"You know well that the caliph Abdu-l-Malek Ibnu-l-walid has chosen you, like so many heroes, from among the brave; you know that the great lords of this island are willing to make you their sons and brethren by marriage, if you only rush on like so many brave men to the fight, and behave like true champions and valiant knights; you know that the recompenses of God await you if you are prepared to uphold his words, and proclaim his religion in this island; and, lastly, that all the spoil shall be yours, and of such Moslems as may be with you.

"Bear in mind that God Almighty will select, according to this promise, those that distinguish themselves most among you, and grant them due reward, both in this world and in the future; and know likewise that I shall be the first to set you the example, and to put in practice what I recommend you to do; for it is my intention, on the meeting of the two hosts, to attack the Christian tyrant Roderic, and kill him with my own hand, if God be pleased. When you see me bearing against him, charge along with me; if I kill him, the victory is ours; if I am killed before I reach him, do not trouble yourselves about me, but fight as if I were still alive and among you, and follow up my purpose; for the moment they see their King fall, these barbarians are sure to disperse. If, however, I should be killed, after inflicting death upon their King, appoint a man from among you who unites both courage and experience and may command you in this emergency and follow up the success. If you attend to my instructions, we are sure of the victory."

When Tarik had thus addressed his soldiers and exhorted them to fight with courage and to face the dangers of war with a stout heart—when he had thus recommended them to make a simultaneous attack upon Roderic's men, and promised them abundant reward if they routed their enemies—their countenances were suddenly expanded with joy their hopes were strengthened, the gales of victory began to blow on their side, and they all unanimously answered him: "We are ready to follow thee, O Tarik! We shall all, to one man, stand by thee and fight for thee; nor could we avoid it were we otherwise disposed—victory is our only hope of salvation."

After this Tarik mounted his horse, and his men did the same; and they all passed that night in constant watch for fear of the enemy. On the following morning, when day dawned, both armies prepared for battle; each general formed his cavalry and his infantry, and, the signal being given, the armies met with a shock, similar to that of two mountains dashing against each other.

King Roderic came, borne on a throne, and having over his head an awning of variegated silk to guard him from the rays of the sun, surrounded by warriors, cased in bright steel, with fluttering pennons and a profusion of banners and standards.

Tarik's men were differently arrayed; their breasts were covered with mail armor; they wore white turbans on their heads, the Arabian bow slung across their backs, their swords suspended in their girdles, and their long spears firmly grasped in their hands.

They say that when the two armies were advancing upon each other, and the eyes of Roderic fell upon the men in the first ranks, he was horror-stricken, and was heard to exclaim: "By the faith of the Messiah! These are the very men I saw painted on the scroll found in the mansion of science at Toledo;" and from that moment fear entered his heart; and when Tarik perceived Roderic, he said to his followers, "This is the King of the Christians," and he charged with his men, the warriors who surrounded Roderic being on all sides scattered and dispersed; seeing which, Tarik plunged into the ranks of the enemy until he reached the King, and wounded him with his sword on the head and killed him on his throne; and when Rodericks men saw their King fall, and his bodyguard dispersed, the rout became general, and victory remained with the Moslems.

The rout of the Christians was complete, for instead of rallying on one spot, they fled in all directions, and, their panic being communicated to their countrymen, cities opened their gates, and castles surrendered without resistance.

The preceding account we have borrowed from a writer of great note, but we deem it necessary to warn the readers that the assertion that Roderic died by the hands of Tarik has been contradicted by several historians, since his body, although diligently sought on the field of battle, could nowhere be found.

We shall proceed to recount in detail that memorable battle, when Almighty God was pleased to put King Roderic's army to flight and grant the Moslems a most complete victory. Several authors who have described at large this famous engagement state that Tarik encamped near Roderic, toward the middle of the month of Ramadan of the year 92 (September, A.D. 711), and although there is some difference as to the dates, all agree that the battle was fought on the banks of the Guadalete. They say also that while both armies were encamped in front of each other, the barbarian King, wishing to ascertain the exact amount of Tarik's forces, sent one of his men, whose valor and strength he knew, and in whose fidelity he placed unbounded confidence, with instructions to penetrate into Tarik's camp, and bring him an account of their number, arms, accoutrements, and vessels.

The Christian proceeded to execute his commission, and reached a small elevation, whence he had a commanding view of the whole camp. However, he had not remained long in his place of observation before he was discovered by some Moslems, who pursued him; but the Christian fled before them, and escaped through the swiftness of his horse.

Arrived at the Christian camp, he addressed Roderic in the following words: "These people, O King! are the same that thou sawest painted on the scroll of the enchanted palace. Beware of them! for the greatest part of them have bound themselves by oath to reach thee or die in the attempt; they have set fire to their vessels, to destroy their last hope of escape; they are encamped along the sea-shore, determined to die or to vanquish, for they know well that there is not in this country a place whither they can fly." On hearing this account, King Roderic was much disheartened, and he trembled with fear. However, the two armies engaged near the lake or gulf; they fought resolutely on both sides till the right and left wings of Roderic's army, under the command of the sons of Wittiza, gave way. The centre, in which Roderic was, still held firm for a while, and made the fate of the battle uncertain for some time; they fled at last, and Roderic before them. From that moment the rout became general, and the Moslems followed with ardor the pursuit of the scattered bands, inflicting death wherever they went.

Roderic disappeared in the midst of the battle, and no certain intelligence was afterward received of him. It is true that some Moslems found his favorite steed, a milk-white horse, bearing a saddle of gold, sparkling with rubies, plunged in the mud of the river, as also one of his sandals, adorned with rubies and emeralds, but the other was never found; nor was Roderic, although diligently searched for, ever discovered either dead or alive, a circumstance which led the Moslems to believe that he perished in the stream, the weight of his armor preventing him from struggling against the current, and he was drowned; but God only knows what became of him.

