 Section 15 of Volume 1, A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Chapter 9 The Mayors of the Palace, The Peppins and the Change of Dynasty, Part 2 The struggle had now begun in earnest, from the Rhône to the Garonne and the Ocean, between the Christians of Southern Gaul and the Muslims of Spain. Duke Eudes saw with profound anxiety his enemy settled in Septimania, and ever on the point of invading and devastating Aquitania. He had been informed that the Caliph Hashem had just appointed to the Governor-Generalship of Spain Abdel Rahman, the Abderam of the Christian Chronicles, regarded as the most valiant of the Spanish Arabs, and that this chieftain was making great preparations for resuming their course of invasion. Another peril at the same time pressed heavily on Duke Eudes. His northern neighbour, Charles, sovereign Duke of the Franks, the conqueror beyond the Rhône of the Frisons and Saxons, was directing glances full of regret toward those beautiful countries of Southern Gaul, which in former days Clovis had won from the Visicostes, and which had been separated little by little from the Frankish Empire. Either justly or by way of ruse Charles accused Duke Eudes of not faithfully observing the Treaty of Peace, they had concluded in 720, and on this pretext he crossed the lawyer, and twice in the same year, 731, carried fear and rapine into the possession of the Duke of Aquitania on the left bank of that river. Eudes went, not unsuccessfully, to the rescue of his domains, but he was soon recalled to the Pyrenees by the news he received of the movements of Abdel Rahman, and by the hope he had conceived of finding in Spain itself and under the sway of the Verbs, an ally against their invasion of his dominions. The military command of the Spanish frontier of the Pyrenees and of the Muslim forces there in Camp had been entrusted to Ottman Ben Abinessa, a chieftain of renown, but no Arab, either in origin or at heart, although a Muslim. He belonged to the race of Berbers, whom the Romans called Moors, a people of the north-west of Africa, conquered and subjugated by the Arabs, but impatient under the yoke. The greater part of Abinessa's troops were likewise Berbers, and devoted to their chiefs. Abinessa, ambitious and audacious, conceived the project of seizing the government of the peninsula, or at the least of making himself independent master of the districts he governed, and he entered into negotiations with the Duke of Aquitania to secure his support. In spite of religious differences, their interests were too similar not to make an understanding easy, and the secret alliance was soon concluded and confirmed by a precious pledge. Duke Oides had a daughter of rare beauty named Lampagy, and he gave her in marriage to Abinessa, who, say the chronicles, became desperately enamored of her. But whilst Oides, trusting to this alliance, was putting himself in motion towards the lawyer to protect his possessions against a fresh attack from the Duke of the Franks, the Governor-General of Spain, Abdel Rahman, informed of Abinessa's plot, was arriving with large forces at the foot of the Pyrenees to stamp out the rebellion. His repression was easy. At the approach of Abdel Rahman, says the chronicles, Abinessa hastened to shut himself up in Livia, the ancient capital of Cerdain, on the ruins of which Puykerta was built, flattering himself that he could sustain a siege and there a white sucker from his father-in-law, Oides. But the advance guard of Abdel Rahman followed him so closely, and with such ardour that it left him no leisure to make the least preparation for defense. Abinessa had scarcely time to fly from the town and gain the neighboring mountains with a few servants and his well-beloved Lampagy. Already he had penetrated into an out-of-the-way and lonely pass, where it seemed to him he run no more risk of being discovered. He halted, therefore, to rest himself and quench the thirst which was tormenting his lovely companion and himself, beside a waterfall which gushed from a mass of lofty rocks upon a piece of fresh green turf. They were surrendering themselves to the delightful feeling of being saved, when, all at once, they hear a loud sound of steps and voices. They listen, they glance in the direction of the sound, and perceive a detachment of armed men, one of those that were out in search of them. The servants take to flight, but Lampagy, too weary, cannot follow them, nor can Abinessa abandon Lampagy. In the twinkling of an eye they are surrounded by foes. The chronicle is the door of Bodja, says that Abinessa, in order not to fall alive into their hands, flung himself from top to bottom of the rocks, and an Arab historian relates that he took sword in hand, and fell pierced with twenty land thrusts, whilst fighting in defense of her he loved. They cut off his head, which was forcefully carried to Abdelraman, to whom they led away prisoner, the hopeless daughter of Oides. She was so lovely in the eyes of Abdelraman, that he sought at his duty to send her to Damascus, to the commander of the face-fell, esteeming no other mortal worthy of her. Abdelraman, at ease touching the interior of Spain, reassembled the forces he had prepared for his expedition, marched towards the Pyrenees by Pampeluna, crossed the summit, become so famous under the name of Port d'Eronsevo, and debouched by a single defile and in a single column, says the chronicles, upon Galic Vasconia, greater in extents than French Biscay now is. Amphoreal, after Scrupulous examination, according to his custom, estimates the army of Abdelraman, whether musselman adventurers locking from all parts, or Arabs of Spain, are from sixty-five to seventy thousand fighting men. Duke Oides made a gallant effort to stop his march and hurl him back towards the mountains, but exhausted, even by certain small successes, and always forced to retire, fight after fight, up to the approaches to Bordeaux, he crossed the Garonne, and halted on the right bank of the river to cover the city. Abdelraman, who had followed him closely, forced the passage of the river, and the battle was fought, in which the Aquitaniens were defeated with immense loss. God alone, says Isidore of Bea, knows the number of those who fell. The battle gained Abdelraman took Bordeaux by assault, and delivered it over to his army. The plunder, to believe the historians of the conquerors, surpassed all that had been preconceived of the wealth of the vanguished. The most insignificant soldier, Seize, had for his share plenty of topazes, jahins and emeralds, to say nothing of gold, or somewhat vulgar article under the circumstances. What appears certain is that, at their departure from Bordeaux, the Arabs were so late in this booty, that their march became less rapid, and unimpeded than before. In the face of this disaster, the Franks and their Duke were evidently the only support to which Oides could have recourse, and he repaired in all haste to Charles, and invoked his aid against the common enemy, who, after having crushed the Aquitaniens, would soon attack the Franks, and subject them in turn to ravages and outrages. Charles did not require solicitation. He took an oath of the Duke of Aquitania to acknowledge his sovereignty, and then's force remained faithful to him, and then, summoning all his warriors, Franks, Burgundians, Gallo-Romans, and Germans from beyond the Rhine, he set himself in motion towards the lawyer. It was time. The Arabs had spread over the whole country between the Garonne and the lawyer. They had even crossed the latter river and penetrated into Burgundy, as far as out on and since, ravaging the country, the towns and the monasteries, and massacring or dispersing the populations. Abdel-Raman had heard tell of the city of Tours and its rich abbey. The treasures thereof, it was said, surpassed those of any other city, and any other abbey in goal. Burning to possess it, he recalled towards this point his scattered forces. On arriving at Poitiers he found the gates closed and the inhabitants resolved to defend themselves, and after a fruitless attempt at assault he continued his march towards Tours. He was already beneath the walls of the place when he learned that the Franks were rapidly advancing in vast numbers. He fell back towards Poitiers, collecting the troops that were returning to him from all quarters, embarrassed with the immense booty they were dragging in their rake. He had for a moment, say the historians, an idea of ordering his soldiers to leave or burn their booty, to keep nothing but their arms and think of nothing but battle. However he did nothing of the kind, and, to await the Franks, he fixed his camp between the Vienne and the Claim, near Poitiers, not far from the spot where, two hundred and twenty-five years before, Clovis had beaten the Visigoths, or, according to other sneerer tours, admire, in a plain still called the Landis de Charlemagne. The Franks arrived. It was in the months of September or October, 732, and the two armies passed a week face to face, at one time remaining in their camps, at another deploying without attacking. It's quite certain that neither Franks nor Arabs, neither Charles nor Abdulrahman, themselves, took any such account, as we do in our day, of the importance of the struggle in which they were on the point of engaging. It was a struggle between East and West, South and North, Asia and Europe, the gospel and the Quran, and we now say, on a general consideration of events, peoples and ages, that the civilization of the world depended upon it. The generations that were passing upon earth, see not so far, nor from such a height, the chances and consequences of their acts. The Franks and Arabs, leaders and followers, did not regard themselves, now nearly twelve centuries ago, as called upon to decide, near Poitiers, such future question. But vaguely, instinctively, they felt the grandeur of the part they were playing, and they mutually scanned one another with that grave curiosity which precedes a formidable encounter between valiant barriers. At length, at the breaking of the seventh or eighth day, Abdulrahman, at the head of his cavalry, ordered a general attack, and the Franks received it with serried ranks, astounding their enemies by their