of St. Peter's tomb, with a letter in which the Pope conjured Charles
Martel not to attach any credit to the representations or words of
Luitprandt, king of the Lombards, and to lend the Roman Church that
effectual support which, for some time past, she had been vainly
expecting from the Franks and their chief.  "Let them come, we are told,"
wrote the Pope, piteously, "this Charles with whom ye have sought refuge,
and the armies of the Franks; let them sustain ye, if they can, and wrest
ye from our hands."  Charles Martel was in fact on good terms with
Luitprandt, who had come to his aid in his expeditions against the Arabs
in Provence.  He, however, received the Pope's nuncios with lively
satisfaction and the most striking proofs of respect; and he promised
them, not to make war on the Lombards, but to employ his influence with
King Luitprandt to make him cease from threatening Rome.  He sent, in his
turn, to the Pope two envoys of distinction, Sigebert, abbot of St.
Denis, and Grimon, abbot of Corbie, with instructions to offer him rich
presents and to really exert themselves with the king of the Lombards to
remove the dangers dreaded by the Holy See.  He wished to do something in
favor of the Papacy to show sincere good-will, without making his
relations with useful allies subordinate to the desires of the Pope.

Charles Martel had not time to carry out effectually with respect to the
Papacy this policy of protection and at the same time of independence; he
died at the close of this same year, October 22, 741, at Kiersy-sur-Oise,
aged fifty-two years, and his last act was the least wise of his life.
He had spent it entirely in two great works, the reestablishment
throughout the whole of Gaul of the Franco-Gallo-Roman empire, and the
driving back from the frontiers of this empire, of the Germans in the
north and the Arabs in the south.  The consequence, as also the
condition, of this double success was the victory of Christianity over
Paganism and Islamism.  Charles Martel endangered these results by
falling back into the groove of those Merovingian kings whose shadow he
had allowed to remain on the throne.  He divided between his two
legitimate sons, Pepin, called the Short, from his small stature, and
Carloman, this sole dominion which he had with so much toil reconstituted
and defended.  Pepin had Neustria, Burgundy, Provence, and the suzerainty
of Aquitaine; Carloman, Austrasia, Thuringia, and Allemannia.  They both,
at their father's death, took only the title of mayor of the palace, and,
perhaps, of duke.  The last but one of the Merovingians, Thierry IV., had
died in 737.  For four years there had been no king at all.

But when the works of men are wise and true, that is, in conformity with
the lasting wants of peoples, and the natural tendency of social facts,
they get over even the mistakes of their authors.  Immediately after the
death of Charles Martel, the consequences of dividing his empire became
manifest.  In the north, the Saxons, the Bavarians, and the Allemannians
renewed their insurrections.  In the south, the Arabs of Septimania
recovered their hopes of effecting an invasion; and Hunald, Duke of
Aquitaine, who had succeeded his father Eudes, after his death in 735,
made a fresh attempt to break away from Frankish sovereignty and win his
independence.  Charles Martel had left a young son, Grippo, whose
legitimacy had been disputed, but who was not slow to set up pretensions
and to commence intriguing against his brothers.  Everywhere there burst
out that reactionary movement which arises against grand and difficult
works when the strong hand that undertook them is no longer by to
maintain them; but this movement was of short duration and to little
purpose.  Brought up in the school and in the fear of their father, his
two sons, Pepin and Carloman, were inoculated with his ideas and example;
they remained united in spite of the division of dominions, and labored
together, successfully, to keep down, in the north the Saxons and
Bavarians, in the south the Arabs and Aquitanians, supplying want of
unity by union, and pursuing with one accord the constant aim of Charles
Martel--abroad the security and grandeur of the Frankish dominion, at
home the cohesion of all its parts and the efficacy of its government.
Events came to the aid of this wise conduct.  Five years after the death
of Charles Martel, in 746 in fact, Carloman, already weary of the burden
of power, and seized with a fit of religious zeal, abdicated his share of
sovereignty, left his dominions to his brother Pepin, had himself shorn
by the hands of Pope Zachary, and withdrew into Italy to the monastery of
Monte Cassino.  The preceding year, in 745, Hunald, Duke of Aquitaine,
with more patriotic and equally pious views, also abdicated in favor of
his son Waifre, whom he thought more capable than himself of winning the
independence of Aquitaine, and went and shut himself up in a monastery in
the island of Rhe, where was the tomb of his father Eudes.  In the course
of divers attempts at conspiracy and insurrection, the Frankish princes'
young brother, Grippo, was killed in combat whilst crossing the Alps.
The furious internal dissensions amongst the Arabs of Spain and their
incessant wars with the Berbers did not allow them to pursue any great
enterprise in Gaul.  Thanks to all these circumstances, Pepin found
himself, in 747, sole master of the heritage of Clovis and with the sole
charge of pursuing, in State and Church, his father's work, which was the
unity and grandeur of Christian France.

Pepin, less enterprising than his father, but judicious, persevering, and
capable of discerning what was at the same time necessary and possible,
was well fitted to continue and consolidate what he would, probably,
never have begun and created.

