EMPEROR AND HOSTAGE.
Led by the Emperor of the Franks, the cavalcade of hunters rode towards
the pavilion where supper was to be partaken of before the return to
Aix-la-Chapelle. Charles called Amael to his side, and noticing, as they
rode, that the aged Breton continued preoccupied about Vortigern, the
Emperor turned to the centenarian with a merry twinkle in his eye:
"What do you think of this day? Have you recovered from your prejudices
against Charles the Fighter? Do you think me at all worthy to govern my
Empire, a domain as vast as the old Empire of Rome? Do you deem me
worthy of reigning over the population of Armorica?"
"Charles, in my youth your grandfather proposed to me that I be the
jailer of the last descendant of Clovis, an ill-starred boy, then a
prisoner in an abbey, and having barely one suit of clothes to cover
himself with. That boy, when grown to man's estate, was, upon orders of
Pepin, your father, tonsured and locked up in a monastery, where he died
obscure and forgotten. Thus do royalties end. Such is the expiation,
prompt or late, reserved for royal stocks that issue from conquest."
"Then the stock of Charles, whom the whole world calls the Great,"
rejoined the Emperor with an incredulous and proud smile, "is,
according to your theory, destined to run out obscurely in some
do-nothing king?"
"It is my firm conviction."
"I took you at first for a man of good judgment," replied the Emperor
shrugging his shoulders; "I must now admit that I was mistaken."
"This very morning, in your Palatine school, you observed that the
children of the poor studied with zeal, while the children of the rich
are lazy. The reason is plain. The former feel the need of work to
insure their well-being; the latter, being provided with and in
possession of ample fortunes, make no effort to acquire knowledge. It is
to them superfluous. Your ancestors, the stewards of the palace, have
done like the children of the poor. Your descendants, however, being no
longer in need of conquering a crown, will imitate the children of the
rich."
"Despite a certain appearance of logic, your argument is false. My
father usurped a crown, but he left to me at the most the Kingdom of
Gaul. To-day Gaul is but one of the provinces of the immense empire that
I have conquered. Obviously, I did not remain idle and torpid like the
rich boys in your comparison."
"The Frankish Kings, together with their leudes, who later became great
landed seigneurs, and the bishops, plundered Gaul, divided her territory
among them, and reduced her people to slavery. But after a period, be it
short or long, learn this, Oh, great Emperor, the people will rise in
their strength, glorious, terrible, and they will know how to reconquer
their patrimony and their independence!"
"Let us drop the future and the past. What think you of Charles?"
"I think that you are mistakenly proud of having almost reconstructed
the administrative edifice of the Roman emperors, and of causing, like
them, your will to weigh upon the whole domain, from one end to the
other. Of all that, nothing will be left after you are gone! All the
peoples that have been conquered and subjugated by your arms will rise
in revolt. Your boundless empire, composed of kingdoms that no common
bond of origin, of customs, or of language holds together, will fall to
pieces; it will crumble together and will bury your descendants under
its ruins."
"Do you mean to imply that Charles the Great will have passed over the
world like a shadow without leaving behind him any lasting monument of
his glory?"
"No, your life will not have been worthless. By ceaselessly warring
against the Frisians, the Saxons and other peoples who wished to invade
Gaul, you have checked, if not forever, at least for a long time, the
maraudings of those hordes that ravaged the north and east of our
unhappy country. But if you have barred the entrance of the barbarians
into Gaul over land, the sea remains open to them. The Northman pirates
almost every day make descents upon the coasts of your Empire, and their
boldness increases to the point that ascending in their vessels the
Meuse, the Gironde and the Loire, they threaten the very heart of your
dominion."
"Oh, old man! This time, I fear me, your misgivings do not lead you
astray. The Northmans are the only source of disquiet to my sleep! The
bare thought of the invasions of those pagans causes me to be overcome
with involuntary and unexplainable apprehensions. One day, during my
sojourn at Narbonne, several vessels of those accursed people extended
their piratical incursion into the very port. A sinister presentiment
seized me; despite all I could do to restrain them, the tears rolled out
of my eyes. One of my officers asked me the reason for my sudden fit of
sadness. 'Do you wish to know, my faithful followers,' I answered, 'do
you wish to know why I weep so bitterly? Certes, I do not fear that
these Northmans may injure me with their piracies; but I feel profoundly
afflicted at the thought that, in my very lifetime, they have the
audacity of touching upon the borders of my Empire; and great is my
grief because I have a presentiment of the sufferings that these
Northmans will inflict upon my descendants and my peoples;'" and the
Emperor remained for several minutes as if overpowered by the sinister
premonition that he now recalled.
"Charles," Amael resumed with a grave voice, "all royalty that issues
from conquest, or from violence, carries within itself the germ of
death, for the reason that its principle is iniquitous. Perchance those
Northman pirates may some day cause your stock to expiate the original
iniquity of the royal sway that you hold from conquest."
