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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE
COLLEGE OF MISSIONS LIBRARY
at the
YALE DIVINITY SCHOOL

Wc$ ^torp of tbe Nations.

THE FRANKS

THE STORY OF THE NATIONS.

Large Crown 8vo, Cloth, Illustrated, 5s.

The Volumes are also kept in the following Special Binding:

Half Persian, cloth sides, gilt top. Price on application.

i. ROME. By ARTHUR OILMAN,

26. SWITZERLAND. By Mrs. Lina

M.A. .

Hug and R. Stead

2. THE JEWS. By Prof. J. K.

27. MEXICO. By Susan Hale.

HOSMER.

28. PORTUGAL. By H. MORSE

3. GERMANY. By Rev. S. Baring-

. Stephens.

Gould. M.A.

29. THE NORMANS. By Sarah

4. CARTHAGE. By Prof. ALFRED

Orne Jewett.

J. Church.
5. ALEXANDER'S EMPIRE. By

30. THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.

By C. w. C. Oman.
31. SICILY: Phoenician, Greek and

Prof. J. P. Mahaffy.

6. THE MOORS. IN SPAIN. By

Roman. By the late Prof. E.

Stanley Lane-Poole.

A. Freeman.

7. ANCIENT EGYPT. By Prof.

32. THE TUSCAN REPUBLICS,

George Rawlinson.

By Bella Duffy.

8. HUNGARY, By Prof. Arminius

33. POLAND, By W. R. MORFILL,

Vambery.

M.A.

9. THE SARACENS. By Arthur

34. PARTHIA. By Prof. George

Gilman, M.A.

Rawlinson.

10. IRELAND. By the Hon. Emily

35. AUSTRALIAN COMMON

Lawless.

WEALTH. By GREVILLE

11. CHALDEA. By ZenaIde A.

Tregarthen.

Ragozin.

36. SPAIN. By H. E. WAITS.

12. THE GOTHS. By Henry Brad

37. JAPAN. By David Murray,

ley.

Ph.D.

13. ASSYRIA, By Z.ENAIDE A. Ra

38. SOUTH AFRICA. By George

gozin.

M. Theal.

14. TURKEY. By Stanley Lane-

39. VENICE. By ALETHEA WIEL.

Poole.

40. THE CRUSADES, By T. A.

15. HOLLAND. By Prof. J. E.

Archer and C. L. Kixgsford.

Thorold Rogers.

41. VEDIC INDIA. By Z. A. RA

16. MEDIEVAL FRANCE. By

GOZIN.

Gustave Masson.

42. WEST INDIES and the SPANISH

17. PERSIA. By S. G. W. Ben

MAIN. By JAMES RODWAY.

jamin.

43. BOHEMIA. By C. Edmund

iS. PHOENICIA. By Prof. GEO.

Maurice. [M.A.

Rawlinson.

44. THE BALKANS. BvW. Miller.

19. ftTETim, By Zenaide A. Ra

45. CANADA, By J. G BOURINOT,

gozin.

LL.D.

20. THE HANSA TOWNS. By

46. BRITISH INDIA. By R. W.

Helen Zimmern.

FRAZER. I.L.B.

21. EARLY BRITAIN. Bv Prof.

47. MODERN FRANCE. By Andre-

Alfred I. Church.

Le-Bon.

22. THE BARBARY CORSAIRS.

48. THE FRANKS. By Lewis Ser

By Stanley Lane-Poole.

geant, B.A.

23. RUSSIA. BvW.R. Morfill, M.A.

MODERN ENGLAND. By

24. THE JEWS UNDER THE

Justin McCarthy, M.P.

ROMANS. By W. D. Morrison.

[In the Press.

25. SCOTLAND. By John Mackin

AUSTRIA. By. Sidney Whit

tosh, LL.D.

man, M.A.

London : T. FISHER UNWI]

V, Paternoster Square, E.C.

Builders of Greater Britain.
Edited by H. F. Wilson.
A Set of 10 Volumes, each with Photogravure Frontispiece
and Map, large crown 8vo, cloth, 5s. each.
List of Volumes.
I. SIR WALTER RALEGH ; the British Dominion of the West. By
Martix A. S. Hume..
2. SIR THOMAS MAITLAND ; the Mastery of the Mediterranean.
By Walter Frewen Lord. In preparation.
JOHN CABOT AND HIS SONS ; the Discovery of North America. By
C. Raymond Beazley, M.A.
LORD CLIVE ; the Foundation of British Rule in India. By Sir A.
J. Areuthnot, K.C.S.I., CLE.
EDWARD GIBBON WAKEFIELD ; the Colonisation of South Australia
and New Zealand. By R. GARNETT, C.B., LL.D.
RAJAH BROOKE ; the Englishman as Ruler of an Eastern State. By
Sir Spenser St. John, G.C.M.G.
ADMIRAL PHILIP ; the Founding of New South Wales. By Louis
Becke and Walter Jeffery.
SIR STAMFORD RAFFLES ; England in the Far East. By the
Editor.
Masters of Medicine.
Edited by Ernest Hart, D.C.L., Editor of" The British
Medical Journal."
Large crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. each.

List of Volumes.
I. JOHN HUNTER. By STEPHEN PAGET.
2. WILLIAM HARVEY. By D'Arcy Power.
3. SIR JAMES SIMPSON. By H. Laing Gordon.
In preparation.
EDWARD JENNER. By Ernest Hart.
HERMANN VON HELMHOLTZ. By JOHN G. McKENDRICK.
WILLIAM STOKES. By SIR WILLIAM STOKES.
CLAUDE BERNARD. By Michael Foster.
SIR BENJAMIN BRODIE. By TIMOTHY Holmes.
THOMAS SYDENHAM. By J. F. PAYNE.
ANDREAS VESALIUS. By C. L. TAYLOR.

London : T. FISHER UNWIN, Paternoster Square, E.C.

DAGOBERT I.
(Reproduction oj a Ninth Century Statue)

THE FRANKS

FROM THEIR ORIGIN AS A CONFEDERACY
TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE
KINGDOM OF FRANCE AND
THE GERMAN EMPIRE

LEWIS SERGEANT
AUTHOR OF "JOHN WYCLIF : LAST OF THE SCHOOLMEN AND
FIRST OF THE ENGLISH REFORMERS," ETC.

2Lonoon
T. FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
NEW YORK : G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
MDCCCXCVIII

Copyright by T. Fisher Unwin, 1898
(For Great Britain).
Copyright by G. P. Putman's Sons, 189:
(For the United States of America).

PREFACE.

The story of the Franks, especially of the earlier
Franks, is rich in fable but poor in history. In
the legend of Clovis, and even in the legend of
Charles the Great, it is a work of considerable
difficulty to separate what is historically accurate
from that which has at best a dubious origin. My
aim in writing this volume has been to present
a general outline of the history of the Franks,
and, in doing so, to confine myself almost ex
clusively to facts which have a sure foundation.
That aim implied that the greater part of the
volume should be devoted to periods in which the
historical foundation was least secure — to the long
struggle between Romans and Teutons, during
which the tribes on the east of the Rhine were
perpetually combining against their enemies until
the Frank confederacy clearly emerged^ and to
the subsequent Merovingian period, during which,
the Franks were gradually subjecting the whole
of Gaul. It is in this domain, overgrown as it is
with fable, and meagrely as its central facts have

X PREFACE.
been dealt with by historians, that the student of
history should find his greatest attraction.
I have ventured in the following pages to support
an interpretation of a particular passage in Gregory
of Tours which has been either ignored or repudiated
for more than a thousand years. The reader must
decide for himself as to the probable origin of the
Franks, and the position of Gregory's " Dispargum " ;
but in any case it is impossible that we should
continue to attach the slightest credence to the
imaginary Belgic Thuringia.

