Wittikind, son of Wernekind, King of the Saxons at the north of the
Elbe. He had espoused the sister of Siegfried, King of the Danes; and
he was the friend of Ratbod, King of the Frisians. A true chieftain at
heart as well as by descent, he was made to be the hero of the Saxons
just as, seven centuries before, the Cheruscan Herman (Arminius) had
been the hero of the Germans. Instead of repairing to Paderborn,
Wittikind had left Saxony, and taken refuge with his brother-in-law, the
King of the Danes. Thence he encouraged his Saxon compatriots, some to
persevere in their resistance, others to repent them of their show of
submission. War began again; and Wittikind hastened back to take part in
it. In 778 the Saxons advanced as far as the Rhine; but, "not having
been able to cross this river," says Eginhard, "they set themselves to
lay waste with fire and sword all the towns and all the villages from
the city of Duitz (opposite Cologne) as far as the confluence of the
Moselle. The churches as well as the houses were laid in ruins from top
to bottom. The enemy, in his frenzy, spared neither age nor sex, wishing
to show thereby that he had invaded the territory of the Franks, not for
plunder, but for revenge!" For three years the struggle continued, more
confined in area, but more and more obstinate. Many of the Saxon tribes
submitted; many Saxons were baptized; and Siegfried, King of the Danes,
sent to Charlemagne a deputation, as if to treat for peace. Wittikind
had left Denmark; but he had gone across to her neighbors, the Northmen;
and, thence reëntering Saxony, he kindled there an insurrection as
fierce as it was unexpected. In 782 two of Charlemagne's lieutenants
were beaten on the banks of the Weser, and killed in the battle,
"together with four counts and twenty leaders, the noblest in the army;
indeed, the Franks were nearly all exterminated. At news of this
disaster," says Eginhard, "Charlemagne, without losing a moment,
reassembled an army and set out for Saxony. He summoned into his
presence all the chieftains of the Saxons, and demanded of them who had
been the promoters of the revolt. All agreed in denouncing Wittikind as
the author of this treason. But as they could not deliver him up,
because immediately after his sudden attack he had taken refuge with the
Northmen, those who, at his instigation, had been accomplices in the
crime, were placed, to the number of four thousand five hundred, in the
hands of the King; and, by his order, all had their heads cut off the
same day, at a place called Werden, on the river Aller. After this deed
of vengeance the King retired to Thionville to pass the winter there."
But the vengeance did not put an end to the war. For three years
Charlemagne had to redouble his efforts to accomplish in Saxony, at the
cost of Frankish as well as Saxon blood, his work of conquest and
conversion: "Saxony," he often repeated, "must be Christianized or wiped
out." At last, in 785, after several victories which seemed decisive, he
went and settled down in his strong castle of Ehresburg, "whither he
made his wife and children come, being resolved to remain there all the
bad season," says Eginhard, and applying himself without cessation to
scouring the country of the Saxons and wearing them out by his strong
and indomitable determination. But determination did not blind him to
prudence and policy. "Having learned that Wittikind and Abbio, another
great Saxon chieftain, were abiding in the part of Saxony situated on
the other side of the Elbe, he sent to them Saxon envoys to prevail upon
them to renounce their perfidy, and come, without hesitation, and trust
themselves to him. They, conscious of what they had attempted, dared not
at first trust to the King's word; but having obtained from him the
promise they desired of impunity, and, besides, the hostages they
demanded as guarantee of their safety, and who were brought to them, on
the King's behalf, by Amalwin, one of the officers of his court, they
came with the said lord and presented themselves before the King in his
palace of Attigny [Attigny-sur-Aisne, whither Charlemagne had now
returned], and there received baptism."
Charlemagne did more than amnesty Wittikind; he named him Duke of
Saxony, but without attaching to the title any right of sovereignty.
Wittikind, on his side, did more than come to Attigny and get baptized
there; he gave up the struggle, remained faithful to his new
engagements, and led, they say, so Christian a life that some
chroniclers have placed him on the list of saints. He was killed in 807,
in a battle against Gérold, Duke of Suabia, and his tomb is still to be
seen at Ratisbon. Several families of Germany hold him for their
ancestor; and some French genealogists have, without solid ground,
discovered in him the grandfather of Robert the Strong,
great-grandfather of Hugh Capet. However that may be, after making
peace with Wittikind, Charlemagne had still, for several years, many
insurrections to repress and much rigor to exercise in Saxony, including
the removal of certain Saxon peoplets out of their country, and the
establishment of foreign colonists in the territories thus become
vacant; but the great war was at an end, and Charlemagne might consider
Saxony incorporated in his dominions.