Like his father, he, on arriving at power, showed pretensions to
moderation, or, it might be said, modesty.  He did not take the title of
king; and, in concert with his brother Carloman, he went to seek, Heaven
knows in what obscure asylum, a forgotten Merovingian, son of Chilperic
II., the last but one of the sluggard kings, and made him king, the last
of his line, with the title of Childeric III., himself, as well as his
brother, taking only the style of mayor of the palace.  But at the end of
ten years, and when he saw himself alone at the head of the Frankish
dominion, Pepin considered the moment arrived for putting an end to this
fiction.  In 751, he sent to Pope Zachary at Rome, Burchard, bishop of
Wurtzhurg, and Fulrad, abbot of St. Denis, "to consult the Pontiff," says
Eginhard, "on the subject of the kings then existing amongst the Franks,
and who bore only the name of king without enjoying a tittle of royal
authority."  The Pope, whom St. Boniface, the great missionary of
Germany, had prepared for the question, answered that "it was better to
give the title of king to him who exercised the sovereign power;" and
next year, in March, 752, in the presence and with the assent of the
general assembly of "leudes" and bishops gathered together at Soissons,
Pepin was proclaimed king of the Franks, and received from the hand of
St. Boniface the sacred anointment.  They cut off the hair of the last
Merovingian phantom, Childeric III., and put him away in the monastery of
St. Sithiu, at St. Omer.  Two years later, July 28, 754, Pope Stephen
II., having come to France to claim Pepin's support against the Lombards,
after receiving from him assurance of it, "anointed him afresh with the
holy oil in the church of St. Denis to do honor in his person to the
dignity of royalty," and conferred the same honor on the king's two sons,
Charles and Carloman.  The new Gallo-Frankish kingship and the Papacy, in
the name of their common faith and common interests, thus contracted an
intimate alliance.  The young Charles was hereafter to become
Charlemagne.

The same year, Boniface, whom, six years before, Pope Zachary had made
Archbishop of Mayence, gave up one day the episcopal dignity to his
disciple Lullus, charging him to carry on the different works himself had
commenced amongst the churches of Germany, and to uphold the faith of the
people.  "As for me," he added, "I will put myself on my road, for the
time of my passing away approacheth.  I have longed for this departure,
and none can turn me from it; wherefore, my son, get all things ready,
and place in the chest with my books the winding-sheet to wrap up my old
body."  And so he departed with some of his priests and servants to go
and evangelize the Frisons, the majority of whom were still pagans and
barbarians.  He pitched his tent on their territory and was arranging to
celebrate there the Lord's Supper, when a band of natives came down and
rushed upon the archbishop's retinue.  The servitors surrounded him, to
defend him and themselves; and a battle began.  "Hold, hold, my
children," cried the arch-bishop; "Scripture biddeth us return good for
evil.  This is the day I have long desired, and the hour of our
deliverance is at hand.  Be strong in the Lord: hope in Him, and He will
save your souls."  The barbarians slew the holy man and the majority of
his company.  A little while after, the Christians of the neighborhood
came in arms and recovered the body of St. Boniface.  Near him was a
book, which was stained with blood, and seemed to have dropped from his
hands; it contained several works of the Fathers, and amongst others a
writing of St. Ambrose "on the Blessing of Death."  The death of the
pious missionary was as powerful as his preaching in converting
Friesland.  It was a mode of conquest worthy of the Christian faith, and
one of which the history of Christianity had already proved the
effectiveness.

St. Boniface did not confine himself to the evangelization of the pagans;
he labored ardently in the Christian Gallo-Frankish Church, to reform the
manners and ecclesiastical discipline, and to assure, whilst justifying,
the moral influence of the clergy by example as well as precept.  The
Councils, which had almost fallen into desuetude in Gaul, became once
more frequent and active there; from 742 to 753 there may be counted
seven, presided over by St. Boniface, which exercised within the Church
a salutary action.  King Pepin, recognizing the services which the
Archbishop of Mayence had rendered him, seconded his reformatory efforts
at one time by giving the support of his royal authority to the canons of
the Councils, held often simultaneously with and almost confounded with
the laic assemblies of the Franks, at another by doing justice to the
protests of the churches against the violence and spoliation to which
they were subjected.  "There was an important point," says M. Fauriel,
"in respect of which the position of Charles Martel's sons turned out to
be pretty nearly the same as that of their father: it was touching the
necessity of assigning to warriors a portion of the ecclesiastical
revenues.  But they, being more religious, perhaps, than Charles Martel,
or more impressed with the importance of humoring the priestly power,
were more vexed and more anxious about the necessity under which they
found themselves of continuing to despoil the churches and of persisting
in a system which was putting the finishing stroke to the ruin of all
ecclesiastical discipline.  They were more eager to mitigate the evil and
to offer the Church compensation for their share in this evil to which it
was not in their power to put a stop.  Accordingly at the March parade
held at Leptines in 743, it was decided, in reference to ecclesiastical
lands applied to the military service: 1st, that the churches having the
ownership of those lands should share the revenue with the lay holder;
2d, that on the death of a warrior in enjoyment of an ecclesiastical
benefice, the benefice should revert to the Church; 3d, that every
benefice by deprivation whereof any church would be reduced to poverty
should be at once restored to her.  That this capitular was carried out,
or even capable of being carried out, is very doubtful; but the less
Carloman and Pepin succeeded in repairing the material losses incurred by
the Church since the accession of the Carlovingians, the more zealous
they were in promoting the growth of her moral power and the restoration
of her discipline.  .  .  .  That was the time at which there began to be
seen the spectacle of the national assemblies of the Franks, the
gatherings of the March parades transformed into ecclesiastical synods
under the presidency of the titular legate of the Roman Pontiff, and
dictating, by the mouth of the political authority, regulations and laws
with the direct and formal aim of restoring divine worship and
ecclesiastical discipline, and of assuring the spiritual welfare of the
people."  (Fauriel, _Histoire de la Gaule,_ &c., t.  III., p.  224.)