CONTENTS.

The Conflict of Races

PAGE
I-IO

Introduction — Romans, Gallo-Romans, and Germans — The
Kelts in Gaul and in Britain — The Roman Church — Limits
of the subject — The Franks ultimately retire from, or are
rejected by, France.

II.

Who were the Franks ?

Obscure Origin of the People — The Gallo-German Frontier —
Caesar and the Sicambrian League — Earliest occurrence of the
name — Vopiscus, Sulpitius, Gregory of Tours -"The Trojan
Legend — A Historical Puzzle and a Word-Study.

III.

Caesar's Frontier Policy

2i-34

Hereditary Foes — The Roman Conquest of Gaul — The West
ward Migrations — Compression and Expansion — Csesar's
Policy — Continued by Augustus — Hermann — The Disaster of
Varus — The Revenge of Germanicus — Marbcd— The Julian
Emperors — The Story of Civilis.
Note on the German Tribes (according to Tacitus) . . 34-36

Xli CONTENTS. IV. PAGE
The German Race  37~47
The Home of the Teutons — Roman Inconsistencies — German
Raids — Romanised Germans— The Flavian Emperors — The
Rhine Frontier — The Roman Rampart — The Cradle-Land of
the Franks — The Decumates Agri. V.
The Decline of Rome  48-57
Franks, Allemans, and Goths — ' ' Deum Ira in Rem Romanam ''
— Growth of the Christian Church — Romanised Gaul — Pagan
and Christian Letters — Gallic Poets.
VI.
The Coming of the Franks .... 58-79
The Frontier broken — Incursions of Allemans, Vandals, and
Franks — Postumus the Traitor — Gallic Insurrections — Aure-
lian — More Frank Raids — Probus — Diocletian — Augusti and
Caesars — Legati, Duces and Cotnites — Constantius — Constan
tine — Julian — Salian Franks settled in Belgic Gaul — A Frank
Consul — A Frank Emperor- Maker — Stilicho — The Poet
Claudian. VII.
The Merovingian Franks .... 80-98
Establishment of the Merovingians in Gaul — Their Origin —
Clodion and Merowig — Gregory of Tours — Dispargum (Divi-
sio-Burgum ?) — The Thuringian Scheidungen-Burg — Salian
Franks — Riparian Franks — Lseti and Leti — Cambrai and
Tournai occupied by the Franks — Aetius — An Impossible
Task— Attila the "Scourge of God"— The Yellow Terror—
Childeric— The Mother of Clovis— Childeric's Tomb.
Note on the Origin of the Merovingians .... 98-100

CONTENTS.
VIIL

PAGE

King Clovis .... . 101-119
The Political State of Gaul at the end of the Fifth Century—
The four Frank Kingdoms in Gaul — Allemans, Goths, and
Burgundians — The Armorican Land — The Conquests of Clovis
' — Defeat of Syagrius — The Cup of Soissons — War with
Thuringia — Queen Clotilda — Expulsion of the Allemans —
The Conversion of Clovis — Saint Remy.

IX.
Conquests of. Christianity . . . 120-131
The Western Church — A new Imperium — The Penance of
Theodosius — Policy and Victories of Christian Rome — The
Church in Gaul — Rome appeals to the Teutons- Invokes the
aid of the Franks — Orthodoxy and Arianism — The Council
of Nice — Victory of the Trinitarians — Effects of the Frank
Conversion.

The Subjection of Gaul . . . 132-152
Wars of Clovis with the Burgundians — Gundobald and Gode-
gisil — Aredius — The Burgundian Codes — Councils of the Gallic
Church — Theodoric the Goth opposes Clovis — The Meeting
of Clovis and Alaric — The Council of Agde— The Conquest
of Aquitaine — Clovis as Roman Consul — Removes from Sois
sons to Paris' — Subjection of the minor Frank Monarchies —
Death of Clovis. XL
Characteristics of the Franks . . 153-164
The Growth of a Nation — Character and Institutions of the
Teutons — Their Codes— Origins of Teutonic Law — Salic Law
 Wehrgeld — Ordeals — Slavery and Enfranchisement.

CONTENTS.

XII. PAGE
The Sons of Clovis . . . 165-179
Subdivision of the Realm of Clovis — Conquest of Burgundy —
Old Age and Death of Clotilda — Conquest of Thuringia and
Bavaria — Clotilda the Younger — Conquest of Provence — Beli-
sarius — The Romance of Totila and the daughter of Theode-
bert — The Plagues — Clotair, second Sole King of the Franks
— Genealogy of the Merovingian Kings.

XIII.
The Sons of Clotair .... 180-193
Subdivision of the Realm of Clotair — Siegbert and Chilperic —
Brunhilda and Fredegonda — Fredegonda's Crimes — Death of
Chilperic — Gontran of Burgundy and Childebert — Brunhilda's
Machinations — Clotair II., third sole King of the Franks —
The Kingdoms of Neustria and Austria — The Frank Reich
and the Oster Ric. XIV.
The Mayors of the Palace . . . 194-206
Origin of the Office — Increase of authority during the minority
of the Kings — Warnaher and Rade — Pepin "of Landen" —
Grimoald and his Son — Rois Faineants — Genealogy of the
hereditary Mayors — Charles Martel — Pepin the Short, Mayor
and King. XV.
Rome appeals to the Franks . - . . 207-220
The Roman See — The Lombards in Italy — Pope Stephen
appeals to Pepin — Pepin crowned at S. Denis — The Her-
cynian Wolf — Development of Frank Authority — Approach
of the Franks to full Civilisation — Land Tenure under the
Frank Kings — Serfdom under Teutonic Rule — The Sons of
Pepin — Accession of Charles.

CONTENTS. XV
XVI. PAGE
Charles the Great .... 221-232
Franks and Saxons — Destruction of Irminsul — A Thirty Years'
War — Pope Adrian's appeal to Charles — Charles defeats the
Lombards in Italy — Visits Rome — Becomes Dux of Rome and
King of Italy — His Benefactions to the Pope — Fresh Cam
paigns in Saxony and Italy — The Assembly of Paderborn —
Mission of Ibn-el-Arabi — Charles invades Spain — Battle of
Roncesvalles — The " Song of Roland."

XVII.
The Western Empire revived . . . 233-247
Witikind the Saxon — Conversion of the Saxons — Final sub
jection of Saxony — Other Wars of Charles — Tassilon of Bavaria
— Charles on the Danube — Death of Pope Adrian — Renewal
of the Understanding with Charles — Leo expelled from Rome
— Restored by Charles — Charles crowned Emperor at Rome
— The Policy of the Pope — Rome and Byzantium.

