that the popes consummated the separation of Rome and Italy, by the
translation of the empire to the less orthodox Charlemagne. They were
compelled to choose between the rival nations: religion was not the sole
motive of their choice; and while they dissembled the failings of
their friends, they beheld, with reluctance and suspicion, the Catholic
virtues of their foes. The difference of language and manners had
perpetuated the enmity of the two capitals; and they were alienated from
each other by the hostile opposition of seventy years. In that schism
the Romans had tasted of freedom, and the popes of sovereignty: their
submission would have exposed them to the revenge of a jealous tyrant;
and the revolution of Italy had betrayed the impotence, as well as the
tyranny, of the Byzantine court. The Greek emperors had restored the
images, but they had not restored the Calabrian estates and the Illyrian
diocese, which the Iconoclasts had torn away from the successors of St.
Peter; and Pope Adrian threatens them with a sentence of excommunication
unless they speedily abjure this practical heresy. The Greeks were
now orthodox; but their religion might be tainted by the breath of the
reigning monarch: the Franks were now contumacious; but a discerning
eye might discern their approaching conversion, from the use, to the
adoration, of images. The name of Charlemagne was stained by the polemic
acrimony of his scribes; but the conqueror himself conformed, with the
temper of a statesman, to the various practice of France and Italy. In
his four pilgrimages or visits to the Vatican, he embraced the popes
in the communion of friendship and piety; knelt before the tomb, and
consequently before the image, of the apostle; and joined, without
scruple, in all the prayers and processions of the Roman liturgy. Would
prudence or gratitude allow the pontiffs to renounce their benefactor?
Had they a right to alienate his gift of the Exarchate? Had they power
to abolish his government of Rome? The title of patrician was below
the merit and greatness of Charlemagne; and it was only by reviving the
Western empire that they could pay their obligations or secure their
establishment. By this decisive measure they would finally eradicate
the claims of the Greeks; from the debasement of a provincial town, the
majesty of Rome would be restored: the Latin Christians would be united,
under a supreme head, in their ancient metropolis; and the conquerors of
the West would receive their crown from the successors of St. Peter.
The Roman church would acquire a zealous and respectable advocate; and,
under the shadow of the Carlovingian power, the bishop might exercise,
with honor and safety, the government of the city.
Before the ruin of Paganism in Rome, the competition for a wealthy
bishopric had often been productive of tumult and bloodshed. The people
was less numerous, but the times were more savage, the prize more
important, and the chair of St. Peter was fiercely disputed by the
leading ecclesiastics who aspired to the rank of sovereign. The reign of
Adrian the First surpasses the measure of past or succeeding ages; the
walls of Rome, the sacred patrimony, the ruin of the Lombards, and the
friendship of Charlemagne, were the trophies of his fame: he secretly
edified the throne of his successors, and displayed in a narrow space
the virtues of a great prince. His memory was revered; but in the next
election, a priest of the Lateran, Leo the Third, was preferred to the
nephew and the favorite of Adrian, whom he had promoted to the first
dignities of the church. Their acquiescence or repentance disguised,
above four years, the blackest intention of revenge, till the day of a
procession, when a furious band of conspirators dispersed the unarmed
multitude, and assaulted with blows and wounds the sacred person of
the pope. But their enterprise on his life or liberty was disappointed,
perhaps by their own confusion and remorse. Leo was left for dead on the
ground: on his revival from the swoon, the effect of his loss of blood,
he recovered his speech and sight; and this natural event was improved
to the miraculous restoration of his eyes and tongue, of which he had
been deprived, twice deprived, by the knife of the assassins. From his
prison he escaped to the Vatican: the duke of Spoleto hastened to
his rescue, Charlemagne sympathized in his injury, and in his camp of
Paderborn in Westphalia accepted, or solicited, a visit from the Roman
pontiff. Leo repassed the Alps with a commission of counts and bishops,
the guards of his safety and the judges of his innocence; and it was not
without reluctance, that the conqueror of the Saxons delayed till the
ensuing year the personal discharge of this pious office. In his fourth
and last pilgrimage, he was received at Rome with the due honors of king
and patrician: Leo was permitted to purge himself by oath of the crimes
imputed to his charge: his enemies were silenced, and the sacrilegious
attempt against his life was punished by the mild and insufficient
penalty of exile. On the festival of Christmas, the last year of the
eighth century, Charlemagne appeared in the church of St. Peter; and,
to gratify the vanity of Rome, he had exchanged the simple dress of his
country for the habit of a patrician. After the celebration of the holy
mysteries, Leo suddenly placed a precious crown on his head, and the
dome resounded with the acclamations of the people, "Long life and
victory to Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned by God the great
and pacific emperor of the Romans!" The head and body of Charlemagne
were consecrated by the royal unction: after the example of the CÊsars,
he was saluted or adored by the pontiff: his coronation oath represents
a promise to maintain the faith and privileges of the church; and
the first-fruits were paid in his rich offerings to the shrine of
his apostle. In his familiar conversation, the emperor protested the
ignorance of the intentions of Leo, which he would have disappointed by
his absence on that memorable day. But the preparations of the ceremony
must have disclosed the secret; and the journey of Charlemagne reveals
his knowledge and expectation: he had acknowledged that the Imperial
title was the object of his ambition, and a Roman synod had pronounced,
that it was the only adequate reward of his merit and services.