He had still, in Germany and all around, many enemies to fight and many
campaigns to reopen. Even among the Germanic populations, which were
regarded as reduced under the sway of the King of the Franks, some, the
Frisians and Saxons, as well as others, were continually agitating for
the recovery of their independence. Farther off, toward the north, east,
and south, people differing in origin and language--Avars, Huns,
Slavons, Bulgarians, Danes, and Northmen--were still pressing or
beginning to press upon the frontiers of the Frankish dominion, for the
purpose of either penetrating within or settling at the threshold as
powerful and formidable neighbors. Charlemagne had plenty to do, with
the view at one time of checking their incursions, and at another of
destroying or hurling back to a distance their settlements; and he
brought his usual vigor and perseverance to bear on this second
struggle. But by the conquest of Saxony he had attained his direct
national object: the great flood of population from east to west came,
and broke against the Gallo-Franco-Germanic dominion as against an
insurmountable rampart.
This was not, however, Charlemagne's only great enterprise at this
epoch, nor the only great struggle he had to maintain. While he was
incessantly fighting in Germany, the work of policy commenced by his
father Pépin in Italy called for his care and his exertions. The new
King of the Lombards, Didier, and the new Pope, Adrian I, had entered
upon a new war; and Didier was besieging Rome, which was energetically
defended by the Pope and its inhabitants. In 773, Adrian invoked the aid
of the King of the Franks, whom his envoys succeeded, not without
difficulty, in finding at Thionville. Charlemagne could not abandon the
grand position left him by his father as protector of the papacy and as
patrician of Rome. The possessions, moreover, wrested by Didier from
the Pope were exactly those which Pépin had won by conquest from King
Astolphus, and had presented to the Papacy. Charlemagne was besides, on
his own account, on bad terms with the King of the Lombards, whose
daughter, Désirée, he had married, and afterward repudiated and sent
home to her father, in order to marry Hildegarde, a Suabian by nation.
Didier, in dudgeon, had given an asylum to Carloman's widow and sons, on
whose intrigues Charlemagne kept a watchful eye. Being prudent and
careful of appearances, even when he was preparing to strike a heavy
blow, Charlemagne tried, by means of special envoys, to obtain from the
King of the Lombards what the Pope demanded. On Didier's refusal he at
once set to work, convoked the general meeting of the Franks, at Geneva,
in the autumn of 773, gained them over, not without encountering some
objections, to the projected Italian expedition, and forthwith commenced
the campaign with two armies. One was to cross the Valais and descend
upon Lombardy by Mount St. Bernard; Charlemagne in person led the other,
by Mount Cenis. The Lombards, at the outlet of the passes of the Alps,
offered a vigorous resistance; but when the second army had penetrated
into Italy by Mount St. Bernard, Didier, threatened in his rear, retired
precipitately, and, driven from position to position, was obliged to go
and shut himself up in Pavia, the strongest place in his kingdom,
whither Charlemagne, having received on the march the submission of the
principal counts and nearly all the towns of Lombardy, came promptly to
besiege him.
To place textually before the reader a fragment of an old chronicle will
serve better than any modern description to show the impression of
admiration and fear produced upon his contemporaries by Charlemagne, his
person and his power. At the close of this ninth century a monk of the
abbey of St. Gall, in Switzerland, had collected, direct from the mouth
of one of Charlemagne's warriors, Adalbert, numerous stories of his
campaigns and his life. These stories are full of fabulous legends,
puerile anecdotes, distorted reminiscences and chronological errors, and
they are written sometimes with a credulity and exaggeration of language
which raise a smile; but they reveal the state of men's minds and
fancies within the circle of Charlemagne's influence and at the sight
of him. This monk gives a naïve account of Charlemagne's arrival before
Pavia, and of the King of the Lombard's disquietude at his approach.
