(742-814)
The birthplace of Charlemagne is unknown, but from various data we may
infer that he was born somewhere about the year 742, nearly seven
years before his father, Pepin the Short, assumed the title of king.
His mother was Bertha, daughter of Charibert, Count of Leon.
Of his boyhood we know as little as of his birth, but he seems at an
early age to have mingled in the real business of life, for when only
twelve years old we find him despatched to receive and welcome the
sovereign pontiff who came to implore his father's aid against the
barbarians that threatened Rome. From the usual habits of the Franks,
it is also probable that he accompanied Pepin in his campaigns at an
early age; but the first time that we really see him in the field, is
on the renewal of the war with the rebellious Duke of Aquitaine.
[Illustration: Charlemagne.]
Upon the death of Pepin, 768, Charlemagne and his younger brother,
Carloman, succeeded to equal portions of one of the most powerful
European kingdoms, bounded by the Pyrenees, the Alps, the
Mediterranean, and the ocean. But this would hardly have enabled the
monarchs, even had they been united, to resist successfully the
incursions of the barbarous tribes on the German frontiers of France,
which had commenced with the first establishment of the Frankish
dominion in Gaul; and which was kept alive by the constant pouring out
of fresh hordes from the overpopulated North. The situation of
Charlemagne was rendered yet more perilous by the passive enmity of
his brother, and the rebellion of Hunald, the turbulent Duke of
Aquitaine. But fortunately, Charlemagne had a genius equal to the
difficulties of his situation; though his brother refused to aid him,
he defeated Hunald; and no less illustrious by his clemency than by
his valor and military skill, he forgave the vanquished rebel.
Desiderius, the king of Lombardy, had made large encroachments upon
the states of the Roman pontiff, whose cause was taken up by
Charlemagne. This led to feuds, which Bertha, the mother of the
Frankish king, endeavored to appease by bringing about a union between
her son and the daughter of the Lombard. But Charlemagne soon took a
disgust to the wife thus imposed upon him, and repudiated her, that he
might marry Hildegarde, the daughter of a noble family in Suabia.
In 771 Carloman died, and Charlemagne was elected to the vacant
throne, to the exclusion of his nephews, whose extreme youth, indeed,
made them incapable of wearing the crown in such troubled times.
Gilberga, the widow of Carloman, immediately fled, and sought an
asylum with Desiderius, the common place of refuge for all who were
hostile to the Frankish monarch. But the attention of Charlemagne was
called off to a more immediate danger from the Saxons, of whom the
Frisons were either a branch or the perpetual allies. Had the tribes
of which this people were composed been united under one head, instead
of being governed by various independent chiefs, the result would
probably have been fatal to France. Such a day, however, might come; a
second Attila might arise; and with a full conviction of these
perils, Charlemagne, when he marched against the barbarians,
determined to put them down effectually. He took and destroyed the
famous temple of the Irminsule, the great idol of their nation--that
is, the Hermansaule, or Pillar of Hermann, which had originally been
raised to commemorate the defeat of the Roman Varus by that hero,
though in time the name had got corrupted, and the cause of its
erection been forgotten. The Saxons were too wise to meet their
powerful opponent in the field, and when, as often happened, they were
brought to bay, they made a feigned submission, and obtained mercy by
vows they never meant to keep. Meanwhile events had been taking place
in another quarter, that called away Charlemagne, and obliged him to
leave his generals to watch over them.
The Lombard king, Desiderius, had made use of his absence to plunder
the papal see, to which Adrian had now succeeded. With some difficulty
the Pope contrived to give his friend notice of his danger, when
Charlemagne assembled a vast army, one division of which he himself
led into Italy over the Alps by Mount Cenis, while the other was
conducted to the same ground by his uncle, Duke Bernard, over the Mons
Jovis, or Mount Joux, which from this event received the name it has
borne ever since, of the Great Saint Bernard. Although surprised by an
invasion from a quarter so unexpected, Desiderius marched out to meet
his enemy, but his flank being turned, he fled hastily to Pavia,
without having struck a blow; Charlemagne pursued the fugitives, but
finding the city too strong to be taken by storm, he blockaded it with
one portion of his army, while with the other he proceeded against
Verona, having reduced which, he returned to the siege of Pavia. Month
after month passed, till at length Easter approached, when, leaving
the city blockaded as before, he determined to visit Rome in his
capacity of patrician or governor. His march through the Italian towns
was one of uninterrupted triumph; everywhere he was met with
acclamations, and at Rome he was received by the Pope, as well as the
people, with the liveliest expressions of gratitude for having freed
them from the tyranny of the Lombards. The friendship then cemented
between Adrian and his young deliverer lasted through the remainder of
their lives without any serious interruption.