Pepin, after he had been proclaimed king and had settled matters with the
Church as well as the warlike questions remaining for him to solve
permitted, directed all his efforts towards the two countries which,
after his father's example, he longed to reunite to the Gallo-Frankish
monarchy, that is, Septimania, still occupied by the Arabs, and
Aquitaine, the independence of which was stoutly and ably defended by
Duke Eudes' grandson, Duke Waifre.  The conquest of Septimania was rather
tedious than difficult.  The Franks, after having victoriously scoured
the open country of the district, kept invested during three years its
capital, Narbonne, where the Arabs of Spain, much weakened by their
dissensions, vainly tried to throw in re-enforcements.  Besides the
Mussulman Arabs the population of the town numbered many Christian Goths,
who were tired of suffering for the defence of their oppressors, and who
entered into secret negotiations with the chiefs of Pepin's army, the end
of which was, that they opened the gates of the town.  In 759, then,
after forty years of Arab rule, Narbonne passed definitively under that
of the Franks, who guaranteed to the inhabitants free enjoyment of their
Gothic or Roman law and of their local institutions.  It even appears
that, in the province of Spain bordering on Septimania, an Arab chief,
called Soliman, who was in command at Gerona and Barcelona, between the
Ebro and the Pyrenees, submitted to Pepin, himself and the country under
him.  This was an important event indeed in the reign of Pepin, for here
was the point at which Islamism, but lately aggressive and victorious in
Southern Europe, began to feel definitively beaten and to recoil before
Christianity.

The conquest of Aquitaine and Vasconia was much more keenly disputed and
for a much longer time uncertain.  Duke Waifre was as able in negotiation
as in war: at one time he seemed to accept the pacific overtures of
Pepin, or, perhaps, himself made similar, without bringing about any
result, at another he went to seek and found even in Germany allies who
caused Pepin much embarrassment and peril.  The population of Aquitaine
hated the Franks; and the war, which for their duke was a question of
independent sovereignty, was for themselves a question of passionate
national feeling.  Pepin, who was naturally more humane and even more
generous, it may be said, in war than his predecessors had usually been,
was nevertheless induced, in his struggle against the Duke of Aquitaine,
to ravage without mercy the countries he scoured, and to treat the
vanquished with great harshness.  It was only after nine years' war and
seven campaigns full of vicissitudes that he succeeded, not in conquering
his enemy in a decisive battle, but in gaining over some servants who
betrayed their master.  In the month of July, 759, "Duke Waifre was slain
by his own folk, by the king's advice," says Fredegaire; and the conquest
of all Southern Gaul carried the extent and power of the Gallo-Frankish
monarchy farther and higher than it had ever yet been, even under Clovis.

In 753, Pepin had made an expedition against the Britons of Armorica, had
taken Vannes, and "subjugated," add certain chroniclers, "the whole of
Brittany."  In point of fact Brittany was no more subjugated by Pepin
than by his predecessors; all that can be said is, that the Franks
resumed, under him, an aggressive attitude towards the Britons, as if to
vindicate a right of sovereignty.

Exactly at this epoch Pepin was engaging in a matter which did not allow
him to scatter his forces hither and thither.  It has been stated
already, that in 741 Pope Gregory III.  had asked aid of the Franks
against the Lombards who were threatening Rome, and that, whilst fully
entertaining the Pope's wishes, Charles Martel had been in no hurry to
interfere by deed in the quarrel.  Twelve years later, in 753, Pope
Stephen, in his turn threatened by Astolphus, king of the Lombards, after
vain attempts to obtain guarantees of peace, repaired to Paris, and
renewed to Pepin the entreaties used by Zachary.  It was difficult for
Pepin to turn a deaf ear; it was Zachary who had declared that he ought
to be made king; Stephen showed readiness to anoint him a second time,
himself and his sons; and it was the eldest of these sons, Charles,
scarcely twelve years old, whom Pepin, on learning the near arrival of
the Pope, had sent to meet him and give brilliancy to his reception.
Stephen passed the winter at St. Denis, and gained the favor of the
people as well as that of the king.  Astolphus peremptorily refused to
listen to the remonstrances of Pepin, who called upon him to evacuate the
towns in the exarchate of Ravenna, and to leave the Pope unmolested in
the environs of Rome as well as in Rome itself.  At the March parade held
at Braine, in the spring of 754, the Franks approved of the war against
the Lombards; and at the end of the summer Pepin and his army descended
into Italy by Mount Cenis, the Lombards trying in vain to stop them as
they debouched into the valley of Suza.  Astolphus beaten, and, before
long, shut up in Pavia, promised all that was demanded of him; and Pepin
and his warriors, laden with booty, returned to France, leaving at Rome
the Pope, who conjured them to remain a while in Italy, for to a
certainty, he said, king Astolphus would not keep his promises.  The Pope
was right.  So soon as the Franks had gone, the King of the Lombards
continued occupying the places in the exarchate and molesting the
neighborhood of Rome.  The Pope, in despair and doubtful of his
auxiliaries' return, conceived the idea of sending "to the king, the
chiefs, and the people of the Franks, a letter written, he said, by
Peter, Apostle of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, to announce to
them that, if they came in haste, he would aid them as if he were alive
according to the flesh amongst them, that they would conquer all their
enemies and make themselves sure of eternal life!"  The plan was
perfectly successful: the Franks once more crossed the Alps with
enthusiasm, once more succeeded in beating the Lombards, and once more
shut up in Pavia King Astolphus, who was eager to purchase peace at any
price.  He obtained it on two principal conditions: 1st, that he would
not again make a hostile attack on Roman territory or wage war against
the Pope or people of Rome; 2d, that he would henceforth recognize the
sovereignty of the Franks, pay them tribute, and cede forthwith to Pepin
the towns and all the lands, belonging to the jurisdiction of the Roman
empire, which were at that time occupied by the Lombards.  By virtue of
these conditions, Ravenna, Rimini, Pesaro, that is to say, the Romagna,
the Duchy of Urbino and a portion of the Marches of Ancona, were at once
given up to Pepin, who, regarding them as his own direct conquest, the
fruit of victory, disposed of them forthwith, in favor of the Popes, by
that famous deed of gift which comprehended pretty nearly what has since
formed the Roman States, and which founded the temporal independence of
the Papacy, the guarantee of its independence in the exercise of the
spiritual power.

