The history of the most barbarous peoples and times assuredly offers no example, in one and the same family, of an usurpation more perfidiously and atrociously consummated. King Clodomir, the father of the two young princes thus dethroned and murdered by their uncles, had, during his reign, shown almost equal indifference and cruelty. In 523, during a war which, in concert with his brothers Childebert and Clotaire, he had waged against Sigismund, king of Burgundy, he had made prisoners of that king, his wife, and their sons, and kept them shut up at Orleans. The year after, the war was renewed with the Burgundians. “Clodomir resolved,” says Gregory of Tours, “to put Sigismund to death. The blessed Avitus, abbot of St. Mesrnin de Micy (an abbey about two leagues from Orleans), a famous priest in those days, said to him on this occasion, ‘If, turning thy thoughts towards God, thou change thy plan, and suffer not these folk to be slain, God will be with thee, and thou wilt gain the victory; but if thou slay them, thou thyself wilt be delivered into the hands of thine enemies, and thou wilt undergo their fate; to thee and thy wife and thy sons will happen that which thou wilt have done to Sigismund and his wife and his sons.’ But Clodomir, taking no heed of this counsel, said, ‘It were great folly to leave one enemy at home when I march out against another; one attacking me behind and another in front, I should find myself between two armies: victory will be surer and easier if I separate one from the other; when the first is once dead, it will be less difficult to get rid of the other also.’ Accordingly he put Sigismund to death, together with his wife and his sons, ordered them to be thrown into a well in the village of Coulmier, belonging to the territory of Orleans, and set out for Burgundy. After his first success Clodomir fell into an ambush and into the hands of his enemies, who cut off his head, stuck it on the end of a pike and held it up aloft. Victory, nevertheless, remained with the Franks; but scarcely had a year elapsed when Queen Guntheuque, Clodomir’s widow, became the wife of his brother Clotaire, and his two elder sons, Theobald and Gonthaire, fell beneath their uncle’s hunting-knife.”
Even in the coarsest and harshest ages the soul of man does not completely lose its instincts of justice and humanity. The bishops and priests were not alone in crying out against such atrocities; the barbarians themselves did not always remain indifferent spectators of them, but sometimes took advantage of them to rouse the wrath and warlike ardor of their comrades. “About the year 528, Theodoric, king of Metz, the eldest son of Clovis, purposed to undertake a grand campaign on the right bank of the Rhine against his neighbors the Thuringians, and summoned the Franks to a meeting. ‘Bethink you,’ said he, that of old time the Thuringians fell violently upon our ancestors, and did them much harm. Our fathers, ye know, gave them hostages to obtain peace; but the Thuringians put to death those hostages in divers ways, and once more falling upon our relatives, took from them all they possessed. After having hung children up, by the sinews of their thighs, on the branches of trees, they put to a most cruel death more than two hundred young girls, tying them by the legs to the necks of horses, which, driven by pointed goads in different directions, tore the poor souls in pieces; they laid others along the ruts of the roads, fixed them in the earth with stakes, drove over them laden cars, and so left them, with their bones all broken, as a meal for the birds and dogs. To this very day doth Hermannfroi fail in his promise, and absolutely refuse to fulfil his engagements: right is on our side; march we against them with the help of God.’ Then the Franks, indignant at such atrocities, demanded with one voice to be led into Thuringia. . . . Victory made them masters of it, and they reduced the country under their dominion. . . . Whilst the Frankish kings were still there, Theodoric would have slain his brother Clotaire. Having put armed men in waiting, he had him fetched to treat secretly of a certain matter. Then, having arranged, in a portion of his house, a curtain from wall to wall, he posted his armed men behind it; but, as the curtain was too short, it left their feet exposed. Clotaire, having been warned of the snare, entered the house armed and with a goodly company. Theodoric then perceived that he was discovered, invented some story, and talked of this, that, and the other. At last, not knowing how to get his treachery forgotten, he made Clotaire a present of a large silvern dish. Clotaire wished him good by, thanked him, and returned home. But Theodoric immediately complained to his own folks that he had sacrificed his silvern dish to no purpose, and said to his son Theodebert, ‘Go, find thy uncle, and pray him to give thee the present I made him.’ Theodebert went, and got what he asked. In such tricks did Theodoric excel.” (Gregory of Tours, III. vii.)
These Merovingian kings were as greedy and licentious as they were cruel. Not only was pillage, in their estimation, the end and object of war, but they pillaged even in the midst of peace and in their own dominions; sometimes, after the Roman practice, by aggravation of taxes and fiscal manoeuvres, at others after the barbaric fashion, by sudden attacks on places and persons they knew to be rich. It often happened that they pillaged a church, of which the bishop had vexed them by his protests, either to swell their own personal treasury, or to make, soon afterwards, offerings to another church of which they sought the favor. When some great family event was at hand, they delighted in a coarse magnificence, for which they provided at the expense of the populations of their domains, or of the great officers of their courts, who did not fail to indemnify themselves, thanks to public disorder, for the sacrifices imposed upon them. At the end of the sixth century, Chilperic, king of Neustria, had promised his daughter Rigonthe in marriage to Prince Recared, son of Leuvigild, king of the Visigoths of Spain. “A grand deputation of Goths came to Paris to fetch the Frankish princess. King Chilperic ordered several families in the fiscal domains to be seized and placed in cars. As a great number of them wept and were not willing to go, he had them kept in prison that he might more easily force them to go away with his daughter. It is said that several, in their despair, hung themselves, fearing to be taken from their parents. Sons were separated from fathers, daughters from mothers, and all departed with deep groans and maledictions, and in Paris there reigned a desolation like that of Egypt. Not a few, of superior birth, being forced to go away, even made wills whereby they left their possessions to the churches, and demanded that, so soon as the young girl should have entered Spain, their wills should be opened just as if they were already in their graves. . . . When King Chilperic gave up his daughter to the ambassadors of the Goths, he presented them with vast treasures. Her mother (Queen Fredegonde) added thereto so great a quantity of gold and silver and valuable vestments, that, at the sight thereof, the king thought he must have nought remaining. The queen, perceiving his emotion, turned to the Franks, and said to them, ‘Think not, warriors, that there is here aught of the treasures of former kings. All that ye see is taken from mine own possessions, for my most glorious king hath made me many gifts. Thereto have I added of the fruits of mine own toil, and a great part proceedeth from the revenues I have drawn, either in kind or in money, from the houses that have been ceded unto me. Ye yourselves have given me riches, and ye see here a portion thereof; but there is here nought of the public treasure.’ And the king was deceived into believing her words. Such was the multitude of golden and silvern articles and other precious things that it took fifty wagons to hold them. The Franks, on their part, made many offerings; some gave gold, others silver, sundry gave horses, but most of them vestments. At last the young girl, with many tears and kisses, said farewell. As she was passing through the gate an axle of her carriage broke, and all cried out alacic! which was interpreted by some as a presage. She departed from Paris, and at eight miles’ distance front the city she had her tents pitched. During the night fifty men arose, and, having taken a hundred of the best horses and as many golden bits and bridles, and two large silvern dishes, fled away, and took refuge with king Childebert. During the whole journey whoever could escape fled away with all that he could lay hands on. It was required also of all the towns that were traversed on the way, that they should make great preparations to defray expenses, for the king forbade any contribution from the treasury: all the charges were met by extraordinary taxes levied on the poor.” (Gregory of Tours, VI. xlv.)