tall stature, stout armor, and their stern immobility. They stood there, says Isidor of Beya, like solid walls or icebergs. During the fight, a body of Franks penetrated into the enemy's camp, either for pillage or to take the Arabs in the rear. The horsemen of Abdulrahman, at once, left the general attack, and turned back to defend their camp or the booty deposited there. Disorders set in amongst them, and before long, throughout their whole army, and the battle became a confused melee, wherein the lofty stature and stout armor of the Franks had the advantage. A great number of Arabs and Abdulrahman himself were slain. At the approach of night, both armies retired to their camps. The next day, at dawn, the Franks moved out of theirs to renew the engagement. In front of them was no stir, no noise, no Arabs out of their tents, and reassembling in their ranks. Some Franks were sent to reconnoiter, enter the enemy's camp, and penetrate it into their tents, but they were deserted. The Arabs had the camped silently in the night, leaving the bulk of their booty, and by this precipitated retreat, acknowledging a more severe defeat, than they had really sustained in the fight. For seeing the effect which would be produced by their reverse in the country they had but lately traversed as conquerors, they halted nowhere but hastened to a re-enter Septimania and their stronghold Narbonne, where they might await reinforcements from Spain. Duke Oides, on his side, after having as vessel taken the oath of allegiance to Charles, who will be thenceforth called Charles Martel, hammer, that glorious name which he won by the great blow he dealt the Arabs, re-entered his dominions of Aquitania and Vasconia, and applied himself to the re-establishment there of security and of his own power. As for Charles Martel, indefatigable alike after and before victory, he did not consider his work in southern Gaul as accomplished. He wished to recover and reconstitute in its entirety the Frankish dominion. And he at once proceeded to reunite to its province and the portions of the Old Kingdom of Burgundy, situated between the Alps and the Rhône, starting from Lyons. His first campaign with this object in 733 was successful. Here it took Lyons, Vien and Valens, without any stoppage up to the Durans, and charged chosen Lloyds to govern these provinces with a view, especially to the repression of attempts at independence at home and incursions on the part of the Arabs abroad. And it was not long before these two perils showed head. The government of Charles Martel's Lloyds was hard to bear for populations accustomed for some time past to have their own way, and for their local chieftains thus stripped of their influence. Maurontius, patrician of Arles, was the most powerful undaring of these chieftains, and he had at heart the independence of his country and his own power far more than Frankish grandeur. Caring little no doubt for the interests of religion, he entered into negotiations with Joseph Ben-Abdel-Raman, governor of Narbonne, and summoned the Muslims into province. Joseph lost no time in responding to the summons, and from 734 to 736, the Arabs conquered and were in military occupation of the left bank of the Rhône, from Arles to Lyons. But in 737 Charles Martel returned, re-entered Lyons and Avignon and crossing the Rhône, marched rapidly on Narbonne to drive the Arabs from Septimania. He succeeded in beating them within sight of their capital, but after a few attempts at assault, not being able to become master of it, he returned to province, laying waste on his march several towns of Septimania, Agdi, Magolone, and Nims, where he tried, but in vain, to destroy the famous Roman arenas by fire, as one blows up an enemy's fortress. A rising of the Saxons recalled him to the northern Gaul, and scarcely had he set out from province, when national insurrection and Arab invasion reccomenced. Charles Martel waited patiently as long as the Saxons resisted, but as soon as he was at liberty on their score, in 739, he collected a strong army, made a third campaign along the Rhône, rhetoric Avignon, crossed the Durants, pushed on as far as the sea, took more cells, and then Arles, and drove the Arabs definitely from province. Some Muslim bands attempted to establish themselves about Saint Tropez, on the rugged heights and among the forests of the Alps, but Charles Martel carried his pursuit even into those wild retreats, and all southern Gaul, on the left bank of the Rhône, was incorporated in the Frankish Damien, which you'll be henceforth called France. The ordinary revenues of Charles Martel clearly could not suffice for so many expeditions and wars. He was obliged to attract or retain by rich presence, particularly by gifts of lands, the warriors old and new lords who formed his strengths. He therefore laid hands on a great number of the domains of the church, and gave them with the title of Benefices in temporary holding, often converted into proprietorship, and under the style of precarious tenure to the chiefs in his service. There was nothing new in this. The Merovingian kings and the mayors of the palace had more than once thus made free with ecclesiastical property. But Charles Martel carried this practice much farther than his predecessors had. He did more. He sometimes gave his warriors ecclesiastical offices and dignities. His liege Milo received from him the archbishoprics of Rhames and Troves, and his nephew Hugh, those of Paris, Rowan and Ballot, with the abysses of Fontenelle and Remigues. The church protested with all her might against such violations of her mission and her interest, her duties and her rights. She was so specially set against Charles Martel that more than a century after his death, in 858, the bishops of France, addressing themselves to Louis the Germanic on this subject, wrote to him, St. Eucharist, Bishop of Orleans, who now reposes in the monastery of Saint Trudon, being at prayer, was transported into the realms of eternity, and there, amongst other things which the Lord did show unto him, his so-prince Charles delivered over to the torments of the damned in the lowest regions of hell. And St. Eucharist, demanding of the angel his guide, what was the reason thereof? The angel answered that it was the sentence of the saints whom he had robbed of their possessions, and who, at the day of the last judgment, will sit with God to judge the world. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Chapter 9. The Mayors of the Palace. The Pepins and the Change in Dynasty. Part 3 While thus making use at the expense of the church and for political interests of material force, Charles Martel was far from misunderstanding her moral influence and the need he had of her support at the very time when he was incurring her anathemas. Not content with defending Christianity against Islamism, he aided it against paganism by leading the Christian missionaries in Germany and the north-west of Europe, amongst others St. Willebrod and St. Boniface, the most effectual assistance. In 724 he addressed to all religious and political authorities that could be reached by his influence, not only to the bishops, but to the dukes, counts, their vikers, or palatines, all our agents, our envoys, and our friends, the circular letter. Know that the successor of the apostles, our Father in Christ, Boniface, bishop, has come unto us saying that we ought to take him under our safeguard and protection. We do you to wit that we do so very willingly, wherefore we have sought proper to give him confirmations thereof under our own hand, in order that, with her so ever he may go, he may there be in peace and safety in the name of our affection and under our safeguard, in such sort that he may be able everywhere to render, do, and receive justice. And if he come to find himself in any path or necessity, which cannot be determined by law, that he may remain in peace and safety until he become into our presence, he and all who shall have hope in him or dependence on him, that none may dare to be contrary-minded towards him or do him damage, and that he may rest at all times in drunkenity and safety under our safeguard and protection, and in order that this may be regarded as certified, we have subscribed but these letters with our own hand and sealed them with our ring. Here were clearly no vague and meaningless words written to satisfy solicitation, and without a thought of their consequences, if they were urgent recommendations and precise injunctions, the most proper for securing success to the protected in the name of the protector. Accordingly St. Boniface wrote, soon after, from the heart of Germany, without the patronage of the Prince of the Franks, without his order and the fear of his power, I could not guide the people or defend the priests, deacons, monks, or handmaids of God, or forbid in this country the rites of the pagans and their sacrilegious worship of idols. At the same time that he protected the Christian missionaries, launched into the midst of pagan Germany, Charles Martel showed himself equally ready to protect, but with as much prudence as goodwill, the head of the Christian Church. In 741 Pope Gregory III sent to him two nuncios, the first that ever entered France in such a character, to demand of him succor against the Lombards, the Pope's neighbors, who were threatening to besiege Rome. These envoys took Charles Martel so many presents that none had ever seen or heard tell of the like, and amongst them the keys of St. Peter's tomb, with a letter in which the Pope endured Charles Martel not to attach any credit to the representations or words of Luitbrand, king of the Lombards, and to lend the Roman Church that effectual support, which for some time passed she had been vainly expecting from the Franks and their chief. Let them come, we are told, wrote the Pope picturesly, this Charles with whom ye have sought refuge, and the armies of the Franks. Let them sustain ye if they can, and rest ye from our hands. Charles Martel was in fact on good terms with Luitbrand, who had come to his aid in his expeditions against the Arabs in Provence. He have ever received the Pope's nuncios with lively satisfaction, and the most striking proofs of respect, and he promised them not to make war on the Lombards, but to employ his influence with King Luitbrand, to make him cease from threatening Rome. He sent, in his turn, to the Pope to envoys of distinction, Sigiburt, Abbot of St. Denis, and Grimond, Abbot of Corby, with the instructions to offer him rich presence, and to really exert themselves with the King of the Lombards, to remove the dangers dreaded by the Holy See. He wished to do something in favor of the papacy, to show sincere good will, without making his relations with usual allies subordinate to the desires of the Pope. Charles Martel had not time to carry out effectually with respect to the papacy, this policy of protection, and at the same time of independence. He died at the close of the same year, October 22nd, 741, at Kersi through Oise, age 52 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 Hall of Goal of the Franco-Gullo-Roman Empire, and the driving back from the frontiers of this empire, of the Germans in the North and the Arabs in the South. The consequence, as also the condition of this double success, was the victory of Christianity over paganism and Islamism. Charles Martel endagerned 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, the sole dominion, which he had with so much toil reconstituted and defended. Pepin had Noistria, Burgundi, Provence, and the suzerainty of Aquitaine, Carloman, Austrasia, Turingia, and Alemania. 