At the head of the Franks as mayor of the palace from 741, and as king
from 752, Pepin had completed in France and extended in Italy the work
which his father, Charles Martel, had begun and carried on, from 714 to
741, in State and Church.  He left France reunited in one and placed at
the head of Christian Europe.  He died at the monastery of St. Denis,
September 18, 768, leaving his kingdom and his dynasty thus ready to the
hands of his son, whom history has dubbed Charlemagne.




CHAPTER X----CHARLEMAGNE AND HIS WARS.

The most judicious minds are sometimes led blindly by tradition and
habit, rather than enlightened by reflection and experience.  Pepin the
Short committed at his death the same mistake that his father, Charles
Martel, had committed: he divided his dominions between his two sons,
Charles and Carloman, thus destroying again that unity of the Gallo-
Frankish monarchy which his father and he had been at so much pains to
establish.  But, just as had already happened in 746 through the
abdication of Pepin's brother, events discharged the duty of repairing
the mistake of men.  After the death of Pepin, and notwithstanding that
of Duke Waifre, insurrection broke out once more in Aquitaine; and the
old duke, Hunald, issued from his monastery in the island of Rhe to try
and recover power and independence.  Charles and Carloman marched against
him; but, on the march, Carloman, who was jealous and thoughtless, fell
out with his brother, and suddenly quitted the expedition, taking away
his troops.  Charles was obliged to continue it alone, which he did with
complete success.  At the end of this first campaign, Pepin's widow, the
Queen-mother Bertha, reconciled her two sons; but an unexpected incident,
the death of Carloman two years afterwards in 771, re-established unity
more surely than the reconciliation had re-established harmony.  For,
although Carloman left sons, the grandees of his dominions, whether laic
or ecclesiastical, assembled at Corbeny, between Laon and Rheims, and
proclaimed in his stead his brother Charles, who thus became sole king of
the Gallo-Franco-Germanic monarchy.  And as ambition and manners had
become less tinged with ferocity than they had been under the
Merovingians, the sons of Carloman were not killed or shorn or even shut
up in a monastery: they retired with their mother, Gerberge, to the court
of Didier, king of the Lombards.  "King Charles," says Eginhard, "took
their departure patiently, regarding it as of no importance."  Thus
commenced the reign of Charlemagne.

The original and dominant characteristic of the hero of this reign, that
which won for him, and keeps for him after more than ten centuries, the
name of Great, is the striking variety of his ambition, his faculties,
and his deeds.  Charlemagne aspired to and attained to every sort of
greatness, military greatness, political greatness, and intellectual
greatness; he was an able warrior, an energetic legislator, a hero of
poetry.  And he united, he displayed all these merits in a time of
general and monotonous barbarism, when, save in the Church, the minds of
men were dull and barren.  Those men, few in number, who made themselves
a name at that epoch, rallied round Charlemagne and were developed under
his patronage.  To know him well and appreciate him justly, he must be
examined under those various grand aspects, abroad and at home, in his
wars and in his government.

In Guizot's _History of Civilization in France_ is to be found a complete
table of the wars of Charlemagne, of his many different expeditions in
Germany, Italy, Spain, all the countries, in fact, that became his
dominion.  A summary will here suffice.  From 769 to 813, in Germany and
Western and Northern Europe, Charlemagne conducted thirty-one campaigns
against the Saxons, Frisons, Bavarians, Avars, Slavons, and Danes; in
Italy, five against the Lombards; in Spain, Corsica, and Sardinia, twelve
against the Arabs; two against the Greeks; and three in Gaul itself,
against the Aquitanians and the Britons; in all, fifty-three expeditions;
amongst which those he undertook against the Saxons, the Lombards, and
the Arabs, were long and difficult wars.  It is undesirable to recount
them in detail, for the relation would be monotonous and useless; but it
is obligatory to make fully known their causes, their characteristic
incidents, and their results.