According to Ar-razi, the contest began on Sunday, two days before the end of Ramadan, and continued till Sunday, the 5th of Shawal; namely, eight whole days; at the end of which God Almighty was pleased to put the idolaters to flight, and grant the victory to the Moslems; and he adds that so great was the number of the Goths who perished in the battle that for a long time after the victory the bones of the slain were to be seen covering the field of action.

They say also that the spoil found by the Moslems in the camp of the Christians surpassed all computation, for the princes and great men of the Goths who had fallen were distinguished by the rings of gold they wore on their fingers, those of an inferior class by similar ornaments of silver, while those of the slaves were made of brass. Tarik collected all the spoil and divided it into five shares or portions, when, after deducting one-fifth, he distributed the rest among nine thousand Moslems, besides the slaves and followers.

When the people on the other side of the straits heard of this success of Tarik, and of the plentiful spoils he had acquired, they flocked to him from all quarters, and crossed the sea on every vessel or bark they could lay hold of. Tank's army being so considerably reinforced, the Christians were obliged to shut themselves up in their castles and fortresses, and, quitting the flat country, betake themselves to their mountains.



BATTLE OF TOURS

A.D. 732

SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY

When the Saracens had completed the conquest of Spain and all that country was wholly under their dominion, they determined to extend their authority over the neighboring country of the Franks.

Having crossed the Pyrenees they met with but slight opposition and soon succeeded in making themselves masters of Southern France, thereby furthering and encouraging their boastful ambition to conquer and Islamize the whole world.

Already had Africa, Asia Minor, and Eastern Europe acknowledged their rule, and the final subjugation of all Christendom by the Mahometan sword seemed certain and imminent.

Their long and uninterrupted career of success had fed their arrogance and filled them with a proud confidence in the invincibility of their arms, and their farther advance into the heart of Europe seemed, in the eyes of Christian and pagan alike, to be the irresistible march of destiny.

The Saracen host had not penetrated far into the Frankish territory when they encountered "a lion in the path," in the person of Charles (or Karl), the great palace-mayor—so called, but who was in reality the defacto sovereign of the Frankish kingdoms.

To Charles, famous for his military skill and prestige, came the recently defeated Eudes, the count of Aquitaine, and the remnant of his force, craving his protection and leadership against the advancing Saracen horde.

Charles' signal victory over the Saracen invaders proved to be the turning-point in the Moslem career of conquest. The question whether the Koran or the Bible, the Crescent or the Cross, Mahomet or Christ, should rule Europe and the western world was decided forever upon the bloody field of Tours.

The broad tract of champaign country which intervenes between the cities of Poitiers and Tours is principally composed of a succession of rich pasture lands, which are traversed and fertilized by the Cher, the Creuse, the Vienne, the Claine, the Indre, and other tributaries of the river Loire. Here and there the ground swells into picturesque eminences, and occasionally a belt of forest land, a brown heath, or a clustering series of vineyards breaks the monotony of the widespread meadows; but the general character of the land is that of a grassy plain, and it seems naturally adapted for the evolutions of numerous armies, especially of those vast bodies of cavalry which principally decided the fate of nations during the centuries that followed the downfall of Rome and preceded the consolidation of the modern European powers.

This region has been signalized by more than one memorable conflict; but it is principally interesting to the historian by having been the scene of the great victory won by Charles Martel over the Saracens, A.D. 732, which gave a decisive check to the career of Arab conquest in Western Europe, rescued Christendom from Islam, preserved the relics of ancient and the germs of modern civilization, and reestablished the old superiority of the Indo-European over the Semitic family of mankind.

Sismondi and Michelet have underrated the enduring interest of this great Appeal of Battle between the champions of the Crescent and the Cross. But, if French writers have slighted the exploits of their national hero, the Saracenic trophies of Charles Martel have had full justice done to them by English and German historians. Gibbon devotes several pages of his great work[69] to the narrative of the battle of Tours, and to the consideration of the consequences which probably would have resulted if Abderrahman's enterprise had not been crushed by the Frankish chief. Schlegel speaks of this "mighty victory" in terms of fervent gratitude, and tells how "the arm of Charles Martel saved and delivered the Christian nations of the West from the deadly grasp of all-destroying Islam"; and Ranke points out, as "one of the most important epochs in the history of the world, the commencement of the eighth century, when on the one side Mahometanism threatened to overspread Italy and Gaul, and on the other the ancient idolatry of Saxony and Friesland once more forced its way across the Rhine. In this peril of Christian institutions, a youthful prince of Germanic race, Charles (or Karl) Martel, arose as their champion, maintained them with all the energy which the necessity for self-defence calls forth, and finally extended them into new regions."

Arnold ranks the victory of Charles Martel even higher than the victory of Arminius, "among those signal deliverances which have affected for centuries the happiness of mankind." In fact, the more we test its importance, the higher we shall be led to estimate it; and, though all authentic details which we possess of its circumstances and its heroes are but meagre, we can trace enough of its general character to make us watch with deep interest this encounter between the rival conquerors of the decaying Roman Empire. That old classic world, the history of which occupies so large a portion of our early studies, lay, in the eighth century of our era, utterly exanimate and overthrown. On the north the German, on the south the Arab, was rending away its provinces. At last the spoilers encountered one another, each striving for the full mastery of the prey. Their conflict brought back upon the memory of Gibbon the old Homeric simile, where the strife of Hector and Patroclus over the dead body of Cebriones is compared to the combat of two lions, that in their hate and hunger fight together on the mountain tops over the carcass of a slaughtered stag; and the reluctant yielding of the Saracen power to the superior might of the northern warriors might not inaptly recall those other lines of the same book of the Iliad, where the downfall of Patroclus beneath Hector is likened to the forced yielding of the panting and exhausted wild boar, that had long and furiously fought with a superior beast of prey for the possession of the scanty fountain among the rocks at which each burned to drink.

