When these matters in Aquitaine were settled and this war ended, his

fellow-ruler being withdrawn from the affairs of this world, Charles was

earnestly besought by the prayers of Adrian, bishop of the city of Rome,

to undertake a war against the Lombards. This had been done before by his

father at the instance of Stephen the pope, in spite of great obstacles,

for there were certain among the chief Frankish nobles with whom the

king was wont to take counsel, who opposed themselves so strictly to his

will that they cried at the top of their voices that they would abandon

the king to his fate and go their way home. Notwithstanding this, war

had been made against King Aistulf, and brought to a speedy conclusion.

But although the same reason for war seemed even more strong to Charles

than it had been to his father, yet it is clear the contest was not so

laborious, nor was it ended with a similar result. Pepin for his part

besieged King Aistulf for a few days in Pavia, and compelled him to give

hostages and to restore the fortified towns and castles which he had

snatched from the Romans, and to take a solemn oath that he would not

attempt to recapture what he had restored. Charles, on the other hand,

when war had once been begun by him, did not cease hostilities until

King Desiderius, wearied by a long siege, had surrendered, and his son

Adelchis, on whom the hopes of all were rested, had been forced to flee

not only from his kingdom, but from Italy. All that had been forcibly

taken from the Romans was restored to them. Hrudogast, prefect of the

duchy of Friuli, who aimed at revolution, was crushed, the whole of Italy

was reduced to the dominion of Charles, and his son Pepin made king of

the conquered territory.

And I would describe how difficult was the passage across the Alps as

he entered Italy, and what great labour it cost the Franks to cross the

trackless ridges of the mountains, and the steep rocks that tower up into

the sky, were not my intention in the present work to communicate the

events concerning my hero’s own life rather than those concerning the

wars which he waged. Yet I will add that the war ended in the conquest

of Italy, King Desiderius was banished into perpetual exile, his son

Adelchis was driven from Italy, and the property stolen from the king of

the Lombards was restored to Adrian, the rector of the Roman church.

THE SAXON WAR (772-804 A.D.)

[Illustration: A SAXON]

[Sidenote: [772-804 A.D.]]

No sooner was this finished than the Saxon War, in which there had

seemed to be a kind of pause, was renewed. The Frankish people never

engaged in a task more protracted, fiercer, or more wearisome; for the

Saxons, like almost all the nations inhabiting Germany, are cruel by

nature, abandoned to the cult of devils, foes of our religion, nor do

they think it wrong to violate or transgress any law, whether human or

divine. They had an easy means of disturbing the peace daily, for of a

truth their boundaries and ours touched at almost any point in the open,

except in a few places where either wide stretches of forest land or the

ridges of intervening mountains set an indisputable limit to the lands

of both countries. Everywhere else indiscriminate bloodshed, plunder,

and burning were incessant. This so stung the Franks that they were not

content with returning one evil turn with another, but determined to make

open war upon their neighbours. And so war was declared against them,

and waged for thirty long years with great bitterness on both sides, but

the Saxons suffered greater injury than the Franks. Hostilities might

have ended sooner but for the perfidy of the Saxons. It is difficult to

tell how often they were beaten and surrendered themselves humbly to the

king, promising to do his bidding. The hostages claimed of them they

would surrender with alacrity, and acknowledge the ambassadors sent to

them. Sometimes they were so cowed and enervated that they even promised

to abandon their cult of devils, saying they would fain submit to the

Christian religion; but ready as they were sometimes to do this they

were always in a hurry to undo it again, so that it is hard to guess to

which of these courses they may the more truly be said to have leaned;

for after the war with them had begun, scarce a single year reached its

conclusion without their shifting from one view to another in this way.

But their mutability, were it never so great, could never overcome the

king’s high spirit and constancy of mind, in adversity as in prosperity,

nor could it tire him out of fulfilling what he had begun to do. For they

never did an act of treachery which he suffered to pass unpunished. He

would despatch an army, either under his own leadership or under that of

his peers, and take vengeance on the enemy’s perfidy, mulcting them in

damages worthy of the offence, until at last he had reduced to his will

all the miserable rebels who offered him habitual resistance. He then

transported ten thousand men of the inhabitants on both banks of the

Elbe, with their wives and little children, distributing them here and

there over Gaul and Germany in fragmentary groups. When they had agreed

to the following conditions imposed upon them by the king, the war that

had lasted so many years was declared at an end:--The cult of the devils

was to be abandoned, the native rites discontinued,[134] the sacraments

of the Christian faith and religion were to be adopted: united to the

Franks they were to form one people with them.

Though this war lasted over so long a space of time, the king himself

did not fight more than two pitched battles with the enemy, one near a

hill called Osneng in a place called Theotmel (Detmold), the other on the

river Hasa, both in the same month and at a few days’ interval. In these

two battles the enemy were so demoralised by defeat that they no longer

dared to provoke the king to battle or to offer resistance to him when he

attacked, except in a place where they were protected by fortification.

In this war perished a large number of nobles, both Frankish as well as

Saxon, men of high distinction. At last, in the thirty-third year, it

came to an end. During this time wars so many and so great sprang up

against the Franks in diverse parts of the earth, wars directed with such

skill by the king, that well might the onlooker be perplexed whether to

admire most the patience of his essays or the success which crowned them.

Two years before the Italian war, began this war (against Desiderius),

which was waged without intermission, and yet there was no relaxation in

any of the other wars that had to be carried on, nor was there anywhere

any respite from battle attended with equal difficulties. The king,

who excelled all the sovereigns of his age in foresight and largeness

of mind, never weakly shrank from taking up and following to the end a

duty either because it was difficult or dangerous. He was well versed

in a knowledge of how to weigh such matter according to its intrinsic

value, not to give way in adversity, and not to be duped by the smiles of

specious fortune in prosperity.

THE PASS OF RONCESVALLES (778 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [778-788 A.D.]]

While the Saxon War was being ardently and incessantly pursued, garrisons

were placed in the most suitable places on the borders, and Charles

marched into Spain with the greatest equipment of war that he could

command. He crossed the Pyrenees, received the submission of all towns

and castles that he approached, and returned with his army safe and

sound. It was on his return through that very Pyrenean pass that he

happened to encounter a slight show of Gascon treachery. The army was

moving in column, in extended formation, as was made necessary by the

narrowness of the pass, when the Gascons, who had placed ambuscades on

the high ledge of the mountain (for the dense foliage of the place, which

is thickly wooded, makes it suitable for the disposal of an ambush),

rushed down from their vantage ground, falling upon the extreme section

of the baggage and those who manned the baggage train and drove them

into the valley below. Here the Gascons fought a pitched battle with

them, killed them all to a man, destroyed the baggage, took advantage of

the cover of night which was drawing over them, and with the greatest

rapidity dispersed in different directions. The Gascons were aided in

this feat by the lightness of their arms and the nature of the place in

which the engagement was determined; whereas the Franks, on the other

hand, were made inferior to the Gascons at every point by the weight of

their armour and the ugliness of their situation. In this battle fell

Eggihard, the king’s server, Anselm Pfalsgraf, and Roland, count of the

Breton march, with many others besides. Nor could the injury be avenged

at the time, because when the thing had been perpetrated the enemy

dispersed with so much cunning that there remained not even the breath of

a rumour as to where in the world they might be hunted out.

THIRD VISIT TO ITALY (787 A.D.)

Charles also subjugated the Bretons who dwell by the coast on the extreme

west of Gaul. They were not obedient to the king’s word, so he sent an

expedition against them, whereupon they were compelled to grant hostages

and make a promise to do what they were told. After this the king himself

entered Italy with his army, and making his way through Rome, marched

upon Capua, a city of Campania, and when he had pitched his camp there

threatened the Beneventines with war unless they surrendered. Arichis,

the duke, avoided this by sending his two sons, Romwald and Grimwald,

with a large sum of money to meet the king, whom he asked to accept them

as hostages, promising to do what he was told, except in the event of

one command, which was if he should be forced himself to come face to

face with the king. Charles, taking the national welfare into greater

consideration than the stubborn character of the duke’s mind, accepted

the hostages offered to him, and in return for a large sum of money

conceded to him the favour that he should not be compelled to meet him

face to face. Only the younger son of Arichis was kept as a hostage, the

elder was returned to his father. The ambassadors who had come to exact

oaths of allegiance from the Beneventines, and to make an agreement with

Arichis for taking them up on their behalf, were now discharged, and the

king returned to Rome. He spent a few days there in holy visits to the

sacred places of the city and then went back into Gaul.

BAVARIAN WAR WITH TASSILO (787-788 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [787-796 A.D.]]

Next came the Bavarian War, which suddenly flamed up and swiftly died

down. It was aroused at once by the arrogance and by the folly of Duke

Tassilo. He had married a daughter of King Desiderius, who thought to

avenge her father’s exile by her husband’s agency. Tassilo made an

alliance with the Huns, whose boundary touches that of the Bavarians

on the east. Not only did he try to win his independence, but also

to provoke the king to war. His violence seeming too great for the

high-spirited king to brook, he gathered together forces from all sides

for an incursion into Bavaria, and straightway advanced to the river

Lech himself with a large army. This river divides the Bavarians from

the Alamanni. He pitched his camp on the banks before entering the

province and determined to ascertain the temper of the duke by means

of ambassadors. Tassilo, thinking it neither to his own advantage nor

to that of his country to act obstinately, surrendered himself to the

king’s mercy, and gave the hostages required, among them being his own

son Theodo. In addition to this, he took an oath of allegiance by which

he bound himself to be induced by the persuasion of nobody to revolt from

the sovereignty of the king.[135] In this way a very swift end was put

to a war which had given promise of becoming a great one. Tassilo being

summoned soon after to the king was not, however, allowed to return; the

province which he had governed was no longer entrusted to a duke but to

the charge of counts.

WARS IN THE NORTH AND WITH THE AVARS (791-796 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [791-810 A.D.]]

When these commotions were thus allayed war was begun against the Slavs,

whom we are accustomed to call Wilzi, but who are more properly termed

in their own tongue Welatabi. In this war among other nations who were

bidden to rally round the king’s ensigns, the Saxons fought as our

allies, but their obedience was feigned and far from being truly devoted.

The cause of the war was that the Welatabi harried the Abodriti, who

had in former days been allied with the Franks; nor could the assiduity

of their incursions be checked by orders. There is a certain gulf which

stretches eastwards from the western ocean, of unascertained length, but

of a width which nowhere exceeds a hundred miles, whereas in many places

it is narrower. Many nations are gathered round its border, such as Danes

and Swedes whom we call Northmen, and they occupy the northern shores and

all the islands in the gulf. But the southern shores are inhabited by

Slavs and Aisti, and divers other nations among whom the chief are the

Welatabi against whom the king was now making war. In one expedition,

which he conducted in person, he so utterly crushed and humbled them,

that in future they were advised to do as they were told without the

smallest show of resistance.

The war following this was, with the exception of the Saxon War, the

greatest of all those waged by my hero; it was that memorable war against

the Avars or Huns. The king set about it with even greater spirit and

with far greater military resources than had gone to the others. Yet

he himself made but one expedition into Pannonia, the province then

inhabited by the Avars. The rest of the campaigns were entrusted to

his son Pepin and the prefects of the provinces, and to the counts and

lieutenants. They used the utmost diligence in the conduct of affairs;

yet eight years had well-nigh passed before the war was ended. What

a great many battles were fought, what blood was shed, the desolate

Pannonia, empty of all living creatures, bears witness. Moreover, the

place in which was situate the royal palace of the chagan (khan) is so

abandoned that you cannot see a trace of human habitation in it. The

whole nobility of the Avars perished in this war, and the entire glory

of the nation was extinguished. All their money and long-accumulated

treasures were seized; nor can human memory recall any war of the Franks

in which they have won greater spoil or been more enriched.

Up to this time, sure enough, the Franks had appeared to be a poor

nation; but now so much gold and silver was found in the royal treasury,

such a heap of valuable spoil was taken in battle, that we may safely

assume that the Franks seized this new wealth from the Huns, and rightly

too, for had not the Huns before this seized it wrongfully from other

nations? Only two among the chiefs of the Frankish nobility fell in this

war,--Eric, duke of Friuli, killed in Liburnia, near Tharsatica (Fiume),

a maritime state, who was entrapped in an ambush laid by the townspeople;

and Gerold, prefect of the Bavarians, who was killed in Pannonia while

drawing up his men in line of battle in the act of engaging with the

Huns. No one knew who did the deed, for he was killed, with the two

others who rode in his company, as he spoke a word of encouragement to

each man along the ranks. But for this, the war was almost a bloodless

one for the Franks and had a most prosperous ending, although it was

prolonged far beyond what was natural from its size.

