The Franks, a tribe of German origin, had marched from their
hereditary possessions on the Lower Rhine to the Meuse and the Sambre,
A. D. 486. From this place, their warlike king, Clovis, led them forth
to war and plunder. After he had conquered and put to death the last
Roman governor, Syágrius, in Soissons, and made himself master of the
country between the Seine and the Loire, he advanced against the
Alemanni, who were in possession of an extensive kingdom on both banks
of the Rhine. He defeated them in the great battle of Zülpich (between
Bonn and Aix), and subjected their country on the Moselle and the
Lahn. In the heat of the battle, Clovis had sworn, that if the
doubtful combat should terminate in his favor, he would embrace the
faith of his Christian wife; and in the same year, he, with 8,000
nobles of his train, received baptism in the waters of the Rhine. But
Christianity produced no emotions of pity in his savage heart. After
he had extended the Frank empire to the Rhone on the east, and to the
Garónne on the south, he attempted to secure the whole territory to
himself and his posterity, by putting to death the chiefs of all the
Frank tribes.
The wickedness of the father was inherited by his four sons, who,
after Clovis’s death, divided the Frank empire between them; the
eldest received the eastern kingdom, Austrásia, with the capital,
Metz; the three younger sons shared the western territory, Neustria,
and Burgundy, which was connected with it. But the empire was again
from time to time united. The history of the kingly house of
Merovingians displays a frightful picture of human depravity. The
murders of brothers and relatives, bloody civil wars, and the
explosion of unbridled passions, fill its annals. The savage
enormities of the two queens, Brunhilda and Fredigonda, are
particularly dreadful. These horrors at length destroyed all the power
of the race of Clovis, so that they are distinguished in history as
sluggish kings, whilst the steward of the royal possessions (Mayor of
the palace) gradually obtained possession of all the powers of
government. A visit to the yearly assemblies of the people
(Marzfelder), upon a carriage drawn by four oxen, was at last the only
occupation of the imbecile Merovingians. At first, each of the three
kingdoms had its own mayor, until the brave and shrewd Pepin of
Heristal succeeded in uniting the mayoralties of Neustria and Burgundy
with that of Austrásia, and making them hereditary in his own family.
From this time, Pepin’s descendants, who were called dukes of
Francónia, possessed the regal power, whilst the Merovingians were
kings in nothing but name.
Pepin of Heristal, and his son Charles Martel, had gained the
confidence of the nation by their warlike deeds, and the favor of the
priests by their zeal in the propagation of Christianity. Both parties
were instrumental in raising Pepin the Little, the son of Charles
Martel, to the throne of the Franks. For when the assembly of the
nation deposed the last imbecile representative of the Merovingians
(Childeric III), and proclaimed the chief steward, Pepin, king, the
pope confirmed the election, in hope of finding in the Frank ruler a
support against the Longobards and the iconoclastic emperor of
Byzantium. In return for the royal consecration, which was first
performed by Boniface, and afterwards by Pope Stephen himself, Pepin
endowed the Roman chair with the portion of coast on the Adriatic sea,
southwards from Ravenna. This was the foundation of the temporal power
of the pope.
Pepin reigned for sixteen years with vigor and renown over the Frank
empire, which extended far into South and Central Germany, and which,
at his death, he divided between his two sons, Charles and Carloman.
About three years afterwards, A. D. 771, Carloman died, and
Charlemagne (Charles the Great) was declared sole ruler of the Franks,
by the voice of the estates of the Empire. He conducted many wars, and
advanced Christian cultivation and civil order. For the purpose of
securing the boundaries of his kingdom and extending Christianity, he
made war for thirty-one years on the Saxon confederation, which was
formed by various Pagan tribes on the Weser and Elbe. Charles took the
fortress of Eresburg, on the south of the Teutoburger forest,
destroyed the national palladium――the statue of Arminius, and
compelled the Saxons to a peace. He next proceeded against the
Longobard king, Desidérius, in obedience to the summons of Pope
Adrian. With an army collected together near Geneva, he crossed the
St. Bernard, stormed the passes of the Alps, and conquered Pavia.
