The Franks arrived. It was in the month of September or October, 732: and the two armies passed a week face to face, at one time remaining in their camps, at another deploying without attacking. It is quite certain that neither Franks nor Arabs, neither Charles nor Abdel-Rhaman themselves, took any such account, as we do in our day, of the importance of the struggle in which they were on the point of engaging; it was a struggle between East and West, South and North, Asia and Europe, the Gospel and the Koran; and we now say, on a general consideration of events, peoples, and ages, that the civilization of the world depended upon it. The generations that are passing upon earth see not so far, nor from such a height, the chances and consequences of their acts; the Franks and Arabs, leaders and followers, did not regard themselves, now nearly twelve centuries ago, as called upon to decide, near Poitiers, such future question; but vaguely, instinctively they felt the grandeur of the part they were playing, and they mutually scanned one another with that grave curiosity which precedes a formidable encounter between valiant warriors. At length, at the breaking of the seventh or eighth day, Abdel-Rhaman, at the head of his cavalry, ordered a general attack; and the Franks received it with serried ranks, astounding their enemies by their tall stature, stout armor, and their stern immobility. “They stood there,” says Isidore of Beja, “like solid walls or icebergs.” During the fight, a body of Franks penetrated into the enemy’s camp, either for pillage or to take the Arabs in the rear. The horsemen of Abdel-Rhaman at once left the general attack, and turned back to defend their camp or the booty deposited there. Disorder set in amongst them, and, before long, throughout their whole army; and the battle became a confused melley, wherein the lofty stature and stout armor of the Franks had the advantage. A great number of Arabs and Abdel-Rhaman himself were slain. At the approach of night both armies retired to their camps. The next day, at dawn, the Franks moved out of theirs, to renew the engagement. In front of them was no stir, no noise, no Arabs out of their tents and reassembling in their ranks. Some Franks were sent to reconnoitre, entered the enemy’s camp, and penetrated into their tents; but they were deserted. “The Arabs had decamped silently in the night, leaving the bulk of their booty, and by this precipitate retreat acknowledging a more severe defeat than they had really sustained in the fight.”
Foreseeing the effect which would be produced by their reverse in the country they had but lately traversed as conquerors, they halted nowhere, but hastened to reenter Septimania and their stronghold Narbonne, where they might await reenforcements from Spain. Duke Eudes, on his side, after having, as vassal, taken the oath of allegiance to Charles, who will be henceforth called Charles Martel (Hammer), that glorious name which he won by the great blow he dealt the Arabs, reentered his dominions of Aquitania and Vasconia, and applied himself to the reestablishment there of security and of his own power. As for Charles Martel, indefatigable alike after and before victory, he did not consider his work in Southern Gaul as accomplished. He wished to recover and reconstitute in its entirety the Frankish dominion; and he at once proceeded to reunite to it Provence and the portions of the old kingdom of Burgundy situated between the Alps and the Rhone, starting from Lyons. His first campaign with this object, in 733, was successful; he retook Lyons, Vienne, and Valence, without any stoppage up to the Durance, and charged chosen “leudes” to govern these provinces with a view especially to the repression of attempts at independence at home and incursions on the part of the Arabs abroad. And it was not long before these two perils showed head. The government of Charles Martel’s “leudes” was hard to bear for populations accustomed for some time past to have their own way, and for their local chieftains thus stripped of their influence. Maurontius, patrician of Arles, was the most powerful and daring of these chieftains; and he had at heart the independence of his country and his own power far more than Frankish grandeur. Caring little, no doubt, for the interests of religion, he entered into negotiations with Youssouf- ben-Abdel-Rhaman, governor of Narbonne, and summoned the Mussulmans into Provence. Youssouf lost no time in responding to the summons; and, from 734 to 736, the Arabs conquered and were in military occupation of the left bank of the Rhone from Arles to Lyons. But in 737 Charles Martel returned, reentered Lyons and Avignon, and, crossing the Rhone, marched rapidly on Narbonne, to drive the Arabs from Septimania. He succeeded in beating them within sight of their capital; but, after a few attempts at assault, not being able to become master of it, he returned to Provence, laying waste on his march several towns of Septimania, Agde, Maguelonne, and Nimes, where he tried, but in vain, to destroy the famous Roman arenas by fire, as one blows up an enemy’s fortress. A rising of the Saxons recalled him to Northern Gaul; and scarcely had he set out from Provence, when national insurrection and Arab invasion recommenced. Charles Martel waited patiently as long as the Saxons resisted; but as soon as he was at liberty on their score, in 739, he collected a strong army, made a third campaign along the Rhone, retook Avignon, crossed the Durance, pushed on as far as the sea, took Marseilles, and then Arles, and drove the Arabs definitively from Provence. Some Mussulman bands attempted to establish themselves about St. Tropez, on the rugged heights and among the forests of the Alps; but Charles Martel carried his pursuit even into those wild retreats, and all Southern Gaul, on the left bank of the Rhone, was incorporated in the Frankish dominion, which will be henceforth called France.