DANISH WAR (808-810 A.D.)

When this and the Saxon War had been brought to an end which their

tediousness made welcome, the two wars which followed, one against the

Bohemians and the other against the Linonians, did not last long, for

they were both speedily despatched under the direction of Charles the

Younger. The last war to be undertaken was that against the Northmen who

are called Danes. At first they indulged in pirate warfare, and later

they ravaged the shores of Gaul and Germany with a large fleet. So puffed

up with vain ambition was their king, Godfrey,[136] that he thought he

would gain the sovereignty of all Germany for his own. Frisia and Saxony

he simply regarded as his own provinces; he had already brought the

neighbouring Abodriti under his sway and made them tributary to him. He

even would boast that in a little while he would appear with his enormous

army at Aachen,[137] where the king held his court. Nor was all faith

denied to his talk, empty as it was; on the contrary, he rather acquired

the reputation of a man who would have begun some such enterprise had he

not been arrested by a premature death. He was murdered by one of his

own servants, and so ended abruptly his life and the war that he had

inaugurated.

GLORY OF CHARLEMAGNE

[Sidenote: [768-810 A.D.]]

Such are the wars which this most puissant king waged during forty-seven

years--a long reign--in divers parts of the earth with superlative

skill and good fortune. By these he so nobly enlarged the kingdom of

the Franks which he had taken over after his father Pepin, that great

and powerful as it already was, he nearly doubled it. For previously

those Franks called Eastern inhabited only that part of Gaul which lies

between the Rhine and the Loire, the ocean and the Balearic Sea, and

that part of Germany situate between Saxony and the Danube, the Rhine

and the Saal which latter river divides the Thuringii from the Sorabi.

The Alamanni and the Bavarians also belonged to the sovereignty of the

Frankish kingdom. But Charles, by the wars I have enumerated, completely

subjugated and made tributary first Aquitaine and Gascony and the whole

range of the Pyrenean Mountains even as far as the Ebro, which river

in Navarre crosses the most fertile lands of Spain and mingles its

waters with the Balearic Sea, beneath the walls of the city Tortosa;

then the whole of Italy from Aosta to lower Calabria where men place

the boundaries of the Greeks and Beneventines, an extent of more than a

thousand miles long; then Saxony which is no small part of Germany and

is supposed to be twice as broad as the part in which the Franks dwell,

with a length which is equal to that of the other; then both Pannonia and

Dacia which lies on the other bank of the Danube, Istria too and Liburnia

and Dalmatia, except the maritime towns which because of his friendly

feeling for the Constantinopolitan emperor and a treaty to which they had

both agreed Charles allowed him to hold; lastly all the wild and uncouth

nations which inhabit Germany between the Rhine and the Vistula, the

ocean and the Danube, who speak almost the same tongue but are widely

different in character and in dress. Chief among these were the Welatabi,

Sorabi, Abodriti, and Bæmanni, for these showed resistance in fight; the

rest who were more numerous surrendered.

[Illustration: A SAXON WARRIOR]

He also added glory to the kingdom by the friendly sentiments of certain

kings and nations which he won to himself. Thus Alfonso, king of Galicia

and Asturias was so linked to him by the bond of friendship that when he

sent him letters or messengers he gave orders that he should be spoken

of as Charles’ servant. The kings of the Scots too had been so bent

to his will through his munificence that they never alluded to him in

other terms than as their lord and called themselves his humble vassals.

Letters from them to him still exist in which it may be seen that their

attitude towards him was of this kind. Harun, king of the Persians who

held well-nigh all the East if we except India, was in such hearty

sympathy with the king that he valued his good will more than that of

all the kings and princes in the world, thinking him alone worthy to be

honoured by his regard and munificence. When the officers sent by Charles

with offerings to the most sacred sepulchre and place of the resurrection

of our Lord and Saviour came to Harun and told him what was the will of

their master he not only allowed them to do what was required but even

yielded up to them that revered and sacred spot to be registered as

belonging to the sovereignty of Charles. When the ambassadors returned he

sent his own to accompany them bearing splendid presents to the king with

garments and spices and other rich products of the East, just as a few

years before at Charles’ request he sent him the only elephant he then

possessed. Even the Constantinopolitan emperors, Nicephorus, Michael, and

Leo expressly sought after his friendly allegiance and sent him numerous

embassies. To remove all source of possible offence to them on account of

his having adopted the title of emperor, which might truly be suspected

as in some sort an attempt to wrest from them the imperial supremacy, he

entered into a most rigid treaty. For the power of the Franks was ever

an object of suspicion to the Greeks and Romans, whence arose the Greek

proverb, “Have a Frank for a friend and not for a neighbour.”

Great as the king was in enlarging the kingdom and in conquering foreign

nations, busy as he was in affairs of this kind, he yet started a great

number of works for the embellishment and convenience of the kingdom.

Some of them he carried through to the finish. The chief place among

these seems rightly to be assigned to the Basilica of the Holy Mother

of God, which was built at Aachen, a miracle of workmanship, and to the

bridge over the Rhine at Mainz, five hundred paces in length, so broad

is the river at that place. This bridge, however, was ruined by fire a

year before the king’s death, nor could it be restored on account of

the nearness of his demise, although it was in his mind to replace the

woodwork by stone. He also began some magnificent palaces--one not far

from the town of Mainz near the village called Ingelheim and another at

Nimeguen on the river Waal which flows past the island of the Batavians

on the southern side. But above all he noted the sacred churches

throughout the whole kingdom wherever they had fallen to ruin because

of their age, and gave orders to the priests and fathers in whose care

they were to superintend their restoration, appointing officials to see

that his orders were carried out. He also constructed a fleet for the war

against the Northmen, making dock yards for this purpose on the rivers of

Gaul and Germany which flow into the North Sea; and because the Northmen

ravaged the shores of Gaul and Germany by constant active inroads, he

posted towers and outlooks in all the harbours and at the mouths of all

those rivers which were navigable. By these defences he stopped the enemy

from being able to pass. He did the same in the south on the coast of the

provinces of Narbonne and Septimania, and all along the coast of Italy as

far as Rome, in order to put a check on the Moors who had lately taken to

piratical practices. By this means Italy suffered no harm from the Moors,

nor Gaul and Germany from the Northmen in his days, with the exception

that Civita Vecchia, a town of Etruria, was betrayed to the Moors who

razed it to the ground, and certain islands in Frisia off the German

coast were plundered by the Northmen.

Such was clearly the character of the king at once in the defence, in the

enlargement and in the embellishment of his kingdom. We may well marvel

at his gifts and at that superlative steadfastness which he showed in

every circumstance whether of prosperity or adversity. Here I will begin

and go on to talk of those other matters which belong to his inner life

and his life in his home.

HIS FAMILY

When his father died he shared the kingdom with his brother and bore

that brother’s quarrelsome envy with exemplary patience, so that all men

marvelled that he could never be provoked into the slightest exhibition

of angry conduct. At his mother’s instigation he married a daughter of

Desiderius, king of the Lombards, but after a year, for what reason is

not known, he put her aside and took Hildegard to wife, a Swabian lady

of high nobility by whom he had three sons, to wit, Charles and Pepin

and Louis, and the same number of daughters, Hrotrud, Bertrada, and

Gisila. He also had three other daughters, Theoderada and Hiltrud by his

wife Fastrada, a German lady of eastern Frankish origin, and a third,

Rothaid, by a concubine whose name escapes my memory. When Fastrada died

he married Liutgard of the Alamanni, but she bore him no children. After

her death he had three concubines, Gerswinda, a Saxon girl, who bore him

a daughter Adaltrud, Regina, the mother of Drogo and Hugh, and Adalinda

from whom he begat Theoderic. His mother, Bertrada, lived with him to old

age, being held in high honour. For he lavished upon her the greatest

reverence, so that except on the occasion of his divorcing the daughter

of Desiderius whom he had married under his mother’s persuasion, there

never once rose a difference between them. Bertrada did not die until

after the demise of Hildegard, having lived to see three grandsons and

as many granddaughters in her son’s house. Charles had his mother buried

with much honour in the church of Saint Dionysius, the same as that

wherein lay his father. Her one sister, Gisila, who had devoted herself

ever since her girlhood to a holy life, was treated by the king with the

same pious affection that he had shown for his mother. She died a few

years before him in the convent to which she had retired.

As for children he thought they should be so brought up, both sons and

daughters, as to be first informed of those liberal studies to which

he himself devoted his attention. For his sons as soon as their age

permitted it, he ordered riding in the Frankish style, the practice of

arms, and the chase; for his daughters, woolspinning, the use of distaff

and spindle; they were to beware of becoming slothful by reason of their

leisure, they were to be instructed in every virtuous occupation. Of

his numerous family two sons and one daughter died before him, Charles

the eldest and Pepin whom he had made king of Italy, and Hrotrud his

eldest daughter who was betrothed to Constantine the emperor of the

Greeks. Pepin left a son Bernhard and five daughters, Adalhaid, Atula,

Guntrada, Berthaid, and Theoderada. The king showed marked evidence of

his affection for them, allowing his grandson to succeed to his father’s

kingdom and his granddaughters to be educated with his own daughters.

The greatness of his soul was so eminent that he bore the death of

his sons and of his daughter with exceeding patience which did in no

wise detract from his affection, for his tears would not be held back.

When he heard the news of the death of Adrian, the Roman pontiff and

his chiefest friend, he wept as bitterly as if he had lost his dearest

son or brother. For he showed the finest loyalty in his friendships,

forming them readily and preserving them with the utmost constancy and he

cherished the purest affection for those whom he had attached to himself

by the ties of sympathy. So much care did he bestow on the education

of his sons and daughters that he never took his meals at home without

them. In travelling his sons rode by his side, his daughters followed

close behind, their train being guarded by servants specially appointed

for this purpose. So beautiful were his daughters and so tender was his

affection for them that strange to say he would not consent to give any

of them in marriage either to one of his own nation or to a foreigner,

but he kept them all with him until his death in his house, saying he

could not do without their society. On this account, although lucky

in all else, he experienced the malice of ill fortune. Yet he hid his

thoughts and behaved as if no suspicion of any evil had ever arisen about

any of them, as if no rumours had ever been spread.

He had by a concubine[138] a son called Pepin whom I have forborne to

mention among the others; he had a good countenance but was deformed

by a hunchback. During the war against the Huns, while his father was

wintering in Bavaria this boy feigned sickness and made a plot against

his father with certain of the Frankish nobility who had fascinated

him with the idle promise of the kingdom. When the fraud had been

detected and the conspirators had paid the penalty the king caused the

boy to shave his beard and allowed him to pass his time in religious

exercises in the abbey at Prüm to which he objected nothing. Another

powerful conspiracy had been previously made against him in Germany; the

originators were some of them blinded, and some of them had got off safe

and sound, but all had been exiled. Death was not inflicted except on

three who, drawing their swords to avoid being captured, even went so far

as to kill some of those sent to take them, so that they were despatched

because there was no other way of keeping them quiet.

The cause and origin of these plots is supposed to have been the cruelty

of queen Fastrada and in both cases the king was the object of the

plot because in acquiescing in his wife’s cruelty he seemed to have

taken a monstrous departure from the gentleness of his nature and his

usual clemency. For all the rest of his life he showed so much love and

consideration for all men both at home and abroad that not even a murmur

of undue cruelty was ever raised against him by anyone.

He had a great love of foreigners and showed so much anxiety to receive

them that the multitude of them came to be thought burdensome not only

to the palace but also to the kingdom. The high-minded king himself was

however not in the least oppressed by a responsibility of this kind,

knowing that such inconveniences were outweighed by the wide reputation

for generosity and the reward of fair fame which were his.

HIS PERSONAL LOOK AND HABITS

Charles was of large and robust frame and commanding stature, though

his height was not excessive (it is said to have measured seven times

the length of his own foot). The top of his head was round, his eyes

were larger than usual and full of life, his nose rather prominent; he

had noble white hair, and his face was sanguine and of cheerful aspect.