Having thus asserted his rights of Patrician or Exarch, Charlemagne
was liberal in his donations to the Church, and soon afterward
returned to the siege of Pavia, which it now became important for him
to bring to a speedy conclusion, the Saxons having again taken
advantage of his absence to ravage his frontiers. About the middle of
the year, the city surrendered, and he was crowned with the iron crown
of Lombardy. He then marched against the Saxons, defeating them
whenever they ventured to make a stand, till they found their best
resource was in submission.
It was not long before a fresh revolt amongst the Lombards recalled
him to their country. Once more he was victorious and once more he was
summoned from his career of conquest to meet the Saxons. As usual,
they were beaten out of the field, and so completely, that many of
them, seeming to have lost all faith in their gods, from repeated
defeats, presented themselves with their wives and children to receive
baptism.
Amid all these fatigues and battles, which might appear sufficient to
have occupied the attention of any one man, Charlemagne retained in
his own hands the general government of the state. The local
administration was distributed among twelve provincial officers, with
the title of Dukes, each of them having the command of a county.
Subordinate to these officers were the Counts, who, in fact, were the
judges of the land, and had full authority to decide and punish within
their jurisdiction. To secure the faithful performance of their duties
by these Dukes and Counts, certain officers, under the name of Missi
Dominici, were sent in visitations from time to time to inquire into
their conduct. In great ecclesiastical questions, or those affecting
the more powerful vassals of the crown, either the king himself, or
the count of his palace, sat as judge.
Spain next demanded his attention. That country had been subdued by
the Arabs, but the descendants of the first conquerors quarrelled
among themselves, and Ibn al Arabi, a powerful chief, sought aid of
Charlemagne, who marched thither, and being, as usual, victorious,
secured to himself a barrier against the Saracens and Gascons. This
was seen with ill-will by Lupo, Duke of Gascony, who when the Frankish
king was leaving Spain to meet fresh dangers on the Rhine,
treacherously laid an ambush for his destruction in the gorges of the
Pyrenees. The monarch himself was allowed to pass with the first
division of his army, the second was assailed and destroyed in the
valley of Roncesvalles, and the conquerors secreting themselves in
their mountain fastnesses, presented no object for the vengeance of
the indignant monarch. Besides, the barbarians were again ravaging his
frontiers, under the command of Witikind, with a fierceness that went
far beyond even the worst of their earlier incursions. Their cruelty,
however, was retaliated by their almost total annihilation while
attempting to retreat across the Adern, and in the ensuing season
Charlemagne reduced them, as it seemed, to a state of total
submission. But no sooner had he set out for Italy, whither he was
called by many pressing affairs, than Witikind, the great leader of
the Westphalians, started forth from his retreat in Denmark and
stimulated all Saxony to a renewed contest. The time was well chosen.
Witikind, who appears to have been as superior to the generals of
Charlemagne as he was inferior to the king himself, gave the Franks a
complete overthrow.
[Illustration: Charlemagne at Witikind's baptism.]
When these tidings were brought to Charlemagne, he returned in all
haste to the northern frontiers. The scene was at once reversed. Cowed
by his name alone, they had recourse, as usual, to submission,
guaranteed by oaths which they never meant to keep, and by hostages
who did not hesitate to incur the fatal penalty attached to the
certain faithlessness of their countrymen. But this time the king
would listen to no terms short of ample vengeance. He demanded that
four thousand of the most hostile and turbulent should be delivered up
to him, all of whom he had executed in one day, in order to do by
intimidation what he had failed to do by kindness. His severity,
however, failed in producing the desired effect. It was not long
before the Saxons again flew to arms, when they sustained so signal a
defeat that very few of all their host escaped from the bloody field.
Yet still the spirit of the barbarians, supported by an indomitable
passion for war and plunder, continued as little quelled as ever.
Witikind and Albion, their most popular chiefs, still maintained the
contest, even when suffering nothing but disasters, until at length,
their conqueror, subduing them more by policy than by arms, won them
over to the Christian faith, which was then embraced by all Saxony.[9]
This, for the time, produced a better feeling, though the truce was
not of long duration.
[Footnote 9: Witikind was baptized with solemn ceremony by
the great bishops of the realm, in presence of his conqueror.
Paul Thumann has vividly portrayed the scene in the painting
here copied.]
Hildegarde, the wife of Charlemagne, had now been dead some short
time, when he married Fastrada, the daughter of a Frankish noble. It
is said that from this union there arose a spirit of discontent among
some of the leading men of his nation, who in consequence rebelled
against him; but, finding themselves too weak to contend with him,
dispersed, and endeavored to find safety in concealment. They did not,
however, escape their merited punishment. Being sooner or later taken,
some had their eyes put out, others were degraded from their rank,
none were condemned to death, but all to exile. Even these severe
examples did not prevent the rise of many petty revolts, the different
parts of which the Frankish kingdom was composed not being as yet
sufficiently amalgamated; but they were suppressed by the united
wisdom and vigor of the monarch.