The ordinary revenues of Charles Martel clearly could not suffice for so many expeditions and wars. He was obliged to attract or retain by rich presents, particularly by gifts of lands, the warriors, old and new “leudes,” who formed his strength. He therefore laid hands on a great number of the domains of the Church, and gave them, with the title of benefices, in temporary holding, often converted into proprietorship, and under the style of precarious tenure, to the chiefs in his service. There was nothing new in this: the Merovingian kings and the mayors of the palace had more than once thus made free with ecclesiastical property; but Charles Martel carried this practice much farther than his predecessors had. He did more: he sometimes gave his warriors ecclesiastical offices and dignities. His liege Milo received from him the archbishoprics of Rheims and Troves; and his nephew Hugh those of Paris, Rouen, and Bayeux, with the abbeys of Fontenelle and Jumieges. The Church protested with all her might against such violations of her mission and her interest, her duties and her rights. She was so specially set against Charles Martel that, more than a century after his death, in 858, the bishops of France, addressing themselves to Louis the Germanic on this subject, wrote to him, “St. Eucherius, bishop of Orleans, who now reposeth in the monastery of St. Trudon, being at prayer, was transported into the realms of eternity; and there, amongst other things which the Lord did show unto him, he saw Prince Charles delivered over to the torments of the damned in the lowest regions of hell. And St. Eucherius demanding of the angel, his guide, what was the reason thereof, the angel answered that it was by sentence of the saints whom he had robbed of their possessions, and who, at the day of the last judgment, will sit with God to judge the world.”
Whilst thus making use, at the expense of the Church, and for political interests, of material force, Charles Martel was far from misunderstanding her moral influence and the need he had of her support at the very time when he was incurring her anathemas. Not content with defending Christianity against Islamism, he aided it against Paganism by lending the Christian missionaries in Germany and the north-west of Europe, amongst others St. Willibrod and St. Boniface, the most effectual assistance. In 724, he addressed to all religious and political authorities that could be reached by his influence, not only to the bishops, “but to the dukes, counts, their vicars, our palatines, all our agents, our envoys, and our friends this circular letter: ‘Know that a successor of the Apostles, our father in Christ, Boniface, bishop, hath come unto us saying that we ought to take him under our safeguard and protection. We do you to wit that we do so very willingly. Wherefore we have thought proper to give him confirmation thereof under our own hand, in order that, whithersoever he may go, he may there be in peace and safety in the name of our affection and under our safeguard; in such sort that he may be able everywhere to render, do, and receive justice. And if he come to find himself in any pass or necessity which cannot be determined by law, that he may remain in peace and safety until he be come into our presence, he and all who shall have hope in him or dependence on him. That none may dare to be contrary-minded towards him or do him damage; and that he may rest at all times in tranquillity and safety under our safeguard and protection. And in order that this may be regarded as certified, we have subscribed these letters with our own hand and sealed them with our ring.’”
Here were clearly no vague and meaningless words, written to satisfy solicitation, and without a thought of their consequences: they were urgent recommendations and precise injunctions, the most proper for securing success to the protected in the name of the protector. Accordingly St. Boniface wrote, soon after, from the heart of Germany, “Without the patronage of the prince of the Franks, without his order and the fear of his power, I could not guide the people, or defend the priests, deacons, monks, or handmaids of God, or forbid in this country the rites of the Pagans and their sacrilegious worship of idols.”
At the same time that he protected the Christian missionaries launched into the midst of Pagan Germany, Charles Martel showed himself equally ready to protect, but with as much prudence as good-will, the head of the Christian Church. In 741, Pope Gregory III. sent to him two nuncios, the first that ever entered France in such a character, to demand of him succor against the Lombards, the Pope’s neighbors, who were threatening to besiege Rome. These envoys took Charles Martel “so many presents that none had ever seen or heard tell of the like,” and amongst them the keys of St. Peter’s tomb, with a letter in which the Pope conjured Charles Martel not to attach any credit to the representations or words of Luitprandt, king of the Lombards, and to lend the Roman Church that effectual support which, for some time past, she had been vainly expecting from the Franks and their chief. “Let them come, we are told,” wrote the Pope, piteously, “this Charles with whom ye have sought refuge, and the armies of the Franks; let them sustain ye, if they can, and wrest ye from our hands.” Charles Martel was in fact on good terms with Luitprandt, who had come to his aid in his expeditions against the Arabs in Provence. He, however, received the Pope’s nuncios with lively satisfaction and the most striking proofs of respect; and he promised them, not to make war on the Lombards, but to employ his influence with King Luitprandt to make him cease from threatening Rome. He sent, in his turn, to the Pope two envoys of distinction, Sigebert, abbot of St. Denis, and Grimon, abbot of Corbie, with instructions to offer him rich presents and to really exert themselves with the king of the Lombards to remove the dangers dreaded by the Holy See. He wished to do something in favor of the Papacy to show sincere good-will, without making his relations with useful allies subordinate to the desires of the Pope.