Whether standing or sitting he thus had the advantage of a very great

presence and dignity. His neck was thick and too short, and his stomach

too prominent; these defects however were lost in the fair balance of

the rest of his limbs. His step was firm, the whole carriage of his body

masculine, but his voice, although it was clear, was not in true harmony

with the size of his frame: his health was sound except for the last four

years of his life, when he was attacked by frequent fever; towards the

end he even walked lame on one foot. And even in that last extremity he

acted more as he willed himself than upon the advice of the doctors whom

he thoroughly detested because they urged him to discontinue roasted

meat at his meals which it was his habit to eat, and accustom himself

to boiled. He took much exercise on horseback and in the chase which

was a national characteristic in him, for there is scarcely a nation on

earth which can equal the Franks in this art. He had much pleasure in

the vapour of natural warm springs and practised his body in frequent

swimming of which he was such a master that no one could be truly said to

excel him in this. On account of the warm springs he even built a palace

at Aachen, where in the last year of his life he dwelt continuously

until his death. Not only did he invite his sons to the baths, but also

his nobles and friends, sometimes even a crowd of his servants and

body-guard, so that there were times when a hundred or even more men were

bathing together.

He wore the dress of his country, that is, the Frankish: on his body, a

linen shirt and linen thigh coverings; then a tunic with a silken hem and

stockings. He wound garters round his legs and clad his feet in shoes.

His chest and shoulders, were protected from the cold by a doublet of

otter and sable skin. Wrapped in a sea-blue cloak he always carried a

sword at his girdle, this and the hilt being interlaced silver and gold.

Sometimes he wore a sword studded with gems, but only on high days and

holidays or on the visit of some foreign embassy. He held the foreign

styles of dress in the greatest contempt however fine they might be, nor

would he ever submit to be robed in them. Only once, in Rome, at the

request of the pontiff Adrian, and again at the earnest request of his

successor Leo, did he wrap himself in the long tunic and chlamys and wear

shoes of the Roman shape. On festival days he would stalk about in a

garment woven with gold and shoes studded with precious stones; a golden

pin clasped his cloak and he wore a splendid crown made of gold and

jewels. On other days his dress differed little from that of an ordinary

person.

[Illustration: A FRANKISH TRUMPETER]

He ate and drank moderately, but he was especially moderate in drinking

for he had the greatest horror of drunkenness in any man to say nothing

of himself and his companions. He was less abstemious in eating and

would often growl that fasting was bad for his body. He very seldom gave

banquets, indeed, only on the chief festival days, but then they were

attended in great numbers. His daily meal was furnished from four courses

in addition to the roast meat which the hunters were wont to bring in on

spits and of which he partook more freely than of any other dish. While

at his meals he would hear some sort of performance or reading. Histories

and the valorous deeds of the men of old were read over to him. He was

fond of the works of St. Augustine, especially of those entitled _De

Civitate Dei_. He drank very sparingly of wine and other liquors, rarely

taking at his meals more than three draughts. In summer after his midday

repast he would take some fruit and one draught, then he would doff his

clothes and shoes just as was his custom at night-time, and take two or

three hours’ rest. At night he slept so lightly that he would break his

repose by waking and even by rising four or five times. While he was

dressing and strapping on his shoes he not only received his friends,

but if the count of the palace informed him of any suit that could not

be determined without his orders, he gave instructions to admit the

litigants without further ado; he would then sit as if in court and give

judgment on the dispute as soon as he had mastered it. Nor was this all

that was settled at this time but he would then give orders for whatever

official duty was to be performed on that day and give instructions to

any particular servant to do his work.

His fluency of speech was resourceful and abundant and he could express

with great openness whatever he wanted to say. Nor did his own language

alone satisfy him, but he spent trouble in acquiring foreign tongues;

of these he learned Latin so well that he would pray in Latin as freely

as in his own language; he understood Greek, however, better than he

could talk it. He was so voluble in speaking that he almost produced

the impression of being a chatterer. He had the greatest respect for

the liberal arts and their learned exponents whom he loaded with great

honour. To learn grammar he attended the lectures of the aged Peter of

Pisa, a deacon; for the rest of his instructions Albinus was his tutor,

otherwise called Alcuin, also a deacon, a Saxon by race, from Britain,

the most learned man of the day. With him the king spent most of his time

and study in rhetoric and dialectics, and particularly in astronomy. He

learned the art of reckoning by numbers and with deep thought and much

skill most carefully investigated the courses of the stars. He tried

to learn to write, and used to keep his tablets and copybook for this

purpose beneath his pillow in bed, so that when he had leisure he could

train his hand but he made little progress.

He devoted himself to the Christian religion which had been instilled

into him in his infancy with the greatest holiness and piety, and on this

account he built the Basilica of Aachen, a work of great beauty, which he

embellished with silver and gold and with candlesticks and lattices and

doors of solid brass. When he could not get columns and marble for this

structure anywhere else, he caused them to be brought from Rome and from

Ravenna. As long as his health permitted he was an untiring worshipper

in church at matins and even-song and also during the hours of the night

and at the time of the sacrifice, and he made it his great care that

all the services of the church should be conducted with the greatest

cleanliness. Very often he would caution the sacristans not to allow

anything improper or foul to be brought into or left in the building. He

provided quantities of sacred vessels, gold and silver, and of priestly

vestments so that while the mass was celebrated no one--not even the

doorkeepers, who are the lowest order of ecclesiastics--was obliged to

perform his duties in private dress. He industriously improved the order

of reading and chanting. For he was a master in both, though he did not

read in public, nor sing above a whisper.

In helping the poor, in free charity, which the Greeks call almsgiving,

he was devout, making this his care not only in his own country and

kingdom, but he would often send money across the seas into Syria and

Egypt and Africa, to Jerusalem and Alexandria and Carthage, where he knew

the Christians were living in poverty, and out of compassion for their

penury. To this end he untiringly sought the friendship of transpontine

kings that some solace and comfort might be forthcoming to the Christians

under their sway. Above all other sacred and venerable places in Rome

he loved the church of St. Peter the apostle, the treasury of which he

enriched with an immense sum in gold, in silver, and in jewels. He sent

many countless gifts to the pontiffs, and during his whole reign nothing

lay so near his heart as that the city of Rome should assume its ancient

prerogative through his zeal and patronage, and that the church of St.

Peter should not only be in safe keeping and protection through him, but

should also be embellished and enriched with his presents above all other

churches. Valuing this ambition as he did within the forty-seven years of

his reign, he found leisure but four times to visit Rome for the sake of

fulfilling his vows and praying.

HIS IMPERIAL TITLE (800 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [800-814 A.D.]]

These were not the only reasons for his last visit to Rome, but the

Romans had compelled Pope Leo to implore the trusty assistance of the

king when that pontiff had been most seriously injured, for they had torn

out his eyes and cut out his tongue. So the king came to Rome to reform

the condition of the church which was sorely disturbed, and he stayed

there the whole winter in this pursuit. During this time he received the

name of emperor and of augustus, to which at first he was so averse that

he vowed that he would not have entered the church on that day, although

it was a festival day, had he been able to foresee the intention of the

pope. Yet he bore the envy that the name raised with the Roman emperors,

who were most indignant at his assumption of it, with great patience, and

he subdued their sullen hostility by a graciousness of demeanour in which

he was most certainly their master, sending them frequent embassies and

calling them his brothers in his letters to them.

Having adopted the imperial title he turned to the numerous deficiencies

in the laws of his people--for the Franks have two laws which differ

considerably in very many places. He meditated how to fill up the

omissions and reconcile what conflicted and to correct what was

mischievous and erroneously stated; but of these projects none were

fulfilled except that he increased the laws by a few chapters and these

were fragmentary. But he caused the laws of all nations under his

dominion which had not been reduced to writing to be definitely codified.

So too he wrote out and committed to memory the rough songs of antiquity

in which the exploits and wars of the ancient kings used to be sung. He

also began a grammar of his native speech. He gave names to the months

in the national tongue, for before this the Franks spoke of them partly

by the Latin and partly by foreign names. Also he designated the twelve

winds by proper appellations, whereas before this, words could not be

found for more than about four. The month January he called Wintarmanoth;

February, Hornung; March, Lentzinmanoth; April, Ostarmanoth; May,

Winnemanoth; June, Brachmanoth; July, Hewimanoth; August, Aranmanoth;

September, Witumanoth; October, Windumemanoth; November, Herbistmanoth;

December, Heilagmanoth. And the winds he named thus: that called

in Latin Subsolanus he called Ostroniwint; Eurus, Ostsunderen;

Euroauster, Sundostren; Auster, Sundren; Austroafricus, Sundwestren;

Africus, Westsundren; Zephyrus, Westren; Chorus, Westnordren; Circius,

Nordwestren; Septenrio, Nordren; Aquilo, Nordostren; Vulturnus, Ostnorden.

HIS DEATH (814 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [814 A.D.]]

Towards the close of his life when he was weighed down with illness and

old age he called to him his son Louis, the king of Aquitaine and last

surviving son of Hildegard, solemnly assembled the Frankish nobility

from all over the kingdom, and with the unanimous consent appointed

Louis his partner in the whole kingdom and heir of the imperial title.

Then he placed the royal crown on his head and decreed that he should

be saluted as emperor and augustus. All those who were present hailed

his doing this with much acclamation, for it seemed as if the king were

divinely inspired for the welfare of his kingdom. For did he not by this

act enlarge his own majesty and strike no small terror into the nations

abroad? He discharged his son to Aquitaine and then, old as he was, set

out for the chase as was his wont in the neighbourhood of the palace at

Aachen. He spent what remained of the autumn in this pursuit, and then

returned to Aachen early in November.

During the winter in the month of January he was seized with fever and

took to his bed. He at once prescribed for himself, as he always did

when he was attacked by fever, an abstinence from food, thinking that by

a privation of this kind the disease might be banished or in any case

reduced, but the pain increased until his side was inflamed (the Greeks

call it “pleurisy”). Yet he continued to starve himself, keeping himself

alive by an occasional draught until the seventh day after he had taken

to his bed. He then received the holy communion and died on the 28th of

January at nine o’clock, in the seventy-second year of his age and in the

forty-seventh year of his reign (814).

They solemnly washed and tended his body, laying it in the church where

it was buried amid the great grief of the whole nation. At first men

doubted where he ought to rest, since he himself in his lifetime had left

no directions in the matter. At last the minds of all were satisfied that

nowhere could he more fitly be buried than in that church which he had

built at his own cost at Aachen from his love of God and our Lord Jesus

Christ and to the glory of the ever blessed Virgin his mother. Here then

he was buried on the same day that he died. Above his tomb was erected a

gilded monument with his effigy and title upon it. This famous title runs

thus:

UNDER THIS TOMB LIES THE BODY OF

CHARLES THE GREAT AND ORTHODOX EMPEROR

WHO GLORIOUSLY ENLARGED THE REALM OF THE FRANKS AND

FORTUNATELY ORDERED THE KINGDOM FOR FORTY-SEVEN YEARS

HE HAD PASSED THE AGE OF SEVENTY WHEN HE DIED

JAN. XXVIII IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD DCCC XIIII

INDICTION VII

PORTENTS OF CHARLEMAGNE’S DEATH

There were many portents of his approaching death, for not only others,

but the king himself felt them. During the whole of his last three years

there were eclipses both of the sun and of the moon, and certain spots

of blackish hue were seen in the sun for the space of seven days. The

portico which he had built with great labour between the church and the

palace fell in a sudden and complete ruin from top to bottom on the day

of the ascension of our Lord.

Also the wooden bridge across the Rhine at Mainz--which it had taken

the king ten years of immense labour to construct, a work so marvellous

that it seemed as if it would endure forever--chanced to catch fire,

and was burned to a cinder in three days, so that not a single spar

remained beyond what was protected under water. Again, when the king was

in Saxony on his last campaign against Godefrid, king of the Danes, one

day when the march had begun and he had left the camp before sunrise,

he saw fall suddenly from heaven a blazing torch that flashed through

the clear sky from right to left. While all wondered what this might

portend, suddenly the king’s horse fell right upon his head and hurled

his rider with such violence to the ground that the pin of his mantle was

broken and his sword belt burst. His attendants rushed up and loosened

his armour, and with some help he was induced to rise. The javelin which

he chanced to hold in his hand at the time was thrown from his grasp a

distance of twenty feet or more. Nor is this all. The palace of Aachen

was visited with frequent shakings, and the ceilings of the houses in

which he dwelt cracked constantly. The church in which he was afterwards

buried was visited by lightning, and the golden apple with which the apex

of the roof was embellished was wrenched away and hurled away over the

adjoining house of the priest. In this same church, on the ring of the

cornice which ran round the interior of the building between the upper

and lower arches, there was an inscription in red chalk relating who was

the founder of the church, the last line ending with the words _Karolus

Princeps_. It was noticed by certain persons that in the same year as

that in which he died, a few months before that event, the letters

spelling _Princeps_ were so obliterated as almost to be invisible. But

the king either concealed his feelings about all these warnings from on

high, or else he scorned them as in no way relating to himself.