XVIII.
The Government of Charles . . . 248-266
Imperial Rule — The Palace at Aachen — The Basilica — Spoils
from Italy — Instruments of Music — Haroun-al-Raschid — Missi
Dominici — Incompatibility of Franks and Gauls — A Barrier
of Speech — Charles's Preference for the East— General As
semblies under the Carolingians — The Capitularies — Arch
bishop Hincmar — The Personal Government of Charles.

XV'i CONTENTS. XIX. . PAGE
The Court of Charles . . . 267-285
The Emperor's Mother — His Wives and Family — Ealhwine
of York — Alcuin and the School of the Palace — Alcuin's
Method of Instruction — A Revival of Learning — Caligraphy —
The Scriptorium at Tours — Eginhard — Charles as a Writer —
The ' ' Caroline Books " — Correspondence of Charles — Dawn
of Teutonic Literature.

XX.

The Life and Work of Charles . . 286-297
Last Years of Charles the Great — Inroads of'the Northmen —
The Emperor's Sons — The Death of the Emperor — His Life
and Work — Obstacles to Mental Evolution — The Legend of
Charlemagne — Influences of the Franks — Charles and Offa,
King of the Mercians.

XXI.

The Partition of the Empire . . . 298-319
Louis the Pious and His Sons — Genealogy of the Carolingians
— Constituent Parts of the Empire — Weakness of Louis —
Revolt of his Sons — Battle of Fontenai — Louis the German
and Charles the Bald— The Oaths of Argentaria — Lingua
Romana and Lingua Teudisca — Nationalities at Fontenai and
Argentaria — Treaty of Verdun and Partition of the Empire —
The Imperial Succession — Encroachments of the Northmen —
Rollo, Duke of Normandy.

CONTENTS. XV11
XXII.

PAGE

France and Germany .... 320-334
The Last Carolingians — The Dukes of France — Hugues Capet
— The Kingdom of France — Hereditary Fiefs — Origins of the
Feudal System— The Word " Frank"— The Imperial Title—
The Holy Roman Empire — Conclusion.

Index  335
Roman Names and Modern Equivalents . . 342

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

GALLIC BRACELET
MAP OF WESTERN GERMANY
PORTA NIGRA (ROMAN) _.
PNEUMATIC ORGAN, FOURTH CENTURY
MONUMENTAL TOMB (ROMAN)
STATUE OF JULIAN
FROM AN ALTAR TO CERNUNNOS IN PARIS
SKETCH-MAPCEREMONIAL SWORD IN SHEATH (FROM THE TOMB
OF CHILDERIC)
BUCKLE (FROM THE TOMB OF CHILDERIC)
MOUNTED TOOTH (DITTO)
AXE-HEAD (DITTO)
SPEAR-HEAD (DITTO)
FRANK WARRIOR (TYPICAL)
STATUE OF CLOVIS (XII. CENTURY) .
STATUE OF CLOTILDA (XII. CENTURY)
THE BAPTISM OF CLOVIS

To face 2851
56
63 71
76
85

9596 97
9899
106 112
"5118

XX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE
ALTAR TRAY AND CHALICE I 23
TOMB OF S. REMY . I 27
A GALLIC COUNCIL 1 37
AMBOISE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY I40
RUINS OF MARMOUTIERS 1 42
DIPTYCH OF SIVIDIUS OF TOURS I46
EARLIER FRANK SETTLEMENTS IN BELGIAN GAUL I 56
IRON SAUFANG l6l
GAUL AFTER THE DEATH OF CLOVIS 1 68
VOTIVE CROWN OF KING SUINTILA I 74
REALM OF THE FRANKS UNDER CLOTAIR II. (6 1 3) 1 90
REPUTED THRONE OF DAGOBERT 1 98
SAXON REALM OF CHARLES THE GREAT 229
THE SWORD OF CHARLES THE GREAT 237
DIADEM OF CHARLES THE GREAT 244
ORGANISTRUM (iX. CENTURY). 250
THREE-STRINGED CROUT (iX. CENTURY) . 250
LYRE (iX. CENTURY) 25 I
TINTINNABULUM (iX. CENTURY) 264
CHIMES (FROM A IX. CENTURY MS.) 273
BYZANTINE ENAMEL RELIQUARY (x. CENTURY) 279
CHRIST AND HIS MOTHER (lX. CENTURY FRESCO) . 295"
TURRET BELL NOW AT SIENA (1159) 33!

I.

THE CONFLICT OF RACES.
It is sometimes said that historians who dwell on
the operation of historic laws, in accordance with
which they believe that history is continuously
evolved, seek to build too great an edifice upon
a series of simple observations, and magnify mere
coincidences into the necessary results of co-opera
ting causes. But if there is any exaggeration of
this kind sufficiently serious to produce a misappre
hension of historical facts, it is not so unfortunate
in its consequences as the opposite exaggeration of
those who represent the facts of history as little else
than a chronological succession of casual event's.
To say that history is developed in accordance
with law is only to admit that such permanent
causes of human action as the race and its tendencies,
the country and its climate, the nation and its insti
tutions, must in successive ages bring about similar
results frqm similar combinations of circumstances.
Nations, like individuals, act in the long run accord
ing to a fairly constant law of their being, so that
from the recorded events of the past we can often
2 l

2 THE CONFLICT OF RACES.
account for and explain the present, whilst the
present condition and character of a nation will
sometimes enable us to interpret and understand
its past.
In dealing with a people like the Franks, and
especially with the Franks who entered Gaul and
helped to create France, there is one consideration
which must be always borne in mind. The mixture
of races in any country, and even the mixture of
various branches of the same race, constantly modi
fies the type of each. For a time the grafted tree
will bear two different kinds of fruit, both of which
may persist as long as the tree survives. But rarely
will several grafts continue to nourish on the same
stock ; either one of them will prevail over all the
rest, or the stock will prove itself more vigorous than
the introduced branches, and will produce its original
fruit in greater abundance, whilst the grafts dwindle
away, or give but slight evidence of their distinct
character. Law is still at work ; the type persists
and displays itself; but with sundry types in one
composite nation there is a struggle for predomi
nance; and the historian cannot always follow this
struggle as closely as he would desire amidst the
intricacies of national development.
Nowhere can we study the laws of national
development, or follow up the human struggle for
existence, with greater satisfaction and profit than
in the early history of England and France. The
reason is the same in both cases, and the elements
of the inquiry, though differing in some important
respects, are in a large measure identical. In Britain

KELTS AND GERMANS. 3
and in Gaul the race that was original — so far as our
present knowledge permits us to speak of the original
— was the race of Kelts. The Greeks called them
Kelts ; though indeed Herodotus, writing in the fifth
century before Christ, said that the Danube rose in
their territory, and that a people whom he called
Kynesioi were the westernmost race in Europe. In
any case the Kelts were in Britain and Gaul ; and in
the latter country, nineteen hundred years ago, they
had already been pressed hard by the Germans
when the Roman armies overwhelmed them. In
both countries a Roman occupation gave them several
centuries of comparative peace and civilisation.
The Caesars rolled back from Gaul successive tides
of invasion. The valleys of the Rhine furnished a
thousand battlefields for the age-long conflict between
a dying empire and a young invincible race. To
such a conflict, amongst the most momentous and
important which humanity has known, there was but
one possible end. Before the destined masters of the
world, who were to carve out four mighty empires in
Europe, and to rise to heights of knowledge, culture,
and disciplined strength such as even Greece and
Rome had never attained, the imperial organisation
gradually weakened and gave way. For five centuries,
and for part of a sixth, the. Roman stood between the
Kelt and the German, striving against fate, stemming
what to him was a tide of barbarism, yet working out
as he did so the beneficent laws of civil evolution, by
tempering to finer consistency the hard metal of the
northern races — metal which Rome could grind and
set, but could never break..