Desidérius ended his days in a cloister. Charles erected the Lombard
throne in Milan, united Upper Italy to the kingdom of the Franks, and
confirmed the gifts made by Pepin to the pope.
During the absence of Charles, the Saxons had expelled the Frank
garrisons and reëstablished their ancient boundaries. Charles again
marched into their country, subdued them, and compelled the chiefs of
the tribes to submit at Paderborn. Their warlike duke, Witikind,
alone, fled to the Danes and refused to confirm the treaty. In the two
following years, Charles fought against the Moors in Spain, took
Pampelona and Saragossa, and united the whole country, as far as the
Ebro, to his own kingdom, as a Spanish province. But during his
return, his rear, under the command of Roland, suffered a defeat in
the valley of Roncesválles, in which the bravest champions of the
Franks were destroyed. Roland’s battle at Roncesválles was a favorite
theme with the poets of the middle ages. The Saxons took advantage of
his absence to make a fresh insurrection, and pursued their
devastating course as far as the Rhine. Charles hastened to the spot,
gave them repeated overthrows, and subdued their land afresh. But when
he attempted to employ them as militia against the Slavonic tribes in
the East, they fell upon the Frank troops who were marching with them,
at the Suntal (between Hanover and Hameln), and slew them. This
demanded vengeance. The Frank emperor marched through the land,
plundering and destroying, and then held a court of judgment at Verden
on the Aller. 4,500 prisoners expiated with their blood the crime of
their brethren. Upon this, hostilities were resumed with fresh
violence. But the battle on the Hase, which terminated to the
disadvantage of the Saxons, put an end to the war. Witikind and the
other chiefs took an oath of fealty and military service, and allowed
themselves to be baptised. The people followed their example. Eight
bishoprics provided for the maintenance and extension of Christianity
among the Saxons. Another insurrection, however, was occasioned a few
years afterwards, by the oppressive _arriere-ban_, and the unwonted
payment of tithes to the Church, which resulted in 10,000 Saxon
families being carried away from their homes, and colonies of Franks
being established in their place. To oppose the Slavonic tribes to the
east of the Elbe, Charles founded the Margraviate of Brandenburg.
Shortly after, Thassilo duke of Bavaria, attempted to render himself
independent of the Frank power, by the assistance of the Avars, who
lived to the east. He was overpowered, and expiated his breach of
faith by perpetual confinement within the walls of the cloisters of
Fulda. Bavaria was hereupon incorporated with the Frank empire, and
Charles established the Eastern Margraviate as a check upon the wild
Avars. When Charlemagne had reduced all the lands from the Ebro and
the Appenines to the Eider, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Raab
and the Elbe, he repaired to Rome at the conclusion of the century. It
was here that, during the festival of Christmas, he was invested with
the crown of the Roman empire, in the church of St. Peter, by Leo III,
whom he had defended against a mob of insurgents. It was hoped, that
by this means, western Christendom might be formed into a single body,
of which the Pope was to become the spiritual, and Charles the secular
head. It was at this time that the long-existing variance between the
Western (Roman Catholic), and the Eastern (Greek Catholic) churches,
terminated in a complete separation.
The domestic policy of Charlemagne was not less fertile of results
than the foreign. 1. He improved the government and the administration
of justice by abolishing the office of duke, dividing the whole
kingdom into provinces, and appointing counts and deputies for the
conduct of the affairs of justice, and clerks of the treasury for the
management of the crown lands and the collection of imposts. The laws
were confirmed by the popular assemblies (maifelder), in which every
freeman had a share. 2. He promoted the cultivation of the land, and
the education of the people. Agriculture and the breeding of cattle
were encouraged, farms and villages sprang up, and barren heaths were
converted into arable fields.