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, Theories of Force, 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 people, and the natural tendency of social effects, 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 Alemanians renewed their insurrections. In the south, the Arabs of Septimania recovered their hopes of affecting an invasion. And who now, Duke of Aquitaine, who had succeeded his father Oides, 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, Gripal, 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 a short duration and a little purpose. Brought up in the school and in the fear of their father, his two sons, Pepin and Carlemann, 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 of Saxons and Bavarians in the south of the Arabs and Aquitaineans, supplying one 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 efficiency of its government. Events came to the aid of this wise conduct. Five years after the death of Charles Martel, in 746 in fact, Carlemann, already weary of the burden of power, and seized with a fit of religious seal, 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 Montecassino. The preceding year in 745, Hunald, Duke of Aquitaine, with more patriotic and equally pious views, also abdicated in favor of his son Waffer, 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 three, where was the tomb of his father Oides. In the course of diverse attempts at conspiracy and insurrection, the Frankish prince's young brother, Gripol, was killed in combat whilst crossing the Alps. The furious internal dissensions amongst the Arabs of Spain, and their incessant wars with the Berbers, did not allow them to pursue any great enterprise in Gaul. Thanks to all these circumstances Pepin found himself in 747, sole master of the heritage of Clovis, and was the sole charge of pursuing, in state and church, his father's work, which was the unity and grandeur of Christian friends. 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, unarriving 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 Carleman, he went to seek heaven knows in but obscure Azulum, a forgotten Merovingian, son of Culparic II. The last but one of the sluggard kings, and made him king, the last of his line, was the title of Hildrigg 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, Borchardt, bishop of Würzburg, Unfuldrad, abbot of Saint Denis, to consult the Pontiff, says Eginhardt, on the subject of the kings then existing among the Franks, and who bore only the name of king, without enjoying a title of royal authority. The pope, whom Saint 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 Lloyds, and bishops gathered together at Soissons, Pepin was proclaimed king of the Franks, and received from the hand of Saint Boniface the sacred anointment. They cut off the hair of the last Merovingian phantom, he odric the third, and put him away in the monastery of Saint Sithieu at Saint-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 Saint Denis, to do honour in his person to the dignity of royalty, and conferred the same honour on the king's two sons, Charles and Carloman. The new girl of 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 Mayans, gave up one day the Episcopal dignity to his disciple Luz, charging him to carry on the different works himself had commenced amongst the churches of Germany, and to uphold the faith of the people. As for me, he added, I will put myself on my road for the time of my passing away approaches. I have launched 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 deported with some of his priests and servants to go and evangelise the frisings, the majority of whom were still pagans and barbarians. He pitched his tent on their territory, and was arranging to celebrate there as a 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 the battle began. Hold, hold, my children, cried the Archbishop. Scripture bideth 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, hoping him, and he will save your souls. The barbarians slew the holy man and the majority of his company. A little while after, the Christians of the neighborhood came in arms and recovered the body of St. Boniface. Near him was a book, which was stained with blood, and seemed to have dropped from his hands. It contained several works of the fathers, and amongst others, a writing of St. Ambrose on the blessing of death. The death of the Pious missionary was as powerful as his preaching in converting Friesland. It was a mode of conquest worthy of Christian faith, and one of which the history of Christianity had already proved their effectiveness. St. Boniface did not confine himself to the evangelization of the pagans. He labored ardently in the Christian Gallow 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 consuls, which had almost fallen into desitute in goal, 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 solitary action. King Pepin, recognizing the services which the Archbishop of Mayans had rendered him, seconded his reformatory efforts at one time by giving the support of his royal authority to the canons of the consuls, held often simultaneously with an almost confounded with the like assemblies of the Franks. At another, by doing justice to the protest of the churches against the violence and spoilation to which they were subjected. There was an important point, says M. Faureal, in respect of which the position of Charles Martell's sons turned out to be pretty nearly the same as that of their father. It was touching the necessity of assigning to warriors a portion of the ecclesiastical revenues. But they, being more religious perhaps than Charles Martell 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 dispose the churches and of persisting in a system which is 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 Leptinis in 743 it was decided, in reference to a ecclesiastical lens applied to the military service, first, that the churches having the ownership of those lands should share the revenue with the layholder. Second, that on the death of a warrior in enjoyment of an ecclesiastical benefit, the benefit should revert to the church. Third, that every benefit 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 Carlovangians, the more zealous they were in promoting the growth of her moral power and the restoration of her discipline. That was the time at which there began to be seen the spectacle of the national assemblies of the Franks. The gatherings of the march parades transformed into ecclesiastical synods under the presidency of the titular legate of the Roman Pontiff and dictating by the mouth of the political authority, regulations and laws with the direct and formal aim of restoring divine worship and ecclesiastical discipline and of assuring the spiritual welfare of the people. Pepin, after he had been proclaimed king and had settled matters with the church as well as the warlike questions remaining for him to solve permitted, directed all his efforts towards the two countries which, after his father's example, he longed to reunite to the Gallow Frankish monarchy, that is, Septimania, still occupied by the Arabs, and Aquitaine, the independence of which was stoutly and ably defended by Duke Oides Granson, Duke Waifri. The conquest of Septimania was rather tedious than difficult. The Franks, after having victoriously scored 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 Muslim Arabs, the population of the town numbered many Christian Goths, who were tired of suffering for the defense 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 definitely 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 Solomon, who was in command at Girona 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 definitely beaten and recoiled before Christianity. The conquest of Aquitaine and Vasconia was much more keenly disputed and for a much longer time uncertain. Duke Wyfrey 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 event 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 scored, and to treat the vanguished 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 Wyfrey was slain by his own folk by the king's advice, says Fredegar, and the conquest of all southern Gaul carried the extent and power of the Gallow Frankish monarchy farther and higher that it had ever yet been, even under Clovis. In 753 Pepin had made an expedition against the Britons of Armorica, had taken Van Ness and subjugated, add certain chronicles, the Hall of Brittany. In point of fact, Brittany was no more subjugated by Pepin than by his predecessors. All that can be said is, that the Franks resumed under him an aggressive attitude towards the Britons, as if to vindicate a right of sovereignty. Exactly at this epoch Pepin was engaging in a matter which did not allow him to scatter his forces hither and thither. It has