4 THE CONFLICT OF RACES.
In the end Rome abandoned the hopeless struggle,
and withdrew from the circumference of her empire
because her very existence was threatened at the
centre. Whilst the last of the Western emperors and
the later Roman duces were fighting in vain against
successive inroads of Goths, Alans, Huns, and
Lombards — whilst the Christian Church in Rome, by
virtue of its compact organisation, began to assume
civil rule in the ravaged and dilapidated city, and
thence to extend its influence to the countries which
Rome had conquered and colonised, the Kelts and
Germans renewed their interrupted warfare. The
Rhine-Germans, no longer opposed by highly-trained
Italian or mercenary legions, established themselves
in Gaul ; the coast-Germans broke through the de
fences of the Saxon shore, and carved an England
out of Britain ; whilst the forest-Germans, ever press
ing from behind upon the fluid tribes of the western
and northern Teutons,1 at once impelled them into
the struggle and reinforced their ranks.
Thus were the new States of Europe founded ; yet
not by the harmony and co-operation of the tribes
which made up this later Aryan development, but
by their competition, and in the teeth of their mutual
internecine ravages. The first Sicambrian and Chattan
Franks in Gaul had to hold their own against Bata-
vians and Chamavians, who preceded or followed
them, just as the Gallo-Roman-Franks succumbed
1 The words "German" and "Teuton,'' as used in this volume,
must be regarded as generally equivalent. "Teuton" originally had
a more restricted meaning, but it was soon employed by Latin writers
in the same sense as " German."

THE IMPERIAL CHURCH. 5
to the Northman sea-kings in the ninth century, and
as the Anglo-Saxons of England succumbed to the
Norman-French in the eleventh century.
The actors are virtually the same, though the
arena changes ; the pressure and the conquest are
always from the last-formed waves of the advancing
tide, from the newer artd ruder Northmen, such as are
still least affected by civil status and civilisation.
Our intention, is to consider the period of Frank
development and predominance in Western Europe,
and to estimate the Franks in relation to and com
parison with the tribes and races which surrounded
them. Side by side with these tribes and races
we shall behold another growing and aggressive
dominion, Semitic in origin, Greek in expression,
Roman in organisation, a marvellous counterpart of
the imperium whose deserted capital it appropriated,
whose methods it adopted, whose eagles it followed
into every land, and whose fate it experienced with
the most significant exactitude. It is by no mere
coincidence that the empire of the Roman Church,
in the clash of conflict with Greeks, Italians, Iberians,
Kelts, and the various Teutonic nations, gained sub
stantially the same victories and received substantially
the same checks as the empire of Roman arms.
The separation of the Eastern and Western
Empires was followed in due time by the separa
tion of the Eastern and Western Churches. The
grafting of an imperial Church on the old Italian
stock led successively to the limitless assumptions,
the incredible corruptions, and the eventual humilia
tion of Christian Rome, so that the Eternal City, as

6 THE CONFLICT OF RACES.
Hadrian called it, has been twice head of the world
and twice the prison of its Pontifex Maximus.
Amongst the Kelts, the Roman Church has found,
as the Roman State before it had found in its oldest
Province, its most docile, exalted, superstitious, and
faithful subjects. State and Church alike encoun
tered in the Teutons a staunch, unconquerable foe,
who spurned their control, shattered their power,
and finally built up an edifice of their own on
durable foundations. All this has been but the
working out of the same historic laws through the
instrumentality of the same peoples. With certain
characters, amidst given circumstances and con
ditions, we have arrived in each case at very much
what might have been expected and predicted
beforehand. To trace the effects of such historic laws as these
is naturally more difficult, as has already been said,
when we have to do, not with the marked charac
teristics of single tribes or races, but with the compo
site characters of national amalgamations. Thus it
is a task of greater complexity to disentangle the
motives which tend to shape the acts of the nation of
Kelts, Gallo-Romans, Basques, Franks, and Scandi
navians, whom we call Frenchmen, or of the nation
of Kelts, Teutons, and Norman-French, whom we
call Englishmen, than it is to understand the com
paratively simple development of the almost unmixed
people of Germany.
At any rate we have the same Teutonic elements
more or less distinctly present in France, England,
and Germany. Even the Franks are among our

KELTS AND FRANKS. J
common ancestry, from whom we derive both blood
and ideas. They fill a page in our island history, a
volume in the histories of France and Germany.
They are especially important as having been, more
than the Goths, or the Angles, or- the Saxons, a hinge
of ancient and modern civilisation ; for in the rise of
the new nationalities they were ever nearest, in arms,
in settlement, and in law, to the vanguard and the
outposts of Rome. Yet in spite of this fact, and
although the first Frank emperor, a century before the
time of Alfred in England, attained to a civilisation
which was not a mere afterglow of Roman culture,
but was in some measure Teutonic, the Franks them
selves, in presence of the Gauls, the Romans, and the
Northmen, were not destined to be the persistent
race in the land which they had conquered. In
Britain there was a conquering German race which
did persist, under very similar conditions, against
Kelts and Romans and Northmen ; but the Franks,
who were the flower of the Teutonic family, and
whose victories were greater and more striking than
those of the Anglo-Saxons, left comparatively slight
traces behind them in the country to which they
gave their name. It is only in a limited sense that
the Franks can be called the makers of France. A
few characteristics of the Salic law, two or three of
the customs which went to build up the feudal
system, a certain inevitable blending of the popu
lation in the centre and north of Gaul, with a larger
admixture of the Germanic element in the north-east,
especially in the provinces which came to be known
as Alsace and Lorraine, added, of course, to the

5 THE CONFLICT OF RACES.
national consolidation which might never have been
attained, or would not have been so thoroughly
attained, without the Merovingian and Carolingian
conquests — these are the principal items of the legacy
which was bequeathed by the victors in arms to their
victors in religion, in language, and in such art and
letters as the times admitted.
It was, indeed, the very strength of their own
national characteristics that led to the failure of

GALLIC BRACELET.

the Franks — if failure it must be called — to acclima
tise themselves thoroughly in Gaul. They were
always- the most German of the Germans, in their
final conquest of the Thuringians, Saxons, and
Allemans, as in their early struggle with the
Romans, and in their victories over the Goths
Burgundians, and Lombards. Their domination in
the west was largely due to the assistance of the
Church, without which they would scarcely have
been able to extend their borders to the Medi-