It has already been seen that, under the last Merovingian kings, the
Saxons were, on the right bank of the Rhine, in frequent collision with
the Franks, especially with the Austrasian Franks, whose territory they
were continually threatening and often invading.  Pepin the Short had
more than once hurled them back far from the very uncertain frontiers of
Germanic Austrasia; and, on becoming king, he dealt his blows still
farther, and entered, in his turn, Saxony itself.  "In spite of the
Saxons' stout resistance," says Eginhard (_Annales,_ t. i., p. 135), "he
pierced through the points they had fortified to bar entrance into their
country, and, after having fought here and there battles wherein fell
many Saxons, he forced them to promise that they would submit to his
rule; and that, every year, to do him honor, they would send to the
general assembly of the Franks a present of three hundred horses.  When
these conventions were once settled, he insisted, to insure their
performance, upon placing them under the guarantee of rites peculiar to
the Saxons; then he returned with his army to Gaul."

[Illustration: Charlemagne at the Head of his Army----212]

Charlemagne did not confine himself to resuming his father's work; he
before long changed its character and its scope.  In 772, being left sole
master of France after the death of his brother Carloman, he convoked at
Worms the general assembly of the Franks, "and took," says Eginhard, "the
resolution of going and carrying war into Saxony.  He invaded it without
delay, laid it waste with fire and sword, made himself master of the fort
of Ehresburg, and threw down the idol that the Saxons called _Irminsul_."
And in what place was this first victory of Charlemagne won?  Near the
sources of the Lippe, just where, more than seven centuries before, the
German Arminius (Herrmann) had destroyed the legions of Varus, and
whither Germanicus had come to avenge the disaster of Varus.  This ground
belonged to Saxon territory; and this idol, called _Irminsul,_ which was
thrown down by Charlemagne, was probably a monument raised in honor of
Arminius (Herrmann-Saule, or Herrmann's pillar), whose name it called to
mind.  The patriotic and hereditary pride of the Saxons was passionately
roused by this blow; and, the following year, "thinking to find in the
absence of the king the most favorable opportunity," says Eginhard, they
entered the lands of the Franks, laid them waste in their turn, and,
paying back outrage for outrage, set fire to the church not long since
built at Fritzlar, by Boniface, martyr.  From that time the question
changed its object as well as its aspect; it was no longer the repression
of Saxon invasions of France, but the conquest of Saxony by the Franks,
that was to be dealt with; it was between the Christianity of the Franks
and the national Paganism of the Saxons that the struggle was to take
place.

For thirty years such was its character.  Charlemagne regarded the
conquest of Saxony as indispensable for putting a stop to the incursions
of the Saxons, and the conversion of the Saxons to Christianity as
indispensable for assuring the conquest of Saxony.  The Saxons were
defending at one and the same time the independence of their country and
the gods of their fathers.  Here was wherewithal to stir up and foment,
on both sides, the profoundest passions; and they burst forth, on both
sides, with equal fury.  Whithersoever Charlemagne penetrated he built
strong castles and churches; and, at his departure, left garrisons and
missionaries.  When he was gone the Saxons returned, attacked the forts
and massacred the garrisons and the missionaries.  At the commencement of
the struggle, a priest of Anglo-Saxon origin, whom St. Willibrod, bishop
of Utrecht, had but lately consecrated, St. Liebwin in fact, undertook to
go and preach the Christian religion in the very heart of Saxony, on the
banks of the Weser, amidst the general assembly of the Saxons.  "What do
ye" said he, cross in hand; "the idols ye worship live not, neither do
they perceive: they are the work of men's hands; they can do nought
either for themselves or for others.  Wherefore the one God, good and
just, having compassion on your errors, hath sent me unto you.  If ye put
not away your iniquity, I foretell unto you a trouble that ye do not
expect, and that the King of Heaven hath ordained aforetime; there shall
come a prince, strong and wise and indefatigable, not from afar, but from
nigh at hand, to fall upon you like a torrent, in order to soften your
hard hearts and bow down your proud heads.  At one rush he shall invade
the country; he shall lay it waste with fire and sword, and carry away
your wives and children into captivity."  A thrill of rage ran through
the assembly; and already many of those present had begun to cut, in the
neighboring woods, stakes sharpened to a point to pierce the priest, when
one of the chieftains named Buto cried aloud, "Listen, ye who are the
most wise.  There have often come unto us ambassadors from neighboring
peoples, Northmen, Slavons or Frisons; we have received them in peace,
and when their messages have been heard, they have been sent away with a
present.  Here is an ambassador from a great God, and ye would slay him!"
Whether it were from sentiment or from prudence, the multitude was
calmed, or at any rate restrained; and for this time the priest retired
safe and sound.

