brought Charles in the end of his reign into
hostile contact with a race almost unknown to his ancestors, but
destined to be only too well known to his sons—the Danes of the Jutland
peninsula and the Scandinavian isles, who dwelt beyond the Eider on the
Nordalbingian border. The advent of a new and militant Christian power
into the recesses of the unknown North seems to have stirred up the
Danes to unwonted activity. They must have heard from Witikind, and the
other Saxon exiles who took refuge with them, many tales of the untiring
energy and unrelenting severity of the great king of the Franks, and
feared lest his strong hand would be stretched out beyond the Eider to
add them to the list of his tributaries, and force them to accept his
religion. [Sidenote: Wars with the Danes.] To guard against the further
advance of the Franks, king Godfred built in 808 all along his frontier,
at the narrowest point of the isthmus of Schleswig, a great earthwork
from sea to sea, long known as the Dannewerk, and famed in wars down to
the last conflict of German and Dane in 1863. But Godfred did not
confine himself to defensive works; he began to make piratical descents
all along the Frisian and Flemish coasts as far as the mouth of the
Seine, and at the same time attacked the Abotrites and Wiltzes, the
Slavonic vassals of Charles on the Baltic. Godfred did much damage in
Frisia, and actually succeeded for a moment in crushing the Abotrites
and subduing the Wiltzes. He gave the Franks much trouble, since he
ravaged all the coast where it was unguarded, but took to his ships
again when a large army was sent against him. In 810 he penetrated so
far into Frisia, that he spoke, in boasting mood, of paying Charles a
visit at Aachen. But in the same year he was murdered by his own people,
and his nephew and successor Hemming made peace with the Franks. The
peace was ill-kept, for we hear of isolated Danish raids in the last
years of Charles’s reign and a fleet of war-ships, which were built in
the ports of Neustria for the defence of the coast, does not seem to
have protected the Frisian waters very efficiently.
But Charles did not survive to see the serious development of the Danish
attack: he died before his realm had suffered any serious loss from
their ravages, and must have been far from suspecting that ere he was
fifty years dead these half-known and somewhat despised foes would
pierce through the Frankish empire from end to end, and even sack his
own chosen dwelling, the royal palace of Aachen.
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