“Close upon this tyrannical magnificence came unexpected sorrows, and close upon these outrages remorse. The youngest son of King Chilperic, Dagobert by name, fell ill. He was a little better, when his elder brother Chlodebert was attacked with the same symptoms. His mother Fredegonde, seeing him in danger of death, and touched by tardy repentance, said to the king, ‘Long hath divine mercy borne with our misdeeds; it hath warned us by fever, and other maladies, and we have not mended our ways, and now we are losing our sons; now the tears of the poor, the lamentations of widows, and the sighs of orphans are causing them to perish, and leaving us no hope of laying by for any one. We heap up riches and know not for whom. Our treasures, all laden with plunder and curses, are like to remain without possessors. Our cellars are they not bursting with wine, and our granaries with corn? Our coffers were they not full to the brim with gold and silver and precious stones and necklaces and other imperial ornaments? And yet that which was our most beautiful possession we are losing! Come then, if thou wilt, and let us burn all these wicked lists; let our treasury be content with what was sufficient for thy father Clotaire.’ Having thus spoken, and beating her breast, the queen had brought to her the rolls, which Mark had consigned to her of each of the cities that belonged to her, and cast them into the fire. Then, turning again to the king, ‘What!’ she cried, ‘dost thou hesitate? Do thou even as I; if we lose our dear children, at least escape we everlasting punishment.’ Then the king, moved with compunction, threw into the fire all the lists, and, when they were burned, sent people to stay the levy of those imposts. And afterwards their youngest child died, worn out with lingering illness. Overwhelmed with grief, they bare him from their house at Braine to Paris, and had him buried in the basilica of St. Denis. As for Chlodebert, they placed him on a litter, carried him to the basilica of St. Medard at Soissons, and, laying him before the tomb of the saint, offered vows for his recovery; but in the middle of the night, enfeebled and exhausted, he gave up the ghost. They buried him in the basilica of the holy martyrs Crispin and Crispinian. Then King Chilperic showed great largess to the churches and the monasteries and the poor.” (Gregory of Tours, V. xxxv.)
It is doubtful whether the maternal grief of Fredegonde were quite so pious and so strictly in accordance with morality as it has been represented by Gregory of Tours; but she was, without doubt, passionately sincere. Rash actions and violent passions are the characteristics of barbaric natures; the interest or impression of the moment holds sway over them, and causes forgetfulness of every moral law as well as of every wise calculation. These two characteristics show themselves in the extreme license displayed in the private life of the Merovingian kings: on becoming Christians, not only did they not impose upon themselves any of the Christian rules in respect of conjugal relations, but the greater number of them did not renounce polygamy, and more than one holy bishop, at the very time that he reprobated it, was obliged to tolerate it. “King Clotaire I. had to wife Ingonde, and her only did he love, when she made to him the following request: ‘My lord,’ said she, ‘hath made of his handmaid what seemed to him good; and now, to crown his favors, let my lord deign to hear what his handmaid demandeth. I pray you be graciously pleased to find for my sister Aregonde, your slave, a man both capable and rich, so that I be rather exalted than abased thereby, and be enabled to serve you still more faithfully.’ At these words Clotaire, who was but too voluptuously disposed by nature, conceived a fancy for Aregonde, betook himself to the country-house where she dwelt, and united her to him in marriage. When the union had taken place he returned to Ingonde, and said to her, ‘I have labored to procure for thee the favor thou didst so sweetly demand, and, on looking for a man of wealth and capability worthy to be united to thy sister, I could find no better than myself; know, therefore, that I have taken her to wife, and I trow that it will not displease thee.’ What seemeth good in my master’s eyes, that let him do,’ replied Ingonde: ‘only let thy servant abide still in the king’s grace.’”
Clotaire I. had, as has been already remarked, four sons: the eldest, Charibert, king of Paris, had to wife Ingoberge, “who had in her service two young persons, daughters of a poor work-man; one of them, named Marcovieve, had donned the religious dress, the other was called Meroflede, and the king loved both of them exceedingly. They were daughters, as has been said, of a worker in wool. Ingoberge, jealous of the affection borne to them by the king, had their father put to work inside the palace, hoping that the king, on seeing him in such condition, would conceive a distaste for his daughters; and, whilst the man was at his work, she sent for the king.
“Charibert, thinking he was going to see some novelty, saw only the workman afar off at work on his wool. He forsook Ingoberge, and took to wife Meroflede. He had also (to wife) another young girl named Theudoehilde, whose father was a shepherd, a mere tender of sheep, and had by her, it is said, a son who, on issuing from his mother’s womb, was carried straight-way to the grave.” Charibert afterwards espoused Marcovive, sister of Meroflede; and for that cause both were excommunicated by St. Germain, bishop of Paris.
Chilperic, fourth son of Clotaire I. and king of Soissons, “though he had already several wives, asked the hand of Galsuinthe, eldest daughter of Athanagild, king of Spain. She arrived at Soissons and was united to him in marriage; and she received strong evidences of love, for she had brought with her vast treasures. But his love for Fredegonde, one of the principal women about Chilperic, occasioned fierce disputes between them. As Galsuinthe had to complain to the king of continual insult and of not sharing with him the dignity of his rank, she asked him in return for the treasures which she had brought, and which she was ready to give up to him, to send her back free to her own country. Chilperic, artfully dissimulating, appeased her with soothing words; and then had her strangled by a slave, and she was found dead in her bed. When he had mourned for her death, he espoused Fredegonde after an interval of a few days.” (Gregory of Tours, IV. xxvi., xxviii.)
Amidst such passions and such morals, treason, murder and poisoning were the familiar processes of ambition, covetousness, hatred, vengeance, and fear. Eight kings or royal heirs of the Merovingian line died of brutal murder or secret assassination, to say nothing of innumerable crimes of the same kind committed in their circle, and left unpunished, save by similar crimes. Nevertheless, justice is due to the very worst times and the very worst governments; and it must be recorded that, whilst sharing in many of the vices of their age and race, especially their extreme license of morals, three of Clovis’s successors, Theodebert, king of Austrasia (from 534 to 548), Gontran, king of Burgundy (from 561 to 598), and Dogobert I., who united under his own sway the whole Frankish monarchy (from 622 to 688), were less violent, less cruel, less iniquitous, and less grossly ignorant or blind than the majority of the Merovingians.