Although three centuries had passed away since the Germanic conquerors of Rome had crossed the Rhine, never to repass that frontier stream, no settled system of institutions or government, no amalgamation of the various races into one people, no uniformity of language or habits had been established in the country at the time when Charles Martel was called to repel the menacing tide of Saracenic invasion from the south. Gaul was not yet France. In that, as in other provinces of the Roman Empire of the West, the dominion of the Caesars had been shattered as early as the fifth century, and barbaric kingdoms and principalities had promptly arisen on the ruins of the Roman power. But few of these had any permanency, and none of them consolidated the rest, or any considerable number of the rest, into one coherent and organized civil and political society.

The great bulk of the population still consisted of the conquered provincials, that is to say, of Romanized Celts, of a Gallic race which had long been under the dominion of the Caesars, and had acquired, together with no slight infusion of Roman blood, the language, the literature, the laws, and the civilization of Latium. Among these, and dominant over them, roved or dwelt the German victors; some retaining nearly all the rude independence of their primitive national character, others softened and disciplined by the aspect and contact of the manners and institutions of civilized life; for it is to be borne in mind that the Roman Empire in the West was not crushed by any sudden avalanche of barbaric invasion. The German conquerors came across the Rhine, not in enormous hosts, but in bands of a few thousand warriors at a time. The conquest of a province was the result of an infinite series of partial local invasions, carried on by little armies of this description. The victorious warriors either retired with their booty or fixed themselves in the invaded district, taking care to keep sufficiently concentrated for military purposes, and ever ready for some fresh foray, either against a rival Teutonic band or some hitherto unassailed city of the provincials.

Gradually, however, the conquerors acquired a desire for permanent landed possessions. They lost somewhat of the restless thirst for novelty and adventure which had first made them throng beneath the banner of the boldest captains of their tribe, and leave their native forests for a roving military life on the left bank of the Rhine. They were converted to the Christian faith, and gave up with their old creed much of the coarse ferocity which must have been fostered in the spirits of the ancient warriors of the North by a mythology which promised, as the reward of the brave on earth, an eternal cycle of fighting and drunkenness in heaven.

But, although their conversion and other civilizing influences operated powerfully upon the Germans in Gaul, and although the Franks—who were originally a confederation of the Teutonic tribes that dwelt between the Rhine, the Maine, and the Weser—established a decisive superiority over the other conquerors of the province, as well as over the conquered provincials, the country long remained a chaos of uncombined and shifting elements. The early princes of the Merovingian dynasty were generally occupied in wars against other princes of their house, occasioned by the frequent subdivisions of the Frank monarchy; and the ablest and best of them had found all their energies tasked to the utmost to defend the barrier of the Rhine against the pagan Germans who strove to pass that river and gather their share of the spoils of the Empire.

The conquests which the Saracens effected over the southern and eastern provinces of Rome were far more rapid than those achieved by the Germans in the North, and the new organizations of society which the Moslems introduced were summarily and uniformly enforced. Exactly a century passed between the death of Mahomet and the date of the battle of Tours. During that century the followers of the prophet had torn away half the Roman Empire; and besides their conquests over Persia, the Saracens had overrun Syria, Egypt, Africa, and Spain, in an unchecked and apparently irresistible career of victory. Nor, at the commencement of the eighth century of our era, was the Mahometan world divided against itself, as it subsequently became. All these vast regions obeyed the Caliph; throughout them all, from the Pyrenees to the Oxus, the name of Mahomet was invoked in prayer and the Koran revered as the book of the law.

It was under one of their ablest and most renowned commanders, with a veteran army, and with every apparent advantage of time, place, and circumstance, that the Arabs made their great effort at the conquest of Europe north of the Pyrenees. The victorious Moslem soldiery in Spain,

"A countless multitude, Syrian, Moor, Saracen, Greek renegade, Persian, and Copt, and Tartar, in one bond Of erring faith conjoined—strong in the youth And heat of zeal—a dreadful brotherhood,"

were eager for the plunder of more Christian cities and shrines, and full of fanatic confidence in the invincibility of their arms.

"Nor were the chiefs Of victory less assured, by long success Elate, and proud of that o'erwhelming strength Which, surely they believed, as it had rolled Thus far unchecked, would roll victorious on, Till, like the Orient, the subjected West Should bow in reverence at Mahomet's name; And pilgrims from remotest arctic shores Tread with religious feet the burning sands Of Araby and Mecca's stony soil."

—Southey's Roderick,

It is not only by the modern Christian poet, but by the old Arabian chroniclers also, that these feelings of ambition and arrogance are attributed to the Moslems who had overthrown the Visigoth power in Spain. And their eager expectations of new wars were excited to the utmost on the reappointment by the Caliph of Abderrahman Ibn Abdillah Alghafeki to the government of that country, A.D. 729, which restored them a general who had signalized his skill and prowess during the conquests of Africa and Spain, whose ready valor and generosity had made him the idol of the troops, who had already been engaged in several expeditions into Gaul, so as to be well acquainted with the national character and tactics of the Franks, and who was known to thirst, like a good Moslem, for revenge for the slaughter of some detachments of the "true believers," which had been cut off on the north of the Pyrenees.

In addition to his cardinal military virtues Abderrahman is described by the Arab writers as a model of integrity and justice. The first two years of his second administration in Spain were occupied in severe reforms of the abuses which under his predecessors had crept into the system of government, and in extensive preparations for his intended conquest in Gaul. Besides the troops which he collected from his province, he obtained from Africa a large body of chosen Berber cavalry, officered by Arabs of proved skill and valor; and in the summer of 732 he crossed the Pyrenees at the head of an army which some Arab writers rate at eighty thousand strong, while some of the Christian chroniclers swell its numbers to many hundreds of thousands more. Probably the Arab account diminishes, but of the two keeps nearer to the truth.

It was from this formidable host, after Eudes, the count of Aquitaine, had vainly striven to check it, after many strong cities had fallen before it, and half the land had been overrun, that Gaul and Christendom were at last rescued by the strong arm of Prince Charles, who acquired a surname (Martel, the "Hammer") like that of the war-god of his forefathers' creed, from the might with which he broke and shattered his enemies in the battle.