The appellation of _great_ has been often bestowed, and sometimes
deserved; but Charlemagne is the only prince in whose favor the title
has been indissolubly blended with the name. That name, with the
addition of _saint_, is inserted in the Roman calendar; and the saint,
by a rare felicity, is crowned with the praises of the historians
and philosophers of an enlightened age. His _real_ merit is doubtless
enhanced by the barbarism of the nation and the times from which he
emerged: but the _apparent_ magnitude of an object is likewise enlarged
by an unequal comparison; and the ruins of Palmyra derive a casual
splendor from the nakedness of the surrounding desert. Without injustice
to his fame, I may discern some blemishes in the sanctity and greatness
of the restorer of the Western empire. Of his moral virtues, chastity
is not the most conspicuous: but the public happiness could not
be materially injured by his nine wives or concubines, the various
indulgence of meaner or more transient amours, the multitude of his
bastards whom he bestowed on the church, and the long celibacy and
licentious manners of his daughters, whom the father was suspected
of loving with too fond a passion. I shall be scarcely permitted to
accuse the ambition of a conqueror; but in a day of equal retribution,
the sons of his brother Carloman, the Merovingian princes of Aquitain,
and the four thousand five hundred Saxons who were beheaded on the same
spot, would have something to allege against the justice and humanity of
Charlemagne. His treatment of the vanquished Saxons was an abuse of the
right of conquest; his laws were not less sanguinary than his arms, and
in the discussion of his motives, whatever is subtracted from bigotry
must be imputed to temper. The sedentary reader is amazed by his
incessant activity of mind and body; and his subjects and enemies were
not less astonished at his sudden presence, at the moment when they
believed him at the most distant extremity of the empire; neither peace
nor war, nor summer nor winter, were a season of repose; and our fancy
cannot easily reconcile the annals of his reign with the geography
of his expeditions. But this activity was a national, rather than a
personal, virtue; the vagrant life of a Frank was spent in the chase, in
pilgrimage, in military adventures; and the journeys of Charlemagne
were distinguished only by a more numerous train and a more important
purpose. His military renown must be tried by the scrutiny of his
troops, his enemies, and his actions. Alexander conquered with the arms
of Philip, but the _two_ heroes who preceded Charlemagne bequeathed him
their name, their examples, and the companions of their victories. At
the head of his veteran and superior armies, he oppressed the savage or
degenerate nations, who were incapable of confederating for their common
safety: nor did he ever encounter an equal antagonist in numbers, in
discipline, or in arms The science of war has been lost and revived with
the arts of peace; but his campaigns are not illustrated by any siege
or battle of singular difficulty and success; and he might behold,
with envy, the Saracen trophies of his grandfather. After the Spanish
expedition, his rear-guard was defeated in the PyrenÊan mountains; and
the soldiers, whose situation was irretrievable, and whose valor was
useless, might accuse, with their last breath, the want of skill
or caution of their general. I touch with reverence the laws of
Charlemagne, so highly applauded by a respectable judge. They compose
not a system, but a series, of occasional and minute edicts, for the
correction of abuses, the reformation of manners, the economy of his
farms, the care of his poultry, and even the sale of his eggs. He wished
to improve the laws and the character of the Franks; and his attempts,
however feeble and imperfect, are deserving of praise: the inveterate