“Theodebert,” says Gregory of Tours, “when confirmed in his kingdom, showed himself full of greatness and goodness; he ruled with justice, honoring the bishops, doing good to the churches, helping the poor, and distributing in many directions numerous benefits with a very charitable and very liberal hand. He generously remitted to the churches of Auvergne all the tribute they were wont to pay into his treasury.” (III. xxv.)
Gontran, king of Burgundy, in spite of many shocking and unprincipled deeds, at one time of violence, at another of weakness, displayed, during his reign of thirty-three years, an inclination towards moderation and peace, in striking contrast with the measureless pretensions and outrageous conduct of the other Frankish kings his contemporaries, especially King Chilperic his brother. The treaty concluded by Gontran, on the 38th of November, 587, at Andelot, near Langres, with his young nephew Childebert, king of Metz, and Queen Brunehant, his mother, contains dispositions, or, more correctly speaking, words, which breathe a sincere but timid desire to render justice to all, to put an end to the vindictive or retrospective quarrels and spoliations which were incessantly harassing the Gallo-Frankish community, and to build up peace between the two kings on the foundation of mutual respect for the rights of their lieges. “It is established,” says this treaty, “that whatsoever the kings have given to the churches or to their lieges, or with God’s help shall hereafter will to give to them lawfully, shall be irrevocable acquired; as also that none of the lieges, in one kingdom or the other, shall have to suffer damage in respect of whatsoever belongeth to him, either by law or by virtue of a decree, but shall be permitted to recover and possess things due to him. . . . And as the aforesaid kings have allied themselves, in the name of God, by a pure and sincere affection, it hath been agreed that at no time shall passage through one kingdom be refused to the Leudes (lieges—great vassals) of the other kingdom who shall desire to traverse them on public or private affairs. It is likewise agreed that neither of the two kings shall solicit the Leudes of the other or receive them if they offer themselves; and if, peradventure, any of these Leudes shall think it necessary, in consequence of some fault, to take refuge with the other king, he shall be absolved according to the nature of his fault and given back. It hath seemed good also to add to the present treaty that whichever, if either, of the parties happen to violate it, under any pretext and at any time whatsoever, it shall lose all advantages, present or prospective, therefrom; and they shall be for the profit of that party which shall have faithfully observed the aforesaid conventions, and which shall be relieved in all points from the obligations of its oath.” (Gregory of Tours, IX. xx.)
It may be doubted whether between Gontran and Childebert the promises in the treaty were always scrupulously fulfilled; but they have a stamp of serious and sincere intention foreign to the habitual relations between the other Merovingian kings.
Mention was but just now made of two women—two queens—Fredegonde and Brunehaut, who, at the Merovingian epoch, played important parts in the history of the country. They were of very different origin and condition; and, after fortunes which were for a long while analogous, they ended very differently. Fredegonde was the daughter of poor peasants in the neighborhood of Montdidier in Picardy, and at an early age joined the train of Queen Audovere, the first wife of King Chilperic. She was beautiful, dexterous, ambitious, and bold; and she attracted the attention, and before long awakened the passion of the king. She pursued with ardor and without scruple her unexpected fortune. Queen Audovere was her first obstacle and her first victim; and on the pretext of a spiritual relationship which rendered her marriage with Chilperic illegal, was repudiated and banished to a convent. But Fredegonde’s hour had not yet come; for Chilperic espoused Galsuinthe, daughter of the Visigothic king, Athanagild, whose youngest daughter, Brunehaut, had just married Chilperic’s brother, Sigebert, king of Austrasia. It has already been said that before long Galsuinthe was found strangled in her bed, and that Chilperic espoused Fredegonde. An undying hatred from that time arose between her and Brunehaut, who had to avenge her sister. A war, incessantly renewed, between the kings of Austrasia and Neustria followed. Sigebert succeeded in beating Chilperic, but, in 575, in the midst of his victory, he was suddenly assassinated in his tent by two emissaries of Fredegonde. His army disbanded; and his widow, Brunehaut, fell into the hands of Chilperic. The right of asylum belonging to the cathedral of Paris saved her life, but she was sent away to Rouen. There, at this very time, on a mission from his father, happened to be Merovee, son of Chilperic, and the repudiated Queen Audovere; he saw Brunehaut in her beauty, her attractiveness and her trouble; he was smitten with her and married her privately, and Praetextatus, bishop of Rouen, had the imprudent courage to seal their union. Fredegonde seized with avidity upon this occasion for persecuting her rival and destroying her step-son, heir to the throne of Chilperic. The Austrasians, who had preserved the child Childebert, son of their murdered king, demanded back with threats their queen Brunehaut. She was surrendered to them; but Fredegonde did not let go her other prey, Merovice. First imprisoned, then shorn and shut up in a monastery, afterwards a fugitive and secretly urged on to attempt a rising against his father, he was so affrightened at his perils, that he got a faithful servant to strike him dead, that he might not fall into the hands of his hostile step-mother. Chilperic had remaining another son, Clovis, issue, as Merovee was, of Queen Audovere. He was accused of having caused by his sorceries the death of the three children lost about this time by Fredegonde; and was, in his turn, imprisoned and before long poniarded. His mother Audovere was strangled in her convent. Fredegonde sought in these deaths, advantageous for her own children, some sort of horrible consolation for her sorrows as a mother. But the sum of crimes was not yet complete. In 584 King Chilperic, on returning from the chase and in the act of dismounting, was struck two mortal blows by a man who took to rapid flight, and a cry was raised all around of “Treason! ‘tis the hand of the Austrasian Childebert against our lord the king!” The care taken to have the cry raised was proof of its falsity; it was the hand of Fredegonde herself, anxious lest Chilperic should discover the guilty connection existing between her and an officer of her household, Landry, who became subsequently mayor of the palace of Neustria. Chilperic left a son, a few months old, named. Clotaire, of whom his mother Fredegonde became the sovereign guardian. She employed, at one time in defending him against his enemies, at another in endangering him by her plots, her hatreds and her assaults, the last thirteen years of her life. She was a true type of the strong-willed, artful, and perverse woman in barbarous times; she started low down in the scale and rose very high without a corresponding elevation of soul; she was audacious and perfidious, as perfect in deception as in effrontery, proceeding to atrocities either from cool calculation or a spirit of revenge, abandoned to all kinds of passion, and, for gratification of them, shrinking from no sort of crime. However, she died quietly at Paris, in 597 or 598, powerful and dreaded, and leaving on the throne of Neustria her son Clotaire II., who, fifteen years later, was to become sole king of all the Frankish dominions.