Charles Martel had not time to carry out effectually with respect to the Papacy this policy of protection and at the same time of independence; he died at the close of this same year, October 22, 741, at Kiersy-sur-Oise, aged fifty-two years, and his last act was the least wise of his life. He had spent it entirely in two great works, the reestablishment throughout the whole of Gaul of the Franco-Gallo-Roman empire, and the driving back from the frontiers of this empire, of the Germans in the north and the Arabs in the south. The consequence, as also the condition, of this double success was the victory of Christianity over Paganism and Islamism. Charles Martel endangered these results by falling back into the groove of those Merovingian kings whose shadow he had allowed to remain on the throne. He divided between his two legitimate sons, Pepin, called the Short, from his small stature, and Carloman, this sole dominion which he had with so much toil reconstituted and defended. Pepin had Neustria, Burgundy, Provence, and the suzerainty of Aquitaine; Carloman, Austrasia, Thuringia, and Allemannia. They both, at their father’s death, took only the title of mayor of the palace, and, perhaps, of duke. The last but one of the Merovingians, Thierry IV., had died in 737. For four years there had been no king at all.
But when the works of men are wise and true, that is, in conformity with the lasting wants of peoples, and the natural tendency of social facts, they get over even the mistakes of their authors. Immediately after the death of Charles Martel, the consequences of dividing his empire became manifest. In the north, the Saxons, the Bavarians, and the Allemannians renewed their insurrections. In the south, the Arabs of Septimania recovered their hopes of effecting an invasion; and Hunald, Duke of Aquitaine, who had succeeded his father Eudes, after his death in 735, made a fresh attempt to break away from Frankish sovereignty and win his independence. Charles Martel had left a young son, Grippo, whose legitimacy had been disputed, but who was not slow to set up pretensions and to commence intriguing against his brothers. Everywhere there burst out that reactionary movement which arises against grand and difficult works when the strong hand that undertook them is no longer by to maintain them; but this movement was of short duration and to little purpose. Brought up in the school and in the fear of their father, his two sons, Pepin and Carloman, were inoculated with his ideas and example; they remained united in spite of the division of dominions, and labored together, successfully, to keep down, in the north the Saxons and Bavarians, in the south the Arabs and Aquitanians, supplying want of unity by union, and pursuing with one accord the constant aim of Charles Martel—abroad the security and grandeur of the Frankish dominion, at home the cohesion of all its parts and the efficacy of its government. Events came to the aid of this wise conduct. Five years after the death of Charles Martel, in 746 in fact, Carloman, already weary of the burden of power, and seized with a fit of religious zeal, abdicated his share of sovereignty, left his dominions to his brother Pepin, had himself shorn by the hands of Pope Zachary, and withdrew into Italy to the monastery of Monte Cassino. The preceding year, in 745, Hunald, Duke of Aquitaine, with more patriotic and equally pious views, also abdicated in favor of his son Waifre, whom he thought more capable than himself of winning the independence of Aquitaine, and went and shut himself up in a monastery in the island of Rhe, where was the tomb of his father Eudes. In the course of divers attempts at conspiracy and insurrection, the Frankish princes’ young brother, Grippo, was killed in combat whilst crossing the Alps. The furious internal dissensions amongst the Arabs of Spain and their incessant wars with the Berbers did not allow them to pursue any great enterprise in Gaul. Thanks to all these circumstances, Pepin found himself, in 747, sole master of the heritage of Clovis and with the sole charge of pursuing, in State and Church, his father’s work, which was the unity and grandeur of Christian France.
Pepin, less enterprising than his father, but judicious, persevering, and capable of discerning what was at the same time necessary and possible, was well fitted to continue and consolidate what he would, probably, never have begun and created.
Like his father, he, on arriving at power, showed pretensions to moderation, or, it might be said, modesty. He did not take the title of king; and, in concert with his brother Carloman, he went to seek, Heaven knows in what obscure asylum, a forgotten Merovingian, son of Chilperic II., the last but one of the sluggard kings, and made him king, the last of his line, with the title of Childeric III., himself, as well as his brother, taking only the style of mayor of the palace. But at the end of ten years, and when he saw himself alone at the head of the Frankish dominion, Pepin considered the moment arrived for putting an end to this fiction. In 751, he sent to Pope Zachary at Rome, Burchard, bishop of Wurtzhurg, and Fulrad, abbot of St. Denis, “to consult the Pontiff,” says Eginhard, “on the subject of the kings then existing amongst the Franks, and who bore only the name of king without enjoying a tittle of royal authority.” The Pope, whom St. Boniface, the great missionary of Germany, had prepared for the question, answered that “it was better to give the title of king to him who exercised the sovereign power;” and next year, in March, 752, in the presence and with the assent of the general assembly of “leudes” and bishops gathered together at Soissons, Pepin was proclaimed king of the Franks, and received from the hand of St. Boniface the sacred anointment. They cut off the hair of the last Merovingian phantom, Childeric III., and put him away in the monastery of St. Sithiu, at St. Omer. Two years later, July 28, 754, Pope Stephen II., having come to France to claim Pepin’s support against the Lombards, after receiving from him assurance of it, “anointed him afresh with the holy oil in the church of St. Denis to do honor in his person to the dignity of royalty,” and conferred the same honor on the king’s two sons, Charles and Carloman. The new Gallo-Frankish kingship and the Papacy, in the name of their common faith and common interests, thus contracted an intimate alliance. The young Charles was hereafter to become Charlemagne.