been stated already, that in 741 Pope Gregory III had asked aid of the Franks against the Lombards who were threatening Rome, and that, whilst fully entertaining the Pope's wishes, Charles Martel had been in no hurry to interfere by deed in the quarrel. Twelve years later, in 753, Pope Stephen, in his turn threatened by Astolfos, king of the Lombards, after vain attempts to obtain guarantees of peace, repaired to Paris and renewed to Pepin the entries 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 fiver of the people as well as that of the king. Astolfos parametrally 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 Brain, 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 Sennys, the Lombards trying in vain to stop them as they debauched into the volley of Sousa. Astolfos 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 aware in Italy, for to a certainty, he said, King Astolfos 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 auxiliary's return, conceived the idea of sending to the King the chiefs and the people of the Franks a letter written, he said, by Peter, Apostle of Jesus Christ, son of the living God, to announce to them that, if they came in haste, he would aid them as if he were alive according to the flesh amongst them, that they would conquer all their enemies, and make themselves sure of eternal life. The plan was perfectly successful. The Franks once more crossed the Alps with enthusiasm, once more succeeded in beating the Lombards, and once more shut up in Pavia King Astolfos, who was eager to purchase peace at any price. He obtained it on two principle conditions. First, that he would not again make a hostile attack on Roman territory, or wage war against the Pope or people of Rome. Second, that he would henceforth recognize the sovereignty of the Franks, base and tribute, and seed for Swiss to pep in the tones and all the lands belonging to jurisdiction of the Roman Empire, which were at that time occupied by the Lombards. By virtue of these conditions, Ravenna, Rimini, Pessaro, that is to say, the Romagna, the Duchy of Arbino, and a portion of the marshes of Ancona were at once given up to Pepin, who, regarding them as his own direct conquest, the fruit of victory, disposed of them for Swiss 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 740 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 Saint Denis, September 18, 768. Leaving his kingdom and his dynasty, thus ready to the hands of his son, home history has dubbed Charlemagne. Translated by Robert Black. The most traditional 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 Carlemagne, 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 Wefra, insurrection broke out once more in Aquitaine, and the old Duke, Hunold, issued from his monastery in the Isle of Rie to try and recover power and independence. Charles and Carlemagne marched against him, but on the march Carlemagne, 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 in unexpected incident, the death of Carlemagne two years afterwards in 771, re-established unity more surely than the reconciliation had re-established harmony. Four, although Carlemagne left sons, the grandees of his dominions, whether Laic or Ecclesiastical, assembled at Corbini, between Laon and Rem, 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 Carlemagne will 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 Eganhard, 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 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, saving the church, the minds of men were dull and barren. Those men, few in number, who made themselves a name at that epoch, rallied round Charlemagne and were developed under his patronage. To know him well and appreciate him justly, he must be examined under those various grand aspects, abroad and at home, in his wars and in his government. In Guizot's history of civilization in France is to be found a complete table of the wars of Charlemagne, of his many different expeditions in Germany, Italy, Spain, all the countries in fact, that became his dominion. A summary will here suffice. From 769 to 813, in Germany and western and northern Europe, Charlemagne conducted thirty-one campaigns against the Saxons, Freisans, 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 is undesirable to recount them in detail, for the relation would be monotonous and useless, but it is obligatory to make fully known their causes, their characteristic incidents, and their results. It has already been seen that, under the last Merovingian kings, the Saxons were, on the right bank of the Rhine, infrequent collision with the Franks, especially with the Austrasian Franks, whose territory they were continually threatening and often invading. Pepe in the short had more than once hurled them back far from the very uncertain frontiers of Germanic Austrasia, and, on becoming king, he dealt his blows still farther, and entered in his turn Saxony itself. In spite of the Saxons' stout resistance, says Eganhard, 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 honour, they would send to the General Assembly of the Franks a present of three hundred horses. When these conventions were once settled, he insisted to ensure their performance upon placing them under the guarantee of rights 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 seven-seventy-two, being left sole master of France after the death of his brother, Carlawan, he convoked at Werm the General Assembly of the Franks, and took, says Eganhard, 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 Erisburg, and threw down the idol that the Saxons called Ermensul. And in what place was this first victory of Charlemagne won? Near the sources of the Lipa, just where, more than seven centuries before, the German Arminius, Hermann, 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 Ermensul, which was thrown down by Charlemagne, was probably a monument raised in honour of Arminius, Ermensul, or Ermenspiller, whose name it called to mind. The patriotic and hereditary pride of the Saxons was passionately roused by this blow, and in the following year, thinking to find in the absence of the King the most favourable opportunity, says Eganhard, they entered the lands of the Franks, laid them waste in their turn, and paying back outrage for outrage, set fire to the church not long since built at Fritzlar by Boniface, martyr. From that time the question changed its object as well as its aspect. It was no longer the repression of Saxons by invasion 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 of the same time the independence of their country and the gods of their fathers. Here was wherewithal to stir up infoment, on both sides, the profoundest passions, and they burst forth on both sides with equal fury. Whether so ever 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. Willebrod, Bishop of Utrecht, had but lately consecrated, St. Levwin, in fact, undertook to go and preach the Christian religion in the very heart of Saxony, on the banks of the Vesser, amidst the general assembly of the Saxons. What do ye, said he, cross in hand, the idols ye worship live not? Neither do they perceive. They are the work of men's hands. They can do not 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 you do not expect, and that the King of Heaven hath ordained a foretime, there shall come a Prince, strong and wise and indefatagable, 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 at 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 sharp into a point to pierce the priest, when one of the chieftains, named Budo, cried aloud, Listen ye her most wise, there have often come unto us ambassadors from neighboring peoples, Northmen, Slavons, or Fritzons. We have received them in peace, and when their messages have been heard they have been sent away with the present. Here is an ambassador from a great God, and you 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 seal 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 an accessible to fear. The Saxons were not one in the same nation, constantly united in one in the same assembly and governed by a single chieftain. Three populations of the same race, distinguished by names borrowed from their geographical situation, just as had happened amongst the Franks in the case of the Austrasians and Neustrians, to Witt, Eastphalian or Eastern Saxons, Westphalian or Westerns, and Angrians, formed the Saxon Conventoration, and to them was often added a fourth peeplet of the same origin, closer to the Danes and called the North Albanians, inhabitants of the Northern District of the Elba. 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 amongst his foes, attacked now one and now another of the large Saxon peeplets, 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 Eganhard, to go and hold at the place called Patterborne, close to Saxony, the general assembly of his people. On his arrival he found there assembled the Senate and the people of this perfidious nation, who conformably to his orders had repaired thither, seeking to deceive him by a false show of submission and devotion. They earned their pardon, but on this condition, however, that if hereafter they broke their engagements they would be deprived of country and liberty. A great number amongst them had themselves baptized on this occasion, but it was with far from sincere intentions that they had testified a desire to become Christians. There had been absent from this great meeting a Saxon chieftain called Whittacan, son of Vernekind, king of the Saxons at the north of the Elba. He had espoused the sister of Siegfried, king of the Danes. He was the friend of Ratbaud, king of the Frissons. A true chieftain at heart, as well as by dissent, he was made to be the hero of the Saxons just as, seven centuries before, the Turescan Hermon, Arminius, had been the hero of the Germans. Instead of repairing to Patterborne, Whittacan 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 Whittacan 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 Eganhard, they set themselves to lay waste with fire and sword all the towns and all the villages from the city of Deutz, opposite Colonia, 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. Whittacan