He founded conventual schools and cathedrals, had the works of the
ancient Roman writers transcribed, and formed a collection of old
German heroic ballads. Learned men, like the British monk, Alcuin, and
the historian Eginhard, from the Odenwald, had ample reason to
congratulate themselves on his encouragement and support. 3. He
favored the clergy and the church. It was by his means that the former
obtained their tithes and vast gifts and legacies; church music was
improved, missionaries supported, and churches and monasteries
erected. Ingelheim on the Rhine, and Aix, were his favorite places of
residence. He lies buried in the latter town.
The son of Charlemagne, Louis the Denbonnaire (the Gentle), was better
fitted for the repose of a cloister than for the government of a
warlike nation. A too hasty division of his kingdom among his three
sons, Lothaire, Pepin, and Louis, was the occasion of much sorrow to
himself, and confusion to the empire. For when, at a later period, he
proposed an alteration in favor of his fourth son, Charles the Bald,
the fruit of a second marriage, the elder sons took up arms against
their father. Louis, faithlessly deserted by his vassals on “the field
of lies,” near Strasburg, and betrayed to his own sons, was compelled
by Lothaire to do penance in the church and to abdicate his throne;
and was afterwards shut up for some time in a cloister. It is true
that Louis procured his father’s reinstatement; but when the weak
emperor, after the death of Pepin, by a new division of the kingdom,
deprived Louis of Germany, in favor of his brothers, Lothaire and
Charles, Louis raised his standard against him. This broke the old
emperor’s heart. Full of sorrow, he ended his days on a small island
of the Rhine, near Ingelheim. The hostile brothers now turned their
arms against each other. A bloody civil war depopulated the country,
so that at last, after a battle of three days’ duration, at
Fontenaille in Burgundy, the Frank nobility refused to obey the
_arriere-ban_, and by this means brought about the treaty of partition
of Verdun. By virtue of this treaty, Lothaire received the imperial
dignity, together with Italy, Burgundy, and Lorraine; Charles the
Bald, western Franconia (France); and Louis the German, the lands on
the right bank of the Rhine――Spire, Worms, and Mayence.
This division was followed by a time of great confusion, during which
Europe was severely harassed, on the south by the Arabs; on the east,
by the Slavi; and on the north and west, by the Normans. To oppose
these predatory inroads, the Carlovingian monarchs, who were all men
of weak and narrow minds, were obliged to restore the ducal office in
the different provinces, and to sanction the hereditary authority of
the Margraves, so that, in a short time, all the power fell into the
hands of the nobles. By the rapid deaths of most of the posterity of
Louis the Denbonnaire, nearly the whole of the empire of Charlemagne
devolved upon Charles the Fat, A. D. 876, a prince weak and indolent,
and simple almost to imbecility. Incapable of resisting the valiant
Normans, he purchased a disgraceful peace from them. This proceeding
so exasperated the German princes, that they decreed his deposition,
at Tribur on the Rhine, and elected his nephew, the brave Arnulf, as
his successor. Arnulf governed with vigor. He overthrew the Normans at
Louvain, and called in the aid of the wild Magyars, or Hungarians,
from the Ural, a people expert in horsemanship and archery, and who
were now, under their valiant captain Arpad, occupying the plains on
the Danube (named after them Hungary), against the Slavi and Avars.
The Avars were either subjected or compelled to retreat. But the
strangers (the Hungarians) soon became a more dreadful scourge to
Germany than either the Slavi or the Avars. They made their predatory
inroads and exacted a yearly tribute, even under Louis the Child, the
youthful son of Arnulf, who died in the flower of his age, after a
glorious campaign in Italy. This still continued, when, after the
early death of this last of the Carlovingian race, the German nobles,
among whom the dukes of Saxony, Franconia, Lorraine, Swabia, and
Bavaria were preëminent for power, met together and elected Duke
Conrad of Franconia, emperor. Germany thus became an elective empire.