The same year, Boniface, whom, six years before, Pope Zachary had made Archbishop of Mayence, gave up one day the episcopal dignity to his disciple Lullus, charging him to carry on the different works himself had commenced amongst the churches of Germany, and to uphold the faith of the people. “As for me,” he added, “I will put myself on my road, for the time of my passing away approacheth. I have longed for this departure, and none can turn me from it; wherefore, my son, get all things ready, and place in the chest with my books the winding-sheet to wrap up my old body.” And so he departed with some of his priests and servants to go and evangelize the Frisons, the majority of whom were still pagans and barbarians. He pitched his tent on their territory and was arranging to celebrate there the Lord’s Supper, when a band of natives came down and rushed upon the archbishop’s retinue. The servitors surrounded him, to defend him and themselves; and a battle began. “Hold, hold, my children,” cried the arch-bishop; “Scripture biddeth us return good for evil. This is the day I have long desired, and the hour of our deliverance is at hand. Be strong in the Lord: hope in Him, and He will save your souls.” The barbarians slew the holy man and the majority of his company. A little while after, the Christians of the neighborhood came in arms and recovered the body of St. Boniface. Near him was a book, which was stained with blood, and seemed to have dropped from his hands; it contained several works of the Fathers, and amongst others a writing of St. Ambrose “on the Blessing of Death.” The death of the pious missionary was as powerful as his preaching in converting Friesland. It was a mode of conquest worthy of the Christian faith, and one of which the history of Christianity had already proved the effectiveness.
St. Boniface did not confine himself to the evangelization of the pagans; he labored ardently in the Christian Gallo-Frankish Church, to reform the manners and ecclesiastical discipline, and to assure, whilst justifying, the moral influence of the clergy by example as well as precept. The Councils, which had almost fallen into desuetude in Gaul, became once more frequent and active there; from 742 to 753 there may be counted seven, presided over by St. Boniface, which exercised within the Church a salutary action. King Pepin, recognizing the services which the Archbishop of Mayence had rendered him, seconded his reformatory efforts at one time by giving the support of his royal authority to the canons of the Councils, held often simultaneously with and almost confounded with the laic assemblies of the Franks, at another by doing justice to the protests of the churches against the violence and spoliation to which they were subjected. “There was an important point,” says M. Fauriel, “in respect of which the position of Charles Martel’s sons turned out to be pretty nearly the same as that of their father: it was touching the necessity of assigning to warriors a portion of the ecclesiastical revenues. But they, being more religious, perhaps, than Charles Martel, or more impressed with the importance of humoring the priestly power, were more vexed and more anxious about the necessity under which they found themselves of continuing to despoil the churches and of persisting in a system which was putting the finishing stroke to the ruin of all ecclesiastical discipline. They were more eager to mitigate the evil and to offer the Church compensation for their share in this evil to which it was not in their power to put a stop. Accordingly at the March parade held at Leptines in 743, it was decided, in reference to ecclesiastical lands applied to the military service: 1st, that the churches having the ownership of those lands should share the revenue with the lay holder; 2d, that on the death of a warrior in enjoyment of an ecclesiastical benefice, the benefice should revert to the Church; 3d, that every benefice by deprivation whereof any church would be reduced to poverty should be at once restored to her. That this capitular was carried out, or even capable of being carried out, is very doubtful; but the less Carloman and Pepin succeeded in repairing the material losses incurred by the Church since the accession of the Carlovingians, the more zealous they were in promoting the growth of her moral power and the restoration of her discipline. . . . That was the time at which there began to be seen the spectacle of the national assemblies of the Franks, the gatherings of the March parades transformed into ecclesiastical synods under the presidency of the titular legate of the Roman Pontiff, and dictating, by the mouth of the political authority, regulations and laws with the direct and formal aim of restoring divine worship and ecclesiastical discipline, and of assuring the spiritual welfare of the people.” (Fauriel, Histoire de la Gaule, &c., t. III., p. 224.)