Whether, absorbed in his own thoughts, the Emperor failed to hear the
last words of the Gaul, or whether he could make no answer to them, he
suddenly cried out:
"Let us forget the accursed Northmans. Speak to me of the good that I
have done. Your words of praise are rare; I like them all the more for
that."
"You are not cruel out of wilfulness, although you might be reproached
for the massacre of more than four thousand Saxon prisoners."
"I remember the event perfectly," Charles said with emphasis. "I had to
terrify those barbarians by a signal example. It was a fatal
necessity!"
"Your heart is accessible to certain promptings of justice and humanity.
In your capitularies you made an effort to improve the condition of the
slaves and the colonists."
"It was my duty as a Christian, as a Catholic. All men are brothers."
"You are no more Christian than your friends, the bishops. You have
simply yielded to an instinct of humanity, natural to man, whatever his
religion may be. But still you are not a Christian."
"By the King of the Heavens! Perhaps I am a Jew?"
"Christ said, according to St. Luke the Evangelist: _The Lord hath sent
me to preach deliverance to the captives--to set at liberty them that
are bruised._ Now, then, your dominions are full of prisoners carried by
conquest from their own homes; the estates of your bishops and your
abbots are stocked with slaves. Accordingly, neither you nor your
priests are Christians. A Christian, according to the words of the
Christ, must never hold his fellowman in bondage. All men are equal."
"Custom so wills it; I merely conform myself thereto."
"What is there to hinder you, and the bishops as well as you, all-mighty
Emperor that you are, from abolishing the abominable custom? What is
there to hinder you from emancipating the slaves? What is there to
hinder you from restoring to them, along with their liberty, the
possession of the land that they themselves render fruitful with the
sweat of their brow?"
"Old man, from time immemorial there have been slaves, and there ever
will be slaves. What would it avail to be of the conquering race if not
to keep the fruits of conquest? By the King of the Heavens! Do you take
me for a barbarian? Have I not promulgated laws, founded schools,
encouraged letters, arts and sciences? Is there in the whole world a
city comparable with Aix-la-Chapelle?"
"Your gorgeous capital of Aix-la-Chapelle, the capital of your Germanic
possessions, is not Gaul. Gaul has remained to you a strange country.
You love forests that lend themselves to your autumn hunting parties,
and the rich domains, whence every year the revenues are carted to your
residences on the other side of the Rhine. But you do not love Gaul,
seeing that you exhaust her resources in men and money in order to carry
on your wars. Frightful misery desolates our provinces. Millions of
God's creatures, deprived almost of bread, shelter and clothes, toil
from dawn to dusk, and die in slavery--all in order to sustain the
opulence of their masters. If you cause instruction to be given to some
pupils in your Palatine school, you allow, on the other hand, millions
of God's creatures to live like brutes! Such is the condition of Gaul
under your reign, Charles the Great!"
"Old man," rejoined the Emperor, with a somber face and rising anger,
"after treating you as a friend this whole day, I looked for different
language. You are more than severe, you are unjust."
"I have been sincere towards you, the same as I was towards your
grandfather."
"Mindful of the service that you rendered my grandfather at the battle
of Poitiers, I meant to be generous towards you. I meant to do the right
thing by myself, by your people, and by you. I hoped to see you, after
this day spent in close intimacy with me, drop your prejudices, and to
be able to say to you: I have vanquished the Bretons by force of arms; I
desire to affirm my conquest by persuasion. Return to your country;
report to your countrymen the day that you spent with Charles; they will
trust your words, seeing that they place implicit confidence in you. You
were the soul of the last two wars that they sustained against me. Be
now the soul of our pacification. A conquest founded on force is often
ephemeral; a conquest cemented in mutual affection and esteem is
imperishable. I trust in your loyalty to gain the hearts of the Bretons
to me. Such was my hope. The bitter injustice of your words dashes it.
Let us think of it no more. You shall remain here as a hostage. I shall
treat you as a brave soldier, who saved my grandfather's life. Perhaps
in time you will judge me more justly. When that day shall have come,
you will be allowed to return to your own country, and I feel sure you
will then tell them what is right, as to-day you would only tell them
what is wrong. All things will come in due season."
"Although your hopes can not realize the object that you proposed, they,
nevertheless, are an evidence of a generous soul."
"By the cap of St. Martin! You Bretons are a strange people. What! If
you should believe that I deserve esteem and affection, and if your
countrymen should share your opinion, would neither you nor they accept
with joy the authority that you now submit to by force?"
"With us it is no question of having a more or less worthy master. We
want no master."
"And yet I am your master, ye pagans!"
"Until the day when we shall have reconquered our independence by a
successful insurrection."
"You will be crushed to dust, exterminated! I swear it by the beard of
the eternal Father."