NOSTALGIA. 9
terranean and the Atlantic, and would certainly
not have succeeded in converting their kingdom
into an empire. The Church, after all, was the real
victor, and the Church in Gaul was essentially Gallo-
Roman. The Franks, it is true, became very good
Christians ; but they ended, as they began, by being
essentially warriors, and they never ceased to cherish
their German institutions, language, and national
traditions. They were in Gaul for centuries, but
of Gaul they never were, in any thorough and durable
sense. The nostalgia which perpetually haunted
them became with large numbers an irresistible force.
When they realised that the Gallo-Romans and the
northern and western Kelts could never be German
ised, and that on the Seine and Loire and Rhone
they must either become Gauls themselves or be
content to live amongst a race alien in language,
thought, and daily habit, then, by natural and inevit
able gravitation, they practically reverted as a nation
to their ancestral seats.
Charles the Great showed by many evident signs
that his ideas and preferences were German rather
than Gallic, Austrian rather than Neustrian. He built
the broad foundations of a German empire between
the" North Sea and the Alps, dwelling constantly in
the Rhinelands, and leaving Aquitaine, Provence
and Italy to the charge of his sons. A generation after
his death his grandchildren divided his possessions ;
the empire passed permanently into Germany, and
all that was most essentially German amongst the
Franks tended to fall back upon the Rhine. If there
was no wholesale and manifest re-migration of Franks

IO THE CONFLICT OF RACES.
from Neustria and Western Gaul, there was at any rate
a continuing current from west to east of the elements
which were more distinctly Teutonic, and which had
shown themselves least fitted or disposed to coalesce
with the Gallo-Roman. From the year 843 we may
reckon that the part of the Franks in the making of
France was practically complete, the kingship falling
(partly, perhaps, by marriage with a Frank princess) to
the Angevin family of Robert the Strong, whose great-
grandson was Hugues Capet. From the same year
the male descendants of Charles the Great reigned in
Germany alone, and at the end of the ninth century
the splendid mission of the Franks in Gaul had been
accomplished. The object of this volume is to trace the rise and
development of the Franks, from their obscure origin
as a confederacy, rather than as a nation, to their
attainment of full and distinct national life ; to follow
them through the successive phases of their growth,
to the time when the Carolingian empire towered in
strength and renown above all other contemporary
dominations ; and, beyond that, to the time when
the mighty stream of human energy, receding from
Western Europe, recovered force and impulse at
its fountain-head, and renooded the plains of
Germany with imperishable and imperial strength.

II.

WHO WERE THE FRANKS ?

THE origin of the Franks, l;ke the origin of their
name, is lost in obscurity. The first thing to note
about them is that we have no facts on which to
found a definite statement. They appear suddenly
and casually in the pages of history, and the Gauls
or Romans who heard them mentioned for the first
time by their new title must have wondered who they
were, and whence they came. There are maps still
in circulation which include Franks amongst the
Teutonic tribes who occupied Germany at the
beginning of the Christian era ; but, there were no
Franks for two or three centuries after Christ, and
the Franks were not a tribe of the Teutons, though
they were indisputably Teutonic.
The earlier Roman historians knew nothing of this
people. Tacitus, who lived into the second century,
and who mentions some seven and forty branches of
the Teutonic race, gives us no particulars of a tribe or
combination of tribes possessing the distinctness and
prominence which subsequently marked the Franks.
Teutonic leagues there naturally would be — alliances

1 2 WHO WERE THE FRANKS ?
for a single campaign, whether aggressive or defensive;
associations for a special purpose, enduring until the
purpose was fulfilled ; treaty-obligations between two-
or more tribes, entered into after a fight, or in order
to avoid fighting. Caesar and Tacitus describe several
of these leagues, the most important being that which
was formed by the Sicambrians, amongst the tribes
on the right bank of the Rhine, extending northwards
between the lands of the Ubii and the Usipii — that
is, approximately, between the confluences of the
Mosella and the Luppia (Lippe) with the Rhine.
This was the most vulnerable section of the Rhine
frontier. Lower down, the waters, higher up the
mountains, created natural defences, aided in the latter
case by a limes and a vallum, a stockade and a rampart.
On the eastern bank of the Rhine, nearly correspond
ing with the eastern part of what is now called Rhenish
Prussia, north and south of the river Sieg, which enters
the Rhine opposite to Bonn, the Sicambrians and
their allies repeatedly braved the power of Rome.1 It
was the very place where we should expect to find an
anti-Roman league, at any time during the Roman
occupation of Gaul. The Rhine-Germans were always
fighting, or preparing to cross the river, or recovering
their energies after a defeat. Those who would not
fight migrated eastwards in their shame, amongst the
marshes and forests, and became hewers of wood
and drawers of water. Those who remained were
constantly reinforced by Chasuarians, Cheruscans,
Chattans, and volunteers from every quarter, wher
ever the greatness of the Roman name and the
1 Tacitus, "Annals," ii. 26, iv. 34.

THE RHINE FRONTIER. I 3
memories of their own ancestry attracted the bravest
warriors to the front. Of those who fought, some few
made good their footing in Gaul, either in spite of
Gauls and Romans or in agreement with them,
defending their new settlements against invaders who
came after them. Others were put to flight by the
Roman generals, who every now and then pursued
them across the Rhine. In the long series of wars
which were waged between the Gallo-Romans and
the Rhine-Germans, millions must have perished on
both sides of this historic frontier, by the sword of
their enemies or by the ravage and starvation which
followed in the wake of victory.
Caesar tells us, in his account of the Gallic War,
of a combination of the Tencteri and Usipii, to the
number of 330,000, who crossed the Lower Rhine into
the Belgian settlements of the Menapii, after they had
been driven from their own territories by the warlike
Suevi — for whom, they declared, not even the im
mortal gods could be a match. The intruders would
not retire at Caesar's bidding, even when he offered to
transfer them to the country of the Ubii, whom the
Suevi had placed under tribute, though they could
not drive them from their fields. Caesar fought and
defeated them ; and, not content with that, he ordered
his cavalry to fall upon their women and children. It
was a shameful deed, for which, as Cato said at Rome,
the conqueror ought to have been handed over to the
vengeance of the survivors.
In this way, amongst others, the Romans welded
together their indomitable foes. That forced migra
tion of the two tribes, expelled from their homes by

14 WHO WERE THE FRANKS?
a fierce enemy of their own race, wandering for three
years with their families and the remnants of their
property, seizing the fields of the Menapii, expelled
again by the Rorhans, cut to pieces by Caesar's army,
witnessing the butchery of their wives and little ones,
whom even the irresistible Suevi had spared, was in
fact the origin of the first riparian league of Germans
— or, at any rate, of the first strong league of the
Rhine-Germans which history records. For the
survivors of the massacre, including' a large number
of horsemen, recrossed the river near its junction with
the Meuse, and, with another body of horsemen who
had not been engaged in the battle, betook them
selves to the Sicambrians, with whom they entered
into alliance.
Cassar determined to follow up his victory by
striking a blow at his enemies on their own ground.
He built his famous bridge of wood, probably, as
Mommsen says, between Cologne and Andernach,
and led his army into the territory of the Sicam
brians. The allies did not venture to face him.
They took refuge in the woods — " finibus suis
excesserant, suaque omnia exportaverant, seque in
solitudinem ac sylvas abdiderant." Some of the
neighbouring tribes sent embassies to the invader ;
but the Suevi raised their standard, and began to
assemble an enormous host of fighting men, which
would doubtless have tested the valour of the
Romans to the utmost. Caesar therefore withdrew,
cutting the bridge behind him. And, whilst he was
absent on his first expedition to Britain, the fugitives
returned to their homes, cemented their alliance, and