Pepin, after he had been proclaimed king and had settled matters with the Church as well as the warlike questions remaining for him to solve permitted, directed all his efforts towards the two countries which, after his father’s example, he longed to reunite to the Gallo-Frankish monarchy, that is, Septimania, still occupied by the Arabs, and Aquitaine, the independence of which was stoutly and ably defended by Duke Eudes’ grandson, Duke Waifre. The conquest of Septimania was rather tedious than difficult. The Franks, after having victoriously scoured the open country of the district, kept invested during three years its capital, Narbonne, where the Arabs of Spain, much weakened by their dissensions, vainly tried to throw in re-enforcements. Besides the Mussulman Arabs the population of the town numbered many Christian Goths, who were tired of suffering for the defence of their oppressors, and who entered into secret negotiations with the chiefs of Pepin’s army, the end of which was, that they opened the gates of the town. In 759, then, after forty years of Arab rule, Narbonne passed definitively under that of the Franks, who guaranteed to the inhabitants free enjoyment of their Gothic or Roman law and of their local institutions. It even appears that, in the province of Spain bordering on Septimania, an Arab chief, called Soliman, who was in command at Gerona and Barcelona, between the Ebro and the Pyrenees, submitted to Pepin, himself and the country under him. This was an important event indeed in the reign of Pepin, for here was the point at which Islamism, but lately aggressive and victorious in Southern Europe, began to feel definitively beaten and to recoil before Christianity.
The conquest of Aquitaine and Vasconia was much more keenly disputed and for a much longer time uncertain. Duke Waifre was as able in negotiation as in war: at one time he seemed to accept the pacific overtures of Pepin, or, perhaps, himself made similar, without bringing about any result, at another he went to seek and found even in Germany allies who caused Pepin much embarrassment and peril. The population of Aquitaine hated the Franks; and the war, which for their duke was a question of independent sovereignty, was for themselves a question of passionate national feeling. Pepin, who was naturally more humane and even more generous, it may be said, in war than his predecessors had usually been, was nevertheless induced, in his struggle against the Duke of Aquitaine, to ravage without mercy the countries he scoured, and to treat the vanquished with great harshness. It was only after nine years’ war and seven campaigns full of vicissitudes that he succeeded, not in conquering his enemy in a decisive battle, but in gaining over some servants who betrayed their master. In the month of July, 759, “Duke Waifre was slain by his own folk, by the king’s advice,” says Fredegaire; and the conquest of all Southern Gaul carried the extent and power of the Gallo-Frankish monarchy farther and higher than it had ever yet been, even under Clovis.
In 753, Pepin had made an expedition against the Britons of Armorica, had taken Vannes, and “subjugated,” add certain chroniclers, “the whole of Brittany.” In point of fact Brittany was no more subjugated by Pepin than by his predecessors; all that can be said is, that the Franks resumed, under him, an aggressive attitude towards the Britons, as if to vindicate a right of sovereignty.
Exactly at this epoch Pepin was engaging in a matter which did not allow him to scatter his forces hither and thither. It has been stated already, that in 741 Pope Gregory III. had asked aid of the Franks against the Lombards who were threatening Rome, and that, whilst fully entertaining the Pope’s wishes, Charles Martel had been in no hurry to interfere by deed in the quarrel. Twelve years later, in 753, Pope Stephen, in his turn threatened by Astolphus, king of the Lombards, after vain attempts to obtain guarantees of peace, repaired to Paris, and renewed to Pepin the entreaties used by Zachary. It was difficult for Pepin to turn a deaf ear; it was Zachary who had declared that he ought to be made king; Stephen showed readiness to anoint him a second time, himself and his sons; and it was the eldest of these sons, Charles, scarcely twelve years old, whom Pepin, on learning the near arrival of the Pope, had sent to meet him and give brilliancy to his reception. Stephen passed the winter at St. Denis, and gained the favor of the people as well as that of the king. Astolphus peremptorily refused to listen to the remonstrances of Pepin, who called upon him to evacuate the towns in the exarchate of Ravenna, and to leave the Pope unmolested in the environs of Rome as well as in Rome itself. At the March parade held at Braine, in the spring of 754, the Franks approved of the war against the Lombards; and at the end of the summer Pepin and his army descended into Italy by Mount Cenis, the Lombards trying in vain to stop them as they debouched into the valley of Suza. Astolphus beaten, and, before long, shut up in Pavia, promised all that was demanded of him; and Pepin and his warriors, laden with booty, returned to France, leaving at Rome the Pope, who conjured them to remain a while in Italy, for to a certainty, he said, king Astolphus would not keep his promises. The Pope was right. So soon as the Franks had gone, the King of the Lombards continued occupying the places in the exarchate and molesting the neighborhood of Rome. The Pope, in despair and doubtful of his auxiliaries’ return, conceived the idea of sending “to the king, the chiefs, and the people of the Franks, a letter written, he said, by Peter, Apostle of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, to announce to them that, if they came in haste, he would aid them as if he were alive according to the flesh amongst them, that they would conquer all their enemies and make themselves sure of eternal life!” The plan was perfectly successful: the Franks once more crossed the Alps with enthusiasm, once more succeeded in beating the Lombards, and once more shut up in Pavia King Astolphus, who was eager to purchase peace at any price. He obtained it on two principal conditions: 1st, that he would not again make a hostile attack on Roman territory or wage war against the Pope or people of Rome; 2d, that he would henceforth recognize the sovereignty of the Franks, pay them tribute, and cede forthwith to Pepin the towns and all the lands, belonging to the jurisdiction of the Roman empire, which were at that time occupied by the Lombards. By virtue of these conditions, Ravenna, Rimini, Pesaro, that is to say, the Romagna, the Duchy of Urbino and a portion of the Marches of Ancona, were at once given up to Pepin, who, regarding them as his own direct conquest, the fruit of victory, disposed of them forthwith, in favor of the Popes, by that famous deed of gift which comprehended pretty nearly what has since formed the Roman States, and which founded the temporal independence of the Papacy, the guarantee of its independence in the exercise of the spiritual power.