Didier had with him at that time one of Charlemagne's most famous
comrades, Ogier the Dane, who fills a prominent place in the romances
and _epopæias_, relating to chivalry, of that age. Ogier had quarrelled
with his great chief and taken refuge with the King of the Lombards. It
is probable that his Danish origin and his relations with the King of
the Danes, Gottfried, for a long time an enemy of the Franks, had
something to do with his misunderstanding with Charlemagne. However that
may have been, "when Didier and Ogger (for so the monk calls him) heard
that the dread monarch was coming, they ascended a tower of vast height
whence they could watch his arrival from afar off and from every
quarter. They saw, first of all, engines of war such as must have been
necessary for the armies of Darius or Julius Cæsar. 'Is not Charles,'
asked Didier of Ogger, 'with his great army?' But the other answered,
'No.' The Lombard, seeing afterward an immense body of soldiery gathered
from all quarters of the vast empire, said to Ogger, 'Certes, Charles
advanceth in triumph in the midst of this throng.' 'No, not yet; he will
not appear so soon,' was the answer. 'What should we do, then,' rejoined
Didier, who began to be perturbed, 'should he come accompanied by a
larger band of warriors?' 'You will see what he is when he comes,'
replied Ogger, 'but as to what will become of us, I know nothing.' As
they were thus parleying appeared the body of guards that knew no
repose; and at this sight the Lombard, overcome with dread, cried, 'This
time 'tis surely Charles.' 'No,' answered Ogger, 'not yet.' In their
wake came the bishops, the abbots, the ordinaries of the chapels royal,
and the counts; and then Didier, no longer able to bear the light of day
or to face death, cried out with groans, 'Let us descend and hide
ourselves in the bowels of the earth, far from the face and the fury of
so terrible a foe.' Trembling the while, Ogger, who knew by experience
what were the power and might of Charles, and who had learned the lesson
by long consuetude in better days, then said, 'When ye shall behold the
crops shaking for fear in the fields, and the gloomy Po and the Ticino
overflowing the walls of the city with their waves blackened with steel
(iron), then may ye think that Charles is coming.' He had not ended
these words when there began to be seen in the west, as it were a black
cloud, raised by the northwest wind or by Boreas, which turned the
brightest day into awful shadows. But as the Emperor drew nearer and
nearer, the gleam of arms caused to shine on the people shut up within
the city a day more gloomy than any kind of night. And then appeared
Charles himself, that man of steel, with his head encased in a helmet of
steel, his hands garnished with gauntlets of steel, his heart of steel
and his shoulders of marble protected by a cuirass of steel, and his
left hand armed with a lance of steel which he held aloft in the air,
for as to his right hand he kept that continually on the hilt of his
invincible sword. The outside of his thighs, which the rest, for their
greater ease in mounting a-horseback, were wont to leave unshackled even
by straps, he wore encircled by plates of steel. What shall I say
concerning his boots? All the army were wont to have them invariably of
steel; on his buckler there was naught to be seen but steel; his horse
was of the color and the strength of steel. All those who went before
the monarch, all those who marched at his side, all those who followed
after, even the whole mass of the army had armor of the like sort, so
far as the means of each permitted. The fields and the high-ways were
covered with steel: the points of steel reflected the rays of the sun;
and this steel, so hard, was borne by a people with hearts still harder.
The flash of steel spread terror throughout the streets of the city.
'What steel! alack, what steel!' Such were the bewildered cries the
citizens raised. The firmness of manhood and of youth gave way at sight
of the steel; and the steel paralyzed the wisdom of graybeards. That
which I, poor tale-teller, mumbling and toothless, have attempted to
depict in a long description, Ogger perceived at one rapid glance, and
said to Didier, 'Here is what ye have so anxiously sought': and while
uttering these words he fell down almost lifeless."
The monk of St. Gall does King Didier and his people wrong. They showed
more firmness and valor than he ascribes to them; they resisted
Charlemagne obstinately, and repulsed his first assaults so well that he
changed the siege into an investment, and settled down before Pavia, as
if making up his mind for a long operation. His camp became a town; he
sent for Queen Hildegarde and her court; and he had a chapel built where
he celebrated the festival of Christmas. But on the arrival of spring,
close upon the festival of Easter, 774, wearied with the duration of the
investment, he left to his lieutenants the duty of keeping it up, and,
attended by a numerous and brilliant following, set off for Rome,
whither the Pope was urgently pressing him to come.