had left Denmark, but he had gone across to her neighbors, the Northmen, and, then sreentring Saxony, he kindled there in insurrection as fierce as it was unexpected. In 782 two of Charlemagne's lieutenants were beaten on the banks of the Vesser, and killed in the battle, together with four counts and twenty litres, the noblest in the army. Indeed, the Franks were nearly all exterminated. At the news of this disaster, says Eganhard, 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 Whittacan 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 4,500 in the hands of the King, and by his order all had their heads cut off on the same day at a place called Verden on the River Aller. After this deed of vengeance the King retired to Theanville to pass the winter there. But the vengeance did not put an end to the war. Blood calls for blood were words spoken in the English Parliament in 1643 by Sir Benjamin Rudyard, one of the best citizens of his country in her hour of revolution. For three years Charlemagne had to redouble his efforts to accomplish in Saxony at the cost of Frankish as well as Saxon blood, his work of conquest and conversion. Saxony, he often repeated, must be Christianized or wiped out. At last in 785 after several victories which seemed decisive he went and settled down in his strong castle of Erisburg, whether he made his wife and children come, being resolved to remain there all the bad season. Says Eganhard, 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 Whittakin and Abbeo, another great Saxon chieftain, were abiding in the part of Saxony situated on the other side of the Elba, he sent to them Saxon envoys to prevail upon them, to renounce their profidity and come without hesitation and trust themselves to him. They, conscious of what they had attempted, dared not at first trust the king's word, but having obtained from him the promise that 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 Amalwen, one of the officers of his court, they came with the said lord and presented themselves before the king in his palace of Atiny. Atiny sur Asne, whether Charlemagne had now returned, and there received baptism. Charlemagne did more than amnesty Whittakin, he named him Duke of Saxony, but without attaching to the title any rite of sovereignty. Whittakin, on his side, did more than come to Atiny and get baptised there. He gave up the struggle, remained faithful to his new engagements, and led, they say, so Christian alive that some chroniclers have placed him on the list of saints. He was killed in 1807 in a battle against Jeralde, Duke of Swabia, and his tomb is still to be seen at Radespawn. 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 Capay. However that may be, after making peace with Whittakin, Charlemagne had still for several years many insurrections to repress and much rigor to exercise in Saxony, including the removal of certain Saxon peopleates 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 amongst the Germanic populations, which were regarded as reduced under the sway of the King of the Franks, some, the Freesons and Saxons as well as others, were continually agitating for the recovery of their independence. Farther off towards 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 epic, nor the only great struggle he had to maintain. Whilst 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, Diedier, and the new Pope, Adrian I, had entered upon a new war, and Diedier 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 fighting at Theonville. 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, rested by Diedier from the Pope were exactly those which Pepin had won by conquest from King Astalphus, 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 afterwards repudiated and sent home to her father in order to marry Hildegard, a Swabian by nation. Diedier, in Duggin, had given an asylum to Charlemagne's widow and sons, on whose intrigue Charlemagne kept a watchful eye. Being prudent and careful of appearance, 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 had demanded. On Diedier's refusal he had 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 valets and descend upon Lombardy by Mount St. Bernard. Charlemagne in person led the other by Mount Sennas. 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, Diedier, 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, whether Charlemagne, having received on the march the submission of the principal counts and nearly all the towns of Lombardy, came promptly to besiege him. CHAPTER X 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. Gaul in Switzerland had collected, direct from the mouth of one of Charlemagne's warriors, Adelbert, numerous stories of his campaigns in his life. These stories are full of fabulous legends, purile anecdotes, distorted reminiscences, and chronological errors, and they are written sometimes with a credulity and exaggeration of language which raises a smile, but they reveal the state of men's minds and fancies within the circle of Charlemagne's influence and at the side of him. This monk gives a naive account of Charlemagne's arrival before Pavia and of the king of Lombard's disquietude at his approach. Diedier had with him at that time one of Charlemagne's most famous comrades, Agier the Dain, who fills a prominent place in the romances and epoys relating to chivalry of that age. Agier had quarreled with his great chief and had taken refuge with the king of the Lombard's. It is probable that his Danish origin and his relations with the king of the Dain's got freed, for a long time an enemy of the Franks had something to do with his misunderstanding with Charlemagne. However that might have been, when Diedier and Agier, for so the monk calls him, heard that the dread monarch was coming, they ascended a tower of vast height, whence they could watch for his arrival from a far 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 of Julius Caesar. Is not Charles, asked Diedier of Agier, with his great army? But the other answered, no. The Lombard, seeing afterwards an immense body of soldiery gathered from all quarters of the vast empire, said to Agier, Sertz, Charles advanceeth 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 Diedier, who begun to be perturbed. Should he come accompanied by a larger band of warriors? You will see what he is when he comes, replied Agier, 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 site the Lombard, overcome with dread, cried, This time to his surely, Charles. No, answered Agier, not yet. In their wake came the bishops, the abbots, the ordinaries of the chapels royal and the counts, and then Diedier 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, Agier, who knew by experience what were the power and might of Charles, and who had learned the lesson by a long constitute in better days, said, When ye shall behold the crops shaking for fear in the fields, and the gloomy poe 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 biborius, 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 kurras 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 want to leave unshackled even by straps, he wore encircled by plates of steel. What shall I say concerning his boots? All the army were want to have them invariably of steel. On his buckler there was not to be seen but of steel. His horse was of the color and the strength of steel. All those who went before the monarch, all those who marched to 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 highways 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, a lack, 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 greybeards. That which I, poor tail-teller, mumbling and toothless, have attempted to depict in a long description, auger perceived at one rapid glance, and said to Didier, Here is what you have so anxiously sought, and whilst 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 assault 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. This camp became a town. He sent for Queen Hildegard in 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, 777, wearied with the duration of the investment, he left to his lieutenants the duty of keeping it up, and while attended by a numerous and brilliant following set off for Rome, whether the Pope was urgently pressing him to come. On Holy Saturday, April 1, 777, 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 principal 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 safe for exarchs and patricians. At the side of the cross Charlemagne dismounted, entered Rome on foot, ascended the steps of the ancient Basilica of St. Peter, repeated 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 St. 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 there too a new gift of certain territories which he was in course of resting 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 in 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 then formed an anagram. Pope Adrian to his most excellent son Charlemagne king. Domino, excelentissimo, filio, carolo, magno, regi, ipandranias, 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 afterwards he even did more than Pope Adrian had advised. In 777 Queen Hildegard 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 imperiled. 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, saved one only, Aragessius, Duke of Beneventum, and entered France again, taking with him as prisoner King Dedier, whom he banished to a monastery, first at Liege and then at Corbi, 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 afterwards, in 777, he had convoked at Paderborn, in Westphalia, that general assembly of his different peoples at which Whittaken did not attend, and which was destined to bring upon the Saxons a more and more obstinate war. The Saracen, Ibn al-Arabi, says Eginard, 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 Muslims, Arab or other, the name of Saracens. Ibn al-Arabi was governor of Saragossa, and one of the Spanish Arab chieftains in league against Adel Rahman, the last offshoot of the Omiyad Caliphs, who, with the assistance of the Berbers, had seized the government of Spain. Amidst the troubles of his country and his nation, Ibn al-Arabi summoned to his aid against Abdel Rahman, the Franks and Christians, just as, but lately, Marantius, Duke of Arl, had summoned to Provence against Charles Martel, the Arabs and the Muslims. 