THE SICAMBRIAN LEAGUE. I 5
made a joint attack on Aduatuca Tungrorum (the
modern Tongres).
Now this Sicambrian League has generally been
regarded as the original, or at all events as the direct
forerunner, of the confederacy which at a later date
acquired the name of Franks. Some of the earliest
commentators on Caesar's text assert that the
descendants of the Sicambrians and their allies
who fought against' Rome in the century before
the birth of Christ were subsequently called by this
name. There is nothing to prove an actual descent.
All that we can affirm is that a people who were
known as Franks, and who were undoubtedly
Teutons, constantly invaded Gaul in the third and
following centuries. The historian Vopiscus, who
wrote a life of his contemporary Aurelian, says that
the latter, when he was tribune of the sixth Gallic
legion, fought a battle hear Mogontiacum (Mayence
or Mainz), and defeated a force of the " Franks,"
" who had invaded the empire, and were ravaging
the whole of Gaul." Aurelian died in the year 275,
and Vopiscus appears to be the first writer who
made use of the name of Franks, though Sulpitius,
writing two centuries later, names three " Frank ''
leaders who broke the Roman rampart in 238.
The passage proves nothing as to the origin of the
particular Germans who fought Aurelian. They
might have been in Gaul • for many years, or they
might have crossed with other Germans at any
point between Rigomagus and the sea.
Gregory of Tours (544-595), who wrote a "History
of the Franks," records the baptism of King Clovis,

1 6 WHO WERE THE FRANKS?
whose cruel deeds and Christian fervour he sets down
with much impartiality. According to his account
Remigius (whom we also know as S. Remy, arch
bishop of Reims) prepared a little speech for the
royal catechumen, beginning with ¦ " Mitis depone
colla Sigamber" — "Bow thy neck meekly, Sicam
brian ! " Thus in the year 496 we have the
representative and flower of the Frank race ad
dressed as a Sicambrian. But that, again, proves
nothing as to a special Sicambrian origin for the
people and the name of Franks. It was a natural
turn of rhetoric for Remigius to use ; but Clovis, as
we shall hereafter see, was a Salian rather than a
Sicambrian Frank. And the Salians had their origin
on the borders of the Hercynian Forest, where the
river Sala (Saale) flows into the Main.
It would be idle to attempt to define the territorial
limits of the Franks during the earlier centuries, of
their history, even if we could rely upon the accuracy
and precision of every one who used the term up to
the establishment of Clovis in Gaul. We read of the
Riparian Franks, of the Sicambrian Franks, of the
Salian Franks, of the Chamavian Franks, and so forth.
Of the Salian Franks, again, there are two denomina
tions, which we will attempt to distinguish in a future
chapter ; and it is doubtful how far to the eastward
we ought to look for the original home of the Franks
before Clovis, towards the central watershed of
Germany, amongst the Chattans and Hermundurians,
or even amongst the Suevians. Clovis himself, the
real founder of the Merovingian dynasty, had to fight
the Thuringians and the Allemans, and to oust the

TROJANS AT PADUA. I J
king of the Riparian Franks, before he could establish
his authority over the Burgundians and Aquitanians.
In other words, he, an undisputed Frank by origin,
found himself opposed to other undisputed Franks,
and to Germans who were not demonstrably Franks,
as well as to Gauls and Gallo-Romans.
It is unnecessary to say that a Trojan origin was
claimed for the Franks— as for the Danes and the
Britons, and as a Macedonian origin was claimed for
the Saxons. The work which goes by the name of
Fredegarius, and which is partly based on Gregory of
Tours, is especially responsible for the Trojan legend ;
and it must be confessed that Fredegarius is not with
out warrant for claiming Virgil as an authority for his
statement. What Virgil says J is this : —
" Antenor potuit, mediis elapsus Achivis,
Illyricos penetrare sinus, atque intima tutus
Regna Liburnorum et fontem superare Timavi,
Unde per ora novem, vasto cum murmure montis,
It mare proruptum, et pelago premit arva sonanti.
Hie tamen ille urbem Patavi sedesque locavit
Teucrorum."
That is to say, Antenor the Trojan migrated to the
furthest gulfs of the Illyrian coast, to the northern
shore of the Adriatic, to Pannonia and Venetia, where
he founded the city of Patavium, or Padua — whence,
say some, the origin of the Batavians. Now, Gregory
himself mentions Pannonia as a reputed home of the
Franks ; and in an age which accepted Virgil as an
authority in history it would not seem at all unreason
able to conclude that the Pannonians and Venetians
¦* ^Eneid, i. 246.
3

1 8 who were The franks ?
were of Trojan origin. But, whatever this may argue
as to the parentage of these two peoples, it throws
little or no light upon the parentage of the Franks:1
The derivation and meaning of the word francus,
which is clearly not Latin in origin, will provide us
not only with a very interesting historical puzzle, but
also with a word-study of exceptional value and
variety. Many words now in constant use, geo
graphical and other, have been derived from this
common appellation (for as such it came to be em
ployed) of the Germanic settlers in Gaul ; but whence
did they originally derive it ?
There is in the Breton division of the Keltic tongue
a word " franc," which means " ample," " open," " at
large," and, by natural inference, " free." The mean
ing suits, and some fairly good authorities, like the
German Diefenbach, have been satisfied with this
explanation. If it were accepted, one might go so far
as to attach a new signification to the derivative word
franchir, and find a harmony in the ideas suggested
by this verb and by the epithet applied to the irre
pressible Teutons, who so constantly leaped the
barriers of Gaul.
Grimm and others have looked for a solution to the
Gothic freis, and the German frei, one adding the
word ancke, " youth," and then contracting/m ancke
into frank. Others again refer us to an English or
Saxon word franca, signifying "a dart," or even to a
Teutonic word framea, with the same signification.
These are not happy guesses, and we should still be
1 The Trojan legend is discussed at some length by Dr. Rydberg, in
his "Teutonic Mythology."

A rOmaN Nickname. tg
without any better suggestion than that of the Breton
word franc, if it were not for a distinct statement, in
historical form, which, though not of conclusive autho
rity, commends itself to our careful consideration,
Sigebert of Gembloux, a Belgian chronicler who died
in the year 1 1 12, writing of the Franks, says, " Valen-
tinianus Francos Attica lingua appellavit, quod Latina
lingua interpretatur feroces." And another writer
says, with greater detail, " Sicambri haec audientes
caesos Alanos (Allemannos) deleverunt. Romani
Attica lingua tunc eos Francos, id est feroces, appella-
verunt ; diuque a tributo liberi vixerunt." If we read
" Hattica," or " Chattica," for " Attica," and if we
accept the substance of the two statements as fairly
likely to be based on an older and stronger authority,
we may conclude that the German warriors of the
central cantons were called " Franci," that is to say
ferocious or formidable, by Romans with whom they
were at the time virtually in alliance. Probably
enough they accepted the term as complimentary
rather than in the opposite sense. According to the
writer last quoted, the name was given by Romans
to Sicambrians, though borrowed from the Chattan
dialect ; but we need not suppose that he drew any
sharp distinction between the two tribes, or, on the
other hand, that the vocabulary of a Ghattan differed
much from that of a Sicambrian.
There is, however, a discrepancy in the statement
of Sigebert as compared with the passage already
quoted from Vopiscus. The first Valentinian was
born in the year 321, but Vopiscus, who wrote part of
the " Historia Augusta," must at the latest have died

20 WHO WERE THE FRANKS?
before Valentinian I. came to man's estate. Either
the derivation of the word " Franci " was introduced
into the Life of Aurelian by a younger hand than
that of Vopiscus, or else the Valentinian that Sigebert
refers to was not the first to make use of it.
We have another and considerably earlier explana
tion of the term from the Byzantine Lydus, who wrote
a book on Roman magistracies in the first half of the
sixth century. According to Lydus, the Gauls or
Romans called these invaders Franks after the name
of one of their leaders.1 There is clearly a choice of
difficulties, and the matter must be left without defi
nite conclusion. The most we can do is to find reason
for preferring the explanation that the German word
" frank," whoever first applied it to this seed of a
nation, was adopted by the Romans, ever ready to
apply a nickname to their enemies or auxiliaries, and
that in this way it passed into general acceptation.
And to the present day there is no word in the
French language which, as we shall hereafter see, is
more monumental in its record of historical origins
and successive developments.
' <&payyovq avrovq it, riyefiovos KaKovmv liri row ftapovTog ot irepi
'Vijvov Kal 'PoSavov (iii. 5°)-

III.