Just as the pious zeal of the missionaries was of service to Charlemagne,
so did the power of Charlemagne support and sometimes preserve the
missionaries.  The mob, even in the midst of its passions, is not
throughout or at all times inaccessible to fear.  The Saxons were not one
and the same nation, constantly united in one and the same assembly and
governed by a single chieftain.  Three populations of the same race,
distinguished by names borrowed from their geographical situation, just
as had happened amongst the Franks in the case of the Austrasians and
Neustrians, to wit, Eastphalian or eastern Saxons, Westphalian or
western, and Angrians, formed the Saxon confederation.  And to them was
often added a fourth peoplet of the same origin, closer to the Danes and
called North-Albingians, inhabitants of the northern district of the
Elbe.  These four principal Saxon populations were sub-divided into a
large number of tribes, who had their own particular chieftains, and who
often decided, each for itself, their conduct and their fate.
Charlemagne, knowing how to profit by this want of cohesion and unity
amongst his foes, attacked now one and now another of the large Saxon
peoplets or the small Saxon tribes, and dealt separately with each of
them, according as he found them inclined to submission or resistance.
After having, in four or five successive expeditions, gained victories
and sustained checks, he thought himself sufficiently advanced in his
conquest to put his relations with the Saxons to a grand trial.  In 777,
he resolved, says Eginhard, "to go and hold, at the place called
Paderborn (close to Saxony) the general assembly of his people.  On his
arrival he found there assembled the senate and people of this perfidious
nation, who, conformably to his orders, had repaired thither, seeking to
deceive him by a false show of submission and devotion.  .  .  .  They
earned their pardon, but on this condition, however, that, if hereafter
they broke their engagements, they would be deprived of country and
liberty.  A great number amongst them had themselves baptized on this
occasion; but it was with far from sincere intentions that they had
testified a desire to become Christians."

[Illustration: Charlemagne inflicting Baptism upon the Saxons----215]

There had been absent from this great meeting a Saxon chieftain called
Wittikind, son of Wernekind, king of the Saxons at the north of the Elbe.
He had espoused the sister of Siegfried, king of the Danes; and he was
the friend of Ratbod, king of the Frisons.  A true chieftain at heart as
well as by descent, he was made to be the hero of the Saxons just as,
seven centuries before, the Cheruscan Herrmann (Arminius) had been the
hero of the Germans.  Instead of repairing to Paderborn, Wittikind had
left Saxony, and taken refuge with his brother-in-law, the king of the
Danes.  Thence he encouraged his Saxon compatriots, some to persevere in
their resistance, others to repent them of their show of submission.  War
began again; and Wittikind hastened back to take part in it.  In 778 the
Saxons advanced as far as the Rhine; but, "not having been able to cross
this river," says Eginhard, "they set themselves to lay waste with fire
and sword all the towns and all the villages from the city of Duitz
(opposite Cologne) as far as the confluence of the Moselle.  The churches
as well as the houses were laid in ruins from top to bottom.  The enemy,
in his frenzy, spared neither age nor sex, wishing to show thereby that
he had invaded the territory of the Franks, not for plunder, but for
revenge!"  For three years the struggle continued, more confined in area,
but more and more obstinate.  Many of the Saxon tribes submitted; many
Saxons were baptized; and Siegfried, king of the Danes, sent to
Charlemagne a deputation, as if to treat for peace.  Wittikind had left
Denmark; but he had gone across to her neighbors, the Northmen; and,
thence re-entering Saxony, he kindled there an insurrection as fierce as
it was unexpected.  In 782 two of Charlemagne's lieutenants were beaten
on the banks of the Weser, and killed in the battle, together with four
counts and twenty leaders, the noblest in the army; indeed the Franks
were nearly all exterminated.  "At news of this disaster," says Eginhard,
"Charlemagne, without losing a moment, re-assembled an army and set out
for Saxony.  He summoned into his presence all the chieftains of the
Saxons and demanded of them who had been the promoters of the revolt.
All agreed in denouncing Wittikind as the author of this treason.  But as
they could not deliver him up, because immediately after his sudden
attack he had taken refuge with the Northmen, those who, at his
instigation, had been accomplices in the crime, were placed, to the
number of four thousand five hundred, in the hands of the king; and, by
his order, all had their heads cut off the same day, at a place called
Werden, on the river Aller.  After this deed of vengeance the king
retired to Thionville to pass the winter there."

[Illustration: A Battle between Franks and Saxons----216]

But the vengeance did not put an end to the war.  "Blood calls for
blood," were words spoken in the English parliament, in 1643, by Sir
Benjamin Rudyard, one of the best citizens of his country in her hour of
revolution.  For three years Charlemagne had to redouble his efforts to
accomplish in Saxony, at the cost of Frankish as well as Saxon blood, his
work of conquest and conversion: "Saxony," he often repeated, "must be
christianized or wiped out."  At last, in 785, after several victories
which seemed decisive, he went and settled down in his strong castle of
Ehresburg, "whither he made his wife and children come, being resolved to
remain there all the bad season," says Eginhard, and applying himself
without cessation to scouring the country of the Saxons and wearing them
out by his strong and indomitable determination.  But determination did
not blind him to prudence and policy.  "Having learned that Wittikind and
Abbio (another great Saxon chieftain) were abiding in the part of Saxony
situated on the other side of the Elbe, he sent to them Saxon envoys to
prevail upon them to renounce their perfidy, and come, without
hesitation, and trust themselves to him.  They, conscious of what they
had attempted, dared not at first trust to the king's word; but having
obtained from him the promise they desired of impunity, and, besides, the
hostages they demanded as guarantee of their safety, and who were brought
to them, on the king's behalf, by Amalwin, one of the officers of his
court, they came with the said lord and presented themselves before the
king in his palace of Attigny [Attigny-sur-Aisne, whither Charlemagne had
now returned] and there received baptism."