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 towards the Pyrenees, crossed the Loire and halted at Casanue, at the confluence of the Lotte and the Giron, 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 Austrians, Neustrians, Burgundians, and diverse German contingents, and commanded by Charlemagne in person, was to enter Spain by the Valley of Ronsk Balls in the western Pyrenees and make for Pampilona. The other, consisting of Provence, Septimaniens, 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 Girona 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 Guifre, Solang the Foa pep in the short, a Merovingian by descent, and in all these qualities little disposed to favour 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. Ferriel, submission and fidelity, but the event soon proved that it was not without Umbridge, or without all the feelings of a true son of Guifre, 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 Ronsk Falls, without encountering any obstacle. On his arrival before Pamplona 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 amongst the Arabs, who rose and mass, at all points, to succour Saragossa. The besiege defended themselves with obscenity. There was more scarcity of provisions amongst the besiegers than inside the place. Sickness broke out amongst them. They were incessantly harassed from without, and rumors of a fresh rising amongst 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 conquest as far as the Ebro. He decided on retreat, and all the army was set in motion to recross the Pyrenees. On arriving before Pamplona, Charlemagne had its walls completely raised to the ground. In order that, as he said, the city might not be able to revolt. The troops entered those same passes of Ronsk walls 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 Eganhard, 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, saved that at the summit of the Pyrenees, he suffered somewhat from the profidity of the Vascons, Basques. Whilst 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 favourable to Ambus God, 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 unfavourable position, struggled against too many disadvantages. Eggedhard, 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 cheek, for after their sudden attack, the enemy disbursed to such good purpose that there was no gaining any trace of the direction in which they should be sought for. History says no more, but in the poetry of the people there is a longer and more faithful memory than in the Court of Kings. The disaster of Ransquavals and the heroism of the warriors who perished there became, in France, the object of popular sympathy and the favourite topic for the exercise of the popular fancy. The Song of Roland, a real Homeric poem in its great beauty, and yet rude and simple as became its national character, bears witness to the prolonged importance attained in Europe by this incident in the history of Charlemagne. Three centuries later the comrades of William the Conqueror, marching to battle at Hastings for the possession of England, struck up the Song of Roland to prepare themselves for victory or death, says Monsieur Vitell, in his vivid estimate and able translation of this poetical monument of the manners and first impulses towards chivalry of the Middle Ages. There is no determining how far history must be made to participate in these reminiscences of national feeling, but assuredly the figures of Roland and Oliver and Archbishop Turpin and the pious unsophisticated and tender character of their heroism are not pure fables invented by the fancy of a poet or the credulity of a monk. If the accuracy of historical narratives must not be looked for in them, their moral truth must be recognized in their portrayal of a people and an age. The political genius of Charlemagne comprehended more fully than would be imagined from his panagiris' brief and dry count all the gravity of the affair of Ron Scalls. Not only did he take immediate vengeance by hanging Duke Lupus of Aquitaine, whose treason had brought down this mishap, and by reducing his two sons, Aderic and Sancho, to a more feeble and precarious condition, but he resolved to treat Aquitaine as he had but lately treated Italy. That is to say, to make of it, according to the correct definition of Mishroferio, a special kingdom, an integral portion indeed of the Frankish Empire, but within a special designation, which was that of resisting the invasions of the Andalusian Arabs, and confining them as much as possible to the soil of the peninsula. This was in some sort giving back to the country its primary task as an independent duchy, and it was the most natural and most certain way of making the Aquitanians useful subjects by giving play to their national vanity, to their pretensions of forming a separate people, and to their hopes of once more becoming, sooner or later, an independent nation. Queen Hildegard, during her husband's sojourn at Casanul in 778, had borne him a son, whom he called Louis, and who was afterwards Louis the Debonair. Charlemagne, summoned a second time to Rome, in 781, by the quarrels of Pope Adrian I, with the imperial court of Constantinople, brought with him his two sons, Pepin aged only four years, and Louis only three years, and had them anointed by the pope, the former king of Italy, and the latter king of Aquitaine. On returning from Rome to Austrasia, Charlemagne sent Louis at once to take possession of his kingdom. From the banks of the mousse to Orléans, the little prince was carried in his cradle, but once on the Loire, this manner of travelling besieged him no longer. His conductors would that his entry into his dominions should have a manly and warrior-like appearance. They clad him in arms proportion to his height and age. They put him and held him on horseback. And it was in such guise that he entered Aquitaine. He came thither accompanied by the officers who were to form his council of guardians, men chosen by Charlemagne with care, amongst the Frankish ludes, distinguished not only for bravery and firmness, but also for adroitness, and such as they should be to be neither deceived nor seared by the cunning, fickle, and turbulent populations with whom they would have to deal. From this period to the death of Charlemagne, and by his sovereign influence, though all the while under his son's name, the government of Aquitaine was a series of continued efforts to hurl back the Arabs of Spain beyond the Ebro, to extend to that river the dominion of the Franks, to divert to that end the forces as well as the feelings of the populations of southern Gaul, and thus to pursue in the south as in the north against the Arabs as well as against the Saxons and Huns the grand design of Charlemagne, which was the repression of foreign invaders, and the triumph of Christian France over Asiatic paganism and Islamism. Although continually obliged to watch, and often still to fight, Charlemagne might well believe that he had nearly gained his end. He had everywhere greatly extended the frontiers of the Frankish dominions and subjugated the populations comprised in his conquests. He had proved that his new frontiers would be vigorously defended against new invasions or dangerous neighbors. He had pursued the Huns and the Saxons to the confines of the Empire of the East, and the Saracens to the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. The center of the dominion was no longer in ancient Gaul, he had transferred it to a point not far from the Rhine, in the midst and within reach of the Germanic populations at the town of Exla Chapelle, which he had founded, and which was his favorite residence. But the principal parts of the Gallo-Frankish kingdom, Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy, were effectually welded in one single mass. What he had done with southern Gaul has but just been pointed out, how he had both separated it from his own kingdom and still retained it under his control. Two expeditions into Amorica, without taking entirely from the Britons their independence, had taught them real deference, and the great warrior Roland, installed as count upon their frontier, warned them of the peril any rising would encounter. The moral influence of Charlemagne was on a par with his material power. He had everywhere protected the missionaries of Christianity, he had twice entered Rome, also in the character of protector, and he could count on the faithful support of the Pope at least as much as the Pope could count on him. He had received embassies and presence from the sovereigns of the East, Christian and Muslim, from the emperors at Constantinople and the caliphs at Baghdad. Everywhere, in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia, he was feared and respected by kings and people. Such at the close of the eighth century were, so far as he was concerned, the result of his wars, of the superior capacity he had displayed, and of the successes which he had won and kept. In 799 he received, at Ex-La-Chapelle, news of serious disturbances which had broken out at Rome, that Pope Leo III had been attacked by conspirators, who after pulling out, it was said, his eyes and his tongue had shut him up in the monastery of St. Erasmus, whence he had with great difficulty escaped, and that he had taken refuge with Winogisius, Duke of Spoleto, announcing his intention of repairing thence to the Frankish king. Leo was already known to Charlemagne, at his accession to the pontificate in 795 he had sent to him, as to the patrician and defender of Rome, the keys of the prison of St. Peter and the banner of the city. Charlemagne showed a disposition to receive him with equal kindness and respect. The Pope arrived, in fact, at Paderborn, past some days there, to Eganhard, and returned to Rome on 30 November 799, at ease regarding his future, but without knowledge on the part of any one of what had been settled between the king of the Franks and him. Charlemagne remained all the winter at Ex-La-Chapelle, spent the first months of the year eight hundred on affairs connected with western