Brunehaut had no occasion for crimes to become a queen, and, in spite of those she committed, and in spite of her out-bursts and the moral irregularities of her long life, she bore, amidst her passion and her power, a stamp of courageous frankness and intellectual greatness which places her far above the savage who was her rival. Fredegonde was an upstart, of barbaric race and habits, a stranger to every idea and every design not connected with her own personal interest and successes; and she was as brutally selfish in the case of her natural passions as in the exercise of a power acquired and maintained by a mixture of artifice and violence. Brunehaut was a princess of that race of Gothic kings who, in Southern Gaul and in Spain, had understood and admired the Roman civilization, and had striven to transfer the remains of it to the newly-formed fabric of their own dominions. She, transplanted to a home amongst the Franks of Austrasia, the least Roman of all the barbarians, preserved there the ideas and tastes of the Visigoths of Spain, who had become almost Gallo-Romans; she clung stoutly to the efficacious exercise of the royal authority; she took a practical interest in the public works, highways, bridges, monuments, and the progress of material civilization; the Roman roads in a short time received and for a long while kept in Anstrasia the name of Brunehaut’s causeways; there used to he shown, in a forest near Bourges, Brunehaut’s castle, Brunehaut’s tower at Etampes, Brunehaut’s stone near Tournay, and Brunehaut’s fort near Cahors. In the royal domains and wheresoever she went she showed abundant charity to the poor, and many ages after her death the people of those districts still spoke of Brunehaut’s alms. She liked and protected men of letters, rare and mediocre indeed at that time, but the only beings, such as they were, with a notion of seeking and giving any kind of intellectual enjoyment; and they in turn took pleasure in celebrating her name and her deserts. The most renowned of all during that age, Fortunatus, bishop of Poitiers, dedicated nearly all his little poems to two queens; one, Brunehaut, plunging amidst all the struggles and pleasures of the world, the other St. Radegonde, sometime wife of Clotaire I., who had fled in all haste from a throne, to bury herself at Poitiers, in the convent she had founded there. To compensate, Brunehaut was detested by the majority of the Austrasian chiefs, those Leudes, landowners and warriors, whose sturdy and turbulent independence she was continually fighting against. She supported against them, with indomitable courage, the royal officers, the servants of the palace, her agents, and frequently her favorites. One of these, Lupus, a Roman by origin, and Duke of Champagne, “was being constantly insulted and plundered by his enemies, especially by Ursion Bertfried. At last, they, having agreed to slay him, marched against him with an army. At the sight, Brunehaut, compassionating the evil case of one of her lieges unjustly persecuted, assumed quite a manly courage, and threw herself amongst the hostile battalions, crying, “‘Stay, warriors; refrain from this wicked deed; persecute not the innocent; engage not, for a single man’s sake, in a battle which will desolate the country!’ ‘Back, woman,’ said Ursion to her; ‘let it suffice thee to have ruled under thy husband’s sway; now ‘tis thy son who reigns, and his kingdom is under our protection, not thine. Back! if thou wouldest not that the hoofs of our horses trample thee under as the dust of the ground!’ After the dispute had lasted some time in this strain, the queen, by her address, at last prevented the battle from taking place.” (Gregory of Tours, VI. iv.) It was but a momentary success for Brunehaut; and the last words of Ursion contained a sad presage of the death awaiting her. Intoxicated with power, pride, hate, and revenge, she entered more violently every day into strife not only with the Austrasian laic chieftains, but with some of the principal bishops of Austrasia and Burgundy, among the rest with St. Didier, bishop of Vienne, who, at her instigation, was brutally murdered, and with the great Irish missionary St. Columba, who would not sanction by his blessing the fruits of the royal irregularities. In 614, after thirty-nine years of wars, plots, murders, and political and personal vicissitudes, from the death of her husband Sigebert I., and under the reigns of her son Theodebert, and her grandsons Theodebert II. and Thierry II., Queen Brunehaut, at the age of eighty years, fell into the hands of her mortal enemy, Clotaire II., son of Fredegonde, now sole king of the Franks. After having grossly insulted her, he had her paraded, seated on a camel, in front of his whole army, and then ordered her to be tied by the hair, one foot, and one arm to the tail of an unbroken horse, that carried her away, and dashed her in pieces as he galloped and kicked, beneath the eyes of the ferocious spectators.
After the execution of Brunehaut and the death of Clotaire II., the history of the Franks becomes a little less dark and less bloody. Not that murders and great irregularities, in the court and amongst the people, disappear altogether. Dagobert I., for instance, the successor of Clotaire II., and grandson of Chilperic and Fredegonde, had no scruple, under the pressure of self-interest, in committing an iniquitous and barbarous act. After having consented to leave to his younger brother Charibert the kingdom of Aquitania, he retook it by force in 631, at the death of Charibert, seizing at the same time his treasures, and causing or permitting to be murdered his young nephew Chilperic, rightful heir of his father. About the same time Dagobert had assigned amongst the Bavarians, subjects of his beyond the Rhine, an asylum to nine thousand Bulgarians, who had been driven with their wives and children from Pannonia. Not knowing, afterwards, where to put or how to feed these refugees, he ordered them all to be massacred in one night; and scarcely seven hundred of them succeeded in escaping by flight. The private morals of Dagobert were not more scrupulous than his public acts. “A slave to incontinence as King Solomon was,” says his biographer Fredegaire, “he had three queens and a host of concubines.” Given up to extravagance and pomp, it pleased him to imitate the magnificence of the imperial court at Constantinople, and at one time he laid hands for that purpose, upon the possessions of certain of his “leudes” or of certain churches; at another he gave to his favorite church, the Abbey of St. Denis, “so many precious stones, articles of value, and domains in various places, that all the world,” says Fredegaire, “was stricken with admiration.” But, despite of these excesses and scandals, Dagobert was the most wisely energetic, the least cruel in feeling, the most prudent in enterprise, and the most capable of governing with some little regularity and effectiveness, of all the kings furnished, since Clovis, by the Merovingian race. He had, on ascending the throne, this immense advantage, that the three Frankish dominions, Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy were re-united under his sway; and at the death of his brother Charibert, he added thereto Aquitania. The unity of the vast Frankish monarchy was thus re-established, and Dagobert retained it by his moderation at home and abroad. He was brave, and he made war on occasion; but, he did not permit himself to be dragged into it either by his own passions or by the unlimited taste of his lieges for adventure and plunder. He found, on this point, salutary warnings in the history of his predecessors. It was very often the Franks themselves, the royal “leudes,” who plunged their kings into civil or foreign wars. In 530, two sons of Clovis, Childebert and Clotaire, arranged to attack Burgundy and its king Godomar. They asked aid of their brother Theodoric, who refused to join them. However, the Franks who formed his party said, “If thou refuse to march into Burgundy with thy brethren, we give thee up, and prefer to follow them.” But Theodoric, considering that the Arvernians had been faithless to him, said to the Franks, “Follow me, and I will lead you into a country where ye shall seize of gold and silver as much as ye can desire, and whence ye shall take away flocks and slaves and vestments in abundance!” The Franks, overcome by these words, promised to do whatsoever he should desire. So Theodoric entered Auvergne with his army, and wrought devastation and ruin in the province.