The Merovingian kings had sunk into absolute insignificance, and had become mere puppets of royalty before the eighth century. Charles Martel, like his father, Pepin Heristal, was duke of the Austrasian Franks, the bravest and most thoroughly Germanic part of the nation, and exercised, in the name of the titular king, what little paramount authority the turbulent minor rulers of districts and towns could be persuaded or compelled to acknowledge. Engaged with his national competitors in perpetual conflicts for power, and in more serious struggles for safety against the fierce tribes of the unconverted Frisians, Bavarians, Saxons, and Thuringians, who at that epoch assailed with peculiar ferocity the Christianized Germans on the left bank of the Rhine, Charles Martel added experienced skill to his natural courage, and he had also formed a militia of veterans among the Franks.

Hallam has thrown out a doubt whether, in our admiration of his victory at Tours, we do not judge a little too much by the event, and whether there was not rashness in his risking the fate of France on the result of a general battle with the invaders. But when we remember that Charles had no standing army, and the independent spirit of the Frank warriors who followed his standard, it seems most probable that it was not in his power to adopt the cautious policy of watching the invaders, and wearing out their strength by delay. So dreadful and so widespread were the ravages of the Saracenic light cavalry throughout Gaul that it must have been impossible to restrain for any length of time the indignant ardor of the Franks. And, even if Charles could have persuaded his men to look tamely on while the Arabs stormed more towns and desolated more districts, he could not have kept an army together when the usual period of a military expedition had expired. If, indeed, the Arab account of the disorganization of the Moslem forces be correct, the battle was as well timed on the part of Charles as it was, beyond all question, well fought.

The monkish chroniclers, from whom we are obliged to glean a narrative of this memorable campaign, bear full evidence to the terror which the Saracen invasion inspired, and to the agony of that great struggle. The Saracens, say they, and their King, who was called Abdirames, came out of Spain, with all their wives, and their children, and their substance, in such great multitudes that no man could reckon or estimate them. They brought with them all their armor, and whatever they had, as if they were thenceforth always to dwell in France.

"Then Abderrahman, seeing the land filled with the multitude of his army, pierces through the mountains, tramples over rough and level ground, plunders far into the country of the Franks, and smites all with the sword, insomuch that when Eudes came to battle with him at the river Garonne, and fled before him, God alone knows the number of the slain. Then Abderrahman pursued after Count Eudes, and while he strives to spoil and burn the holy shrine at Tours he encounters the chief of the Austrasian Franks, Charles, a man of war from his youth up, to whom Eudes had sent warning. There for nearly seven days they strive intensely, and at last they set themselves in battle array, and the nations of the North, standing firm as a wall and impenetrable as a zone of ice, utterly slay the Arabs with the edge of the sword."

The European writers all concur in speaking of the fall of Abderrahman as one of the principal causes of the defeat of the Arabs; who, according to one writer, after finding that their leader was slain, dispersed in the night, to the agreeable surprise of the Christians, who expected the next morning to see them issue from their tents and renew the combat. One monkish chronicler puts the loss of the Arabs at three hundred and seventy-five thousand men, while he says that only one thousand and seven Christians fell; a disparity of loss which he feels bound to account for by a special interposition of Providence. I have translated above some of the most spirited passages of these writers; but it is impossible to collect from them anything like a full or authentic description of the great battle itself, or of the operations which preceded and followed it.

Though, however, we may have cause to regret the meagreness and doubtful character of these narratives, we have the great advantage of being able to compare the accounts given of Abderrahman's expedition by the national writers of each side. This is a benefit which the inquirer into antiquity so seldom can obtain that the fact of possessing it, in the case of the battle of Tours, makes us think the historical testimony respecting that great event more certain and satisfactory than is the case in many other instances, where we possess abundant details respecting military exploits, but where those details come to us from the annalist of one nation only, and where we have, consequently, no safeguard against the exaggerations, the distortions, and the fictions which national vanity has so often put forth in the garb and under the title of history. The Arabian writers who recorded the conquests and wars of their countrymen in Spain have narrated also the expedition into Gaul of their great Emir, and his defeat and death near Tours, in battle with the host of the Franks under "King Caldus," the name into which they metamorphose Charles Martel.

They tell us how there was war between the count of the Frankish frontier and the Moslems, and how the count gathered together all his people, and fought for a time with doubtful success. "But," say the Arabian chroniclers, "Abderrahman drove them back; and the men of Abderrahman were puffed up in spirit by their repeated successes, and they were full of trust in the valor and the practice in war of their Emir. So the Moslems smote their enemies, and passed the river Garonne, and laid waste the country, and took captives without number. And that army went through all places like a desolating storm. Prosperity made these warriors insatiable. At the passage of the river Abderrahman overthrew the count, and the count retired into his stronghold, but the Moslems fought against it, and entered it by force and slew the count; for everything gave way to their cimeters, which were the robbers of lives.

"All the nations of the Franks trembled at that terrible army, and they betook them to their king 'Caldus,' and told him of the havoc made by the Moslem horsemen, and how they rode at their will through all the land of Narbonne, Toulouse, and Bordeaux, and they told the King of the death of their count. Then the King bade them be of good cheer, and offered to aid them. And in the 114th year[70] he mounted his horse, and he took with him a host that could not be numbered, and went against the Moslems. And he came upon them at the great city of Tours. And Abderrahman and other prudent cavaliers saw the disorder of the Moslem troops, who were loaded with spoil; but they did not venture to displease the soldiers by ordering them to abandon everything except their arms and war-horses. And Abderrahman trusted in the valor of his soldiers, and in the good fortune which had ever attended him. But, the Arab writer remarks, such defect of discipline always is fatal to armies.

"So Abderrahman and his host attacked Tours to gain still more spoil, and they fought against it so fiercely that they stormed the city almost before the eyes of the army that came to save it, and the fury and the cruelty of the Moslems toward the inhabitants of the city were like the fury and cruelty of raging tigers. It was manifest," adds the Arab, "that God's chastisement was sure to follow such excesses, and Fortune thereupon turned her back upon the Moslems.