evils of the times were suspended or mollified by his government; but
in his institutions I can seldom discover the general views and the
immortal spirit of a legislator, who survives himself for the benefit of
posterity. The union and stability of his empire depended on the life
of a single man: he imitated the dangerous practice of dividing his
kingdoms among his sons; and after his numerous diets, the whole
constitution was left to fluctuate between the disorders of anarchy and
despotism. His esteem for the piety and knowledge of the clergy tempted
him to intrust that aspiring order with temporal dominion and civil
jurisdiction; and his son Lewis, when he was stripped and degraded
by the bishops, might accuse, in some measure, the imprudence of his
father. His laws enforced the imposition of tithes, because the dÊmons
had proclaimed in the air that the default of payment had been the cause
of the last scarcity. The literary merits of Charlemagne are attested
by the foundation of schools, the introduction of arts, the works
which were published in his name, and his familiar connection with the
subjects and strangers whom he invited to his court to educate both the
prince and people. His own studies were tardy, laborious, and imperfect;
if he spoke Latin, and understood Greek, he derived the rudiments of
knowledge from conversation, rather than from books; and, in his mature
age, the emperor strove to acquire the practice of writing, which every
peasant now learns in his infancy. The grammar and logic, the music
and astronomy, of the times, were only cultivated as the handmaids of
superstition; but the curiosity of the human mind must ultimately tend
to its improvement, and the encouragement of learning reflects the
purest and most pleasing lustre on the character of Charlemagne. The
dignity of his person, the length of his reign, the prosperity of his
arms, the vigor of his government, and the reverence of distant nations,
distinguish him from the royal crowd; and Europe dates a new Êra from
his restoration of the Western empire.
That empire was not unworthy of its title; and some of the fairest
kingdoms of Europe were the patrimony or conquest of a prince, who
reigned at the same time in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Hungary.
I. The Roman province of Gaul had been transformed into the name and
monarchy of France; but, in the decay of the Merovingian line, its
limits were contracted by the independence of the _Britons_ and the
revolt of _Aquitain_. Charlemagne pursued, and confined, the Britons
on the shores of the ocean; and that ferocious tribe, whose origin
and language are so different from the French, was chastised by the
imposition of tribute, hostages, and peace. After a long and evasive
contest, the rebellion of the dukes of Aquitain was punished by the
forfeiture of their province, their liberty, and their lives. Harsh and
rigorous would have been such treatment of ambitious governors, who had
too faithfully copied the mayors of the palace. But a recent discovery
has proved that these unhappy princes were the last and lawful heirs of
the blood and sceptre of Clovis, and younger branch, from the brother of
Dagobert, of the Merovingian house. Their ancient kingdom was reduced to
the duchy of Gascogne, to the counties of Fesenzac and Armagnac, at the
foot of the Pyrenees: their race was propagated till the beginning of
the sixteenth century; and after surviving their Carlovingian tyrants,
they were reserved to feel the injustice, or the favors, of a third
dynasty. By the reunion of Aquitain, France was enlarged to its present
boundaries, with the additions of the Netherlands and Spain, as far
as the Rhine. II. The Saracens had been expelled from France by the
grandfather and father of Charlemagne; but they still possessed the
greatest part of Spain, from the rock of Gibraltar to the Pyrenees.