“In 555, Clotaire I. had made an expedition against the Saxons, who demanded peace; but the Frankish warriors would not hear of it. ‘Cease, I pray you,’ said Clotaire to them, ‘to be evil-minded against these men; they speak us fair; let us not go and attack them, for fear we bring down upon us the anger of God.’ But the Franks would not listen to him. The Saxons again came with offerings of vestments, flocks, even all their possessions, saying, ‘Take all this, together with half our country; leave us but our wives and little children; only let there be no war between us.’ But the Franks again refused all terms. ‘Hold, I adjure you,’ said Clotaire again to them; ‘we have not right on our side; if ye be thoroughly minded to enter upon a war in which ye may find your loss, as for me, I will not follow ye.’ Then the Franks, enraged against Clotaire, threw themselves upon him, tore his tent to pieces as they heaped reproaches upon him, and bore him away by force, determined to kill him if he hesitated to march with them. So Clotaire, in spite of himself, departed with them. But when they joined battle they were cut to pieces by their adversaries, and on both sides so many fell that it was impossible to estimate or count the number of the dead. Then Clotaire with shame demanded peace of the Saxons, saying that it was not of his own will that he had attacked them; and, having obtained it, returned to his own dominions.” (Gregory of Tours, III. xi., xii.; IV. xiv.)
King Dagobert was not thus under the yoke of his “leudes.” Either by his own energy, or by surrounding himself with wise and influential counsellors, such as Pepin of Landen, mayor of the palace of Austrasia, St. Arnoul, bishop of Metz, St. Eligius, bishop of Noyon, and St. Andoenus, bishop of Rouen, he applied himself to and succeeded in assuring to himself, in the exercise of his power, a pretty large measure of independence and popularity. At the beginning of his reign he held, in Austrasia and Burgundy, a sort of administrative and judicial inspection, halting at the principal towns, listening to complaints, and checking, sometimes with a rigor arbitrary indeed, but approved of by the people, the violence and irregularities of the grandees. At Langres, Dijon, St. Jean-de, Losne, Chalons-sur-Saline, Auxerre, Autun, and Sens, “he rendered justice,” says Fredegaire, “to rich and poor alike, without any charges, and without any respect of persons, taking little sleep and little food, caring only so to act that all should withdraw from his presence full of joy and admiration.” Nor did he confine himself to this unceremonious exercise of the royal authority. Some of his predecessors, and amongst them Childebert I., Clotaire I., and Clotaire II., had caused to be drawn up, in Latin and by scholars, digests more or less complete of the laws and customs handed down by tradition, amongst certain of the Germanic peoples established on Roman soil, notably the laws of the Salian Franks and Ripuarian Franks; and Dagobert ordered a continuation of these first legislative labors amongst the newborn nations. It was, apparently, in his reign that a digest was made of the laws of the Allemannians and Bavarians. He had also some taste for the arts, and the pious talents displayed by Saints Eloi and Ouen in goldsmith’s-work and sculpture, applied to the service of religion or the decoration of churches, received from him the support of the royal favor and munificence. Dagobert was neither a great warrior nor a great legislator, and there is nothing to make him recognized as a great mind or a great character. His private life, too, was scandalous; and extortions were a sad feature of its close. Nevertheless his authority was maintained in his dominions, his reputation spread far and wide, and the name of great King Dagobert was his abiding title in the memory of the people. Taken all in all, he was, next to Clovis, the most distinguished of Frankish kings, and the last really king in the line of the Merovingians. After him, from 638 to 732, twelve princes of this line, one named Sigebert, two Clovis, two Childeric, one Clotaire, two Dagobert, one Childebert, one Chilperic, and two Throdoric or Thierry, bore, in Neustria, Austrasia, and Burgundy, or in the three kingdoms united, the title of king, without deserving in history more than room for their names. There was already heard the rumbling of great events to come around the Frankish dominion; and in the very womb of this dominion was being formed a new race of kings more able to bear, in accordance with the spirit and wants of their times, the burden of power.
There is a certain amount of sound sense, of intelligent activity and practical efficiency, which even the least civilized and least exacting communities absolutely must look for in their governing body. When this necessary share of ability and influence of a political kind are decidedly wanting in the men who have the titles and the official posts of power, communities seek elsewhere the qualities (and their consequences) which they cannot do without. The sluggard Merovingians drove the Franks, Neustrians, and Austrasians to this imperative necessity. The last of the kings sprung from Clovis acquitted themselves too ill or not at all of their task; and the mayors of the palace were naturally summoned to supply their deficiencies, and to give the populations assurance of more intelligence and energy in the exercise of power. The origin and primitive character of these supplements of royalty were different according to circumstances; at one time, conformably with their title, the mayors of the palace really came into existence in the palace of the Frankish kings, amongst the “leudes,” charged, under the style of antrustions (lieges in the confidence of the king: in truste regia), with the internal management of the royal affairs and household, or amongst the superior chiefs of the army; at another, on the contrary, it was to resist the violence and usurpation of the kings that the “leudes,” landholders or warriors, themselves chose a chief able to defend their interests and their rights against the royal tyranny or incapacity. Thus we meet, at this time, with mayors of the palace of very different political origin and intention, some appointed by the kings to support royalty against the “leudes,” others chosen by the “leudes” against the kings. It was especially between the Neustrian and Austrasian mayors of the palace that this difference became striking. Gallo-Roman feeling was more prevalent in Neustria, Germanic in Austrasia. The majority of the Neustrian mayors supported the interests of royalty, the Austrasian those of the aristocracy of landholders and warriors. The last years of the Merovingian line were full of their struggles; but a cause far more general and more powerful than these differences and conflicts in the very heart of the Frankish dominions determined the definitive fall of that line and the accession of another dynasty. When in 687 the battle fought at Testry, on the banks of the Somme, left Pepin of Heristal, duke and mayor of the palace of Austrasia, victorious over Bertaire, mayor of the palace of Neustria, it was a question of something very different from mere rivalry between the two Frankish dominions and their chiefs.
At their entrance and settlement upon the left bank of the Rhine and in Gaul, the Franks had not abandoned the right bank and Germany; there also they remained settled and incessantly at strife with their neighbors of Germanic race, Thuringians, Bavarians, the confederation of Allemannians, Frisons, and Saxons, people frequently vanquished and subdued to all appearance, but always ready to rise either for the recovery of their independence, or, again, under the pressure of that grand movement which, in the third century, had determined the general invasion by the barbarians of the Roman empire. After the defeat of the Huns at Chalons, and the founding of the Visigothic, Burgundian, and Frankish kingdoms in Gaul, that movement had been, if not arrested, at any rate modified, and for the moment suspended. In the sixth century it received a fresh impulse; new nations, Avars, Tartars, Bulgarians, Slavons, and Lombards thrust one another with mutual pressure from Asia into Europe, from Eastern Europe into Western; from the North to the South, into Italy and into Gaul. Driven by the Ouigour Tartars from Pannonia and Noricum (nowadays Austria), the Lombards threw themselves first upon Italy, crossed before long the Alps, and penetrated into Burgundy and Provence, to the very gates of Avignon. On the Rhine and along the Jura the Franks had to struggle on their own account against the new comers; and they were, further, summoned into Italy by the Emperors of the East, who wanted their aid against the Lombards. Everywhere resistance to the invasion of barbarians became the national attitude of the Franks, and they proudly proclaimed themselves the defenders of that West of which they had but lately been the conquerors.