The short interval of peace now allowed him, Charlemagne employed in
endeavoring to educate and civilize his people. He made a tour through
his dominions, spreading local and general improvement, reforming
laws, advancing knowledge, and building churches and monasteries,
Christianity being one of the chief means to which he trusted for the
attainment of his grand objects. In this he was no less successful
than he had before been in war. With the exception of the Eastern
Empire, France was now the most cultivated nation in Europe, even Rome
herself sending thither for skilful workmen, while commerce, roads,
and mechanics must have been much advanced, as we may infer from the
facility with which marble columns and immense stone crosses were
often carried through the whole extent of France upon carriages of
native construction. Luxury, too, with its attendant arts, had made
considerable strides. Vases of gold and silver richly carved, silver
tables brightly wrought, bracelets, rings, and table-cloths of fine
linen, might be seen in the houses of the nobles. The people must have
been dexterous in working iron, for their superiority in this respect
is evinced by the severe laws forbidding the exportation of arms.
The calm, thus wisely employed, did not last long. Charlemagne was
soon aroused from his peaceful occupations to put down a revolt of
Tassilo, Duke of Bavaria, as well as a meditated attack upon Italy by
Adalgisus, the son of the deposed Lombard king, Desiderius, who was
assisted underhand by the Greek empress, Irene, and had besides formed
a secret alliance with the Duke of Beneventum. Tassilo, being seized,
was condemned to death by the great council. He appealed to the
clemency of the king, who, ever averse to shed blood, mitigated the
sentence into a lifelong seclusion from the world in a cloister.
Adalgisus was met by the Duke of Beneventum, not to assist him, as he
had expected, but to oppose him, for the duke had in good time
discovered that loyalty was more likely to prosper than treason. He
therefore joined the army of France under Grimwold, and in the battle
which succeeded the Greek forces were entirely routed, and Adalgisus
disappears from the busy scene.
The empire of Charlemagne was next to be assailed by the Huns, not the
same people whose fathers had fought under Attila, though probably
descended from the same stock. Upon the death of that ferocious
conqueror, the tribes whom his talents had kept united, again
sundered. Shortly afterward a warlike nation, calling themselves
Avars, approached the northern parts of Europe, having been driven
from their native country by the Turks. They spread rapidly, acquiring
territory and power, until they were invited by Tassilo to aid him in
his meditated treachery. They lost more than one battle against the
Franks, but neither their own defeat, nor the total overthrow of their
ally, made any change in their purposes. They persisted; fought a hard
battle, and were so utterly routed, that they drew back and remained
quiet for a while, in order to collect their strength before venturing
upon a fresh contest with their tremendous adversary, who, on his
part, was no less desirous of a respite for the same object. Little
rest, however, was allowed him. No sooner had he beaten back these
Huns, than he had to contend with a new enemy, the Weletabes, a
Slavonian tribe inhabiting the northern part of Germany, near
Brandenburg and Pomerania, from the Elbe to the Baltic. In themselves
they might not have excited much alarm, but, if they met with only a
temporary success, their example might have been fatal, by rousing the
Saxons, who still with reluctance submitted to the yoke imposed upon
them. The king, therefore, without loss of time, met and defeated the
Weletabes; when he received them into grace, and ever afterward found
them faithful.
Having freed himself from this peril, Charlemagne next found that he
must turn his arms against the Huns of Hungary, which appears to have
been defended by them after a singular fashion. The whole country was
surrounded by nine circles of double palisading, formed of trunks of
trees twenty feet in height. The interstices of the palisade were
twenty feet wide, filled with stone and lime compacted, the top being
covered with earth, and planted with shrubs. At the distance of twenty
Teutonic, or forty Italian miles, was a second fortified line of the
same kind; and thus the circles were repeated, the circumference
always narrowing till you came to the innermost, or ring, in which the
Avars kept all their wealth, the accumulation of centuries of rapine.
Such, at least, is the account, however improbable, handed down to us
by an historian of the day.
In the outset fortune favored Charlemagne as usual. He took the first
three of the defensive circles sword in hand, and laid waste the
country to the junction of the Raab with the Danube, while his son
Pepin had met and routed their army in another quarter. But unhappily
a pestilential disease broke out among the horses, who died by
thousands, and he was obliged to retreat, unpursued, however, by the
Avars, their surprise and terror not having yet subsided.
In the doubtful lull that followed, a conspiracy was raised against
the life and throne of the monarch, in which his natural son, Pepin
the Hunchback, was implicated. It was discovered in time, and all the
conspirators were put to death, with the exception of Pepin, who was
confined for life within a monastery.