"Near the river Owar,[71] the two great hosts of the two languages and the two creeds were set in array against each other. The hearts of Abderrahman, his captains, and his men, were filled with wrath and pride, and they were the first to begin the fight. The Moslem horsemen dashed fierce and frequent forward against the battalions of the Franks, who resisted man-fully, and many fell dead on either side, until the going down of the sun. Night parted the two armies, but in the gray of the morning the Moslems returned to the battle. Their cavaliers had soon hewn their way into the centre of the Christian host. But many of the Moslems were fearful for the safety of the spoil which they had stored in their tents, and a false cry arose in their ranks that some of the enemy were plundering the camp; whereupon several squadrons of the Moslem horsemen rode off to protect their tents. But it seemed as if they fled, and all the host was troubled.

"And while Abderrahman strove to check their tumult and to lead them back to battle, the warriors of the Franks came around him, and he was pierced through with many spears, so that he died. Then all the host fled before the enemy and many died in the flight. This deadly defeat of the Moslems, and the loss of the great leader and good cavalier Abderrahman, took place in the hundred and fifteenth year."[72]

It would be difficult to expect from an adversary a more explicit confession of having been thoroughly vanquished than the Arabs here accord to the Europeans. The points on which their narrative differs from those of the Christians—as to how many days the conflict lasted, whether the assailed city was actually rescued or not, and the like—are of little moment compared with the admitted great fact that there was a decisive trial of strength between Frank and Saracen, in which the former conquered. The enduring importance of the battle of Tours in the eyes of the Moslems is attested not only by the expressions of "the deadly battle" and "the disgraceful overthrow" which their writers constantly employ when referring to it, but also by the fact that no more serious attempts at conquest beyond the Pyrenees were made by the Saracens.

Charles Martel and his son and grandson were left at leisure to consolidate and extend their power. The new Christian Roman Empire of the West, which the genius of Charlemagne founded, and throughout which his iron will imposed peace on the old anarchy of creeds and races, did not indeed retain its integrity after its great ruler's death. Fresh troubles came over Europe, but Christendom, though disunited, was safe. The progress of civilization, and the development of the nationalities and governments of modern Europe, from that time forth went forward in not uninterrupted, but ultimately certain, career.

FOOTNOTES:

[69] Gibbon remarks that if the Saracen conquests had not then been checked, "perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet."

[70] Of the Hegira.

[71] Probably the Loire.

[72] An. Heg.



FOUNDING OF THE CARLOVINGIAN DYNASTY

PEPIN THE SHORT USURPS THE FRANKISH CROWN

A.D. 751

FRANCOIS P.G. GUIZOT

The Merovingians, the first dynasty of the Frankish kings in Gaul, was founded by the greatest of their kings, Clovis, who in 486 overthrew the Gallo-Roman sway under Syagrius, near Soissons. After his death in 511 his kingdom was divided among four sons who were mere boys ranging from twelve to eighteen years of age. The young princes extended the conquests of their father until they had secured from the emperor Justinian title to the whole of Gaul. The last survivor of the brother-kings was Clotaire I. Under his rule the whole Frankish empire had been united in one; but on his decease it was again divided among sons. This division cut the kingdom into three separate sovereignties.

The reign of these brothers was one of horrible cruelty and bloodshed. A second Clotaire survived them and brought the monarchy under one sceptre. But power slipped fast from this royal representative of the Merovingian race, and the mayor of the palace (major-domus) began to exercise an authority which in time resulted in supremacy. When Pepin of Heristal, the greatest territorial lord of Austrasia, took upon himself the office of major-domus, he compelled the Merovingian King, at the battle of Testry in 687, to invest him with the powers of that office in the three Frankish states, Neustria, Austrasia, and Burgundy. This being accomplished Pepin was practically dictator, and the Merovingians, though allowed to remain on the throne, were simply figure-heads from that time forth. Charles Martel was a son worthy of Pepin of Heristal. His most notable achievement was the defeat of the Saracen invaders at the battle of Tours, A.D. 732, which ended the advance of Mahometanism through Western Europe.

Charles Martel died October 22, 741, at Kiersey-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 his 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 Alemannia. 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 Alamannians 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 while crossing the Alps. The furious internal dissensions among 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 Childeric 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 Wuerzburg, and Fulrad, abbot of St. Denis, "to consult the pontiff," says Eginhard, "on the subject of the kings then existing among 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 among 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 their 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 archbishop; "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 among 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, while 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 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 at 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."

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 toward 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 reinforcements. 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 Waif re 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 toward 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, while 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 awhile 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 among 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: (1) That he would not again make a hostile attack on Roman territory, or wage war against the Pope or people of Rome; (2) 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.



CAREER OF CHARLEMAGNE

A.D. 772-814

FRANCOIS P.G. GUIZOT

In Charles, the son of Pepin the Short, later known as Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, the Carlovingians saw the culminating glory of their line, while in French history the splendor of his name outshines that of all other rulers. It seemed an act of fate that his brother and joint heir to the Frankish kingdom should die and leave the monarchy wholly in his hands, for his genius was to prove equal to its field of action.

The kingdom which Charlemagne inherited was great in extent, lying mainly between the Loire and the Rhine, including Alemannia and Burgundy, while his sphere of influence—to use the modern phrase—covered many provinces and districts over which his rule was wholly or in part acknowledged—Aquitaine, Bavaria, Brittany, Frisia, Thuringia, and others.

To enlarge still further the bounds of his kingdom was the task to which the young monarch at once addressed himself, and upon which he entered with all the advantages of family prestige, a commanding and engaging personality, proven courage and skill in war, as well as talent and accomplishments in civil affairs.

The central purpose of Charlemagne, to the service of which all his policies and his conduct were directed, was the maintenance of the Christian religion as embodied in the Western Church, whose great champion he became, and in that character occupies his lofty place in the history of Europe and of the world. At this period the two great powers in the Christian world were the Roman pontiff and the Frankish king; and when, on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor of the Romans, and in the Holy Roman Empire restored the Western Empire, extinct since 476, he welded church and state in what long proved to be indissoluble bonds, somewhat—it must be added—to the chagrin of the Byzantine emperors of the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople. This was an event the significance of which only later times could learn to estimate. The Holy Roman Empire henceforth held a leading part in the world's affairs, the influence of which is still active in the survivals of its power among nations.