When the Merovingians were indisputably nothing but sluggard kings, and when Ebroin, the last great mayor of the palace of Neustria, had been assassinated (in 681), and the army of the Neustrians destroyed at the battle of Testry (in 687), the ascendency in the heart of the whole of Frankish Gaul passed to the Franks of Austrasia, already bound by their geographical position to the defence of their nation in its new settlement. There had risen up among them a family, powerful from its vast domains, from its military and political services, and already also from the prestige belonging to the hereditary transmission of name and power. Its first chief known in history had been Pepin of Landen, called The Ancient, one of the foes of Queen Brunehaut, who was so hateful to the Austrasians, and afterwards one of the privy councillors and mayor of the palace of Austrasia, under Dagobert I. and his son Sigebert II. He died in 639, leaving to his family an influence already extensive. His son Grimoald succeeded him as mayor of the palace, ingloriously; but his grandson, by his daughter Bega, Pepin of Heristal, was for twenty-seven years not only virtually, as mayor of the palace, but ostensibly and with the title of duke, the real sovereign of Austrasia and all the Frankish dominion. He did not, however, take the name of king; and four descendants of Clovis, Thierry III., Clovis III., Childebert III., and Dagobert III. continued to bear that title in Neustria and Burgundy, under the preponderating influence of Pepin of Heristal. He did, during his long sway, three things of importance. He struggled without cessation to keep or bring back under the rule of the Franks the Germanic nations on the right bank of the Rhine,—Frisons, Saxons, Thuringians, Bavarians, and Allemannians; and thus to make the Frankish dominion a bulwark against the new flood of barbarians who were pressing one another westwards.
He rekindled in Austrasia the national spirit and some political life by beginning again the old March parades of the Franks, which had fallen into desuetude under the last Merovingians. Lastly, and this was, perhaps, his most original merit, he understood of what importance, for the Frankish kingdom, was the conversion to Christianity of the Germanic peoples over the Rhine, and he abetted with all his might the zeal of the popes and missionaries, Irish, Anglo-Saxon, and Gallo-Roman, devoted to this great work. The two apostles of Friesland, St. Willfried and St. Willibrod, especially the latter, had intimate relations with Pepin of Heristal, and received from him effectual support. More than twenty bishoprics, amongst others those of Utrecht, Mayence, Ratisbonne, Worms, and Spire, were founded at this epoch; and one of those ardent pioneers of Christian civilization, the Irish bishop, St. Lievin, martyred in 656 near Ghent, of which he has remained the patron saint, wrote in verse to his friend Herbert, a little before his martyrdom, “I have seen a sun without rays, days without light, and nights without repose. Around me rageth a people impious and clamorous for my blood. O people, what harm have I done thee? ‘Tis peace that I bring thee; wherefore declare war against me? But thy barbarism will bring my triumph and give me the palm of martyrdom. I know in whom I trust, and my hope shall not be confounded. Whilst I am pouring forth these verses, there cometh unto me the tired driver of the ass that beareth me the usual provisions: he bringeth that which maketh the delights of the country, even milk and butter and eggs; the cheeses stretch the wicker-work of the far too narrow panniers. Why tarriest thou, good carrier? Quicken thy step; collect thy riches, thou that this morning art so poor. As for me I am no longer what I was, and have lost the gift of joyous verse. How could it be other-wise when I am witness of such cruelties?”
It were difficult to describe with more pious, graceful, and melancholy feeling a holier and a simpler life.
After so many firm and glorious acts of authority abroad, Pepin of Heristal at his death, December 16, 714, did a deed of weakness at home. He had two wives, Plectrude and Alpaide; he had repudiated the former to espouse the latter, and the church, considering the second marriage unlawful, had constantly urged him to take back Plectrude. He had by her a son, Grimoald, who was assassinated on his way to join his father lying ill near Liege. This son left a child, Theodoald, only six years old. This child it was whom Pepin, either from a grandfather’s blind fondness, or through the influence of his wife Plectrude, appointed to succeed him, to the detriment of his two sons by Alpaide, Charles and Childebrand. Charles, at that time twenty-five years of age, had already a name for capacity and valor. On the death of Pepin, his widow Plectrude lost no time in arresting and imprisoning at Cologne this son of her rival Alpaide; but, some months afterwards, in 715, the Austrasians, having risen against Plectrude, took Charles out of prison and set him at their head, proclaiming him Duke of Austrasia. He was destined to become Charles Martel.
He first of all took care to extend and secure his own authority over all the Franks. At the death of Pepin of Heristal, the Neustrians, vexed at the long domination of the Austrasians, had taken one of themselves, Ragenfried, as mayor of the palace, and had placed at his side a Merovingian sluggard king, Chilperic II., whom they had dragged from a monastery. Charles, at the head of the Austrasians, twice succeeded in beating, first near Cambrai and then near Soissons, the Neustrian king and mayor of the palace, pursued them to Paris, returned to Cologne, got himself accepted by his old enemy Queen Plectrude, and remaining temperate amidst the triumph of his ambition, he, too, took from amongst the surviving Merovingians a sluggard king, whom he installed under the name of Clotaire IV., himself becoming, with the simple title of Duke of Austrasia, master of the Frankish dominion.
Being in tranquillity on the left bank of the Rhine, Charles directed towards the right bank—towards the Frisons and the Saxons—his attention and his efforts. After having experienced, in a first encounter, a somewhat severe check, he took, from 715 to 718, ample revenge upon them, repressed their attempts at invasion of Frankish territory, and pursued them on their own, imposed tribute upon them, and commenced with vigor, against the Saxons in particular, that struggle, at first defensive and afterwards aggressive, which was to hold so prominent a place in the life and glorious but blood-stained annals of his grandson Charlemagne.
In the war against the Neustrians, at the battle of Soissons in 719, Charles had encountered in their ranks Eudes or Eudon, Duke of Aquitania and Vasconia, that beautiful portion of Southern Gaul situated between the Pyrenees, the Ocean, the Garonne, and the Rhone, who had been for a long time trying to shake off the dominion of the barbarians, Visigoths or Franks. At the death of Pepin of Heristal, the Neustrians had drawn into alliance with them, for their war against the Austrasians, this Duke Elides, to whom they gave, as it appears, the title of king. After their common defeat at Soissons, the Aquitanian prince withdrew precipitately into his own country, taking with him the sluggard king of the Neustrians, Chilperic II. Charles pursued him to the Loire, and sent word to him, a few months afterwards, that he would enter into friendship with him if he would deliver up Chilperic and his treasures; otherwise he would invade and ravage Aquitania. Eudes delivered up Chilperic and his treasures; and Charles, satisfied with having in his power this Merovingian phantom, treated him generously, kept up his royal rank, and at his death, which happened soon afterwards, replaced him by another phantom of the same line, Theodoric or Thierry IV.; whom he dragged from the abbey of Chelles, founded by Queen St. Bathilde, wife of Clovis II., and who for seventeen years bore the title of king, whilst Charles Martel was ruling gloriously, and was, perhaps, the savior of the Frankish dominions. When he contracted his alliance with the Duke of Aquitania, Charles Martel did not know against what enemies and perils he would soon have to struggle.