HIS WILL AND TESTAMENT

Charles intended to make a will in which he might provide to some extent

for his daughters and the children he had begotten of his concubines, but

he began it late and it could not be completed. Three years, however,

before his death he made division of his treasures, his money, his

garments, and other chattels, in the presence of his friends and of his

servants, making them witnesses that after his death the distribution

made by him should take effect and be ratified by their assent. What he

wished to be done with each portion he set down in an abstract of which

the argument and text is as follows:

[Illustration: A FRANKISH WOMAN OF QUALITY]

Description and division made by the most glorious and most pious prince,

Charles, emperor, augustus, in the year of the incarnation of our Lord

Jesus Christ 811, in the forty-third year of his reign in Francia, in the

thirty-seventh of his reign in Italy, in the eleventh of his use of the

imperial dignity, and in the fourth indiction.

Whereas a pious and prudent consideration urged him to make and with

the will of God to complete this division of the valuables and moneys

found in his treasury on that day. And whereas the said Charles was most

anxious and eager to provide that both the customary distribution of alms

which is duly made by Christians from their possessions should be given

by himself from his moneys as is right and befitting, and also that his

heirs, having all sense of doubt removed as to what belongs to them,

might be able to know clearly and make division among themselves in due

appointment without strife or contention. Now this indenture witnesseth

his will and purpose that all his goods and chattels, whether of gold or

silver or precious stones or royal ornaments, such as can be found on

the aforesaid day in his treasury, be divided into three portions, to

be again divided, two of them into twenty-one parts, the third portion

to be kept entire; the reason of this division of two-thirds of the

property into twenty-one parts being because that is recognised to be

the number of metropolitan cities in the realm, and of these twenty-one

parts one is to be given by his heirs and friends to each metropolis as

a gift of alms, the archbishop being at that time at the head of that

church to take up the portion granted to his church and divide it with

his suffragans in these proportions--one-third to be retained for his own

church and the remaining two-thirds to be divided among suffragans. These

portions of the first threefold division, twenty-one in number, that

being the number of the metropolitan cities, to be separated from one

another, and each to be stored distinct in its own depository with the

name of the city upon it to which it shall be conveyed.

The names of the metropolitan cities to which this grant of bounty

shall be made are: Rome, Ravenna, Milan, Friuli, Gratz, Cologne, Mainz,

Juvavia, also called Salzburg; Trèves, Sass, Besançon, Lyons, Rouen,

Rheims, Arles, Vienne, Moutiers in the Tarantaise, Embrun, Bordeaux,

Tours, Borges. And of the one-third portion which is to be kept intact

this shall be the distribution, the other two portions being assigned

according to the aforementioned division and secured under seal: this

third portion to be used for daily requirements as property in no way

transferred by disposal from the power of the possessor, and to continue

as long as he lives or shall think its possession necessary to him.

But after his death or voluntary renunciation of worldly estate, to

be divided into four portions. Of these the first to be added to the

aforementioned twenty-one portions; the second to be apportioned to his

sons and daughters and their children, being divided among them in just

and reasonable proportions; the third to be applied to the needy in

true Christian fashion, and the fourth likewise as a gift of alms to be

delivered to and distributed among the men-servants and maid-servants

forming the household of the palace. And moreover it is herein further

enjoined that to this one-third portion of the whole, which like the rest

consists in silver and gold, shall be added all the vessels and utensils

in use in the various departments of the household, whether of brass or

iron or other metal, together with all the arms, clothing, and other

matter valuable or negligible, to wit, hangings, coverlets, tapestries,

hair-cloths, leather work, cushions, and whatever else shall be found in

his chests or wardrobes on that day, it being thereby possible to make

more numerous divisions of this portion and enable a greater number to

share in this distribution of alms.

And moreover it is enjoined that his chapel, by which is meant all

that pertains to the service of the church, shall remain whole and

unimpaired, both such matter as he himself hath created and gathered

together, and also that which descended to him as his father’s heir. And

whereas there may be found vessels or books or other ornaments which

are clearly seen not to have been brought by him into the said chapel,

these vessels or books or other ornaments shall be bought at a just

valuation, and possessed by any person desiring to acquire them. And

with regard to the books, of which he collected a vast number in his

library, it is likewise ordained that they shall be purchased at a just

valuation by those desiring to buy them, the money so received to be

distributed among the poor. And with regard to three silver tables and

a golden one of great size and weight among the rest of his treasures

and money, it is willed and decreed as follows: and first the table of

square form which bears upon it a plan of the city of Constantinople,

together with the rest of the gifts appointed for this purpose, shall

be carried to Rome, to the church of St. Peter the apostle; the second

table of round form, embellished with an image of the city of Rome,

shall be taken to the Episcopal church of Ravenna; and the third, which

far surpasses the others in the beauty of its workmanship, and the

massiveness of its weight, and is made of three connected discs on which

is comprehended, in a configuration most intricate and minute, a plan of

the whole world--this, together with the aforesaid table of gold, shall

be an increase for the portion to be divided among his heirs and to be

distributed in alms.

This disposition and settlement was made and decreed in the presence of

those bishops, abbots, and counts who were then able to be witnesses, and

their names are as follows:

Bishops: Hildebald, Richulf, Arno, Wolfar, Bernoin, Laidrad, John,

Theodulf, Jesse, Haido, Waltgaud.

Abbots: Frederick, Adalung, Angilbert, Irmin.

Counts: Walacho, Meginher, Otulf, Stephen, Unruoch, Burchard, Meginhard,

Hatto, Rihwin, Edo, Ercangar, Gerold, Bero, Hildiger, Rocculf.

Louis, the son of Charles, who by divine order succeeded to him, having

scrutinised this same abstract, executed all the introductions therein

contained with all possible despatch, and with the most loving fidelity,

as soon as the king was dead.[b]

So ends the life of Charles the Great as told by his devoted servant

and contemporary Einhard. Let us now review the same ground from the

standpoint of one of the greatest of modern historians, and see how the

figure of the great king and the structure that he reared have grown

across the shadow of a thousand years.[a]

GIESEBRECHT ON CHARLES THE GREAT

[Sidenote: [768-814 A.D.]]

Every independent power that still dared to assert itself in the former

kingdom of the Merovingians was subdued. In Aquitania a hereditary

dukedom still existed, which Pepin had attacked but not conquered;

Charles put an end to it. The Bretons had resisted the authority of the

Frankish kings for centuries; after a long struggle their resistance

was broken. Bavaria still existed as an independent dukedom under the

Agilolfinger Tassilo, and even in Pepin’s time there had been a dangerous

uprising; Tassilo was humbled, and, although he retained his power for

some time longer, he owed it only to the personal friendship of Charles

and to the intervention of the pope. He finally had to give up and retire

to a monastery.

It was a vital question for the new royal house, which had founded its

power above all on those parts of the kingdom that had remained German,

to put an end to the freedom of the Saxon race. At war with the Frankish

kings for centuries and often defeated in bloody battles, the Saxons had

nevertheless arisen after every defeat, and in recent years had even

gradually extended their dominion in the southwest further towards the

land of the Franks. Every uprising against the Frankish royal power found

a ready support in them, the last free German race. In the last years

of his life Pepin had been incessantly at war with this people; Charles

received the war as an inheritance from his father and was determined

to bring it to an end at any price in order to assure royalty and the

Christian religion among all Germans for all time. In the conquest of the

last free heathen German race he saw the great work of his life.

[Sidenote: [768-772 A.D.]]

For half a millennium the internal relations of the Saxons, who had

remained in their ancient seats, had undergone no essential change.

The ancient popular liberty had maintained itself here against the

monarchy, the ancient religion against Christianity, and the customs of

the forefathers had been faithfully preserved; the Saxons of that time

were still the genuine sons of the Cherusci whom Hermann had led against

the Romans. The land was divided into a limited group of districts or

counties (_Gaue_), which were governed as in former times by princes

(_Gaufürsten_), chosen by the communities to administer justice and lead

the army. There was no common head for the entire people, but there

was a great annual national assembly, at Marklo on the Weser, to which

delegates from the three free estates of the people came from all the

districts. Here common affairs were discussed, war and peace decided

upon, and leaders (_Herzöge_) chosen when the army was to be led against

an enemy of the land. The free men of the nation were divided into three

ranks, the nobles (_Edliuge_), who were powerful but not very numerous,

the freemen, and the serfs, a numerous class of dependent men who held no

property but enjoyed liberty of person. Geographically the Saxons were

divided into the Westfalen (Westphalians), on the Sieg, Ruhr, and Lippe

and both sides of the Ems; the Enger on both shores of the Weser, as far

as the Leine and the Ostfalen (Eastphalians), in the territory extending

as far as the Elbe. A further division was formed by the Nordalbinger or

“north people” who still remained in possession of the right side of the

lower Elbe as far as the Eider, _i.e._, of those regions in which the

Saxon name had first been heard.

It was a great martial and valiant people of unimpaired natural vigour,

full of a wild spirit of liberty and of barbaric cunning, against whom

Charles now turned his arms. It was also, to be sure, a people without

firm unity and strong cohesion and therefore not hard to defeat in

separate combats. But all separate victories contributed little to the

final decision of the war; district after district must be subdued, one

community after another separately annihilated. The war that Charles

waged against the Saxons was the same war in which the Romans had once

been defeated; it was waged against the same tribes and in the same

regions, and it was again a question of subjugating Germanic freedom to

the authority of an individual and joining it to a great empire. At the

same time the war was now also a fight for the Christian faith. Charles

marched to battle with the relics of the saints; missionaries accompanied

the march of his warriors.

[Sidenote: [772-777 A.D.]]

War was declared against the Saxons at the “field of May” (Maifeld, champ

de Mai, formerly Märzfeld, champs de Mars) at Worms in the year 772. The

army set out and first took the Ehresburg, the principal stronghold of

the Saxons on the Diemel, on the site of the present Stadtberge. Then

the sanctuary in the Egge, where the Irminsul stood--a mighty tree trunk

which, according to the faith of the Saxons, supported the universe--was

destroyed. The entire country as far as the Weser was ravaged with fire

and sword. The Saxons dared not meet the warlike Franks in open battle,

and as the latter advanced further into the country most of the tribes

swore submission and gave hostages to the king. Christian priests at

once went through the land and preached, along with Christianity,

submission to the Frankish monarchy, but they preached to deaf ears;

hardly had Charles left the Saxon boundary when the people rose in mass,

retook the Ehresburg, captured the Siegburg on the Ruhr, and overran the

territory of Frankish occupation.

In the year 775 Charles had to begin the war anew. He vowed to subdue the

“faithless and perjured” nation of the Saxons or destroy them forever.

Summoning all the military forces of his kingdom, he invaded Saxony with

an enormous army. But again the enemy would nowhere oppose the Franks

in open battle; only once the Westphalians, under the lead of Witikind,

risked a surprise at night. Amid terrible devastations Charles’ army

pressed forward to the Oker; the tribes submitted and gave hostages. And

still the subjugation of the land was not yet decided. As soon as Charles

had left the land the enemy arose again in his rear and recaptured the

stronghold of Siegburg.

Then the king returned in 776 with an invincible army. The Saxons

immediately gave up all resistance; hardly had Charles reached the source

of the Lippe when they promised to accept Christianity and submit; many

immediately received baptism. Charles now had fortresses built in Saxony,

took up his residence there for some time and held the “field of May” at

Paderborn in 777. The nobles and the freemen of the land appeared before

the mighty king on this occasion; no voice of opposition was heard,

all defiance seemed broken. The Saxons vowed implicit obedience to the

commands of the king, and conceded him the right, if they failed in this

duty, to deprive them of land and liberty forever. The people received

baptism in throngs; Saxony seemed indeed conquered. Only Witikind, in

whom dwelt something of the spirit of Hermann, would not bow down to the

Frank and sought refuge with the Danish king Siegfried.

Nothing tended more to hinder Charles in assuring his success in Saxony

and quickly strengthening his authority there than the wars which, as

ally of the pope, he had to carry on simultaneously against the Lombards.