The rule of the Carlovingians survived longest in France, but it
possessed neither strength nor dignity. Under Charles the Simple, who
had ascended the French throne after the deposition and subsequent
death of Charles the Fat, the dukes and counts rendered themselves
entirely independent, and one of the most powerful among them, Hugh of
Paris, kept the imbecile king in strict confinement. France, on the
other hand, was delivered from the devastating forays of the Normans,
by Charles admitting duke Rollo into the province named after them
Normandy, on condition that he and his followers would suffer
themselves to be baptized, and recognize the king as their suzerain
(feudal sovereign). The Normans, a people readily susceptible of
civilization, soon acquired the language, manners, and customs of the
Franks. Charles the Simple was followed by two other kings of the
Carlovingian race; but their power was at last so limited that they
possessed nothing but the town of Laon, with the surrounding country;
every thing else had fallen into the hands of the insolent nobility.
After the death of the Childless Louis V, Hugh Capet, son and heir of
Hugh of Paris, assumed the title of king, and put to death in prison
Louis’ uncle Charles of Lorraine, who attempted to assert his right to
the throne by force of arms.
The first successors of Hugh Capet possessed but little power and a
narrow territory. The dukes and counts of the different provinces
looked upon the king, who, properly, was only lord of France, as their
equal, and only allowed him the first rank among themselves, in so far
as they were obliged to recognize him as their feudal superior. The
nobles dared not weaken the rights that appertained to him in this
capacity, lest they should afford an example of breach of faith to
their own subjects, and encourage them to similar behavior towards
themselves. For the rest, the possessions of the great vassals were
independent counties and principalities, which had no closer
connection with the French throne than the western territories on the
Seine, Loire, and Garonne, which belonged to the king of England; or
the eastern (Burgundian) lands on the Rhone and the Jura, which were
portions of the German empire.
But in the attempt to increase the kingly power, the house of Capet
were not less aided by their good fortune than by their wisdom. It was
fortunate, that, owing to the lengthened lives of most of their kings,
the throne was seldom vacant, that there was almost always a son of
age to succeed his father, and that, consequently, there was never an
interregnum. But it was wisdom in the first kings to have their eldest
sons crowned during their lives, and to make them their partners in
the government, so that, on the death of the father, little or no
change was suffered. The most important kings after Hugh Capet were
Louis VII, who undertook the second crusade, and during his absence
intrusted the government in France to the politic Abbot Suger of St.
Denis; Philip Augustus II, who wrested Normandy and the other
territories in the west from the English king, John Lackland; and
Louis VIII, who enlarged his dominions on the south by the war against
the Albigenses. But the reigns which had the greatest influence upon
the history of France were those of St. Louis and Philip the Fair. The
former improved the laws, and caused the royal courts of justice to be
looked upon as the highest in the land, and the disputes of the nobles
among themselves, or with their vassals to be brought before them for
decision: the latter, on the other hand, increased the consequence of
the towns by granting various privileges and liberties to the
citizens, and by being the first who summoned the representatives of
the towns to the diet during his contest with the pope. After the
death of Philip’s three sons, who reigned one after the other, but
left no male heirs, the French throne passed to the house of Valois,
A. D. 1328.
Philip VI of Valois, brother’s son of Philip the Fair, inherited the
French throne. But Edward III of England also asserted his claims, as
son of a daughter of Philip the Fair. Without regard to the Salic law,
which prohibited the succession of females, he assumed the title of
king of France, and made war upon Philip. After a bloody contest of a
few years, the battle of Crecy was fought, in which the English were
the victors, and the flower of the French chivalry, together with
John, the blind king of Bohemia, fell on the field. The possession of
the important town of Calais was the fruit of the victory. Philip died
in the following year, and his son, John the Good, succeeded to the
contested crown. Eager to obliterate the memory of Crecy, he attacked
the English army, which was under the command of Edward III’s heroic
son, the Black Prince, but suffered a decisive defeat at Poictiers,
and was obliged to proceed as a captive to the capital of England.
Whilst he was absent, the kingdom was governed by the crown prince
(Dauphin). During his rule, an insurrection broke out in Paris and
over the whole land, which was attended with great devastations and
outrages, until the imperfectly-armed citizens and peasants were
subdued by the French knights, and visited with severe punishment.