Charlemagne did more than amnesty Wittikind; he named him Duke of Saxony,
but without attaching to the title any right of sovereignty.  Wittikind,
on his side, did more than come to Attigny and get baptized there; he
gave up the struggle, remained faithful to his new engagements, and led,
they say, so Christian a life, that some chroniclers have placed him on
the list of saints.  He was killed in 807, in a battle against Gerold,
duke of Suabia, and his tomb is still to be seen at Ratisbonne.  Several
families of Germany hold him for their ancestor; and some French
genealogists have, without solid ground, discovered in him the
grandfather of Robert the Strong, great-grandfather of Hugh Capet.
However that may be, after making peace with Wittikind, Charlemagne had
still, for several years, many insurrections to repress and much rigor to
exercise in Saxony, including the removal of certain Saxon peoplets out
of their country and the establishment of foreign colonists in the
territories thus become vacant; but the great war was at an end, and
Charlemagne might consider Saxony incorporated in his dominions.

[Illustration: THE SUBMISSION OF WITTIKIND----218]

He had still, in Germany and all around, many enemies to fight and many
campaigns to re-open.  Even amongst the Germanic populations, which were
regarded as reduced under the sway of the king of the Franks, some, the
Frisons 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 epoch,
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, Didier, and the new Pope, Adrian I., had entered
upon a new war; and Dither was besieging Rome, which was energetically
defended by the Pope and its inhabitants.  In 773, Adrian invoked the aid
of the king of the Franks, whom his envoys succeeded, not without
difficulty, in finding at Thionville.  Charlemagne could not abandon the
grand position left him by his father as protector of the Papacy and as
patrician of Rome.  The possessions, moreover, wrested by Didier from the
Pope were exactly those which Pepin had won by conquest from King
Astolphus, and had presented to the Papacy.  Charlemagne was, besides, on
his own account, on bad terms with the king of the Lombards, whose
daughter, Desiree, he had married, and afterwards repudiated and sent
home to her father, in order to marry Hildegarde, a Suabian by nation.
Didier, in dudgeon, had given an asylum to Carloman's widow and sons, on
whose intrigues Charlemagne kept a watchful eye.  Being prudent and
careful of appearances, even when he was preparing to strike a heavy
blow, Charlemagne tried, by means of special envoys, to obtain from the
king of the Lombards what the Pope demanded.  On Didier's refusal he at
once set to work, convoked the general meeting of the Franks, at Geneva,
in the autumn of 773, gained them over, not without encountering some
objections, to the projected Italian expedition, and forthwith commenced
the campaign with two armies.  One was to cross the Valais and descend
upon Lombardy by Mount St. Bernard; Charlemagne in person led the other,
by Mount Cenis.  The Lombards, at the outlet of the passes of the Alps,
offered a vigorous resistance; but when the second army had penetrated
into Italy by Mount St. Bernard, Didier, threatened in his rear, retired
precipitately, and, driven from position to position, was obliged to go
and shut himself up in Pavia, the strongest place in his kingdom, whither
Charlemagne, having received on the march the submission of the principal
counts and nearly all the towns of Lombardy, came promptly to besiege
him.