Through the divorce of his daughter, King Desiderius had become Charles’

most bitter enemy; he had joyfully received the sons of Carloman who

had been excluded from the throne, had recognised them as kings of the

Franks, and had demanded their anointment from Pope Adrian. But in spite

of all Desiderius’ efforts to separate the pope from Charles, Adrian

remained “hard as adamant”; he did not even waver when Desiderius marched

against Rome with an army and took the greater part of the cities that

Pepin had bestowed upon the apostolic see. The pope’s appeal for help

reached Charles in 773 and he did not delay an instant to obey it. The

passes of the Alps were poorly defended; Charles made his way through

into the plains of Lombardy without material opposition. Here Desiderius

refused to give battle in the open field and restricted himself to the

defence of his cities, which had to be besieged one by one.

[Sidenote: [774-780 A.D.]]

While the Frankish army was engaged in these operations Charles betook

himself at Easter, 774, to Rome in order to show himself to the city as

its patricius and to renew in person his alliance with the pope. He was

received with all the honours that were customary at the entrance of an

exarch or a patricius of the Greek emperor. At St. Peter’s church the

pope came forward to meet him, and to the singing of “Blessed be he that

cometh in the name of the Lord!” both walked to the grave of the apostle

and prayed together there. Then the Easter festival was celebrated with

the greatest pomp, after which Charles not only confirmed his father’s

gift to the pope but made additions to it. Charles declared, as his

father had done, that he had not made war upon the Lombards to gain gold

or silver, land or people, but simply to protect the rights of the holy

see and to elevate the Roman church. But if the pope conceived the hope

from this that Charles would turn over to St. Peter’s all those parts

of the Lombard kingdom to which Rome laid claim, according to a promise

made by Pepin but never kept, he was doomed to bitter disappointment. For

when, after a long siege, Pavia was taken and Desiderius fell into the

hands of his enemies, Charles received the homage of the Lombards and

called himself thenceforth “king of the Franks and Lombards.” Desiderius

was sent as a monk to a Frankish monastery.

After he acquired this extensive territory in Italy, Charles’ relations

with the see of Rome were not entirely free from unpleasantness. He

had become the powerful neighbour of the pope, who himself aspired to

temporal power here. There was considerable friction; various claims were

raised and rejected on both sides. But in the condition of the times it

was impossible that this alliance should be dissolved or even weakened.

As early as the year 776 it again became apparent how inseparably the

interests of the pope were united with the power of the Frankish king.

Desiderius’ son Adelchis, who had fled to Constantinople, was threatening

Italy. He was supported by his brother-in-law Arichis, the proud and

still unconquered duke of Benevento; other Lombard dukes were in secret

alliance with both. The pope was in no less danger than the Frankish

government. Again Charles hastened across the Alps; the threatening

danger was quickly crushed by his powerful attitude, and new uprisings

were prevented by a reorganisation of all the affairs of the Lombard

kingdom. Everywhere except in Spoleto, where the pope laid claim to

feudal rights, the ducal power was abolished, the land was divided into

counties, the Frankish military and judicial system was introduced,

political power was removed from bishops and abbots; in short, the entire

constitution of the Frankish monarchy was copied as closely as possible.

Four years later, nevertheless, Charles gave the Lombard kingdom a

viceroy of its own in his five-year-old son Pepin. Being upon its own

peculiar basis, serving a special purpose and continually exposed to

the attacks of dangerous enemies, the land seemed to need a separate

government.

[Sidenote: [780-785 A.D.]]

[The unsuccessful expedition against the Moors in Spain took place at

this time, and the absence of Frankish armies on the northern frontier

induced the Saxons to rebel again.] They destroyed the newly built

churches, the priests were slain, the Franks were driven out and the

Frankish territory itself was attacked. Charles at once sent a force of

Franks and Alamanni against the Saxons, and in the years 779 and 780 the

king himself marched with a mighty army into the seditious land. All

the districts submitted anew and promised allegiance and the acceptance

of Christianity. But, taught by sad experience, Charles did not trust

their promises again and planned means to enforce obedience. Numerous

fortresses were built about the country, especially on the Frankish

boundary and along the Elbe; strong garrisons in these strongholds

confined the Saxons from east and west and really maintained peace for

some time. Charles made use of this period to carry out measures designed

to break up forever the old heathen cult and the hereditary national

freedom. The Frankish military and judicial system was now introduced

here, as it had previously been in the Lombard kingdom; the land was

divided into counties, the government of which was placed in the hands

of Frankish lords or of Saxon nobles who had submitted to Charles.

The division of the land into bishoprics was also begun. Christian

priests were settled in the country, and the people, when they did not

voluntarily accept the teachings of Christ, were forced to baptism, to

ecclesiastical life, and the ordering of tithes. In the year 782 the king

held a great and brilliant diet at the sources of the Lippe; his rule in

Saxony appeared to be as unhampered as in his own house. He was already

laying plans to extend his own kingdom beyond Saxony to the east among

the Slavic races. It was on an expedition against the Sorbs, who dwelt

between the Saale and the Elbe, that the Saxons had for the first time to

render the king military service. Apparently the king desired to give the

warlike spirit of this people an occupation in a different direction.

The new regulations of Charles cut deep into the very life of the people.

The ancient Germanic freedom bled from mortal wounds. Too exhausted

to maintain itself longer upright, it nevertheless still possessed

sufficient energy to fight convulsively against destruction. Witikind

now reappeared among the Saxons and summoned his people to the defence

of their ancient faith and hereditary right. All Saxony flew to arms;

even the Frisians joined Witikind. A great common determination inspired

these last champions of ancient Germanic liberty. Hardly had Charles gone

forth when the whole country was in revolt. The priests were slain, the

nobles who had submitted to the Franks were exiled, and preparations were

made for a life and death struggle. The army sent against the Sorbs had

to turn about and march immediately against Witikind and his hordes, but

in the Süntel hills near the Weser it suffered a complete defeat, and

reinforcements sent forward from the Rhine had difficulty in saving the

scanty remnants.

Charles himself, however, was already on the march with a new army, and

again resistance seemed to be paralysed upon his appearance in person.

Witikind gave up Saxon liberty for lost and fled again to the Danes.

As a stern avenger and judge, Charles now called the faithless people

to account. He demanded the surrender of the guilty; 4,500 Saxons were

delivered into his hands, and he had them all beheaded in one day at

Verden, thinking that, in this desperate struggle, liberty, if cut down

by one mighty blow, would bleed to death at once.

_The Final Subjugation of the Saxons_

With fearful earnestness Charles pursued his aim of completely

subjugating the Saxons. He thought he had attained it with the bath of

blood at Verden. But humbled as the Saxons were by the terrible deed

it filled them still more with wrath and thirst for revenge against

the Franks. At once the whole land was again under arms, and once more

Witikind returned from the Danes. In 783 Charles again had to march with

the entire force of his kingdom against the Saxons, who now for the first

time opposed him in great open battles. They did so to their ruin; first

at Detmold, and then on the Haase near Osnabrück Charles inflicted the

most bloody defeats on them. The Saxon youths were slain, the resources

of the land began to fail. Without meeting any further special opposition

the king marched on, plundering and ravaging, as far as the Elbe.

Nevertheless Witikind still maintained the field against him, until in

the years 784 and 785 plundering expeditions of Charles exhausted the

land’s last power of resistance. Then Witikind at the command of the king

appeared in the palace at Attigny, made submission, and received baptism.

Saxony was now conquered and Christianity and royalty were forced on the

people together. Under penalty of death baptism was required and heathen

customs were prohibited. Any injury to a Christian priest, any sedition

against the king or disobedience of his commands was declared a capital

crime.

[Sidenote: [785-796 A.D.]]

For several years the stillness of death reigned in the land of the

Saxons, and Charles could begin to think of directing his arms against

the Wends beyond the Elbe. In the year 789 he crossed the river easily

and conquered all the country as far as the Peene, thus establishing the

Frankish rule in the rear of the Saxons. Now and then, indeed, scattered

revolts still broke out among the latter people, but they were at once

put down with an iron hand and never again became dangerous to Frankish

supremacy. The continuance of Christianity was already assured and the

country was divided up into bishoprics.

While Charles was extending the boundaries of his kingdom into Wendish

territory on the northeast, great conquests had been made in the

southeast as well. A series of campaigns against the Avars in the years

790 to 796 finally resulted in their complete subjugation, the extension

of the Frankish authority far down the valley of the Danube, and the

restoration of Christianity to lands where it had long since died out.

By the might of his arms Charles had doubled the extent of his inherited

kingdom, by his indomitable energy he had crushed all opposition within

it and given its political and ecclesiastical institutions such a

unity as the West had not known since the time of the Romans. From the

Pyrenees and the Frisian coast to the eastern plains in the valleys of

the Danube, the Elbe, and the Oder, from the Eider to the highest peaks

of the Apennines stretched the rule of the Franks, grasped in the hands

of a single man to whom not only all temporal authorities in this wide

realm were subject, but whom the entire clergy must also unequivocally

acknowledge as their head. To all previous centuries it had seemed

impossible to bring all the tribes of the interior of Germany under

one rule, to bend the stubborn love of liberty of all Germans to the

authority of a king. Charles had succeeded, and he had at the same time

reunited under his sceptre the most important lands of the Western Roman

Empire which had been separated since the latter’s fall. The first cities

of the ancient empire were in his possession, Rome itself recognised his

authority. The struggle, the opposition between Roman and German had, for

centuries, been a source of disturbance to the West; this struggle seemed

ended, this opposition amicably settled, since German and Roman were now

embraced in one empire, received in one church.

_The Imperial Coronation 800 A.D._

Thus the Frankish kingdom had been raised by Charles to a position of

world power of universal importance. Moreover this truly imperial power

had arisen in the West at a time when the Eastern Empire had fallen into

the greatest discredit. For it was just at this time that the ambitious

Irene, who had conducted the government for some time as regent for

her son and had then been deposed, had again usurped power in the most

infamous manner.

By revolt against her own child, whom she caused to be blinded, this

woman, in opposition to all the traditions of antiquity, gained the

imperial title, which she covered with unspeakable shame. Who could blame

the papacy if with a single blow it now severed forever the weak bond

that still seemed to fetter it to Constantinople? To tell the truth, the

bishop of Rome hardly had any choice left him; he was forced to turn his

back upon Constantinople and recognise the Frankish king as his emperor

and lord.

[Sidenote: [795-800 A.D.]]

The last years of Pope Adrian passed in peace, but his successor began

amid storms. When Adrian died at the close of 795 he was succeeded by

Leo III, who immediately sent Charles the keys of the sepulchre of St.

Peter with the banner of Rome and requested him to send legates to Rome

to receive the homage of the inhabitants of the city. The new pope

made submission to the Frank for himself and Rome from the beginning.

He conceived the rights of the patriciate as having the same extent as

though Charles were already emperor; he sought a protector and only too

soon needed the help of one. In the spring of 799 fierce party struggles

broke out among the Roman nobility; the pope, attacked and maltreated by

his enemies, fled from the city and hurried with an appeal for help to

Paderborn before the throne of King Charles. Frankish nobles conducted

him back to Rome in the autumn and procured him temporary security from

his opponents; but without Charles he was even yet in danger. And already

the king himself was hastening to Rome; the establishment of the Western

Empire was decided.

When Charles, at the Christmas celebration of the year 800, entered the

church of St. Peter in the robe of the Roman patricius, the pope placed

a golden crown upon his head. The church resounded with the shout of the

crowd, “God bless and save Carolus Augustus, crowned of God, the great

and pacific emperor of the Romans!” The pope fell at the feet of the

Germanic warrior and paid homage to him in the same manner as the bishops

of Rome had formerly paid homage to the Roman emperor at Constantinople.

When Charles ascended the imperial throne of Rome an end was reached

towards which ambitious German princes had for centuries aspired. The

Germans had received from Rome the first impressions of a great political

life, and it was under the influence of these impressions that all the

Germanic kingdoms have been founded. The greatness of the Roman imperial

state, the unity of its efficient armies, the pomp of the imperial court,

the majesty of the law were, and remained, the ideal of the Germanic

kings. Even when, in the West, the weakened empire of the cæsars had

yielded under the impact of Germanic hordes, it nevertheless seemed to

the noblest leaders of the latter to be the loftiest object of a mighty

prince to restore the ruined structure by his own power and with his

own means. But how was this to be accomplished so long as the German

races themselves, without internal or external cohesion, weakened and

exhausted one another in an almost uninterrupted series of wars, and so

long as the leaders ruled over peoples who, with their defiant love of

freedom, resisted any constraint of law and any energetic sovereignty?