CESAR'S FRONTIER POLICY.

It follows from what has already been said that
there can be no such thing as a precise and compre
hensive story of the Franks, at any rate before the
time of Clovis. The name which has become so
famous in the history of the world was always unde
fined, and never more than conventional. What we
know is that it was applied to certain German warriors
— probably in the first instance to Sicambrians, Chat-
tans, and Hermundurians, nearly corresponding with
the Hermiones of Pliny — and that from them it was
gradually extended to other boki and aggressive
Teutons, dwelling on or near the banks of the river
Sala, of the Main, and of the Middle and Lower Rhine.
But we could not at any period take a map of Europe
and say with confidence, " Here were the Franks, and
here they ceased to be." We could not be sure that
in dividing the German cantons between Franks and
not-Franks we were including all that ought to be
included, and excluding all that ought to be ex
cluded. We could not take the descriptions of
Germany and of its national characteristics, as fur-

22 CMSAk ' S FRONTIER POLICY.
nished by Caesar, Strabo, Pomponius Mela, Pliny, ahd
Tacitus, and say, "This applies in particular to
Germans who took the name of Franks, and this to
Germans who remained in their ancestral seats, and
never called themselves Franks." As we are shut out
from any exact definition by the nature of our subject,
it is necessary to begin by laying down limits for our
selves. It will be interesting if we follow the general
progress of the struggle between Romans and Ger
mans, on both sides of the imperial frontier, from the
time of Julius Caesar onward. Proceeding on these
lines, and watching the general retrocession of the
Roman dominion, up to the time when the Rhine
became German on both banks, throughout the whole
of its course, we may take note of the earlier occur
rences of the name and personality of the Franks,
without drawing any more positive conclusions in
regard to them than our last chapter may appear to
warrant. Not until we approach the middle of the
fifth century shall we be entitled to speak, as the
introduction to the Salic code of law will be found to
speak, of the Franks as a nation.
From the time of Clovis to the time of Charles the
Great we shall have to do with a comparatively dis
tinct kingdom, or with distinct kingdoms, of the
Franks ; and thereafter we shall see a new empire,
with Franks in place of Romans, recoiling before a
new invasion of irrepressible Northmen.
When Julius Caesar went to the transalpine Province
of Gaul as proconsul, in the year 58 B.C., more than
forty years after the memorable defeat by Marius of

HELVETIANS AND SUEVIANS. 23
the Cimbrians at Aquae Sextiae (Aix), and of the
Teutons at Vercelli, his command extended as far
north as the Cebenna mountains and Lake Lemanus.
Of further Gaul, which he describes as held by Aqui-
tanians, Celts," and Belgians, and which up to that time
was independent of Rome, the Germans had already
occupied considerable districts on the left bank of the
Rhine. The river was practically in German hands,
from its source to its mouth. Between the mouth and
the Vosagus mountains (Vosges), the Belgians, so far
as they were Kelts, had been driven back or overrun
by Teutons ; and, higher still, great hordes of. Central
Germans had ousted the Helvetians from their native
valleys, and driven them to seek a new home in Gaul.
The leaders of this vast migration gave Caesar a pre
text for attacking them, which he was not slow to
seize. He had come from Rome with an aggressive
policy already shaped in his mind, and he took the
first step towards the conquest of Gaul by crushing
the Helvetian host, and compelling the wanderers, or
such 'of them as had not been slain, or taken refuge
amongst the Aeduans, to return to their former terri
tories. A new and more formidable enemy was now to be
encountered. Ariovistus, with an army of a hundred
thousand Suevians (an indefinite term which must be
regarded as including Germans of more than one tribe)
had penetrated into the land of the Sequanians, within
a few days' march of Vesontio (Besancon). There
Caesar defeated him, and thence drove him, with the
remains of his shattered forces, back across the Rhine.
There were still plenty of Germans left in Gaul, as

24 c^esar's frontier policy.
Caesar found to his cost. We have mentioned already
the presence of the Menapians amongst the earlier
settlers in Belgic territory, the migration of the
Tencteri and Usipii, Caesar's demonstration against
the Sicambrian League, and his withdrawal before
the general levy of the Suevians. He was both
wise and prudent in declining to fight on that occa
sion. He had come to conquer Gaul, not Germany
or Britain. His policy was to subdue the divided
Gauls in detail, whether by fighting or by negotiating
— and it must be remembered that the wealthiest men
in nearer Gaul were already largely Italian in feeling,
and well disposed to Rome. He was too great a
general to miss his main object by committing himself
deeply in the side issues.
Moreover, Caesar must have seen, with the clear
sight of true military genius, that the conquest of
Germany, if not actually impossible, was a very
different thing from the subjugation of Gaul. He
saw that the number of fighting men in Germany was
almost unlimited, and that each of them was as brave
and intrepid as the best Roman legionary. Physi
cally, indeed, they were bigger and stronger than the
Romans and their southern levies ; their only in
feriority was in discipline and strategy. But what
Caesar would regard as more important — what was
overlooked by rasher and younger generals, like
Drusus half a century later — was that the Germans,.
in addition to being a multitude of swarming nations,
were also in a condition of constant flux, and this not
so much by their own choice as by a combination of
natural necessities. His course in Gaul was com-

COMPRESSION AND EXPANSION. 2$
paratively smooth sailing, but if he had invaded
Germany he would have been caught in a vortex
of overwhelming currents. In Gaul he had a fixed
mark, whereas in Germany the target would have
been incessantly in motion. His first experience as
proconsul, when he came from Rome with a single
legion, was to encounter a planned and bravely
escorted migration of 368,000 Helvetians, moving
from east to west, who, if not themselves actually
Teutons, were in motion as the direct result of a west
ward Teutonic pressure. The expedition of Ariovistus
was not ostensibly a migration, but it doubtless origi-
¦ nated in the same causes, which must have led to
the same shifting of wives and families and property.
Ariovistus was said to have been called in to the
assistance of the Sequanians and Arvernians (corre
sponding to the present Auvergnats) ; but he was in
Gaul before that, with other objects and other aims.
The case of the Tencteri and their allies was more
distinctly one of migration initiated by pressure
behind, and exerting pressure in front.
If Caesar recognised these two great growing forces
- of compression and expansion amongst the German
tribes, he probably foresaw something of the course
of events during the next few centuries. It would be
useless for Rome to conquer Germany : she could not
hold it. Her policy must be to stem this human
tide, to keep it in check, and by a few well-directed
blows at the proper moments to prevent the enemies
of the empire from massing themselves in irresistible
force upon the frontiers. In this way the compressed
populations of the mountain and forest lands, of the