In the earlier years of the eighth century, less than a hundred years from the death of Mahomet, the Mussulman Arabs, after having conquered Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Northern Africa, had passed into Europe, invaded Spain, overthrown the kingdom of the Visigoths, driven back the remnants of the nation and their chief, Pelagius, to the north of the Peninsula, into the Asturias and Galicia, and pushed even beyond the Pyrenees, into old Narbonness, then called Septimania, their limitless incursions. These fiery conquerors did not amount at that time, according to the most probable estimates, to more than fifty thousand; but they were under the influence of religious and warlike enthusiasm at one and the same time; they were fanatics in the cause of Deism and of glory. “The Arab warrior during campaigns was not excused from any one of the essential duties of Islamism; he was bound to pray at least once a day, on rising in the morning, at the blush of dawn. The general of the army was its priest; he it was who, at the head of the ranks, gave the signal for prayer, uttered the words, reminded the troops of the precepts of the Koran, and enjoined upon them forgetfulness of personal quarrels.” One day, on the point of engaging in a decisive battle, Moussaben- Nossair, first governor of Mussulman Africa, was praying, according to usage, at the head of the troops; and he omitted the invocation of the name of the Khalif, a respectful formality indispensable on the occasion. One of his officers, persuaded that it was a mere slip on Moussa’s part, made a point of admonishing him. “Know thou,” said Moussa, “that we are in such a position and at such an hour that no other name must be invoked save that of the most high God.” Moussa was, apparently, the first Arab chief to cross the Pyrenees and march, plundering as he went, into Narbonness. The Arabs had but very confused ideas of Gaul; they called it Frandjas, and gave to all its inhabitants, without distinction, the name of Frandj. The Khalif Abdelmelek, having recalled Moussa, questioned him about the different peoples with which he had been concerned. “And of these Frandj,” said he, “what hast thou to tell me?” “They are a people,” answered Moussa, “very many in number and abundantly provided with everything, brave and impetuous in attack, but spiritless and timid under reverses.” “And how went the war betwixt them and thee?” added Abdelmelek: “was it favorable to thee or the contrary?” “The contrary! Nay, by Allah and the Prophet; never was my army vanquished; never was a battalion beaten; and never did the Mussulmans hesitate to follow me when I led them forty against fourscore.” (Fauriel, Histoire de la Gaule, &c., t. III., pp. 48, 67.)
In 719, under El-Idaur-ben-Abdel-Rhaman, a valiant and able leader, say the Arab writers, but greedy, harsh, and cruel, the Arabs pursued their incursions into Southern Gaul, took Narbonne, dispersed the inhabitants, spread themselves abroad in search of plunder as far as the borders of the Garonne, and went and laid siege to Toulouse. Eudes, Duke of Aquitania, happened to be at Bordeaux, and he hastily summoned all the forces of his towns and all the populations from the Pyrenees to the Loire, and hurried to the relief of his capital. The Arabs, commanded by a new chieftain, El-Samah, more popular amongst them than El-Haur, awaited him beneath the walls of the city determined to give him battle. “Have ye no fear of this multitude,” said El-Samah to his warriors; “if God be with us, who shall be against us? “Elides had taken equally great pains to kindle the pious courage of the Aquitanians; he spread amongst his troops a rumor that he had but lately received as a present from Pope Gregory II. three sponges that had served to wipe down the table at which the sovereign pontiffs were accustomed to celebrate the communion; he had them cut into little strips which he had distributed to all those of the combatants who wished for them, and thereupon gave the sword to sound the charge. The victory of the Aquitanians was complete; the Arab army was cut in pieces; El-Samah was slain, and with him, according to the victors’ accounts, full three hundred and seventy-five thousand of his troops. The most truth-like testimonies and calculations do not put down at more than from fifty to seventy thousand men, in fighting trim, the number of Arabs that entered Spain eight or ten years previously, even with the additions it must have received by means of the emigrations from Africa; and undoubtedly El-Samah could not have led into Aquitania more than from forty to forty-five thousand. However that may be, the defeat of the Arabs before Toulouse was so serious that, four or five centuries afterwards, Ibn-Hayan, the best of their historians, still spoke of it as the object of solemn commemoration, and affirmed that the Arab army had entirely perished there, without the escape of a single man. The spot in the Roman road, between Carcassonne and Toulouse, where the battle was fought, was one heap of dead bodies, and continued to be mentioned in the Arab chronicles under the name of Martyrs’ Causeway. But the Arabs of Spain were then in that unstable social condition and in that heyday of impulsive youthfulness as a people, when men are more apt to be excited and attracted by the prospect of bold adventures than discouraged by reverses. El-Samah, on crossing the Pyrenees to go plundering and conquering in the country of the Frandj, had left as his lieutenant in the Iberian peninsula Anbessa-ben-Sohim, one of the most able, most pious, most just, and most humane chieftains, say the Arab chronicles, that Islamism ever produced in Europe. He, being informed of El-Samah’s death before Toulouse, resolved to resume his enterprise and avenge his defeat. In 725, he entered Gaul with a strong army; took Carcassonne; reduced, either by force or by treaty, the principal towns of Septimania to submission; and even carried the Arab arms, for the first time, beyond the Rhone into Provence. At the news of this fresh invasion Duke Eudes hurried from Aquitania, collecting on his march the forces of the country, and, after having waited some time for a favorable opportunity, gave the Arabs battle in Provence. It was indecisive at first, but ultimately won by the Christians without other result than the retreat of Anbessa, mortally wounded, upon the right bank of the Rhone, where he died without having been able himself to recross the Pyrenees, but leaving the Arabs masters of Septimania, where they established themselves in force, taking Narbonne for capital and a starting-point for their future enterprises.