On Holy Saturday, April 1, 774, Charlemagne found, at three miles from
Rome, the magistrates and the banner of the city, sent forward by the
Pope to meet him; at one mile all the municipal bodies and the pupils of
the schools carrying palm branches and singing hymns; and at the gate of
the city, the cross, which was never taken out save for exarchs and
patricians. At sight of the cross Charlemagne dismounted, entered Rome
on foot, ascended the steps of the ancient basilica of St. Peter,
repeating at each step a sign of respectful piety, and was received at
the top by the Pope himself. All around him and in the streets a chant
was sung, "Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord!" At his
entry and during his sojourn at Rome, Charlemagne gave the most striking
proofs of Christian faith and respect for the head of the Church.
According to the custom of pilgrims he visited all the basilicas, and in
that of Sta. Maria Maggiore he performed his solemn devotions. Then,
passing to temporal matters, he caused to be brought and read over, in
his private conferences with the Pope, the deed of territorial gift made
by his father Pépin to Stephen II, and with his own lips dictated the
confirmation of it, adding thereto a new gift of certain territories
which he was in course of wresting by conquest from the Lombards. Pope
Adrian, on his side, rendered to him, with a mixture of affection and
dignity, all the honors and all the services which could at one and the
same time satisfy and exalt the King and the priest, the protector and
the protected. He presented to Charlemagne a book containing a
collection of the canons written by the pontiffs from the origin of the
Church, and he put at the beginning of the book, which was dedicated to
Charlemagne, an address in forty-five irregular verses, written with his
own hand, which formed an anagram: "Pope Adrian to his most excellent
son, Charlemagne, king" (_Domino excellentissimo filio Carolo Magno
regi, Hadrianus papa_). At the same time he encouraged him to push his
victory to the utmost and make himself king of the Lombards, advising
him, however, not to incorporate his conquest with the Frankish
dominions, as it would wound the pride of the conquered people to be
thus absorbed by the conquerors, and to take merely the title of "King
of the Franks and Lombards." Charlemagne appreciated and accepted this
wise advice; for he could preserve proper limits in his ambition and in
the hour of victory. Three years afterward he even did more than Pope
Adrian had advised. In 777 Queen Hildegarde bore him a son, Pépin, whom
in 781 Charlemagne had baptized and anointed King of Italy at Rome by
the Pope, thus separating not only the two titles, but also the two
kingdoms, and restoring to the Lombards a national existence, feeling
quite sure that so long as he lived the unity of his different dominions
would not be imperilled. Having thus regulated at Rome his own affairs
and those of the Church, he returned to his camp, took Pavia, received
the submission of all the Lombard dukes and counts, save one only,
Aregisius, Duke of Beneventum, and entered France again, taking with
him, as prisoner, King Didier, whom he banished to a monastery, first at
Liège and then at Corbie, where the dethroned Lombard, say the
chroniclers, ended his days in saintly fashion.
The prompt success of this war in Italy, undertaken at the appeal of the
head of the Church, this first sojourn of Charlemagne at Rome, the
spectacles he had witnessed and the homage he had received, exercised
over him, his plans and his deeds, a powerful influence. This rough
Frankish warrior, chief of a people who were beginning to make a
brilliant appearance upon the stage of the world, and issue himself of a
new line, had a taste for what was grand, splendid, ancient, and
consecrated by time and public respect; he understood and estimated at
its full worth the moral force and importance of such allies. He
departed from Rome in 774, more determined than ever to subdue Saxony,
to the advantage of the Church as well as of his own power, and to
promote, in the South as in the North, the triumph of the Frankish
Christian dominion.
Three years afterward, in 777, he had convoked at Paderborn, in
Westphalia, that general assembly of his different peoples at which
Wittikind did not attend, and which was destined to bring upon the
Saxons a more and more obstinate war. "The Saracen Ibn-al-Arabi," says
Eginhard, "came to this town, to present himself before the King. He had
arrived from Spain, together with other Saracens in his train, to
surrender to the King of the Franks himself and all the towns which the
King of the Saracens had confided to his keeping." For a long time past
the Christians of the West had given the Mussulmans, Arab or other, the
name of _Saracens_. Ibn-al-Arabi was governor of Saragossa, and one of
the Spanish-Arab chieftains in league against Abdel-Rhaman, the last
offshoot of the Ommiad caliphs, who, with the assistance of the Berbers,
had seized the government of Spain. Amid the troubles of his country and
his nation, Ibn-al-Arabi summoned to his aid, against Abdel-Rhaman, the
Franks and the Christians, just as, but lately, Maurontius, Duke of
Arles, had summoned to Provence, against Charles Martel, the Arabs and
the Mussulmans.