France at Rouen, Tour, Orléans and Paris, and returning to Mayans in the month of August, then for the first time announced to the General Assembly of Franks his design of making a journey to Italy. He repaired thither, in fact, and arrived on the twenty-third of November, eight hundred, at the gates of Rome. The Pope received him there as he was dismounting, and then the next day, standing on the steps of the Basilica of St. Peter and amidst General Halleluyas, he introduced the king into the sanctuary of the Blessed Apostle, glorifying and thanking the Lord for this happy event. Some days were spent in examining into the grievances which had been set down to the Pope's account, and in receiving two monks arrived from Jerusalem to present to the king, with the patriarch's blessing, the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and cavalry, as well as the sacred standard. Lastly, on the twenty-fifth of December, eight hundred, the day of the Nativity of Our Lord, says Eganhard, the king came into the Basilica of the Blessed St. Peter, Apostle, to attend the celebration of Mass. At the moment when, in his place before the altar, he was bowing down to pray, Pope Leo placed on his head a crown, and all the Roman people shouted, Long life and victory to Charles Augustus, crowned by God, the great and Pacific Emperor of the Romans. After this proclamation the pontiff prostrated himself before him and paid him adoration, according to the custom established in the days of the old emperors, and thenceforward Charles, giving up the title of patrician for that of emperor and Augustus. Eganhard adds, in his life of Charlemagne, the king at first testified great aversion for this dignity, for he declared that, not withstanding the importance of the festival, he would not on that day have entered the church, if he could have foreseen the intentions of the sovereign pontiff. However, this event excited the jealousy of the Roman emperors of Constantinople, who showed great vexation at it, but Charles met their bad graces with nothing but great patience, and thanks to this magnanimity which raised him so far above them, he managed by sending to them frequent embassies and giving them in his letters the name of brother, to triumph over their conceit. No one probably believed in the ninth century, and no one assuredly will nowadays believe that Charlemagne was innocent beforehand of what took place on the twenty-fifth of December eight hundred in the Basilica of St. Peter. It is doubtful also if he were seriously concerned about the ill temper of the emperors of the East. He had wit enough to understand the value which always remains attached to old traditions, and he might have taken some pains to secure their countenance to this title of emperor, but all his contemporaries believed, and he also undoubtedly believed, that he had on that day really won and set up again the Roman empire. CHAPTER XI What then was the government of this empire of which Charlemagne was proud to assume the old title? How did this German warrior govern that vast dominion which, thanks to his conquests, extended from the Elbe to the Ebro, from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, which comprised nearly all Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and the north of Italy and of Spain, and which, soothed to say, was still when Charlemagne caused himself to be made emperor, scarce more than the hunting ground and the battlefield of all the swarms of barbarians who tried to settle on the ruins of the Roman world, they had invaded and broken into pieces. The government of Charlemagne in the midst of this chaos is the striking, complicated, and transitory fact which is now to be passed in review. A word of warning must be first of all given touching this word government, with which it is impossible to dispense. For a long time past the word has entailed ideas of national unity, general organization, and regular and efficient power. There has been no lack of revolutions which have changed dynasties and the principles and forms of the supreme power in the state, but they have always left existing under different names the practical machinery whereby the supreme power makes itself felt and exercises its various functions over the whole country. Open the almanac, whether it be called the imperial, the royal, or the national, and you will find there always the working system of the government of France. All the powers and their agents, from the lowest to the highest, are there indicated in class according to their prerogatives and relations. Nor have we there a mere empty nomenclature, a phantom of theory. Things go on actually as they are described. The book is the reflex of the reality. It were easy to construct, for the empire of Charlemagne, a similar list of officers. There might be set down in it dukes, counts, vickers, sentiniers, and sheriffs, siebeni, and they might be distributed in regular gradation over the whole territory, but it would be one huge lie, for most frequently, in the majority of places, these majestacies were utterly powerless and themselves in complete disorder. The efforts of Charlemagne, either to establish them on a firm footing or to make them act with regularity, were continual, but unavailing. In spite of the fixity of his purpose and the energy of his action, the disorder around him was measureless and insurmountable. He might check it for a moment at one point, but the evil existed wherever his terrible will did not reach, and wherever it did the evil broke out again so soon as it had been withdrawn. How could it be otherwise? Charlemagne had not to grapple with one single nation or with one single system of institutions. He had to deal with different nations without cohesion and foreign to one another. At one and the same time, to assemblies of free men, to landholders over the dwellers and their domains, and to the king over the ludes and their following. These three powers appeared and acted side by side in every locality as well as in the totality of the state. Their relations and their prerogatives were not governed by any generally recognized principle, and none of the three was invested with sufficient might to prevail habitually against the independence or resistance of its rivals. Force alone, varying according to circumstances and always uncertain, decided matters between them. Such was France at the accession of the second line. The co-existence and the struggle between the three systems of institutions and the three powers just eluded had as yet no other result. Out of this chaos Charlemagne caused to issue a monarchy, strong through him alone, and so long as he was by, but powerless and gone like a shadow when the man was lost to the institution. Whoever is astonished, either at this triumph of absolute monarchy through the personal movement of Charlemagne, or at the speedy fall of the fabric on the disappearance of the moving spirit, understands neither what can be done by a great man when without him society sees itself given over to deadly peril, nor how unsubstantial and frail is absolute power when the great man is no longer by, or when society has no longer need of him. It has been shown how Charlemagne by his wars, which had for their object and result permanent and well-secured conquests, had stopped the fresh incursions of barbarians, that is, had stopped disorder coming from without. An attempt will now be made to show by what means he set about suppressing disorder from within and putting his own rule in the place of the anarchy that prevailed in the Roman world which lay in ruins, and in the barbaric world which was a prey to blind and ill-regulated force. A distinction must be drawn between the local and central governments. Far from the center of the state, in what have since been called the provinces, the power of the emperor was exercised by the medium of two classes of agents, one local and permanent, the other dispatched from the center and transitory. In the first class we find, first, the dukes, counts, vickers of counts, centennaries, sheriffs, scabini, officers or magistrates residing on the spot, nominated by the emperor himself or by his delegates, and charged with the duty of acting in his name for the levying of troops, rendering of justice, maintenance of order, and receipt of imposts. Second, the beneficiaries or vassals of the emperor, who held of him, sometimes as hereditiments, more often for life, and more often still without fixed rule or stipulation, lands, domains, through the extent of which they exercised, a little bit in their own name and a little bit in the name of the emperor, a certain jurisdiction, and nearly all the rites of sovereignty. There was nothing very fixed or clear in the position of the beneficiaries in the nature of their power. They were at one in the same time delegates and independent, owners and enjoyers of insafruct, and the former or the latter character prevailed among them according to circumstances. But altogether they were closely bound to Charlemagne, who in a great number of cases charged them with the execution of his orders in the lands they occupied. Above these agents, local and resident, magistrates or beneficiaries were the misi dominici, temporary commissioners, charged to inspect in the emperor's name the condition of the provinces, authorized to penetrate into the interior of the free lands as well as the domains granted with the title of benefits, having the right to reform certain abuses and bound to render an account of all to their master. The misi dominici, where the principal instruments Charlemagne had, throughout the vast territory of his empire, of order and administration. As to the central government, setting aside for a moment the personal action of Charlemagne and of his counselors, the general assemblies, to judge by the appearance and to believe all the modern historians, occupied a prominent place in it. They were in fact, during his reign, numerous and active. From the year 776 to the year 813, we may count thirty-five of these national assemblies, March parades and May parades, held at Vorm, Valencians, Geneva, Paderborn, Ex-la-Chapelle, Tien-Ve, and several other towns, the majority situated round about the two banks of