Amidst their civil divisions, an Arabian emir of Saragossa implored
his protection in the diet of Paderborn. Charlemagne undertook the
expedition, restored the emir, and, without distinction of faith,
impartially crushed the resistance of the Christians, and rewarded the
obedience and services of the Mahometans. In his absence he instituted
the _Spanish march_, which extended from the Pyrenees to the River Ebro:
Barcelona was the residence of the French governor: he possessed the
counties of _Rousillon_ and _Catalonia_; and the infant kingdoms of
_Navarre_ and _Arragon_ were subject to his jurisdiction. III. As king
of the Lombards, and patrician of Rome, he reigned over the greatest
part of Italy, a tract of a thousand miles from the Alps to the borders
of Calabria. The duchy of _Beneventum_, a Lombard fief, had spread,
at the expense of the Greeks, over the modern kingdom of Naples. But
Arrechis, the reigning duke, refused to be included in the slavery of
his country; assumed the independent title of prince; and opposed his
sword to the Carlovingian monarchy. His defence was firm, his submission
was not inglorious, and the emperor was content with an easy tribute,
the demolition of his fortresses, and the acknowledgment, on his coins,
of a supreme lord. The artful flattery of his son Grimoald added the
appellation of father, but he asserted his dignity with prudence, and
Benventum insensibly escaped from the French yoke. IV. Charlemagne
was the first who united Germany under the same sceptre. The name of
_Oriental France_ is preserved in the circle of _Franconia_; and the
people of _Hesse_ and _Thuringia_ were recently incorporated with the
victors, by the conformity of religion and government. The _Alemanni_,
so formidable to the Romans, were the faithful vassals and confederates
of the Franks; and their country was inscribed within the modern limits
of _Alsace_, _Swabia_, and _Switzerland_. The _Bavarians_, with a
similar indulgence of their laws and manners, were less patient of a
master: the repeated treasons of Tasillo justified the abolition of
their hereditary dukes; and their power was shared among the counts, who
judged and guarded that important frontier. But the north of Germany,
from the Rhine and beyond the Elbe, was still hostile and Pagan; nor was
it till after a war of thirty-three years that the Saxons bowed under
the yoke of Christ and of Charlemagne. The idols and their votaries were
extirpated: the foundation of eight bishoprics, of Munster, Osnaburgh,
Paderborn, and Minden, of Bremen, Verden, Hildesheim, and Halberstadt,
define, on either side of the Weser, the bounds of ancient Saxony these
episcopal seats were the first schools and cities of that savage land;
and the religion and humanity of the children atoned, in some degree,
for the massacre of the parents. Beyond the Elbe, the _Slavi_, or
Sclavonians, of similar manners and various denominations, overspread
the modern dominions of Prussia, Poland, and Bohemia, and some transient
marks of obedience have tempted the French historian to extend the
empire to the Baltic and the Vistula. The conquest or conversion
of those countries is of a more recent age; but the first union of
_Bohemia_ with the Germanic body may be justly ascribed to the arms of
Charlemagne. V. He retaliated on the Avars, or Huns of Pannonia, the
same calamities which they had inflicted on the nations. Their rings,
the wooden fortifications which encircled their districts and villages,
were broken down by the triple effort of a French army, that was poured
into their country by land and water, through the Carpathian mountains
and along the plain of the Danube. After a bloody conflict of eight
years, the loss of some French generals was avenged by the slaughter
of the most noble Huns: the relics of the nation submitted the
royal residence of the chagan was left desolate and unknown; and the
treasures, the rapine of two hundred and fifty years, enriched the
victorious troops, or decorated the churches of Italy and Gaul. After
the reduction of Pannonia, the empire of Charlemagne was bounded only by
the conflux of the Danube with the Teyss and the Save: the provinces
of Istria, Liburnia, and Dalmatia, were an easy, though unprofitable,
accession; and it was an effect of his moderation, that he left the
maritime cities under the real or nominal sovereignty of the Greeks. But
these distant possessions added more to the reputation than to the power
of the Latin emperor; nor did he risk any ecclesiastical foundations to
reclaim the Barbarians from their vagrant life and idolatrous worship.
Some canals of communication between the rivers, the Saone and the
Meuse, the Rhine and the Danube, were faintly attempted. Their execution
would have vivified the empire; and more cost and labor were often
wasted in the structure of a cathedral.
Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.--Part V.
If we retrace the outlines of this geographical picture, it will be seen
that the empire of the Franks extended, between east and west, from the
Ebro to the Elbe or Vistula; between the north and south, from the duchy
of Beneventum to the River Eyder, the perpetual boundary of Germany
and Denmark. The personal and political importance of Charlemagne
was magnified by the distress and division of the rest of Europe. The
islands of Great Britain and Ireland were disputed by a crowd of princes
of Saxon or Scottish origin: and, after the loss of Spain, the Christian
and Gothic kingdom of Alphonso the Chaste was confined to the narrow
range of the Asturian mountains. These petty sovereigns revered the
power or virtue of the Carlovingian monarch, implored the honor and
support of his alliance, and styled him their common parent, the sole
and supreme emperor of the West. He maintained a more equal intercourse
with the caliph Harun al Rashid, whose dominion stretched from Africa
to India, and accepted from his ambassadors a tent, a water-clock, an
elephant, and the keys of the Holy Sepulchre. It is not easy to conceive
the private friendship of a Frank and an Arab, who were strangers
to each other's person, and language, and religion: but their public
correspondence was founded on vanity, and their remote situation left no
room for a competition of interest. Two thirds of the Western empire of
Rome were subject to Charlemagne, and the deficiency was amply supplied
by his command of the inaccessible or invincible nations of Germany. But
in the choice of his enemies, we may be reasonably surprised that he
so often preferred the poverty of the north to the riches of the south.