At the head of the Franks as mayor of the palace from 741, and as king from 752, Pepin had completed in France and extended in Italy the work which his father, Charles Martel, had begun and carried on, from 714 to 741, in State and Church. He left France reunited in one and placed at the head of Christian Europe. He died at the monastery of St. Denis, September 18, 768, leaving his kingdom and his dynasty thus ready to the hands of his son, whom history has dubbed Charlemagne.
The most judicious minds are sometimes led blindly by tradition and habit, rather than enlightened by reflection and experience. Pepin the Short committed at his death the same mistake that his father, Charles Martel, had committed: he divided his dominions between his two sons, Charles and Carloman, thus destroying again that unity of the Gallo- Frankish monarchy which his father and he had been at so much pains to establish. But, just as had already happened in 746 through the abdication of Pepin’s brother, events discharged the duty of repairing the mistake of men. After the death of Pepin, and notwithstanding that of Duke Waifre, insurrection broke out once more in Aquitaine; and the old duke, Hunald, issued from his monastery in the island of Rhe to try and recover power and independence. Charles and Carloman marched against him; but, on the march, Carloman, who was jealous and thoughtless, fell out with his brother, and suddenly quitted the expedition, taking away his troops. Charles was obliged to continue it alone, which he did with complete success. At the end of this first campaign, Pepin’s widow, the Queen-mother Bertha, reconciled her two sons; but an unexpected incident, the death of Carloman two years afterwards in 771, re-established unity more surely than the reconciliation had re-established harmony. For, although Carloman left sons, the grandees of his dominions, whether laic or ecclesiastical, assembled at Corbeny, between Laon and Rheims, and proclaimed in his stead his brother Charles, who thus became sole king of the Gallo-Franco-Germanic monarchy. And as ambition and manners had become less tinged with ferocity than they had been under the Merovingians, the sons of Carloman were not killed or shorn or even shut up in a monastery: they retired with their mother, Gerberge, to the court of Didier, king of the Lombards. “King Charles,” says Eginhard, “took their departure patiently, regarding it as of no importance.” Thus commenced the reign of Charlemagne.
The original and dominant characteristic of the hero of this reign, that which won for him, and keeps for him after more than ten centuries, the name of Great, is the striking variety of his ambition, his faculties, and his deeds. Charlemagne aspired to and attained to every sort of greatness, military greatness, political greatness, and intellectual greatness; he was an able warrior, an energetic legislator, a hero of poetry. And he united, he displayed all these merits in a time of general and monotonous barbarism, when, save in the Church, the minds of men were dull and barren. Those men, few in number, who made themselves a name at that epoch, rallied round Charlemagne and were developed under his patronage. To know him well and appreciate him justly, he must be examined under those various grand aspects, abroad and at home, in his wars and in his government.
In Guizot’s History of Civilization in France is to be found a complete table of the wars of Charlemagne, of his many different expeditions in Germany, Italy, Spain, all the countries, in fact, that became his dominion. A summary will here suffice. From 769 to 813, in Germany and Western and Northern Europe, Charlemagne conducted thirty-one campaigns against the Saxons, Frisons, Bavarians, Avars, Slavons, and Danes; in Italy, five against the Lombards; in Spain, Corsica, and Sardinia, twelve against the Arabs; two against the Greeks; and three in Gaul itself, against the Aquitanians and the Britons; in all, fifty-three expeditions; amongst which those he undertook against the Saxons, the Lombards, and the Arabs, were long and difficult wars. It is undesirable to recount them in detail, for the relation would be monotonous and useless; but it is obligatory to make fully known their causes, their characteristic incidents, and their results.
It has already been seen that, under the last Merovingian kings, the Saxons were, on the right bank of the Rhine, in frequent collision with the Franks, especially with the Austrasian Franks, whose territory they were continually threatening and often invading. Pepin the Short had more than once hurled them back far from the very uncertain frontiers of Germanic Austrasia; and, on becoming king, he dealt his blows still farther, and entered, in his turn, Saxony itself. “In spite of the Saxons’ stout resistance,” says Eginhard (Annales, t. i., p. 135), “he pierced through the points they had fortified to bar entrance into their country, and, after having fought here and there battles wherein fell many Saxons, he forced them to promise that they would submit to his rule; and that, every year, to do him honor, they would send to the general assembly of the Franks a present of three hundred horses. When these conventions were once settled, he insisted, to insure their performance, upon placing them under the guarantee of rites peculiar to the Saxons; then he returned with his army to Gaul.”