Shortly after this, a peace was established between France and
England, by which Calais and the south-west of France was surrendered
to the English, and a heavy ransom promised for John, whilst Edward,
on the other hand, renounced his pretensions to the French throne. But
when the collection of the ransom money was delayed, John voluntarily
returned into captivity, and died in London.
John’s son, Charles V (the Wise), healed the wounds of his country. He
quieted men’s minds by his moderate government, and by prudence and
valor recovered the lands that had been lost on the Loire and the
Garonne; so that when the Black Prince fell a victim to wasting
disease, and Edward III shortly followed him into the grave, nothing
remained to the English of all their conquests but Calais. But under
his successor, Charles VI, who became insane shortly after coming of
age, France again fell into a state of confusion and lawlessness. Two
powerful court parties, headed by the uncle of the king (the duke of
Burgundy), and the king’s brother (the duke of Orleans), contended for
the government; whilst the burghers rebelled against the heavy
imposts, and demanded an increase of their privileges. About the same
time in which the towns were waging war against the knights in
Germany, the Swiss peasants were contending against the nobility, and
a dangerous popular insurrection, under Wat Tyler and others, was
making rapid progress in England, the citizen and peasant class rose
against the court and the nobility in Flanders and France also. But
want of union among the insurgents gave the latter the victory, and
the outbreak was followed by a diminution of the privileges of the
people. The Burgundian party favored the citizens, the Orleans party
the nobility.
The chivalrous king, Henry V of England, took advantage of these
circumstances to renew the war with France. He demanded the former
possessions back again; and when this was refused, he entered France
by Calais, and renewed at Agincourt, on the Somme, the days of Crecy
and Poictiers, A. D. 1415. The French army, four times the number of
its opponents, was overthrown, and the flower of the French chivalry
either fell in the field, or were taken prisoners by the enemy;
nothing stood between the victor and Paris, where party violence had
just now attained its highest point, and murders and insurrections
were matters of daily occurrence. The Orleans party joined the
Dauphin, whilst the Burgundian party, with the queen Isabella, united
themselves with the English, and acknowledged Henry V and his
descendants as the heirs of the French crown. The whole of the country
to the north of the Loire was soon in the hands of the English. But
Henry V was snatched away by death in the midst of his heroic course,
in the same year in which the crazy Charles VI sank into the grave,
and the Dauphin took possession of the throne under the title of
Charles VII. But this made little difference to France. The English
and their allies proclaimed Henry VI, who was scarcely a year old, the
rightful ruler of the country, and retained their superiority in the
field so that they already held Orleans in siege.
In this necessity, the MAID OF ORLEANS, a peasant girl of Dom Remy in
Lorraine, who gave out that she had been summoned to the redemption of
France by a heavenly vision, aroused the sinking courage of Charles
and his soldiers. Under her banner, the town of Orleans was delivered,
the king conducted to Rheims to be crowned, and the greater part of
their conquests wrested from the English. The faith in her heavenly
mission inspired the French with courage and self-confidence, and
filled the English with fear and despair. This effect remained after
Joan of Arc had fallen into the hands of the latter, and had been
given up to the flames on a pretended charge of blasphemy and sorcery.
The English lost one province after another; and when Philip the Good
of Burgundy reconciled himself with the king, Calais soon became their
last and only possession in the land of France. Paris opened its gates
and received Charles with acclamations. He reigned over France in
peace for twenty-five years; but he was a weak man, who suffered
himself to be guided by women and favorites. He was followed by Louis
XI, a crafty but politic prince, who, by cunning, violence, and
unexampled tyranny, rendered the power of the throne absolute, and
enlarged and consolidated his empire. He robbed the nobility of all
their choicest privileges, and gradually united all the great fiefs
with the crown. He then, by the assistance of the Swiss (whose hardy
youth he and his successor engaged as mercenaries), overthrew Charles
the Bold, and made himself master of the dukedom of Burgundy. The
stings of conscience and the fear of men tortured him in the lonely
castles where he spent the last years of his life, A. D. 1483. His two
successors, Charles VIII and Louis XII, conquered Brittany, but
dissipated the strength of the kingdon in their expeditions to Italy.