The three-and-thirty campaigns laboriously consumed in the woods and
morasses of Germany would have sufficed to assert the amplitude of his
title by the expulsion of the Greeks from Italy and the Saracens from
Spain. The weakness of the Greeks would have insured an easy victory;
and the holy crusade against the Saracens would have been prompted by
glory and revenge, and loudly justified by religion and policy. Perhaps,
in his expeditions beyond the Rhine and the Elbe, he aspired to save
his monarchy from the fate of the Roman empire, to disarm the enemies of
civilized society, and to eradicate the seed of future emigrations.
But it has been wisely observed, that, in a light of precaution, all
conquest must be ineffectual, unless it could be universal, since the
increasing circle must be involved in a larger sphere of hostility. The
subjugation of Germany withdrew the veil which had so long concealed the
continent or islands of Scandinavia from the knowledge of Europe, and
awakened the torpid courage of their barbarous natives. The fiercest of
the Saxon idolaters escaped from the Christian tyrant to their brethren
of the North; the Ocean and Mediterranean were covered with their
piratical fleets; and Charlemagne beheld with a sigh the destructive
progress of the Normans, who, in less than seventy years, precipitated
the fall of his race and monarchy.
Had the pope and the Romans revived the primitive constitution, the
titles of emperor and Augustus were conferred on Charlemagne for
the term of his life; and his successors, on each vacancy, must have
ascended the throne by a formal or tacit election. But the association
of his son Lewis the Pious asserts the independent right of monarchy and
conquest, and the emperor seems on this occasion to have foreseen and
prevented the latent claims of the clergy. The royal youth was commanded
to take the crown from the altar, and with his own hands to place it on
his head, as a gift which he held from God, his father, and the
nation. The same ceremony was repeated, though with less energy, in
the subsequent associations of Lothaire and Lewis the Second: the
Carlovingian sceptre was transmitted from father to son in a lineal
descent of four generations; and the ambition of the popes was reduced
to the empty honor of crowning and anointing these hereditary princes,
who were already invested with their power and dominions. The
pious Lewis survived his brothers, and embraced the whole empire
of Charlemagne; but the nations and the nobles, his bishops and his
children, quickly discerned that this mighty mass was no longer inspired
by the same soul; and the foundations were undermined to the centre,
while the external surface was yet fair and entire. After a war, or
battle, which consumed one hundred thousand Franks, the empire was
divided by treaty between his three sons, who had violated every filial
and fraternal duty. The kingdoms of Germany and France were forever
separated; the provinces of Gaul, between the Rhone and the Alps, the
Meuse and the Rhine, were assigned, with Italy, to the Imperial dignity
of Lothaire. In the partition of his share, Lorraine and Arles, two
recent and transitory kingdoms, were bestowed on the younger children;
and Lewis the Second, his eldest son, was content with the realm of
Italy, the proper and sufficient patrimony of a Roman emperor. On his
death without any male issue, the vacant throne was disputed by his
uncles and cousins, and the popes most dexterously seized the occasion
of judging the claims and merits of the candidates, and of bestowing on
the most obsequious, or most liberal, the Imperial office of advocate of
the Roman church. The dregs of the Carlovingian race no longer exhibited
any symptoms of virtue or power, and the ridiculous epithets of the
_bard_, the _stammerer_, the _fat_, and the _simple_, distinguished
the tame and uniform features of a crowd of kings alike deserving
of oblivion. By the failure of the collateral branches, the whole
inheritance devolved to Charles the Fat, the last emperor of his family:
his insanity authorized the desertion of Germany, Italy, and France: he
was deposed in a diet, and solicited his daily bread from the rebels by
whose contempt his life and liberty had been spared. According to the
measure of their force, the governors, the bishops, and the lords,
usurped the fragments of the falling empire; and some preference was
shown to the female or illegitimate blood of Charlemagne. Of the greater
part, the title and possession were alike doubtful, and the merit was
adequate to the contracted scale of their dominions. Those who could
appear with an army at the gates of Rome were crowned emperors in
the Vatican; but their modesty was more frequently satisfied with the
appellation of kings of Italy: and the whole term of seventy-four years
may be deemed a vacancy, from the abdication of Charles the Fat to the
establishment of Otho the First.