Scarcely had the king escaped this danger, than he was alarmed by news
that the Saxons had revolted, and uniting themselves with the Huns,
had given a bloody defeat to his cousin, Theodoric. Close upon this
came other tidings of equally evil import. In the late campaign
against the Huns, Charlemagne had called to his aid his son Pepin,
King of Italy, who, notwithstanding he was himself embroiled with
Grimbald, Duke of Beneventum, did not hesitate to obey. To reward this
prompt obedience, Charlemagne early in the winter had despatched
another son, Louis, King of Aquitaine, to the help of his brother,
when the Saracens took advantage of the latter's absence to attack his
frontiers, and even penetrated to Narbonne before any forces were
ready to oppose them. From this expedition they returned home laden
with plunder, and satisfied with this success, remained for a while in
quiet. Charles therefore had a brief respite to turn against the
Saxons; and as he had hitherto found all his precautions unavailing to
keep them within the bounds of good order, he broke up the nation, and
transported an immense number of the most turbulent to a distance from
their own country. Multitudes of men, women, and children were
dispersed over France, and not a few were transported to Brabant and
various parts of Flanders.
About this time, 793, the first collision took place between the
Franks and the piratical Northmen.
It would be alien from our present purpose to follow Charlemagne step
by step in his march of conquest and civilization. We need only say in
general terms, that he drove back the Arabs, reduced the Huns, became
the friend of Haroun al Raschid, his only rival in the paths of
greatness, and effectually protected his long line of coast from the
attempted incursion of the Northmen. It is said that upon one occasion
he arrived at a certain port just as the pirates were preparing to
land; but the moment they by some means learnt the presence of the
monarch, they immediately fled in terror at his mere name. He remained
gazing on the departing vessels, while the tears rolled down his
cheeks. His nobles could not help showing surprise at such unusual
emotion in the monarch, which being observed by him he exclaimed, "I
weep not, my friends, because I myself fear these miserable savages;
but I weep that they should dare to show themselves upon my coast
while I am living, for I foresee the evils they will bring upon my
people when I am dead."
It was always an object of first importance with Charlemagne to
support the papal authority, as holding out the only means of
spreading Christianity, which he justly considered the most effectual
instrument he could employ to enlighten and civilize the world. An
attempt had been made to mutilate the Pope, and thus disqualify him
for his office, by Campulus and Paschal, two disappointed aspirants
to the papacy; but he escaped from their hands and brought his
complaints before Charlemagne. The conspirators then attempted to
justify the deed, by accusing the Pope of atrocious crimes; and the
king calling to his aid certain of the Roman prelates, proceeded to
sit in judgment on him. The prelates, however, declared that by all
the canonical rules they could not judge their superior; and Leo
therefore was allowed, according to an old custom, to purge himself,
by a solemn oath, of the crimes which had been laid to his charge.
Many motives of policy at this time induced the Pope to set up an
emperor of the West in opposition to the Eastern Empire. It was
Christmas-day, when, with the rest of the Catholic world, Charlemagne
presented himself in the church of St. Peter. At the desire of the
Romans he was dressed in the long robe of the patrician, and
unsuspicious, it is said, of the honor intended him, knelt at the high
altar; but, just as he was about to rise, Leo advanced, and suddenly
placed upon his head the crown of the Western world, amidst the
popular acclamations, "Long life and victory to Charles Augustus,
crowned by God, great and pacific Emperor of the Romans!"
To end the long-existing feuds between the Western and Eastern
Empires, Charlemagne now proposed to marry Irene, who, having deposed
her son and put out his eyes, had usurped the throne of
Constantinople. Irene herself was not unwilling to accept the offer;
but she was overruled by a faction, and a treaty of peace was
substituted for a treaty of marriage. But while the negotiations were
going on, Irene herself was deposed by the great treasurer,
Nicephorus, who even refused to grant her the smallest pittance, so
that the degraded empress was obliged to support herself by the labors
of the distaff. He was, however, glad to conclude a peace with
Charlemagne.
Though troubled from time to time by disputes among the neighboring
barbarians, the Frankish monarch might now be said to enjoy peace; and
while still in the possession of robust health, he resolved to prepare
for death, by allotting among his children such portions of territory
as he wished them to possess when he should be removed from the scene.
Both his sons and the people willingly consented to the proposed
arrangements, which, indeed, bore the stamp of his usual wisdom and
justice. But the advanced age which he attained, brought with it the
usual evils of protracted life. He saw his friends and children swept
away before him. His son Louis alone remained to inherit his vast
dominions. With this single drawback the remainder of his time was as
prosperous as his earlier career had been; till at length, being
suddenly attacked with pleurisy, he expired, after a short illness, in
the seventy-second year of his age and the forty-seventh of his reign,
January 28, 814.