Charlemagne accepted the summons with alacrity. With the coming of
spring in the following year, 778, and with the full assent of his chief
warriors, he began his march toward the Pyrenees, crossed the Loire, and
halted at Casseneuil, at the confluence of the Lot and the Garonne, to
celebrate there the festival of Easter, and to make preparations for his
expedition thence. As he had but lately done for his campaign in Italy
against the Lombards, he divided his forces into two armies: one
composed of Austrasians, Neustrians, Burgundians, and divers German
contingents, and commanded by Charlemagne in person, was to enter Spain
by the valley of Roncesvalles, in the western Pyrenees, and make for
Pampeluna; the other, consisting of Provençals, Septimanians, Lombards,
and other populations of the South, under the command of Duke Bernard,
who had already distinguished himself in Italy, had orders to penetrate
into Spain by the eastern Pyrenees, to receive on the march the
submission of Gerona and Barcelona, and not to halt till they were
before Saragossa, where the two armies were to form a junction, and
which Ibn-al-Arabi had promised to give up to the King of the Franks.
According to this plan, Charlemagne had to traverse the territories of
Aquitaine and Vasconia, domains of Duke Lupus II, son of Duke Waifre, so
long the foe of Pépin the Short, a Merovingian by descent, and, in all
these qualities, little disposed to favor Charlemagne. However, the
march was accomplished without difficulty. The King of the Franks
treated his powerful vassal well; and Duke Lupus swore to him afresh,
"or for the first time," says M. Fauriel, "submission and fidelity; but
the event soon proved that it was not without umbrage or without all the
feelings of a true son of Waifre that he saw the Franks and the son of
Pépin so close to him."
The aggressive campaign was an easy and a brilliant one. Charles with
his army entered Spain by the valley of Roncesvalles without
encountering any obstacle. On his arrival before Pampeluna the Arab
governor surrendered the place to him, and Charlemagne pushed forward
vigorously to Saragossa. But there fortune changed. The presence of
foreigners and Christians on the soil of Spain caused a suspension of
interior quarrels among the Arabs, who rose in mass, at all points, to
succor Saragossa. The besieged defended themselves with obstinacy; there
was more scarcity of provisions among the besiegers than inside the
place; sickness broke out among them; they were incessantly harassed
from without; and rumors of a fresh rising among the Saxons reached
Charlemagne. The Arabs demanded negotiation. To decide the King of the
Franks upon an abandonment of the siege, they offered him "an immense
quantity of gold," say the chroniclers, hostages, and promises of homage
and fidelity. Appearances had been saved; Charlemagne could say, and
even perhaps believe, that he had pushed his conquests as far as the
Ebro; he decided on retreat, and all the army was set in motion to
recross the Pyrenees. On arriving before Pampeluna Charlemagne had its
walls completely razed to the ground, "in order that," as he said, "that
city might not be able to revolt." The troops entered those same passes
of Roncesvalles which they had traversed without obstacle a few weeks
before; and the advance-guard and the main body of the army were already
clear of them. The account of what happened shall be given in the words
of Eginhard, the only contemporary historian whose account, free from
all exaggeration, can be considered authentic. "The King," he says,
"brought back his army without experiencing any loss, save that at the
summit of the Pyrenees he suffered somewhat from the perfidy of the
Vascons (Basques). While the army of the Franks, embarrassed in a narrow
defile, was forced by the nature of the ground to advance in one long
close line, the Basques, who were in ambush on the crest of the
mountain--for the thickness of the forest with which these parts are
covered is favorable to ambuscade--descend and fall suddenly on the
baggage-train and on the troops of the rear-guard, whose duty it was to
cover all in their front, and precipitate them to the bottom of the
valley. There took place a fight in which the Franks were killed to a
man. The Basques, after having plundered the baggage-train, profited by
the night which had come on to disperse rapidly. They owed all their
success in this engagement to the lightness of their equipment and to
the nature of the spot where the action took place; the Franks, on the
contrary, being heavily armed and in an unfavorable position, struggled
against too many disadvantages. Eginhard, master of the household of the
King; Anselm, count of the palace; and Roland, prefect of the marches of
Brittany, fell in this engagement. There were no means, at the time, of
taking revenge for this check; for, after their sudden attack, the enemy
dispersed to such good purpose that there was no gaining any trace of
the direction in which they should be sought for."