So the Visigoth Atawulf, the Ostrogoth Theodoric, and finally the first

Merovingians had had to give up at the very first effort their bold plans

of establishing the Western Empire; it was enough that they succeeded in

bringing individual portions of the great whole under their sovereignty

and forming them into separate kingdoms.

But the first Germanic prince who succeeded in breaking up forever the

independence of the communities and in helping the royal authority to

the final decisive victory over popular authority, and who proceeded

at the same time to unite to his kingdom all the German races that had

remained in their ancient seats, and join them again with the Germans who

had emigrated and become romanised, also at once took up the idea of the

Roman Empire and represented himself as the successor of the old emperors.

Thus for the first time there seemed to be a peaceful settlement of

the long struggle between Rome and the Germans, in which the question

involved was less the overthrow of the old-world power than the reception

of the German races in the great federation of civilised peoples; less

the destruction of the former civilisation than the further dissemination

of all the intellectual treasures included in and cherished by the Roman

power. It was not as slaves, indeed, conquered by the legions of Rome,

that the Germans had been incorporated in the empire; with their arms

in their hands they had gained the rights of citizens and of lords of

the empire, and when they had filled and transformed everything with

the elements of their nature, the free development of events placed the

imperial sceptre of the West in the strong right hand of a German prince.

So Charles entered upon the government of that great Germanic-Roman

empire into which the ancient Roman power had been transformed.

_Administration and Reforms of Charles_

[Sidenote: [800-814 A.D.]]

But Charles’ ambition as emperor, it is certain, was not to revive

the despotism of heathen Rome over the world, to call to life again

forgotten rights of the ancient emperors and thus establish absolute

power for himself. His idea of the new power that came to him as emperor

was rather based upon that religious and political conception of the

emperorship which the western church had developed in itself. It was

rather the theocracy of the old alliance than the despotism of the Roman

imperial state that furnished him the maxims which he followed in the

administration of the world power intrusted to him. In the circle of his

friends Charles was called King David; when compared with his imperial

predecessors he must be placed not beside the Julians or the Flavians,

but beside Constantine or Theodosius, the founders of the Roman state

church. Thus the ideal of the new imperial state is nothing less than the

kingdom of God on earth, in which the emperor is appointed by God himself

as his lieutenant, in order that he may, in accordance with the divine

intentions, guide and govern the people.

It was in this sense that Charles conceived his position; in this sense

he began his imperial government. Soon after his return from Rome he had

the entire body of ecclesiastical and civil law in force in his dominions

revised at Aachen and everything struck out that seemed contrary to the

command of God. Then he sent out royal messengers, both ecclesiasts and

laymen, in all directions to put these improved laws into force and at

the same time to require from all subjects of the empire who had passed

their twelfth year a new oath of allegiance, an oath which, as was

expressly emphasised, imposed far higher duties towards his imperial

majesty than the oath formerly given to the king. To these messengers

Charles gave an almost apostolic mission; they were to warn the people

zealously against any violation of the divine commands, to enjoin the

Christian virtues, to remind all that they must sometime give an account

of their lives before the judgment throne of Christ.

Though the Germanic kingdom had from the beginning assumed some

ecclesiastical rights, it seems now, when raised to imperial power,

to usurp almost the plenitude of the high-priesthood. And Charles was

in fact frankly designated the “regent of the holy church”; church

councils not only required his permission to meet, he supplemented their

decisions, rectified their mistakes, and had everywhere the deciding vote

in them. It was he, in no less degree, who reformed the entire clergy of

his empire and with unrelenting sternness forced upon them the canonical

life whose regulations were for the most part taken from the monastic

rules of St. Benedict. The legislation of Charles encroaches everywhere

upon the domain of the church, and even in the later collections of the

canon law his laws appear beside the letters of the popes and the decrees

of the councils. The pope, although the western church honours him as

its spiritual head, sinks beside this high-priestly emperor almost to

the rank of first councillor in ecclesiastical affairs, of head of the

highest corporate body of the empire.

But it was as king of the Franks, as commander-in-chief and supreme

judge of his people that Charles had attained imperial power; out of

the military and judicial authority that he exercised over the free

Franks and all peoples subject to them his whole power had arisen, and

would fall to the ground if this basis upon which it rested should be

weakened or withdrawn from it. If the empire of Charles was to maintain

its existence it was all-important that the subject portions of the

realm should at the same time be so fully incorporated in the Frankish

political system that they could never again separate from it--an

immeasurable, infinitely difficult task, especially as Charles could

never think of forcing the despotism of decrepit Rome upon his empire

nor of crushing the characteristic life of the separate races with the

weight of his supreme power, of establishing one law and administration

and like forms of government from one end of his empire to the other. He

was withheld from this in the first place by his ideal of the Christian

state, but even more by his own disposition and by the nature of the

peoples he ruled over. If the political creation of Charles was to gain

any sort of permanence among peoples that were either German throughout,

or had at least been internally transformed by Germanic elements, it must

proceed from the German spirit, which possesses no creative activity

where freedom of development is not permitted to the individual. It

must, moreover, cling tenaciously to tradition, and regulate, assemble,

and direct the powers of the state more through personal influence than

through a lifeless mechanism.

Charles performed this task with a wisdom and greatness of soul that will

ever be astonishing. Mighty and successful as are his deeds of arms, his

fame as lawgiver nevertheless shines with a far brighter radiance through

the history of mankind. Above the personal and national laws, which had

in part first been codified by his direction, he established by his

capitularies--edicts and enactments which he either promulgated upon his

own decision or upon the counsel of the imperial assemblies--a general

law of the empire, a body of legislation of the most comprehensive sort,

which not only regulated the great affairs of the entire body politic but

even descended to local conditions, in order to adjust them to the whole.

He carried through in good part the undertaking so long despaired of--of

subjugating the defiant, liberty-loving Germanic races to a constitution,

of making them serve the ideal of the state. A gigantic step in the

development of the German spirit was taken through the legislation of

Charles, and it must not be thought that because it was a first and

therefore rude and awkward attempt it was born of a barbaric spirit.

If we rightly regard the highest art of the lawgiver as consisting in

the ability to perceive with a keen eye every germ of moral life that

he meets with in the customs and institutions of his people, and so to

care for it that the most beautiful fruit of which it is capable will

be obtained from it, then Charles was one of the greatest lawgivers

the world has ever seen. No native impulse of the Germanic character

was allowed by him to die; every one on the contrary was placed under

cultivation, ennobled, and made capable of producing more splendid

flowers and more useful fruit. As the Frankish political system in

general, aside from its ecclesiastical elements, rested primarily on a

Germanic basis, so too above all it was Germanic elements that were made

use of in the political creation of Charles. The content of his laws,

aside from the theocratic admixtures, is thoroughly German, although the

capitularies as well as the national laws were written in Latin. In a

certain sense the entire past of the Germanic nations flows into these

laws, their whole future life flows from them. The Romans called the laws

of the Twelve Tables the source of their entire political organisation;

with equal right the Germans, indeed all the nations of Europe, could say

the same of the laws of Charles. With veneration and holy awe one opens

the capitularies of the great emperor, which combined form a legislative

work that had a fruitful effect upon many centuries. The image of the

Carlovingian state is here presented to our eyes with vivid actuality; we

see how great things were accomplished and the highest striven for.

The strongest agency in holding the empire together was the Roman

Catholic church; it disseminated one faith, one moral law, like religious

institutions over nations that had previously been distinct from one

another in language, customs, and laws, and enclosed them in its

ingenious compact organisation as with a fine-meshed net. Church councils

and imperial assemblies generally met together, and in the latter the

voice of the clergy possessed the most weighty influence. The bishops

were regarded as the most skilful agents in all political negotiations,

they enjoyed a respect equal to that of counts. Like the temporal nobles,

they were rich landowners, often led their retainers to war in person,

and not seldom exchanged the crosier for the sword. Though the clergy had

formerly been almost exclusively of Roman origin, now many Germans also

devoted themselves to the clerical estate; sermons were preached in the

German language, religious books were translated into German. In this way

the clergy approached nearer to the peculiar character of the Germanic

peoples, but did not on that account serve the universal aims of their

estate and of the empire any the less effectively, especially since the

compact union of the church had in recent times been rather strengthened

than weakened.

A second, if not equally strong bond for the empire, was the Frankish

nationality and the political institutions based upon it. With their

swords the victorious Franks had gained control of the West, had

made themselves rulers of the Germanic and Latin world; the empire,

though it called itself Roman, was nevertheless only an extension of

the kingdom of the Franks. The Frankish king was the sovereign of the

empire; the divisions of the latter, the provinces, districts, and

hundreds, or whatever other provincial name they may have borne, were

for the most part ruled by Frankish nobles. Everywhere throughout the

wide extent of the empire palaces and courts of the Frankish kings,

castles and extensive possessions of the Frankish nobles were to be

met with. The elements of the Frankish constitution were imposed both

upon the conquered German lands and upon subject Italy. The Frankish

people penetrated and surrounded the entire West with their political

institutions; not strong enough to destroy the other nationalities, they

had however attained such power that they could hold them down and make

them serviceable to themselves.

As head of the western church and as king of the Franks the emperor was

supreme in every way. The bishops, chosen always in accordance with

his will, though not often directly by him, almost seemed to be the

mere instruments of his designs. And in no less degree the entire civil

government of the state proceeds from him. He alone appoints the counts,

who in his name administer the military and judicial authority in their

counties; their position is merely that of imperial officials who can be

removed or dismissed when the common welfare demands it. He designates

the royal messengers who travel annually in pairs through the various

divisions of the empire, oversee the officials, receive complaints

against them, uphold the rights of the throne in all parts of the

monarchy, and maintain a constant communication between the divisions and

the emperor. He is himself the supreme judge with unlimited jurisdiction;

he has sole jurisdiction over the nobles and can assume all jurisdiction

over others. He has the right to call to arms, decides upon war and

peace, leads the army in person or appoints a commander-in-chief as

well as dukes (_Herzöge_) of the forces of the separate peoples for the

duration of the war. Legislation is also essentially vested in his hands,

although in it he consults the imperial assembly and his council of state.

The imperial assembly consisted of all the lay and clerical lords,

_i.e._, of the high court officials, the bishops, abbots, dukes, counts

(_Grafen_), and the principal men of the royal retinue. It met every

spring, usually in connection with the great review of the field of May,

and its counsel was asked in all weighty affairs of state or important

imperial laws. The council of state, however, was composed only of the

high court officials, and the magnates of the empire whom the emperor

deemed worthy of special confidence, and summoned to his presence either

temporarily or permanently. In the autumn the council of state generally

met for especially important sessions which served for the most part as

preliminary consultations for the next imperial assembly, and for this

purpose was increased by important servants of the emperor from all

parts of the empire, and hence might be considered as a sort of imperial

assembly in miniature.

The ancient works of art and science had made an impression upon Charles’

mind at an early date. He had wandered in Italy among the ruins of the

great world gone by, and had decorated his palaces and the new churches

in his native land with ancient works of art. It had thus been revealed

to him that a peculiar breath of the divine spirit animated art and

science, and also out of the German songs, despised by others, there was

wafted to him a breath of fresh, vigorous, intellectual life. Charles

raised his eyes far above the narrow bounds in which the western church

confined art and science, where only the Roman erudition transformed by

the clergy according to its own ideas had held its ground; he felt that

Christianity carried with it the tendency towards a universal culture

of mankind, but he also felt that it ought also to assimilate all the

higher intellectual elements which were scattered in the individuality

of different nations. Above all he realised, as no one before him,

what treasures of mind were stored in his German mother-tongue, and

could be elaborated from it. For this reason he gave especial attention

to the German language and poetry; he himself worked on the first

German grammar, and was the first who caused the German heroic poems

to be written down. He held the clergy to preaching in German to the

Germans, to instructing them in the German language. Only thus could the

foundation for a German national civilisation be laid; since nothing less

than the civilisation of the nation as a whole was the end he had in view.

The idea of a general national culture, which only recent times have

called to life, and that in a very imperfect manner, was in fact already

conceived in the mind of the great emperor. But national culture could

proceed only from scholastic culture, although the latter, which had

been preserved almost exclusively among the clergy, had long worn a

predominantly theological character. For that reason alone Charles

was obliged to nourish and cultivate this theologising scholarship,

to which he also attributed the highest value, in all directions. He

gathered the first scholars of the day at his court, bringing them not

only from Italy but also from England, whither the new Latin science and

literature had been transplanted from Rome together with Christianity,

and where, invigorated by fresh nourishment, it had put forth new blooms.