the Rhine. The number and periodical nature of these great political reunions are undoubtedly a noticeable fact. What then went on in their midst? What character and weight must be attached to their intervention in the government of the state? It is important to sift this matter thoroughly. There is extant touching on this subject a very curious document. A contemporary and counselor of Charlemagne, his cousin German, Adelbert, abbot of Corbic, had written a treatise called of the Ordering of the Palace, De Ordine Paleti, and designed to give an insight into the government of Charlemagne, with a special reference to the national assemblies. This treatise was lost, but towards the close of the ninth century, Hinkmar, the celebrated Archbishop of Brem, reproduced it almost in its entirety in the form of a letter of instructions, written at the request of certain grandees of the kingdom who had asked counsel of him with respect to the government of Charlemagne, one of the sons of Charles the Stutterer. We read therein, it was the custom at this time to hold two assemblies every year. In both, that they might not seem to have been convoked without motive, there were submitted to the examination and deliberation of the grandees, and by virtue of orders from the king, the fragments of law called Kepichula, which the king himself had drawn up under the inspiration of God, or the necessity for which had been made manifest to him in the intervals between the meetings. Two striking facts are to be gathered from these words. The first, that the majority of the members composing these assemblies probably regarded as a burden, the necessity for being present at them, sent Charlemagne to care to explain their convocation by declaring to them the motive for it, and by always giving them something to do. The second, that the proposal of the capitularies, or in modern phrase, the initiative is naturally exercised by him who wishes to regulate a reform, and in this time it was especially Charlemagne who conceived this design. There is no doubt, however, but that the members of the assembly might make on their side such proposals as appeared to them suitable. The constitutional distrust and artifices of our times were assuredly unknown to Charlemagne, who saw in these assemblies a means of government rather than a barrier to his authority. To resume the test of Hinkmar, after receiving these communications they deliberated on them two or three days more, according to the importance of the business. Palace messengers going and coming took their questions and carried back the answers. No stranger came near the place of their meeting until the result of their deliberations had been able to be submitted to the scrutiny of the great prince, who then with the wisdom he received from God adopted a resolution which all obeyed. The definitive resolution therefore depended on Charlemagne alone. The assembly contributed only information and counsel. Hinkmar continues, and supplies details worthy of reproduction, for they give an insight into the imperial government and the actions of Charlemagne himself amidst these most ancient of the national assemblies. Things went on thus for one or two capitularies, or a greater number, until with God's help all the necessities of the occasion were regulated. Whilst these matters were thus proceeding out of the king's presence, the prince himself, in the midst of the multitude, came to the general assembly, was occupied in receiving the presence alluding the men of most note, conversing with those he saw seldom, showing towards the elders a tender interest, disbording himself with the youngsters, and doing the same thing or something like it with the ecclesiastics as well as the seculares. However, if those who were deliberating about the matters submitted to their examination showed a desire for it, the king repaired to them and remained with them as long as they wished, and then they reported to him with perfect familiarity what they thought about all matters, and what were the friendly discussions that had arisen amongst them. I must not forget to say that, if the weather were fine, everything took place in the open air, otherwise in several distinct buildings, where those who had to deliberate on the king's proposals were separated from the multitude of persons come to the assembly, and then the men of greater note were admitted. The places appointed for the meeting of the lords were divided into two parts, in such sort that the bishops, the abbots, and the clerics of high rank might meet without mixture with the laity. In the same way the counts and other chiefs of the state underwent separation, in the morning, until whether the king was present or absent, all were gathered together, then the lords above specified the clerics on their side and the laics on theirs repaired to the hall which had been assigned to them, and where seats had been with dew on or prepared for them. When the lords laical and ecclesiastical were thus separated from the multitude, it remained in their power to sit separately or together according to the nature of the business they had to deal with, ecclesiastical, secular, or mixed. In the same way, if they wished to send for any one, either to demand refreshment or to put any question and to dismiss him after getting what they wanted, it was at their option. Thus took place the examination of affairs proposed to them by the king for deliberation. The second business of the king was to ask of each what there was to report to him, or to enlighten him touching the part of the kingdom each had come from. Not only was this permitted to all, but they were strictly enjoined to make inquiries during the interval between the assemblies about what happened within or without the kingdom, and they were bound to seek knowledge from foreigners as well as natives, enemies as well as friends, sometimes by employing emissaries and without troubling themselves much about the manner in which they acquired their information. The king wished to know whether in any part in any corner of the kingdom the people were restless, and what was the cause of their restlessness, or whether there had happened any disturbance to which it was necessary to draw the attention of the council general, and other similar matters. He sought also to know whether any of the subjugated nations were inclined to revolt, whether any of those that had revolted seemed disposed toward submission, and whether those that were still independent were threatening the kingdom with any attack. On all these subjects, whenever there was any manifestation of disorder or danger, he demanded chiefly what were the motives or occasion of them. There is need of no great reflection to recognize the true character of these assemblies. It is clearly imprinted upon the sketch drawn by Hinkmar. The figure of Charlemagne alone fills the picture. He is the centerpiece of it and the soul of everything. To his he who wills that the national assemblies should meet and deliberate, to his he who inquires into the state of the country, to his he who proposes and approves of or rejects the laws, with him rest, will, and motive, initiative, and decision. He has a mind sufficiently judicious, unshackled, and elevated to understand that the nation ought not to be left in darkness about its affairs, and that he himself has need of communicating with it, of gathering information from it, and of learning its opinions. But we have here no exhibition of great political liberties, no people discussing its interest in its business, interfering effectually in the adoption of resolutions, and, in fact, taking in its government so active and decisive a part as to have a right to say that it is self-governing, or, in other words, a free people. It is Charlemagne and he alone who governs. It is absolute government marked by prudent civility and grandeur. When the mind dwells upon the state of Gallo Frankish society in the eighth century, there is nothing astonishing in such a fact. Whether it be civilized or barbarian, that which every society needs, that which it seeks and demands first of all in its government, is a certain degree of good sense and strong will, of intelligence and innate influence, so far as the public interests are concerned, qualities, in fact, which suffice to keep social order maintained or make it realized, and to promote respect for individual rights and the progress of the general well-being. This is the essential aim of every community of men, and the institutions and guarantees of free government are the means of attaining it. It is clear that, in the eighth century, on the ruins of the Roman and beneath the blows of the barbaric world, the Gallo Frankish nation, vast and without cohesion, brutish and ignorant, was incapable of bringing forth, so to speak, from its own womb, with the aid of its own wisdom and virtue, a government of the kind. A host of different forces, without enlightenment and without reason, were everywhere and incessantly struggling for dominion, or in other words, were ever troubling and endangering the social condition. Let there but arise in the midst of this chaos of unruly forces and selfish passions a great man, one of those elevated minds and strong characters that can understand the essential aim of society and then urge it forward, and at the same time keep it well in hand on the roads that lead there too, and such a man will soon seize and exercise the personal power almost of a despot, and people will not only make him welcome, but even celebrate his praises, for they do not quit the substance for the shadow, or sacrifice the end to the means. Such was the empire of Charlemagne. Amongst analysts and historians, some treating him as a mere conqueror and despot, have ignored his merits and his glory. Others that they might admire him without scruple have made of him a founder of free institutions, a constitutional monarch. Both are equally mistaken. Charlemagne was, indeed, a conqueror and a despot, but by his conquest and his personal power he, so long as he was by, that is, for six and forty years, saved gallo- frankish society from barbaric invasion without and anarchy within. That is the characteristic of his government and his title to glory.