Charlemagne did not confine himself to resuming his father’s work; he before long changed its character and its scope. In 772, being left sole master of France after the death of his brother Carloman, he convoked at Worms the general assembly of the Franks, “and took,” says Eginhard, “the resolution of going and carrying war into Saxony. He invaded it without delay, laid it waste with fire and sword, made himself master of the fort of Ehresburg, and threw down the idol that the Saxons called Irminsul.” And in what place was this first victory of Charlemagne won? Near the sources of the Lippe, just where, more than seven centuries before, the German Arminius (Herrmann) had destroyed the legions of Varus, and whither Germanicus had come to avenge the disaster of Varus. This ground belonged to Saxon territory; and this idol, called Irminsul, which was thrown down by Charlemagne, was probably a monument raised in honor of Arminius (Herrmann-Saule, or Herrmann’s pillar), whose name it called to mind. The patriotic and hereditary pride of the Saxons was passionately roused by this blow; and, the following year, “thinking to find in the absence of the king the most favorable opportunity,” says Eginhard, they entered the lands of the Franks, laid them waste in their turn, and, paying back outrage for outrage, set fire to the church not long since built at Fritzlar, by Boniface, martyr. From that time the question changed its object as well as its aspect; it was no longer the repression of Saxon invasions of France, but the conquest of Saxony by the Franks, that was to be dealt with; it was between the Christianity of the Franks and the national Paganism of the Saxons that the struggle was to take place.
For thirty years such was its character. Charlemagne regarded the conquest of Saxony as indispensable for putting a stop to the incursions of the Saxons, and the conversion of the Saxons to Christianity as indispensable for assuring the conquest of Saxony. The Saxons were defending at one and the same time the independence of their country and the gods of their fathers. Here was wherewithal to stir up and foment, on both sides, the profoundest passions; and they burst forth, on both sides, with equal fury. Whithersoever Charlemagne penetrated he built strong castles and churches; and, at his departure, left garrisons and missionaries. When he was gone the Saxons returned, attacked the forts and massacred the garrisons and the missionaries. At the commencement of the struggle, a priest of Anglo-Saxon origin, whom St. Willibrod, bishop of Utrecht, had but lately consecrated, St. Liebwin in fact, undertook to go and preach the Christian religion in the very heart of Saxony, on the banks of the Weser, amidst the general assembly of the Saxons. “What do ye” said he, cross in hand; “the idols ye worship live not, neither do they perceive: they are the work of men’s hands; they can do nought either for themselves or for others. Wherefore the one God, good and just, having compassion on your errors, hath sent me unto you. If ye put not away your iniquity, I foretell unto you a trouble that ye do not expect, and that the King of Heaven hath ordained aforetime; there shall come a prince, strong and wise and indefatigable, not from afar, but from nigh at hand, to fall upon you like a torrent, in order to soften your hard hearts and bow down your proud heads. At one rush he shall invade the country; he shall lay it waste with fire and sword, and carry away your wives and children into captivity.” A thrill of rage ran through the assembly; and already many of those present had begun to cut, in the neighboring woods, stakes sharpened to a point to pierce the priest, when one of the chieftains named Buto cried aloud, “Listen, ye who are the most wise. There have often come unto us ambassadors from neighboring peoples, Northmen, Slavons or Frisons; we have received them in peace, and when their messages have been heard, they have been sent away with a present. Here is an ambassador from a great God, and ye would slay him!” Whether it were from sentiment or from prudence, the multitude was calmed, or at any rate restrained; and for this time the priest retired safe and sound.
Just as the pious zeal of the missionaries was of service to Charlemagne, so did the power of Charlemagne support and sometimes preserve the missionaries. The mob, even in the midst of its passions, is not throughout or at all times inaccessible to fear. The Saxons were not one and the same nation, constantly united in one and the same assembly and governed by a single chieftain. Three populations of the same race, distinguished by names borrowed from their geographical situation, just as had happened amongst the Franks in the case of the Austrasians and Neustrians, to wit, Eastphalian or eastern Saxons, Westphalian or western, and Angrians, formed the Saxon confederation. And to them was often added a fourth peoplet of the same origin, closer to the Danes and called North-Albingians, inhabitants of the northern district of the Elbe. These four principal Saxon populations were sub-divided into a large number of tribes, who had their own particular chieftains, and who often decided, each for itself, their conduct and their fate. Charlemagne, knowing how to profit by this want of cohesion and unity amongst his foes, attacked now one and now another of the large Saxon peoplets or the small Saxon tribes, and dealt separately with each of them, according as he found them inclined to submission or resistance. After having, in four or five successive expeditions, gained victories and sustained checks, he thought himself sufficiently advanced in his conquest to put his relations with the Saxons to a grand trial. In 777, he resolved, says Eginhard, “to go and hold, at the place called Paderborn (close to Saxony) the general assembly of his people. On his arrival he found there assembled the senate and people of this perfidious nation, who, conformably to his orders, had repaired thither, seeking to deceive him by a false show of submission and devotion. . . . They earned their pardon, but on this condition, however, that, if hereafter they broke their engagements, they would be deprived of country and liberty. A great number amongst them had themselves baptized on this occasion; but it was with far from sincere intentions that they had testified a desire to become Christians.”