Charles himself was a most zealous pupil of these men whom he held

up as a shining pattern for his clergy, and whose example did indeed

have an unusual influence. Even if the emperor’s final ends were far

from being attained, nevertheless schools began soon to flourish in

the episcopal churches and in the cloisters; the Frankish clergy soon

became distinguished for its learning, and even the laity was in some

degree affected by the new intellectual life. Theological literature

again produced works of lasting influence. Latin poetry was diligently

cultivated, the German received rules and an artistic development; the

art of reliable historical composition which was able to distinguish

between fact and fable, and could grasp great events in their true

position, grew up then for the first time among the Germans. In all of

this almost solely the work of the clergy may be detected, which allowed

itself to be directed by the mind of the emperor. He tried to remove the

bishops and abbots from all earthly cares, and ordered them to install

secular persons as judges and officials, who should execute justice and

collect the revenues of the chapters, so that they themselves might

follow their spiritual and intellectual calling with undivided force.

But mighty and influential as was the position to which the clerical and

civil nobility had attained, the real power of the people still rested

in the estate of freemen, which had ever remained the broad foundation

of the Germanic political organisation. Only the stubborn force and the

simplicity of severe morality that still persisted, especially in the

German portions of the Frankish monarchy, had preserved the kingdom of

the Merovingians from complete destruction and had made the establishment

of royal power possible to the house of Pepin. No one knew better than

Charles that the roots of his power lay here and that it would of

necessity itself wither and disappear with them. With indefatigable

zeal therefore he kept watch that the estate of freemen should neither

be diminished nor shorn of its rights. When the magnates were evidently

striving to displace the smaller landholders, seize their possessions

and thus bring them into a dependent relation, Charles opposed them with

the whole force of his authority and strictly forbade all oppression

that could be employed to that end. Charles opposed such oppressive

drudgery of the free people with unrelenting sternness and regulated by

law the services that could be required of the freemen. The poorer men

were partially freed from the duty of personal military service, several

of them being permitted to combine to equip one of their number. On the

outbreak of war, moreover, for the most part only those provinces that

were near the scene of the conflict were obliged to furnish their full

complement of men.

[Illustration: THE CROWNING OF CHARLEMAGNE AT ROME, 800 A.D.]

If, as has been asserted, Charles was the only sovereign of the entire

Middle Ages who penetrated to any depth the secrets of political economy,

he could not fail to see that the nourishment and support of the state

lay in the assured permanence of the middle and lower class landowners.

To be sure, at a time when the internal organisation of the state

consisted almost exclusively in the administration of justice, Charles

could not carry out any great general measures for the elevation of

the national welfare; but he could furnish others an example of how

to practise agriculture successfully. And he gave this example to the

whole empire. He was the best husbandman in it, his estates were model

establishments, he saw to everything personally, looked over all accounts

himself; and he even required a report of every wolf killed on his

property. In other directions also he showed ways and means of increasing

the national wealth. He directed his attention to the industries which,

at least in the German provinces, were still carried on only by bondmen;

and taught on his estates how they could be engaged in with profit.

He safeguarded trade, which was carried on in the German provinces

mostly by Italians and Jews, and opened new routes to it. A highway of

commerce joining the Mediterranean and the North Sea extended along the

Rhine. Another route led from the mouth of the Elbe to the middle Danube

and branched there in one direction towards the Black Sea, in the other

towards the Adriatic. The development of an extensive industrial activity

out of these foundations of Charles was slow and late; for the moment

they were no more successful than those legal enactments of the emperor

which forbade the freeman all feud and even self-defence, and commanded

him to lay down his arms in time of peace. Mighty though the emperor’s

arm was, there still existed a remnant of the old personal liberty and

impatience of restraint which even he was unable to overcome.

Thus the state of Charlemagne sought to unite in itself all the different

elements of political life that had developed in the Christian-Germanic

period. In combination they were to supplement and counterbalance,

control, and gradually to permeate one another. The clergy and the civil

nobility were intended both to support and to watch each other. The

officials and the communes extended to one another a helping hand, but

at the same time kept each other within bounds. The crown united the

whole, but it was none the less actually, if not legally, restricted and

bound by the separate elements of the state. A certain balance of powers

was established, but its maintenance required great skill and no little

expenditure of power. The mighty personality of Charles succeeded in this

in good part, but his keen insight did not fail to perceive how strong

were the individual interests of the separate estates, and how hard it

was for them to adapt themselves to any legally regulated system.

Not everything turned out as he wished and planned. The political

institutions of Charles were indeed far from really penetrating the

whole extent of his dominions; the ideal that hovered before his spirit

in fact came to actual realisation only in his immediate vicinity, at

his court. According to the ecclesiastical and temporal character of

the empire, the person of the emperor was surrounded by a numerous body

of court clergy and a brilliant retinue of temporal nobles. At the head

of the ecclesiastical household stood the apocrisiary or arch-chaplain;

through his hands all ecclesiastical matters passed to the emperor,

and he had also assumed the duties of referendary. Below him was the

arch-chancellor, who later himself gained the position of arch-chaplain.

The best trained men of affairs, the most worthy servants of the church,

the first scholars of the time were among the court clergy, which was the

training-school of the bishops of the empire and under whose direction

also stood the court school, at that time the most famous educational

institution in the entire West. As the court chapel--the entire body

of court clergy--was the centre of all ecclesiastical and scientific

activity, so too in the supreme court the administration of justice and

the science of government reached their height. Here the emperor either

presided in person or was represented by the count palatine, who formed

the head of the civil nobility and through whose hands all legal matters

went to the emperor.

For the direct service of the king’s person vassals were appointed who

could be looked upon as models of knightly training. At the court of

Charles the most distinguished and influential men from all parts of

the empire met. No one came into the emperor’s presence who could not

have found there a fellow-countryman and in him an advocate. Service

in the imperial palace was under the strictest regulations; everything

was exactly fitted together, in order to be of mutual advantage. The

older men received assistance and support from the younger; the latter

found precept and example in their elders. So the court was not only a

training-school for the clergy, but in no less degree for the nobility.

The noble propriety and courtly manners which were later a distinguishing

characteristic of knighthood, seemed to have had their beginning at the

court of Charles.

Like the stars about the sun the paladins were grouped about the great

emperor, who overshadowed them all. Not indeed, through brilliancy and

pomp of external appearance did he charm the eyes of those who approached

him; but about his tall, dignified figure played a dazzling glory as of

some higher light in which the clearness of his great spirit seemed to

radiate. Those long, white locks which adorned his head in old age, the

great piercing eyes, the calm, serene brow, the powerful figure, aged but

still not lacking in grace--this whole picture not only imprinted itself

deeply upon his contemporaries, but history and tradition have held fast

to it in all times, and to-day there is not a youth who has not received

that impression. Many ambitious sovereigns have appeared in the thousand

years since his time, but none has striven towards a higher ideal than

to be placed beside Charlemagne; with this the boldest conquerors, the

wisest pacific princes have contented themselves. The French chivalry

of later times glorified Charles as the first knight, German citizens

venerated him as the paternal friend of the people, and the most just

of judges. The Catholic church placed him among its saints; the poetry

of all nations in the succeeding ages has repeatedly received strength

and vigour from his mighty appearance. Never perhaps has a richer life

proceeded from the activity of a mortal man.

_Last Years of Charles_

In the last years of his life Charles was less occupied with military

enterprises than in the earlier period. He turned over military glory

to his sons, Charles, Pepin, and Louis, with whom he associated capable

generals as advisers. Pepin, in Italy, had to conduct many a campaign

against the armies of the Grecian emperor, Nicephorus, who had dethroned

Irene; it was not until 812 that the court of Byzantium recognised

Charles as emperor and the boundaries of the Eastern and Western empires

were settled. At about the same time, too, the principality of Benevento

finally submitted; it remained under Lombard princes, but they had to pay

tribute to Charles. In the Alps and the valley of the Danube affairs were

more easily and quickly settled after Pepin had destroyed the kingdom

of the Avars. The frontier next the Avars, the marks of Corinthia and

Friane, gained a firm outline, and the Slavs living within and along

these boundaries recognised the sovereignty of the Franks. In 806,

Charles, the emperor’s oldest son, also made war upon the Bohemians and

the Sorbs; they were humbled, and for supervision of them the Frankish

mark on the upper Main and the Thuringian mark on the Saale, Gera and

Unstrut, were established.

[Sidenote: [793-814 A.D.]]

More stubborn and dangerous were the wars against the Arabs in the

southwest of the empire. The earlier conquests of Charles had been lost

again, and in 793 the Arabs had even crossed the Pyrenees and attacked

the Frankish dominions. But in 797 a Frankish army, under the command

of Louis, again succeeded in penetrating far into Spain, and four years

later Barcelona fell. The foundation was laid for the Spanish mark and

its extent was gradually increased by a series of successful campaigns.

At the same time the small Christian states that had been formed in

the northern mountains of the land arose to manful defence against

the infidels. The kingdom of Asturia now for the first time gained an

assurance of permanency under the brave king Alfonso II. Oviedo was built

as a royal city and Compostela arose over the grave of the holy apostle

James whose bones had just been miraculously discovered there. The

veneration of St. Iago di Compostela and the courage of the chivalrous

Alfonso then inflamed the Spanish Christians to further successful

undertakings. The deeds of Charles gave the first inspiration for their

victories, and Alfonso, who called himself a servant of the emperor,

laid his choicest booty at Charles’ feet. At the same time the Basques,

Pamplona, and all Navarre cut loose from the alliance with the Arabs by

making temporary submission to the Franks; and along the Balearic Isles,

and on the coasts of Corsica and Sardinia, Frankish fleets were already

fighting Arab pirates with some degree of success.

Unquestionably the Frankish arms had proved themselves far superior to

the once feared prowess of the Arabs. But the empire was now attacked

by new enemies who stormed upon the northern marks with fearful might

and wild violence, seeming to gain an access of renewed strength in the

heat of battle. These enemies were the Danes. In earlier times they had

appeared as friendly and closely related brothers of the German peoples;

but Christianity and the compact union of the Frankish kingdom formed

a strong dividing wall between the German and the Scandinavian peoples

and turned the blood and racial friendship into the bitterest enmity.

Unquenchable love of freedom, daring, and heroic courage, inexhaustible

natural vigour, wild lust of booty--all that had once made the Germans so

fatal to the Roman Empire was turned now with these sons of the northland

against the Roman-German sovereignty of Charles and threatened it with

all the greater danger since the Danes were skilled in naval as well as

land warfare; while the Franks, who had for a long period fought only on

land, must first learn to do battle on the unstable element of the waves.

With the help of the seafaring Frisians Charles fitted out his first

fleets, and as Frankish seamen were already fighting in the Mediterranean

to protect the shores of Italy and Gaul from the Arabs, so too Frankish

ships were soon seeking to defend the coasts of the North Sea from the

attacks of the Norse enemies; but the Franks never became thoroughly

familiar with naval warfare.

The wide empire was now protected against the neighbouring lands and

peoples by a complete circle of strongly fortified and well defended

marks, similar to dykes for the protection of a carefully tilled plain

against the rush of wild floods. The Frankish vassals settled everywhere

here for the defence of the boundaries formed a standing military force,

always on guard against the near enemy and therefore also relieved

from all service in other parts of the empire. These vassals, called

_Markmannen_, were thus a sort of military colony on conquered ground,

and were under their own counts who were clothed with extensive plenary

powers and were chosen by the emperor from the bravest warriors among his

nobles. These counts were called _Markgrafen_ [hence our word marquis].

[Sidenote: [814 A.D.]]

When Charlemagne felt his end approaching he placed his youngest son

Louis, his sole heir after the early death of Charles and Pepin, on the

throne beside him and with his own hands set the imperial crown upon his

head at Aachen [Aix-la-Chapelle]. Four months later the world mourned the

death of the great emperor. On the 28th of January, 814, Charles died

in his palace at Aachen, in the seventy-second year of his age and the

forty-sixth of his reign.[c]

THE LEGENDARY CHARLEMAGNE

Scarcely had the great emperor passed away when the sober truth of his

achievements took on the tones of the miraculous, and the historic

Charles, too great to comprehend as he really was, became the centre for

all that wealth of legend which grew into the epic poetry of France. In

the year 883 a garrulous old monk in the monastery of St. Gaul on the

upper Rhine recorded his version of the invasion of Lombardy, and through

his words, which the theme renders eloquent, one can see for the first

time the picture of the Charlemagne of the Middle Ages.[a]

_The Monk of St. Gall’s Story_

With Desiderius (in Pavia) was Otker, one of Karl’s great nobles, who had

fled the wrath of the dread king some years before and had found refuge

with Desiderius. Now on the approach of the terrible Karl, they climbed

into a high tower from which they could see in all directions.