Charlemagne served the Church and fulfilled his own purposes through the military subjugation of all whom he could overcome among the barbarians and heathens of his time. And the powers which he gained as conqueror he exercised with equal ability and steadfastness of purpose in his capacity as foremost secular ruler in the world. By the union of the Teutonic with the Roman interests, and of northern vigor with the culture of the South, it is considered by the historians of our own day that Charlemagne proved himself the beginner of a new era—in fact, as Bryce declares, of modern history itself.

Gibbon has said that of all the heroes to whom the title of "the Great" has been given, Charlemagne alone has retained it as a permanent addition to his name.

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 afterward in 771, reestablished unity more surely than the reconciliation had reestablished 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.

From 769 to 813, in Germany and Western and Northern Europe, Charlemagne conducted thirty-one campaigns against the Saxons, Frisians, 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; among which those he undertook against the Saxons, the Lombards, and the Arabs were long and difficult wars. It were 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.

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 Saxon's stout resistance," says Eginhard, "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 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 (Herman) 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 (Hermann-Seule, or Herman'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 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, amid 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 naught 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 Frisians; we have received them in peace, and when their messages had 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 among 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 people 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 subdivided 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 among 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 this 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 among 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 Frisians. 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 Herman (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 reentering 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, reassembled 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. 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 Ratisbon. 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.

He had still, in Germany and all around, many enemies to fight and many campaigns to reopen. Even among the Germanic populations, which were regarded as reduced under the sway of the King of the Franks, some, the Frisians and Saxons, as well as others, were continually agitating for the recovery of their independence. Farther off, toward the north, east, and south, people differing in origin and language—Avars, Huns, Slavons, Bulgarians, Danes, and Northmen—were still pressing or beginning to press upon the frontiers of the Frankish dominion, for the purpose of either penetrating within or settling at the threshold as powerful and formidable neighbors. Charlemagne had plenty to do, with the view at one time of checking their incursions, and at another of destroying or hurling back to a distance their settlements; and he brought his usual vigor and perseverance to bear on this second struggle. But by the conquest of Saxony he had attained his direct national object: the great flood of population from east to west came, and broke against the Gallo-Franco-Germanic dominion as against an insurmountable rampart.

This was not, however, Charlemagne's only great enterprise at this epoch, nor the only great struggle he had to maintain. While he was incessantly fighting in Germany, the work of policy commenced by his father Pepin in Italy called for his care and his exertions. The new King of the Lombards, Didier, and the new Pope, Adrian I, had entered upon a new war; and Didier was besieging Rome, which was energetically defended by the Pope and its inhabitants. In 773, Adrian invoked the aid of the King of the Franks, whom his envoys succeeded, not without difficulty, in finding at Thionville. Charlemagne could not abandon the grand position left him by his father as protector of the papacy and as patrician of Rome. The possessions, moreover, wrested by Didier from the Pope were exactly those which Pepin had won by conquest from King Astolphus, and had presented to the Papacy. Charlemagne was besides, on his own account, on bad terms with the King of the Lombards, whose daughter, Desiree, he had married, and afterward repudiated and sent home to her father, in order to marry Hildegarde, a Suabian by nation. Didier, in dudgeon, had given an asylum to Carloman's widow and sons, on whose intrigues Charlemagne kept a watchful eye. Being prudent and careful of appearances, even when he was preparing to strike a heavy blow, Charlemagne tried, by means of special envoys, to obtain from the King of the Lombards what the Pope demanded. On Didier's refusal he at once set to work, convoked the general meeting of the Franks, at Geneva, in the autumn of 773, gained them over, not without encountering some objections, to the projected Italian expedition, and forthwith commenced the campaign with two armies. One was to cross the Valais and descend upon Lombardy by Mount St. Bernard; Charlemagne in person led the other, by Mount Cenis. The Lombards, at the outlet of the passes of the Alps, offered a vigorous resistance; but when the second army had penetrated into Italy by Mount St. Bernard, Didier, threatened in his rear, retired precipitately, and, driven from position to position, was obliged to go and shut himself up in Pavia, the strongest place in his kingdom, whither Charlemagne, having received on the march the submission of the principal counts and nearly all the towns of Lombardy, came promptly to besiege him.