"Exterminate the last of the Breton Gauls, strangle all the children,
and you will then be able to reign over the desert of Armorica. But so
long as there lives a single man of our race in our country, you may be
able to vanquish, but never to subjugate it."
"But tell me, old man, is it that my rule is so terrible, and my laws so
hard?"
"We want no foreign domination. To live according to the laws of our
fathers, freely and as becomes free men, to choose our chiefs, to pay no
tribute, to lock ourselves up within our own frontiers and to defend
them--these are our aspirations. Accept them and you will have nothing
to fear from us."
"To dictate conditions to me! to me, who reign as sovereign master over
all Europe! To have a miserable population of shepherds and husbandmen
impose conditions to me! to me, whose arms have conquered the world!
Impudence can reach no further!"
"I might answer you that, in order to vanquish that miserable population
of shepherds, of woodmen and husbandmen entrenched in their mountain
fastnesses, behind their rocks, their marshes and their forests, your
veteran bands had to be requisitioned for Gaul--"
"Yes," cried the Emperor in a vexed voice, "in order to keep your
accursed country in obedience, I am forced to leave there my choicest
troops, troops that I may need at any moment here in Germany, where I
have hard battles to fight."
"That must be an unpleasant thing to you, Charles, I admit. Without
mentioning the maritime invasions of the Northmans, there are the
Bohemians, the Hungarians, the Bavarians, the Lombards and so many other
people whom your arms have overcome, the same as they overcame us, the
Bretons--all vanquished, but none subjugated. From one moment to the
other they may rise anew, and, what is graver still, menace the very
heart of your Empire. As to us, on the contrary, all that we demand is
to live free; we never think of going beyond our frontiers."
"Who guarantees to me that, once my troops, are out of your infernal
country, you will not forthwith resume your armed excursions and attacks
against the Frankish forces that are bivouacked on this side of your
borders?"
"The other provinces are Gallic like ourselves. Our duty bids us to
provoke them, and to aid them to break the yoke of the Frankish kings.
But the thoughtful people among us are of the opinion that the hour for
revolt has not yet come. For the last four centuries the Catholic
priests have moulded the minds of the people to slavery. Alas, centuries
will pass before they re-awaken from their present stupor. You admit
that it is dangerous for you to be compelled to keep a portion of your
best troops tied up in Brittany. Recall your army. I give you my word as
a Breton, and I am, moreover, authorized to make the pledge in the name
of our tribes, that, so long as you live, we shall not go out of our
frontiers."
"By the King of the Heavens! The joke is rather too harsh. Do you take
me for a fool? Do I not know that, if I grant you a truce by withdrawing
my troops, you will take advantage of it to prepare anew for war after
my death? But we shall always know how to suppress your uprisings."
"Yes, we shall certainly take up arms if your sons fail to respect our
liberties."
"And you really expect me--me, the vanquisher, to consent to a shameful
truce? To consent to withdraw my forces from a country that it has cost
me so much trouble to overcome?"
"Very well; leave, then, your army in Brittany, but depend upon it that,
within a year or two, new insurrections will break out."
"Insane old man! How dare you hold such language to me when you, your
grandson, and four other Breton chiefs are my hostages! Oh! I swear by
the everlasting God, your head will drop at the first sign of an
insurrection. Do not lean too heavily upon the good nature of the old
Charles. The terrible example I made of the four thousand prisoners whom
I took from the revolted Saxons should be proof enough to you that I
recoil before no act of necessity. Only the dead are not to be feared."
"The Breton chiefs who remained on the way by reason of their wounds,
and who will speedily join me and my grandson at Aix-la-Chapelle, would,
no more than my grandson and myself, have accepted the post of hostages
had the same been without danger. Whatever the fate may be that awaits
us, we shall not falter in our duty. We are here in the very center of
your Empire, and well in condition to judge of the opportuneness for an
uprising. From this very place we will give the signal for a fresh war,
the moment we think the time is favorable."
"By the King of the Heavens! This audacity has gone far enough!" cried
the Emperor, pale with rage. "To dare tell me that these traitors,
according to what they may see and spy near my court, will themselves
send to Brittany the order to revolt! Oh, I swear by God, from
to-morrow, from this very evening, both you and your grandson will be
cast into a dungeon so dark that you will need lynx's eyes to find out
what goes on around here. By the cap of St. Martin! Such insolence is
enough to turn one into a ferocious beast. Not another word, old man!
Here we are at the pavilion. I shall now join my daughters. The sight of
them will console me for your ingratitude!"
Uttering these last words with mingled rage and sorrow, the Emperor put
his horse to the gallop in order to reach all the quicker the hunting
pavilion, where he expected to meet his daughters, and satisfy his
growing hunger. The seigneurs in Charles' suite were about to follow
their master's example and quicken the steps of their mounts, when the
Emperor, suddenly turning around, cried out to them, with an imperious
voice:
"No one shall follow me. I want to be alone with my daughters! You shall
await my orders near the pavilion."