The world's leading conquerors

The diplomacy, as well as the strategy, of the Emperor was worthy of a far-seeing and cautious ruler. He kept the frontiers of the Empire assured by fortifications, wherever there was prospect of direct attack from the Danes or the Slavs, and by such means saw to it that the tribes bordering on the lines of defense were kept in awe and reduced to a state of dependence. In other places where the more distant Avars and the Bulgars might ultimately give trouble, the Emperor had taken care to come to a friendly arrangement with the Eastern Empire for mutual protection. This understanding did not, it is true, prevent friction between the two powers on the Adriatic Sea, where on several occasions the armies had met to decide their differences by arms. But on neither side was there any intention of developing consistent schemes for conquering the territory of the rival emperor. Disturbances were local and the border population was itself uncertain in allegiance, and ready to accept the guidance of its interests in determining the direction of its loyalty. This kind of hesitancy was not found in Italy, which remained inviolably faithful to Charles’ rule.

The rulers of Constantinople had no time nor inclination to repeat the experiment of Justinian and Constans during the reign of Charles; they were weakened by serious difficulties of their own, due to disputed succession and religious conflict, and to the need of constant watchfulness against Moslem aggression. It was fortunate for both empires that the Saracens were not united. This was the most decisive factor, indeed, of the history of this period. The East was freed from the type of attack which had kept Leo the Isaurian constantly on the defensive, and which only his high military talents were able to cope with, while in the West the inability of the Moslems to act together made it possible for Charles to expand his territory and to give the time needed for internal development in the consolidation of his rule.

It was one of the most permanent results of the activity of Charles as a conqueror that in the Spanish peninsula he strengthened not only the natural position of the petty and struggling Christian kingdoms, but by his personality made the ideal of a Christian ruler respected there, and so assured for the Christians in Spain a future which could be realized only when they had lived down their particularism and recognized the value of solidarity. But the wider field of armed conflict for the peoples included in his realm would have meant little, if it had not been accompanied by opportunities for real social progress.

The empire of Charles, though it was the concrete creation of an ideal government crudely understood and most inadequately worked out, illustrated the liberty-loving principles of the Germanic peoples who were gathered in its fold. In this respect, with all its imperfections, the rule of the great Frankish monarch is more closely allied to the political principles of modern times than were the more ambitious and more logical creations of the conquerors who preceded and who followed him. Unconsciously, it may be, his system of government gave scope for local diversities and recognized rights of deep-planted traditions with a generosity which is characteristic not of empires such as those of Cæsar and Napoleon, but of federal republics of the type of the United States, and the Federation of the Swiss Cantons. When he aimed at uniformity he did not lose sight of the fact that he was the ruler of heterogeneous nationalities, on whose good-will and coöperation the permanence of the Empire was dependent. The pressure of centralization was lightly exercised, simply because in the Emperor’s mind the ideas of Roman rule had to pass through the medium of German tribal tradition.

There was no steam roller set to work to equalize, if not to pulverize, the component parts of his realm. The divisions were not destroyed, but were rather combined in a higher political unity. The kingdom of the West Goths was at least preserved, though it had less of a definite character than the Lombard kingdom, which the Emperor took special pains to preserve in its integrity. Even the traditions of the Ostrogoths were allowed a value in so far as they stood for a strenuous opposition to the imperial policy of uniformity of administration and to the economic sacrifice of the local centers to the purposes of world politics. Lombard influence had overcome both Ostrogothic and Roman rule; it was irreconcilable, and stood for the stubborn and conservative standpoint that made the first Germanic invaders difficult to assimilate in the provinces of the Roman Empire, where by force of arms they became the ruling class. A similar obstinacy, with its preservation of the original political type, marked the Lombard kingdom and duchies which Charles had conquered. A picturesque example of local initiative was not crowded out by the Frankish overlordship in Venice; the seafaring community came into being in a favored spot, on the confines of the two empires, too remote to be crushed from Constantinople, and protected from the Western ruler by a few leagues of shallow sea.

The same centrifugal tendencies are seen in Southern Italy; and what is more important, in Northern and Central Italy, there was no attempt to stifle the germs of municipal activity which produced, later on, such marvelous fruitage in the Italian town life of the Middle Ages. The contrast between the Germanic and Roman elements in the Empire faded away gradually under the Emperor’s administration, but Roman civilization could not be eclipsed, while the laws of Justinian continued to be quoted as a model, and while the Church with its general use of the Latin language was regarded as the chief adjunct and support of continuity in imperial rule.