To place textually before the reader a fragment of an old chronicle will serve better than any modern description to show the impression of admiration and fear produced upon his contemporaries by Charlemagne, his person and his power. At the close of this ninth century a monk of the abbey of St. Gall, in Switzerland, had collected, direct from the mouth of one of Charlemagne's warriors, Adalbert, numerous stories of his campaigns and his life. These stories are full of fabulous legends, puerile anecdotes, distorted reminiscences and chronological errors, and they are written sometimes with a credulity and exaggeration of language which raise a smile; but they reveal the state of men's minds and fancies within the circle of Charlemagne's influence and at the sight of him. This monk gives a naive account of Charlemagne's arrival before Pavia, and of the King of the Lombard's disquietude at his approach. Didier had with him at that time one of Charlemagne's most famous comrades, Ogier the Dane, who fills a prominent place in the romances and epopaeias, relating to chivalry, of that age. Ogier had quarrelled with his great chief and taken refuge with the King of the Lombards. It is probable that his Danish origin and his relations with the King of the Danes, Gottfried, for a long time an enemy of the Franks, had something to do with his misunderstanding with Charlemagne. However that may have been, "when Didier and Ogger (for so the monk calls him) heard that the dread monarch was coming, they ascended a tower of vast height whence they could watch his arrival from afar off and from every quarter. They saw, first of all, engines of war such as must have been necessary for the armies of Darius or Julius Caesar. 'Is not Charles,' asked Didier of Ogger, 'with his great army?' But the other answered, 'No.' The Lombard, seeing afterward an immense body of soldiery gathered from all quarters of the vast empire, said to Ogger, 'Certes, Charles advanceth in triumph in the midst of this throng.' 'No, not yet; he will not appear so soon,' was the answer. 'What should we do, then,' rejoined Didier, who began to be perturbed, 'should he come accompanied by a larger band of warriors?' 'You will see what he is when he comes,' replied Ogger, 'but as to what will become of us, I know nothing.' As they were thus parleying appeared the body of guards that knew no repose; and at this sight the Lombard, overcome with dread, cried, 'This time 'tis surely Charles.' 'No,' answered Ogger, 'not yet.' In their wake came the bishops, the abbots, the ordinaries of the chapels royal, and the counts; and then Didier, no longer able to bear the light of day or to face death, cried out with groans, 'Let us descend and hide ourselves in the bowels of the earth, far from the face and the fury of so terrible a foe.' Trembling the while, Ogger, who knew by experience what were the power and might of Charles, and who had learned the lesson by long consuetude in better days, then said, 'When ye shall behold the crops shaking for fear in the fields, and the gloomy Po and the Ticino overflowing the walls of the city with their waves blackened with steel (iron), then may ye think that Charles is coming.' He had not ended these words when there began to be seen in the west, as it were a black cloud, raised by the northwest wind or by Boreas, which turned the brightest day into awful shadows. But as the Emperor drew nearer and nearer, the gleam of arms caused to shine on the people shut up within the city a day more gloomy than any kind of night. And then appeared Charles himself, that man of steel, with his head encased in a helmet of steel, his hands garnished with gauntlets of steel, his heart of steel and his shoulders of marble protected by a cuirass of steel, and his left hand armed with a lance of steel which he held aloft in the air, for as to his right hand he kept that continually on the hilt of his invincible sword. The outside of his thighs, which the rest, for their greater ease in mounting a-horseback, were wont to leave unshackled even by straps, he wore encircled by plates of steel. What shall I say concerning his boots? All the army were wont to have them invariably of steel; on his buckler there was naught to be seen but steel; his horse was of the color and the strength of steel. All those who went before the monarch, all those who marched at his side, all those who followed after, even the whole mass of the army had armor of the like sort, so far as the means of each permitted. The fields and the high-ways were covered with steel: the points of steel reflected the rays of the sun; and this steel, so hard, was borne by a people with hearts still harder. The flash of steel spread terror throughout the streets of the city. 'What steel! alack, what steel!' Such were the bewildered cries the citizens raised. The firmness of manhood and of youth gave way at sight of the steel; and the steel paralyzed the wisdom of graybeards. That which I, poor tale-teller, mumbling and toothless, have attempted to depict in a long description, Ogger perceived at one rapid glance, and said to Didier, 'Here is what ye have so anxiously sought': and while uttering these words he fell down almost lifeless."

The monk of St. Gall does King Didier and his people wrong. They showed more firmness and valor than he ascribes to them; they resisted Charlemagne obstinately, and repulsed his first assaults so well that he changed the siege into an investment, and settled down before Pavia, as if making up his mind for a long operation. His camp became a town; he sent for Queen Hildegarde and her court; and he had a chapel built where he celebrated the festival of Christmas. But on the arrival of spring, close upon the festival of Easter, 774, wearied with the duration of the investment, he left to his lieutenants the duty of keeping it up, and, attended by a numerous and brilliant following, set off for Rome, whither the Pope was urgently pressing him to come.

On Holy Saturday, April 1, 774, Charlemagne found, at three miles from Rome, the magistrates and the banner of the city, sent forward by the Pope to meet him; at one mile all the municipal bodies and the pupils of the schools carrying palm branches and singing hymns; and at the gate of the city, the cross, which was never taken out save for exarchs and patricians. At sight of the cross Charlemagne dismounted, entered Rome on foot, ascended the steps of the ancient basilica of St. Peter, repeating at each step a sign of respectful piety, and was received at the top by the Pope himself. All around him and in the streets a chant was sung, "Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord!" At his entry and during his sojourn at Rome, Charlemagne gave the most striking proofs of Christian faith and respect for the head of the Church. According to the custom of pilgrims he visited all the basilicas, and in that of Sta. Maria Maggiore he performed his solemn devotions. Then, passing to temporal matters, he caused to be brought and read over, in his private conferences with the Pope, the deed of territorial gift made by his father Pepin to Stephen II, and with his own lips dictated the confirmation of it, adding thereto a new gift of certain territories which he was in course of wresting by conquest from the Lombards. Pope Adrian, on his side, rendered to him, with a mixture of affection and dignity, all the honors and all the services which could at one and the same time satisfy and exalt the King and the priest, the protector and the protected. He presented to Charlemagne a book containing a collection of the canons written by the pontiffs from the origin of the Church, and he put at the beginning of the book, which was dedicated to Charlemagne, an address in forty-five irregular verses, written with his own hand, which formed an anagram: "Pope Adrian to his most excellent son, Charlemagne, king" (Domino excellentissimo filio Carolo Magno regi, Hadrianus papa). At the same time he encouraged him to push his victory to the utmost and make himself king of the Lombards, advising him, however, not to incorporate his conquest with the Frankish dominions, as it would wound the pride of the conquered people to be thus absorbed by the conquerors, and to take merely the title of "King of the Franks and Lombards." Charlemagne appreciated and accepted this wise advice; for he could preserve proper limits in his ambition and in the hour of victory. Three years afterward he even did more than Pope Adrian had advised. In 777 Queen Hildegarde bore him a son, Pepin, whom in 781 Charlemagne had baptized and anointed King of Italy at Rome by the Pope, thus separating not only the two titles, but also the two kingdoms, and restoring to the Lombards a national existence, feeling quite sure that so long as he lived the unity of his different dominions would not be imperilled. Having thus regulated at Rome his own affairs and those of the Church, he returned to his camp, took Pavia, received the submission of all the Lombard dukes and counts, save one only, Aregisius, Duke of Beneventum, and entered France again, taking with him, as prisoner, King Didier, whom he banished to a monastery, first at Liege and then at Corbie, where the dethroned Lombard, say the chroniclers, ended his days in saintly fashion.