There had been absent from this great meeting a Saxon chieftain called Wittikind, son of Wernekind, king of the Saxons at the north of the Elbe. He had espoused the sister of Siegfried, king of the Danes; and he was the friend of Ratbod, king of the Frisons. A true chieftain at heart as well as by descent, he was made to be the hero of the Saxons just as, seven centuries before, the Cheruscan Herrmann (Arminius) had been the hero of the Germans. Instead of repairing to Paderborn, Wittikind had left Saxony, and taken refuge with his brother-in-law, the king of the Danes. Thence he encouraged his Saxon compatriots, some to persevere in their resistance, others to repent them of their show of submission. War began again; and Wittikind hastened back to take part in it. In 778 the Saxons advanced as far as the Rhine; but, “not having been able to cross this river,” says Eginhard, “they set themselves to lay waste with fire and sword all the towns and all the villages from the city of Duitz (opposite Cologne) as far as the confluence of the Moselle. The churches as well as the houses were laid in ruins from top to bottom. The enemy, in his frenzy, spared neither age nor sex, wishing to show thereby that he had invaded the territory of the Franks, not for plunder, but for revenge!” For three years the struggle continued, more confined in area, but more and more obstinate. Many of the Saxon tribes submitted; many Saxons were baptized; and Siegfried, king of the Danes, sent to Charlemagne a deputation, as if to treat for peace. Wittikind had left Denmark; but he had gone across to her neighbors, the Northmen; and, thence re-entering Saxony, he kindled there an insurrection as fierce as it was unexpected. In 782 two of Charlemagne’s lieutenants were beaten on the banks of the Weser, and killed in the battle, together with four counts and twenty leaders, the noblest in the army; indeed the Franks were nearly all exterminated. “At news of this disaster,” says Eginhard, “Charlemagne, without losing a moment, re-assembled an army and set out for Saxony. He summoned into his presence all the chieftains of the Saxons and demanded of them who had been the promoters of the revolt. All agreed in denouncing Wittikind as the author of this treason. But as they could not deliver him up, because immediately after his sudden attack he had taken refuge with the Northmen, those who, at his instigation, had been accomplices in the crime, were placed, to the number of four thousand five hundred, in the hands of the king; and, by his order, all had their heads cut off the same day, at a place called Werden, on the river Aller. After this deed of vengeance the king retired to Thionville to pass the winter there.”
But the vengeance did not put an end to the war. “Blood calls for blood,” were words spoken in the English parliament, in 1643, by Sir Benjamin Rudyard, one of the best citizens of his country in her hour of revolution. For three years Charlemagne had to redouble his efforts to accomplish in Saxony, at the cost of Frankish as well as Saxon blood, his work of conquest and conversion: “Saxony,” he often repeated, “must be christianized or wiped out.” At last, in 785, after several victories which seemed decisive, he went and settled down in his strong castle of Ehresburg, “whither he made his wife and children come, being resolved to remain there all the bad season,” says Eginhard, and applying himself without cessation to scouring the country of the Saxons and wearing them out by his strong and indomitable determination. But determination did not blind him to prudence and policy. “Having learned that Wittikind and Abbio (another great Saxon chieftain) were abiding in the part of Saxony situated on the other side of the Elbe, he sent to them Saxon envoys to prevail upon them to renounce their perfidy, and come, without hesitation, and trust themselves to him. They, conscious of what they had attempted, dared not at first trust to the king’s word; but having obtained from him the promise they desired of impunity, and, besides, the hostages they demanded as guarantee of their safety, and who were brought to them, on the king’s behalf, by Amalwin, one of the officers of his court, they came with the said lord and presented themselves before the king in his palace of Attigny [Attigny-sur-Aisne, whither Charlemagne had now returned] and there received baptism.”
Charlemagne did more than amnesty Wittikind; he named him Duke of Saxony, but without attaching to the title any right of sovereignty. Wittikind, on his side, did more than come to Attigny and get baptized there; he gave up the struggle, remained faithful to his new engagements, and led, they say, so Christian a life, that some chroniclers have placed him on the list of saints. He was killed in 807, in a battle against Gerold, duke of Suabia, and his tomb is still to be seen at Ratisbonne. Several families of Germany hold him for their ancestor; and some French genealogists have, without solid ground, discovered in him the grandfather of Robert the Strong, great-grandfather of Hugh Capet. However that may be, after making peace with Wittikind, Charlemagne had still, for several years, many insurrections to repress and much rigor to exercise in Saxony, including the removal of certain Saxon peoplets out of their country and the establishment of foreign colonists in the territories thus become vacant; but the great war was at an end, and Charlemagne might consider Saxony incorporated in his dominions.