The union of the Empire and the Papacy kept up that tradition of civilization by which the isolation of Germanic tribal life was swept aside, and the Germans learned that there were other governmental principles than custom, and began to see that might was not the only right. The institutions of the Church did more than preserve the ideal element for the individual and for society. They stood for continuity in securing the best achievements of classic culture in government and in learning, and prevented just that kind of social cataclysm which marked the progress of Islam, when it attempted to handle mankind in the mass. Reverence for the Holy Scriptures, however imperfect may have been the acquaintance with them, had a powerful influence in maintaining the connection of Church and State, and acted constantly against the divisive tendencies of racial rule.

The Celts of Western France, the remnant of the people who had once dominated the whole of Occidental Europe, were brought into the sphere of general European life, and the same opportunities were given to the Germanic peoples. Allied with the population of Latin origin, they extended their sway over a territory which before had never felt the influence of centralization. The union of the two elements was of momentous importance, and this achievement stands out as the abiding result of the Emperor’s conquest. France and Germany made up a whole, in which the Teutonic element had a superior position, but without tyrannizing over the peoples of the Romance stock. In Burgundy and Neustria the elements of Latin blood were strongest, and the contrast gave a peculiar character to Austrasia.

The most significant factor of the Emperor’s rule was that it offered a center of unity to the Teutonic tribes, consolidating them, where the Merovingian kingdoms, which also stood for the old Germanic tribal traditions, had shown complete incapacity. But under the Carolingian rule, neither the Alemanni, nor the Bavarians, nor the Saxons, could claim predominance, for the sovereign’s authority was exercised apart from all these tribal influences, and yet at the same time the characteristics of the tribe, local sentiment, and customary law, were not broken up by the central government. The Teutonic local division, the “Gau,” was no more interfered with than the Gallic “Civitas.” The power at the top of all, formed by the armed hosts of the component parts of the Empire and by the clergy, was expressed in institutions that kept the body politic together. In the assemblies, all the different nationalities took part, and acted under the guidance of the single will of a single ruler, who was kept from the capricious action of a tyrant by his firm hold on the ideal of a Christian commonwealth. The principles of the whole imperial system harmonized with popular governmental traditions, and both in their social and in their religious aspects answered to the popular conceptions of membership in a world-wide church.

Charles, in his plans for the succession, looked forward to a ruling family controlling by descent a singularly heterogeneous collection of races. It is unthinkable, as an historical principle, that the traditions and customs of race and tribe could be long suppressed. Since the time of Germanic invasions they had been the most potent factor in the evolution of Western Europe; and, though they were kept in the background by the energy and character of the Emperor, it only needed a few crises to call them forth into activity. Out of the interplay of these tribal interests and racial divergencies has grown modern Europe.

A further weakness in the Carolingian structure was due to the relation of the secular and the ecclesiastical authority. The grounds of conflict, even in Charles’ own time, were never far distant. The Emperor’s diplomacy and personality smoothed the acerbities away, and his attitude of compromise found ready imitators in such Popes as Hadrian I and Leo III. There would have been a different outcome if, on his visits to Rome, he had been faced by a Pope of the temperament of Nicholas I. The possible independence of the spiritual power the Emperor did little to prevent by legislation. There was no way of avoiding such disputes, and the struggles for supremacy between Empire and Papacy attained their full development in the thirteenth century.

Charles, too, showed no willingness to deal radically with the customary laws of succession of the Frankish people, and in this sphere he was far more conservative than the Lombards or the Ostrogoths. The principle of division among the heirs rather than unity of territory, meant in itself a great danger. It would have caused trouble to Charles himself had not his brother been removed by death early in the reign. Yet the Emperor set a strong precedent for its recognition in his own disposition of the Empire among his three sons. The position of Louis was due to an accident, and the old question was bound to emerge again when the rights of his various children, as his heirs, came to be considered. Nothing was done to prescribe how the exercise of sole rule as Emperor was to be carried out when the subordinate rulers of his own house proved reluctant to obey their head.

The Empire plainly was only secure if its various rulers could consent to work harmoniously together; a division among them, a break between the Church and the State, the exaltation of the idea of nationality and race, were all possibilities which would surely destroy the integrity of Charles’ imperial construction. The history of the century after his death shows the weak sides of the Emperor’s benevolent optimism. He contemplated a great Christian republic directed by a family united in its members and guided by patriarchal instinct. In working out this program, Charles was an opportunist as well as an optimist; he took the component political factors as he found them, and introduced them as the stones of a mosaic, thinking more of the whole than of the parts, seemingly oblivious of the disparity of the elements he was introducing into the fabric. The distinctions of race were certain to become accentuated the moment the central power showed weakness and proved itself unable to be an effectual protection against anarchy within or attacks from the outside.