The prompt success of this war in Italy, undertaken at the appeal of the head of the Church, this first sojourn of Charlemagne at Rome, the spectacles he had witnessed and the homage he had received, exercised over him, his plans and his deeds, a powerful influence. This rough Frankish warrior, chief of a people who were beginning to make a brilliant appearance upon the stage of the world, and issue himself of a new line, had a taste for what was grand, splendid, ancient, and consecrated by time and public respect; he understood and estimated at its full worth the moral force and importance of such allies. He departed from Rome in 774, more determined than ever to subdue Saxony, to the advantage of the Church as well as of his own power, and to promote, in the South as in the North, the triumph of the Frankish Christian dominion.

Three years afterward, in 777, he had convoked at Paderborn, in Westphalia, that general assembly of his different peoples at which Wittikind did not attend, and which was destined to bring upon the Saxons a more and more obstinate war. "The Saracen Ibn-al-Arabi," says Eginhard, "came to this town, to present himself before the King. He had arrived from Spain, together with other Saracens in his train, to surrender to the King of the Franks himself and all the towns which the King of the Saracens had confided to his keeping." For a long time past the Christians of the West had given the Mussulmans, Arab or other, the name of Saracens. Ibn-al-Arabi was governor of Saragossa, and one of the Spanish-Arab chieftains in league against Abdel-Rhaman, the last offshoot of the Ommiad caliphs, who, with the assistance of the Berbers, had seized the government of Spain. Amid the troubles of his country and his nation, Ibn-al-Arabi summoned to his aid, against Abdel-Rhaman, the Franks and the Christians, just as, but lately, Maurontius, Duke of Arles, had summoned to Provence, against Charles Martel, the Arabs and the Mussulmans.

Charlemagne accepted the summons with alacrity. With the coming of spring in the following year, 778, and with the full assent of his chief warriors, he began his march toward the Pyrenees, crossed the Loire, and halted at Casseneuil, at the confluence of the Lot and the Garonne, to celebrate there the festival of Easter, and to make preparations for his expedition thence. As he had but lately done for his campaign in Italy against the Lombards, he divided his forces into two armies: one composed of Austrasians, Neustrians, Burgundians, and divers German contingents, and commanded by Charlemagne in person, was to enter Spain by the valley of Roncesvalles, in the western Pyrenees, and make for Pampeluna; the other, consisting of Provencals, Septimanians, Lombards, and other populations of the South, under the command of Duke Bernard, who had already distinguished himself in Italy, had orders to penetrate into Spain by the eastern Pyrenees, to receive on the march the submission of Gerona and Barcelona, and not to halt till they were before Saragossa, where the two armies were to form a junction, and which Ibn-al-Arabi had promised to give up to the King of the Franks. According to this plan, Charlemagne had to traverse the territories of Aquitaine and Vasconia, domains of Duke Lupus II, son of Duke Waifre, so long the foe of Pepin the Short, a Merovingian by descent, and, in all these qualities, little disposed to favor Charlemagne. However, the march was accomplished without difficulty. The King of the Franks treated his powerful vassal well; and Duke Lupus swore to him afresh, "or for the first time," says M. Fauriel, "submission and fidelity; but the event soon proved that it was not without umbrage or without all the feelings of a true son of Waifre that he saw the Franks and the son of Pepin so close to him."

The aggressive campaign was an easy and a brilliant one. Charles with his army entered Spain by the valley of Roncesvalles without encountering any obstacle. On his arrival before Pampeluna the Arab governor surrendered the place to him, and Charlemagne pushed forward vigorously to Saragossa. But there fortune changed. The presence of foreigners and Christians on the soil of Spain caused a suspension of interior quarrels among the Arabs, who rose in mass, at all points, to succor Saragossa. The besieged defended themselves with obstinacy; there was more scarcity of provisions among the besiegers than inside the place; sickness broke out among them; they were incessantly harassed from without; and rumors of a fresh rising among the Saxons reached Charlemagne. The Arabs demanded negotiation. To decide the King of the Franks upon an abandonment of the siege, they offered him "an immense quantity of gold," say the chroniclers, hostages, and promises of homage and fidelity. Appearances had been saved; Charlemagne could say, and even perhaps believe, that he had pushed his conquests as far as the Ebro; he decided on retreat, and all the army was set in motion to recross the Pyrenees. On arriving before Pampeluna Charlemagne had its walls completely razed to the ground, "in order that," as he said, "that city might not be able to revolt." The troops entered those same passes of Roncesvalles which they had traversed without obstacle a few weeks before; and the advance-guard and the main body of the army were already clear of them. The account of what happened shall be given in the words of Eginhard, the only contemporary historian whose account, free from all exaggeration, can be considered authentic. "The King," he says, "brought back his army without experiencing any loss, save that at the summit of the Pyrenees he suffered somewhat from the perfidy of the Vascons (Basques). While the army of the Franks, embarrassed in a narrow defile, was forced by the nature of the ground to advance in one long close line, the Basques, who were in ambush on the crest of the mountain—for the thickness of the forest with which these parts are covered is favorable to ambuscade—descend and fall suddenly on the baggage-train and on the troops of the rear-guard, whose duty it was to cover all in their front, and precipitate them to the bottom of the valley. There took place a fight in which the Franks were killed to a man. The Basques, after having plundered the baggage-train, profited by the night which had come on to disperse rapidly. They owed all their success in this engagement to the lightness of their equipment and to the nature of the spot where the action took place; the Franks, on the contrary, being heavily armed and in an unfavorable position, struggled against too many disadvantages. Eginhard, master of the household of the King; Anselm, count of the palace; and Roland, prefect of the marches of Brittany, fell in this engagement. There were no means, at the time, of taking revenge for this check; for, after their sudden attack, the enemy dispersed to such good purpose that there was no gaining any trace of the direction in which they should be sought for."