The advance guard appeared, stronger than all the armies of Darius or

of Cæsar; and Desiderius asked Otker, “Think you Karl is with this

great army?” But he replied, “Not yet.” Then he saw the van of the army

drawn from all parts of the wide empire and he said to Otker, “Surely

the conquering Karl is in that host.” But Otker said, “Not yet.” Then

Desiderius, in growing alarm, cried out, “What can we do if still more

come with him?” Otker replied, “You will soon behold the manner of his

coming; but as for us, I know not what shall befall.” And lo, while they

yet spoke there appeared, wave after wave, the multitude of his household

servants. “That is Karl,” cried Desiderius in terror. But Otker said,

“Not yet.” Then came the bishops and abbots and chaplains and their

train, and the dazed and trembling king, stammering with fear, called

to Otker, “Let us go down and hide in the earth from the wrath of this

terrible foe.” But Otker, who in his better days had seen the power of

Karl’s incomparable arms, answered in dread, “When a harvest of steel

comes waving in the fields, and the Po and the Ticino dash waves black

with steel against the city wall, then Karl is coming.” Scarce had he

spoken when in the north and in the west they saw his coming, dark and

cloudlike, attended by shadow that eclipsed the clear day. Then as the

king drew nigh there came a flash from gleaming weapons that was more

awful to the besieged than any night. Then they saw Karl, the man of

steel, his arms, his iron breast, his broad shoulders protected by steel

harness, his left hand holding aloft the iron lance, his right ready for

the victorious sword. Steel filled the fields and roads, and shot back

the rays of the sun; the people, paralyzed by fear, did homage to the

bristling lances and bared swords.

And all this, which I, a toothless old man have told, stammering and with

many words, Otker saw with one swift look, and said to Desiderius, “There

is Karl, whom you so long desired to see.” And with these words he fell

to the ground like one dead.[d]

_Sheppard’s Summary of the Legends_

[Sidenote: [800-814 A.D.]]

In any effort of the mind to represent unto itself the personal

attributes of the great Carlovingian emperor, it becomes indescribably

confused, owing to the double image presented to the vision by the

historic and the legendary Charlemagne. To the mediæval imagination,

excited by the romantic strains of minnesingers and trouvères, the last

was undoubtedly predominant. His mother, whom Villon calls _Berthe aux

grans pies_ (Bertha of the large feet, the original, perhaps, of the

goose-footed queen still known in nursery tales), daughter of the king of

Hungary, the betrothed of Pepin, for whom a false Bertha was substituted

by the officer intrusted to bring home the royal bride, is as mythical

a personage as Deïanira or Ariadne. Her wanderings in the forest; her

residence with the good miller of Mans, for whom she spins so gracefully

and so patiently; the coming of King Pepin when lost in the chase; his

love at first sight for the gentle peasant maid; the gradual _dénouement_

of the truth; the punishment of the traitors; the marriage of the lovers,

and the birth of Charles, form an introduction to the life of the hero

of Carlovingian romance, which removes him at once into the region of

the fabulous. And when at last he emerges into the twilight land which

lies between the domains of legend and history, he becomes, after the

immemorial habit of the myth, the nucleus round which are concreted

innumerable traditions of warlike enterprise and religious animosity--the

spontaneous products of a time when the instincts which underlie both are

in a state of preternatural excitement.

Charlemagne, surrounded by his paladins and “douze pairs,” like the

British Arthur amid his knights of the Round Table, formed a much more

distinct and familiar image in the popular mind, than the great monarch

who sat as a real lawgiver in the court of his palace at Aachen. And

probably his relations with Harun-al-Rashid, and the actual incidents

of the Saracenic wars, were altogether distorted and obscured by the

legends of his campaigns in Spain and the Holy Land, to win from the

children of Mahoun the sacred relics of Calvary, the crown of thorns,

the holy lance, and the nails of the true cross. But it is through

this delusive medium that the image of Charlemagne has generally been

presented to our modern perceptions. Coloured by the prismatic light of

legend, myth, and song, the form of the greatest man of early European

times assumes to the gazer’s eye a brilliant, but strangely changeful

aspect. We fill up, from mingled sources of history and romance, a great

though indistinct outline: the vast but well-knit body, the towering

stature, the “dome-shaped” skull, the broad, lofty forehead, with the

“large quick eye” beneath, the snowy hair and beard which swept his

waist, like the blossoming hawthorn or the flowering laurestinus,

the giant strength which could cleave a knight in twain at a single

blow, from helmet-peak to saddle-bow, his famous sword Joyeuse, with

its religious legend engraven on the blade--_Decem præceptorum custos

Carolus_; his death-dealing spear, supposed by some to be the very

lance which pierced the Saviour’s side; his glittering mail of proof;

the large robes of otter-skin in which he sat wrapped, while, during

the long winter evening, he listened to the _barbara et antiquissima

carmina_ of his favourite bards, most probably the earliest rhapsodies

of the _Nibelungenlied_; his hearty jovial spirit, the outpouring of a

great, strong, sensuous nature; his _bonhomie_, developed in practical

jokes upon pedants and fools; his strong common sense, his courtesy, his

patronage of learning, his feats of strength, his amours, his restless

locomotion, his laborious efforts to write, his fatherly fondness

for those beautiful but unworthy daughters whom he could not bear to

leave behind, even in his warlike expeditions--all these form a complex

portraiture most probably very unlike “the rough, tough, and shaggy old

monarch,” as Sir F. Palgrave calls him, who had the courage, the energy,

and the skill to govern that wild ninth-century world. Yet it may be

doubted whether some modern writers have not wandered still further from

the original, while they ignore the lapse of a thousand years, and depict

a constitutional monarch of modern Europe. “Each generation, or school,”

says Sir F. Palgrave, with some little exaggeration, “has endeavoured to

exhibit him as a normal model of excellence. Courtly Mézeray invests the

son of Pepin with the taste of Louis Quatorze; the polished Abbé Velly

bestows upon the Frankish emperor the abstract perfection of a dramatic

hero. Boulainvilliers, the champion of the noblesse, worships the founder

of hereditary feudality; Mably discovers in the _Capitularies_ the maxims

of popular liberty, Montesquieu the perfect philosophy of legislation.”[e]

FOOTNOTES

[132] [He is believed to have been born on the Main in modern

Hesse-Darmstadt. As to his apology for his poor Latinity, it may be said

that he was remarkably versed for his time in Latin.]

[133] [We are curiously in the dark as to the date of Charles’ birth.

There are reasons for accepting each of the following dates,--742, 743,

744, and 747. The first is probably the correct date.]

[134] [On one of these forays in 772, Charles cut down the sacred idol

Irminsul, symbolic of the column which in the Odinic cosmogony supported

the world; his army was threatened with destruction by thirst, which the

Saxons took as a proof of sacrilege; when a cloudburst however saved the

army, many of the Saxons were converted to the more potent deity. Another

account states that the army obtained water from the sudden starting of

an intermittent spring. There is no doubt that the destruction of the

Irminsul cast a great gloom over the Saxon army. Deputies were sent to

Charles’ camp with promises that Christian priests would be received and

with offers to send twelve hostages for their safety. Charles treated

them with great moderation, hoping they would remain quiet under the

great blow he had dealt until he could attend to other pressing matters.]

[135] [He was tried the same year, his royal locks shorn, and his person

immured in a convent. With him end the Agilolfings.]

[136] [Also spelled Godefrid or Göttrick.]

[137] [Aix-la-Chapelle, the _Aquisgranum_ or _Civites Aquensis_ of the

Romans.]

[138] [Hodgkin[c] calls him the son of Charles’ wife Himiltrud. But this

conspiracy took place in 972. See the later remarks on the state of

concubinage.]

[Illustration: CATHEDRAL AT AACHEN, WHERE CHARLEMAGNE WAS BURIED]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VI

CHARLEMAGNE’S SUCCESSORS TO THE TREATY OF VERDUN

[814-843 A.D.]

LOUIS LE DÉBONNAIRE, OR PIOUS (814-840 A.D.)

Charlemagne’s successor, Louis le Débonnaire,[139] did not restore

vanished prestige by any of his own. We may praise his goodness, his

virtue, the purity of his morals, the efforts he made from the beginning

of his reign to rid the court of that license which Charlemagne had

allowed to enter, and his re-establishment of the necessary discipline

among the monks and secular clergy; but he had not the firmness required

to maintain authority. From the beginning he showed a deference to the

pope that Charlemagne would have felt excessive. He allowed Stephen IV

(816) to be elected and take possession of the pontificate without his

consent, and was pacified by tardy excuses. When Stephen came to crown

him in France, he permitted him to pronounce words which revealed the

tendency of the holy see to arrogate to itself the free disposal of the

imperial crown: “Peter glorifies himself in making you this present

because you assure him the enjoyment of his just rights.”

[Sidenote: [817-822 A.D.]]

The papacy was already working for its second deliverance, eager to

reject the authority of the Western emperors as it had rejected that

of the Eastern. If Charlemagne had judged it expedient to divide

authority with his sons on account of the extent of the empire, a still

stronger necessity existed for Louis le Débonnaire to do the same.

But his division of the states, accomplished at the Reichstag held at

Aachen in July, 817, did not differ in any respect from that made by

Charlemagne, and neither brought imperial unity into doubt or peril.

Two subordinate kingdoms--Aquitaine and Bavaria--were created for Pepin

and Louis [Ludwig]. Lothair, the eldest son, was associate emperor, or

co-regent.[b]

Louis did not attribute the appointment of Lothair as co-regent and his

own future successor to his own will and choice alone, but also to that

of his people. Agobardus[d] does not make any mention of Bernhard and

Italy, though, in the records, they have not been entirely omitted. The

chronicle narrates that the kingdom of Italy shall stand in the same

relation to the empire under his son as it did under his father and

himself. The arrangements concerning the two younger sons of the emperor

Louis were carefully weighed and considered. Pepin, the elder, received

Aquitaine, Gascony, the mark of Toulouse, and a few west-Frankish and

Burgundian countries. To the younger, Ludwig, were assigned Boiaria

(Bavaria) and Carentania (Carinthia) with the mark of the Slavonic Avars.

Each received the title of king, but great stress was laid upon the fact

that they were vassals of the emperor, and neither in war nor peace, nor

in any foreign relations whatsoever, should the two younger brothers

act independently of the elder. Their territories, again, should not be

divided up among their descendants; even the voice of their people was

essential to the choice of their successors.

We can appreciate the importance of these decisions by comparing them

with the ordinance of 806, which actually contemplated the existence of

three independent realms bound together by mutual loyalty. The idea of

the empire as finally adopted by Charlemagne was thus firmly adhered to.

A decision was also arrived at, providing for the maintenance of the

empire in the event of the death of Louis without legitimate heirs; one

of his brothers was to succeed him, so that primogeniture would have been

the result. Louis reserved to himself absolute power over his sons for

the term of his natural life.

These imperial resolutions have frequently been interpreted as signifying

a division, whereas nothing of the sort was contemplated, for all the

rules, as laid down, aimed at the unity of the empire, with the exception

of a few concessions made to hereditary rights. They were nothing more

nor less than an attempt to co-ordinate the two principles upon which

the empire was based, namely unity and the right of succession. The

right of inheritance was founded upon long-established custom, as laid

down on the death of King Pepin. On the other hand, the empire was the

outcome of a political idea, which had arisen since that time, and which

constituted the substance of all power. At that moment the idea of unity

was predominant.[c]

But these fresh efforts were afterwards ill sustained, and already, by

the movement which was agitating the confines of the empire, it was plain

that the strong hand of Charlemagne was no longer there. The Northmen

redoubled their ravages; the Slavs crossed the Elbe; the Avars rose; the

Croats became independent; the duke of Benevento refused tribute; the

African Saracens pillaged Corsica and Sardinia; those of Spain invaded

Septimania and supported the Gascons in revolt; the Bretons took Morvan

as king and invaded Neustria. The Franks, it is true, had the advantage

everywhere. Morvan in particular was killed, and Louis made Nomenoé duke

of the Bretons.

[Sidenote: [822-833 A.D.]]