In its political creativeness the Emperor’s work was framed on a smaller scale than he contemplated. He proposed an Empire, but he really founded kingdoms—the historic kingdoms of Western Europe. The inheritors of his system were the territorial monarchs, who took from him the conception of a supreme secular power closely united with the Church. The actual central authority established by Charles soon passed away, but the peoples included within it, endowed with the energy proceeding from him, as a source, survived and developed. The ground prepared by him was the foundation for the national kingdoms with whose vicissitudes and progress the course of civilization has been unalterably connected. He has been well named, therefore, the Patriarch of Europe, the Abraham in whose seed the political world has been blessed.

The ablest monarchs of Europe, both in the Middle Ages and in modern times, from Otto III to Napoleon, including Frederic Barbarossa and Louis XIV, all have felt the power of his personality. Napoleon speaks of him as his illustrious predecessor. Yet, as a politician, Charles was inferior to his father, Pippin, whose shrewdness in arranging momentous political combinations he did not inherit, and on the field of battle he was not the equal of his grandfather, Charles Martel. He never won a battle such as Poictiers, and with one or two exceptions the narrative of his campaigns shows nothing of the skilful and spectacular generalship of Belisarius.

In his wars no unusual gifts of strategy were required; no great mastery of tactics was necessary. But he was what one of his contemporaries declared, “the powerful fighter who smote the Saxons and humbled the hearts of the Franks and Barbarians, who had been able to resist the might of the Romans.” His campaigns attest energy and obstinacy, a clear-sighted ability to see when and where a decisive blow must be delivered. He never lost his head in a dangerous position, and so he was able to take in a military problem in its various aspects, and while resting at one stage of a conflict, he could quietly prepare to overcome his adversaries in a second move.

His mind was well balanced, it worked logically and with a large vision, and he aimed at acting in such a way that the innumerable details of his work as ruler would be explicable and could harmonize as parts of a well-considered whole. He was general-in-chief, and he also realized as we have seen, Constantine’s description of himself in relation to the Church, as “chief bishop for its external affairs.” As a judge, Charles was the supreme court of appeal, and was in this capacity remarkable for his severity and unsparing attitude to the guilty. Though he was not a genius as an administrator, he showed industry and judgment in using and in improving such organs of government as were known in his day in Western Europe. As we have pointed out, his capitularies show him to us as a great landlord, familiar with agricultural methods, able to measure the economic needs of a large estate, and to act accordingly, possessing an extraordinary amount of practical energy and versatility.

There was no limit to his interests, and he brought in a high conception of duty. Up to the close of his life nothing was too small to escape his personal supervision; he kept count of the chickens on his personal estates, dictated his capitularies, and learned the art of writing, a rare accomplishment, and deemed among the Teutonic races the special work of a cleric. He presided over assemblies and councils, ordered the system of chanting in his private chapel, and hardly a year passed by that he did not visit one of the frontiers of the Empire. His mental capacity was characterized by something of the mobility which belonged to the Renaissance period, a trait not seen among medieval rulers, and perhaps paralleled only in the case of Frederick II. His talents were not employed towards futile ends; he economized them, and while he was open to impressions, he kept with scrupulousness his store of energy under control. He was free from Napoleon’s defect of fitting all things as parts of a rigid system, and he knew when to keep his hands from disarranging a firmly established social order.

It may be that a larger measure of interference from him would have prevented the growth of feudal privileges which the land system of Western Europe was already producing. This evolution he did not oppose; in some cases his own acts furthered it. The court and “missi” under his direction became, as it were, observers and directors of a naturally developing type of local administration which the general ordinances of the Empire did nothing to repress. Feudal customs, still, of course, in their germ, were pressed into the service of the state, as for example when the lord was required to appear accompanied by his dependents at the general military assembly of the King. The Emperor was quick in reconciling local divergencies, and in discerning some easily practicable method of making seemingly irreconcilable factors contribute mutually to his ends. When a governmental order failed, he was fertile in discerning an immediate remedy, careless whether the innovation of a reform could be theoretically accommodated to the administration as it before existed. Wherever the structure he planned turned out faulty, he went to work with the spirit of an artist who thinks more of the safety of the whole building than of the harmony of its parts. His ideal of rule was always before him, yet there was none of the stage effect of which Napoleon was so fond. He did not try to impress upon others principles that did not attract his own sympathies. He believed in what he did and believed the way he was doing it was consistent with his own ideals of right, personal and social. The empire was to be a community guided by Christian standards, a visible embodiment of the City of God, as understood in his day.

The dream was a mighty one, and proved inspiring largely because it was impersonal. The Emperor stood as the champion, unselfish and devoted, of progress, so far as his age appreciated that much abused term. It was, at least, a reality in respect to the conscious effort on his part to moralize government, and by doing so to contribute to an ideal solidarity of men and races. Yet the task he had assigned himself was too great; and his work remained but an unfinished sketch, soon to be demolished in the troublous and hopeless reigns of his descendants.