The struggle had now begun in earnest, from the Rhone to the Garonne and the Ocean, between the Christians of Southern Gaul and the Mussulmans of Spain. Duke Eudes saw with profound anxiety his enemies settled in Septimania, and ever on the point of invading and devastating Aquitania. He had been informed that the Khalif Hashem had just appointed to the governor-generalship of Spain Abdel-Rhaman (the Abderame of the Christian chronicles), regarded as the most valiant of the Spanish Arabs, and that this chieftain was making great preparations for resuming their course of invasion. Another peril at the same time pressed heavily on Duke Eudes: his northern neighbor, Charles, sovereign duke of the Franks, the conqueror, beyond the Rhine, of the Frisons and Saxons, was directing glances full of regret towards those beautiful countries of Southern Gaul, which in former days Clovis had won from the Visigoths, and which had been separated, little by little, from the Frankish empire. Either justly or by way of ruse Charles accused Duke Eudes of not faithfully observing the treaty of peace they had concluded in 720; and on this pretext he crossed the Loire, and twice in the same year, 731, carried fear and rapine into the possession of the Duke of Aquitania on the left bank of that river. Eudes went, not unsuccessfully, to the rescue of his domains; but he was soon recalled to the Pyrenees by the news he received of the movements of Abdel-Rhaman and by the hope he had conceived of finding, in Spain itself and under the sway of the Arabs, an ally against their invasion of his dominions. The military command of the Spanish frontier of the Pyrenees and of the Mussulman forces there encamped had been intrusted to Othman-ben-Abi-Nessa, a chieftain of renown, but no Arab, either in origin or at heart, although a Mussulman. He belonged to the race of Berbers, whom the Romans called Moors, a people of the north-west of Africa, conquered and subjugated by the Arabs, but impatient under the yoke. The greater part of Abi- Nessa’s troops were likewise Berbers and devoted to their chiefs. Abi- Nessa, ambitious and audacious, conceived the project of seizing the government of the Peninsula, or at the least of making himself independent master of the districts he governed; and he entered into negotiations with the Duke of Aquitania to secure his support. In spite of religious differences their interests were too similar not to make an understanding easy; and the secret alliance was soon concluded and confirmed by a precious pledge. Duke Eudes had a daughter of rare beauty, named Lampagie, and he gave her in marriage to Abi-Nessa, who, say the chronicles, became desperately enamoured of her.
But whilst Eudes, trusting to this alliance, was putting himself in motion towards the Loire to protect his possessions against a fresh attack from the Duke of the Franks, the governor-general of Spain, Abdel- Rhaman, informed of Abi-Nessa’s plot, was arriving with large forces at the foot of the Pyrenees, to stamp out the rebellion. Its repression was easy. “At the approach of Abdel-Rhaman,” say the chroniclers, “Abi-Nessa hastened to shut himself up in Livia [the ancient capital of Cerdagne, on the ruins of which Puycerda was built], flattering himself that he could sustain a siege and there await succor from his father-in-law, Eudes; but the advance-guard of Abdel-Rhaman followed him so closely and with such ardor that it left him no leisure to make the least preparation for defence. Abi-Nessa, had scarcely time to fly from the town and gain the neighboring mountains with a few servants and his well-beloved Lampagie. Already he had penetrated into an out-of-the-way and lonely pass, where it seemed to him he ran no more risk of being discovered. He halted, therefore, to rest himself and quench the thirst which was tormenting his lovely companion and himself, beside a waterfall which gushed from a mass of lofty rocks upon a piece of fresh, green turf. They were surrendering themselves to the delightful feeling of being saved, when, all at once, they hear a loud sound of steps and voices; they listen; they glance in the direction of the sound, and perceive a detachment of armed men, one of those that were out in search of them. The servants take to flight; but Lampagie, too weary, cannot follow them, nor can Abi-Nessa abandon Lampagie. In the twinkling of an eye they are surrounded by foes. The chronicler Isidore of Bdja says that Abi-Nessa, in order not to fall alive into their hands, flung himself from top to bottom of the rocks; and an Arab historian relates that he took sword in hand, and fell pierced with twenty lance-thrusts whilst fighting in defence of her he loved. They cut off his head, which was forthwith carried to Abdel- Rhaman, to whom they led away prisoner the hapless daughter of Eudes. She was so lovely in the eyes of Abdel-Rhaman, that he thought it his duty to send her to Damascus, to the commander of the faithful, esteeming no other mortal worthy of her.” (Fauriel, Historie de la Gaulle, &c., t. III., p. 115.)
Abdel-Rhaman, at ease touching the interior of Spain, reassembled the forces he had prepared for his expedition, marched towards the Pyrenees by Pampeluna, crossed the summit become so famous under the name of Port de Roncevaux, and debouched by a single defile and in a single column, say the chroniclers, upon Gallic Vasconia, greater in extent than French Biscay now is. M. Fauriel, after scrupulous examination, according to his custom, estimates the army of Abdel-Rhaman, whether Mussulman adventurers flocking from all parts, or Arabs of Spain, at from sixty-five to seventy thousand fighting men. Duke Eudes made a gallant effort to stop his march and hurl him back towards the mountains; but exhausted, even by certain small successes, and always forced to retire, fight after fight, up to the approaches to Bordeaux, he crossed the Garonne, and halted on the right bank of the river, to cover the city. Abdel-Rhaman who had followed him closely, forced the passage of the river, and a battle was fought, in which the Aquitanians were defeated with immense loss. “God alone,” says Isidore of Beja, “knows the number of those who fell.” The battle gained, Abdel-Rhaman took Bordeaux by assault and delivered it over to his army. The plunder, to believe the historians of the conquerors, surpassed all that had been preconceived of the wealth of the vanquished: “The most insignificant soldier,” say they, “had for his share plenty of topazes, jacinths, and emeralds, to say nothing of gold, a somewhat vulgar article under the circumstances.” What appears certain is that, at their departure from Bordeaux, the Arabs were so laden with booty that their march became less rapid and unimpeded than before.
In the face of this disaster, the Franks and their duke were evidently the only support to which Eudes could have recourse; and he repaired in all haste to Charles and invoked his aid against the common enemy, who, after having crushed the Aquitanians, would soon attack the Franks, and subject them in turn to ravages and outrages. Charles did not require solicitation. He took an oath of the Duke of Aquitania to acknowledge his sovereignty and thenceforth remain faithful to him; and then, summoning all his warriors, Franks, Burgundians, Gallo-Romans, and Germans from beyond the Rhine, he set himself in motion towards the Loire. It was time. The Arabs had spread over the whole country between the Garonne and the Loire; they had even crossed the latter river and penetrated into Burgundy as far as Autun and Sens, ravaging the country, the towns, and the monasteries, and massacring or dispersing the populations. Abdel-Rhaman had heard tell of the city of Tours and its rich abbey, the treasures whereof, it was said, surpassed those of any other city and any other abbey in Gaul. Burning to possess it, he recalled towards this point his scattered forces. On arriving at Poitiers he found the gates closed and the inhabitants resolved to defend themselves; and, after a fruitless attempt at assault, he continued his march towards Tours. He was already beneath the walls of the place when he learned that the Franks were rapidly advancing in vast numbers. He fell back towards Poitiers, collecting the troops that were returning to him from all quarters, embarrassed with the immense booty they were dragging in their wake. He had for a moment, say the historians, an idea of ordering his soldiers to leave or burn their booty, to keep nothing but their arms, and think of nothing but battle: however, he did nothing of the kind, and, to await the Franks, he fixed his camp between the Vienne and the Clain, near Poitiers, not far from the spot where, two hundred and twenty-five years before, Clovis had beaten the Visigoths; or, according to others, nearer Tours, at Mire, in a plain still called the Landes de Charlemagne.