To place textually before the reader a fragment of an old chronicle will
serve better than any modern description to show the impression of
admiration and fear produced upon his contemporaries by Charlemagne, his
person and his power.  At the close of this ninth century a monk of the
abbey of St. Gall, in Switzerland, had collected, direct from the mouth
of one of Charlemagne's warriors, Adalbert, numerous stories of his
campaigns and his life.  These stories are full of fabulous legends,
puerile anecdotes, distorted reminiscences, and chronological errors, and
they are written sometimes with a credulity and exaggeration of language
which raise a smile; but they reveal the state of men's minds and fancies
within the circle of Charlemagne's influence and at the sight of him.
This monk gives a naive account of Charlemagne's arrival before Pavia and
of the king of the Lombards' disquietude at his approach.  Didier had
with him at that time one of Charlemagne's most famous comrades, Ogier
the Dane, who fills a prominent place in the romances and epopoeas,
relating to chivalry, of that age.  Ogier had quarrelled with his great
chief and taken refuge with the king of the Lombards.  It is probable
that his Danish origin and his relations with the king of the Danes,
Gottfried, for a long time an enemy of the Franks, had something to do
with his misunderstanding with Charlemagne.  However that may have been,
"when Didier and Ogger (for so the monk calls him) heard that the dread
monarch was coming, they ascended a tower of vast height, whence they
could watch his arrival from afar off and from every quarter.  They saw,
first of all, engines of war such as must have been necessary for the
armies of Darius or Julius Caesar.  'Is not Charles,' asked Didier of
Ogger, 'with this 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 Ogger, 'Certes, Charles advanceth in
triumph in the midst of this throng.'  'No, not yet; he will not appear
so soon,' was the answer.  'What should we do, then,' rejoined Didier,
who began to be perturbed, 'should he come accompanied by a larger band
of warriors?'  'You will see what he is when he comes,' replied Ogger,
'but as to what will become of us I know nothing.'  As they were thus
parleying appeared the body of guards that knew no repose; and at this
sight the Lombard, overcome with dread, cried, 'This time 'tis surely
Charles.'  'No,' answered Ogger, 'not yet.'  In their wake came the
bishops, the abbots, the ordinaries of the chapels royal, and the counts;
and then Didier, no longer able to bear the light of day or to face
death, cried out with groans, 'Let us descend and hide ourselves in the
bowels of the earth, far from the face and the fury of so terrible a foe.
Trembling the while, Ogger, who knew by experience what were the power
and might of Charles, and who had learned the lesson by long consuetude
in better days, then said, 'When ye shall behold the crops shaking for
fear in the fields, and the gloomy Po and the Ticino overflowing the
walls of the city with their waves blackened with steel (iron), then may
ye think that Charles is coming.'  He had not ended these words when
there began to be seen in the west, as it were a black cloud, raised by
the north-west wind or by Boreas, which turned the brightest day into
awful shadows.  But as the emperor drew nearer and nearer, the gleam of
arms caused to shine on the people shut up within the city a day more
gloomy than any kind of night.  And then appeared Charles himself, that
man of steel, with his head encased in a helmet of steel, his hands
garnished with gauntlets of steel, his heart of steel and his shoulders
of marble protected by a cuirass of steel, and his left hand armed with a
lance of steel which he held aloft in the air, for as to his right hand
he kept that continually on the hilt of his invincible sword.  The
outside of his thighs, which the rest, for their greater ease in mounting
a horseback, were wont to leave unshackled even by straps, he wore
encircled by plates of steel.  What shall I say concerning his boots?
All the army were wont to have them invariably of steel; on his buckler
there was nought to be seen but steel; his horse was of the color and the
strength of steel.  All those who went before the monarch, all those who
marched at his side, all those who followed after, even the whole mass of
the army, had armor of the like sort, so far as the means of each
permitted.  The fields and the 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 through-out the streets of the city.  'What steel! alack,
what steel!'  Such were the bewildered cries the citizens raised.  The
firmness of manhood and of youth gave way at sight of the steel; and the
steel paralyzed the wisdom of graybeards.  That which I, poor
tale-teller, mumbling and toothless, have attempted to depict in a long
description, Ogger perceived at one rapid glance, and said to Didier,
'Here is what ye have so anxiously sought:' and 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 assaults so well that he
changed the siege into an investment and settled down before Pavia, as if
making up his mind for a long operation.  His camp became a town; he sent
for Queen Hildegarde and her court; and he had a chapel built, where he
celebrated the festival of Christmas.  But on the arrival of spring,
close upon the festival of Easter, 774, wearied with the duration of the
investment, he left to his lieutenants the duty of keeping it up, and,
attended by a numerous and brilliant following, set off for Rome, whither
the Pope was urgently pressing him to come.

On Holy Saturday, April 1, 774, Charlemagne found, at three miles from
Rome, the magistrates and the banner of the city, sent forward by the
Pope to meet him; at one mile all the municipal bodies and the pupils of
the schools carrying palm-branches and singing hymns; and at the gate of
the city, the cross, which was never taken out save for exarchs and
patricians.  At sight of the cross Charlemagne dismounted, entered Rome
on foot, ascended the steps of the ancient basilica of St. Peter,
repeating at each step a sign of respectful piety, and was received at
the top by the Pope himself.  All around him and in the streets a chant
was sung, "Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord!"  At his
entry and during his sojourn at Rome Charlemagne gave the most striking
proofs of Christian faith and respect for the head of the Church.
According to the custom of pilgrims he visited all the basilicas, and in
that of 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 thereto a new gift of certain territories
which he was in course of wresting by conquest from the Lombards.  Pope
Adrian, on his side, rendered to him, with a mixture of affection and
dignity, all the honors and all the services which could at one and the
same time satisfy and exalt the king and the priest, the protector and
the protected.  He presented to Charlemagne a book containing a
collection of the canons written by the pontiffs from the origin of the
Church, and he put at the beginning of the book, which was dedicated to
Charlemagne, an address in forty-five irregular verses, written with his
own hand, which formed an anagram: "Pope Adrian to his most excellent son
Charlemagne, king."  (_Domino excellentissimo filio Carolo Magno regi
Ipadrianus 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 Hildegarde bore him a son, Pepin, whom
in 781 Charlemagne had baptized and anointed king of Italy at Rome by the
Pope, thus separating not only the two titles, but also the two kingdoms,
and restoring to the Lombards a national existence, feeling quite sure
that, so long as he lived, the unity of his different dominions would not
be imperilled.  Having thus regulated at Rome his own affairs and those
of the Church, he returned to his camp, took Pavia, received the
submission of all the Lombard dukes and counts, save one only, Aregisius,
duke of Beneventum, and entered France again, taking with him as prisoner
King Didier, whom he banished to a monastery, first at Liege and then at
Corbie, where the dethroned Lombard, say the chroniclers, ended his days
in saintly fashion.

The prompt success of this war in Italy, undertaken at the appeal of the
Head of the Church, this first sojourn of Charlemagne at Rome, the
spectacles he had witnessed, and the homage he had received, exercised