26 Cesar's frontier policy.
valleys and grazing-grounds of Germany, might, be
held back by strong forts and ramparts, and by
unceasing vigilance of frontier-garrisons ; but the
restrained force would still gather and grow, and the
first relaxation of the defence would be followed by
an immediate expansion. As Montesquieu has said,
" Les violences des Romains avaient fait retirer les
peuples du Midi au Nord : tandis que la force qui les
contenait subsista, ils y resterent ; quand elle fut
affaiblie, ils se repandirent de toutes parts." The
truth of this statement was frequently attested, from
the time of Marius onward ; hut it was conspicuously
illustrated in the fifth and the ninth century.1
The best work of Caesar in relation to Gaul and the
Germans endures to this day, because it was in close
harmony with the laws of historic development — not,
like the work of many generals and statesmen, in
apparent resistance to those laws. " Inasmuch as the
great general and statesman of Rome," says Momm-
sen, "with sure glance perceived in the German
tribes the rivals and antagonists of the Roman-Greek
world ; inasmuch as with firm hand he established
the new system of aggressive defence down even to
its details, and taught men to protect the frontier of
the empire by rivers or artificial ramparts, to colonise
the nearest barbarian tribes along the frontier with
the view of warding off the more remote, and to
recruit the Roman army by enlistment from the
1 "La meme chose arriva quelqiies siecles apres. Les conquetes de
Charlemagne et ses tyrannies avaient une seconde fois fait reculer les
peuples du Midi au Nord ; sitot que cet empire fut affaibli ils se
porterent une seconde fois du Nord au Midi " ( " Causes de- la Grandeur
des Romains et de leur Decadence "). 

¦A ROOT-FACT OF HISTORY. 2J
enemy's country, he gained for the Hellenic-Italian
culture the interval necessary to civilise the West, as
it had already civilised the East."
To say that Caesar did this, and that he had the
genius to do it, is another Way of saying that the
historical development of the world had produced
the imperial race of Italy, and that the Italian race
had produced the characteristic genius of Caesar.
The character and the culture of Italy had alike
matured to bring about this result on the very eve
of the Christian era. The genius of Rome, the con
quests of Caesar, the power of the Roman army which
was presently to set up and put down the Emperors as
its puppets, created an engine of human development
whereby not only was Roman culture assimilated in
Gaul, Germany, and Britain, but also Christianity was
grafted upon that culture, before the Roman Empire
came to an end.
This is a root-fact of history which need not here
be further dwelt upon ; but it is indispensable to any
right conception of the story of the Northern races.
The policy of Caesar was observed by his successors.
Augustus spent some three years in the trans
alpine Provinces (17-14 B.C.), and devoted himself,
amongst other purposes, to the consolidation of the
frontier defences. During the next two or three cen
turies, the forts on the Rhine and the Danube, which
were often the centres of colonies, and the artificial
barrier connecting the two rivers at points where they •
became wide enough to be easily defended, were con
stantly restored and strengthened ; and many a blow
was struck at the riparian tribes when their gathering

28 c^esar's frontier policy.
strength threatened to be formidable again. Augustus
did, indeed, advance the frontier-line to the mouth of
the Amisia (Ems), so as to include the conquered
Frisians, and part of the territory, as far as the Visur-
gis (Weser), which his stepson Drusus had three times
promenaded. After the death of Drusus, his brother
Tiberius chastised the Sicambrians, whom we once
more find united with their neighbours in a strong
anti-Roman league. This time the Chattans are
spoken of as their most prominent allies.
The campaigns of the two sons of Livia seemed for
the moment to have produced a salutary effect upon
the Sicambrians, Chattans, and Cheruscans. A chain
of fifty forts was completed, now or not long after
wards, between Mogontiacum and Vetera Castra.
Vast numbers of German settlers on the left bank
of the Rhine were expelled again, and for a few
years the' Romans flattered themselves that the
warlike Teutons were bowing their necks to the yoke.
Augustus made Varus governor of the newly included
country, and commissioned him to bring it under the
The map attempts to illustrate the history of several centuries.
The allocation of tribe names is only approximate. [Alois, Elbe ;
Amisia, Ems ; Aqitce Mattiacorum, Wiesbaden ; Argentoratum,
Strassburg ; Argentovaria, Artzenheim (?) ; Asciburgum, Asburg ;
Augusta Treverorum, Treves ; Axona, Aisne ; Bonna, Bonn ;
Burginatium, Schenkenschanz ; Colonia Agripfina, Cologne ; Con
fluent es, Coblenz ; Diutia, Deutz ; Divodurum, Metz ; Durocatalauni,
Chalons ) Issala, Yssel ; Laugona, Lahn ; Locoritum, Lohr (?) ;
Ltifpia, Lippe ; Matrona, Marne ; Moenus, Main ; .Mogontiacum,
Mainz ; Nicer, Neckar ; Rigomagus, Remagen ; Rura, Ruhr ; Sala,
Saale ; Sauconna, Saone ; Scaldis, Scheldt ; Sequana, Seine ; Siga,
Sieg ; Tolbiacum, Ztilpich ; Tulhtm, Toul ; Vahalis, Waal ; Vetera
Castra, Birten ; Visontio, Besancon ; Visurgis, Weser.]

5^

"3 so io 40
Eng Miles 7/

o ycjontcc

'di  nn  mil  n"''HW\\F v

)0

n

T. FISHER UNWIN, PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON, E.C.

Hermann. 29
jurisdiction of Rome. Hermann, a chief of the
Cheruscans, who had served in the Roman army, and
had been created a Roman knight under the designa
tion of Arminius, lived on terms of amity with the
unsuspecting Varus, meanwhile preparing for him a
deadly ambush. One day, as Varus . was marching
with his three legions through the Saltus Teutobur-
gius, the Cheruscans and their allies, led by Hermann,
fell upon him suddenly from all sides, and in countless
numbers. The brave legions sustained the attack for
three days, until barely a man was left alive ; and
then the unfortunate Varus fell by his own hand. In
vain Augustus cried to him, at Rome, to give him
back his lost legions. The disaster was worse than
this, for Hermann's treachery produced its calculated
effect, and the conquests of Drusus were abandoned.
Germanicus, indeed, avenged the slaughtered legions
on their enemies. He took an army of veterans, rein
forced by eight troops of Batavian horsemen, to the
Teutoburg forest, paid funeral honours to the bones of
Varus and his men, defeated Hermann after a year or
two of varying fortunes, led a fleet of one thousand
vessels through the canal (Drusiana Fossa) which his
father Drusus had dug between the Rhine and the
Issala (Yssel), and crossed the Lower Ems and Weser.
He might have reconquered the country, at any rate
for a time, if he had not been recalled to Rome
by Tiberius. Thus tamely ended the only serious
attempt which was made to depart from Caesar's
wiser policy.
A- few years later (A.D. 19), the broken prestige of
Hermann left him a prey to the jealousy of the sur-

30 . cmsar's frontier policy.
rounding tribes, and at the age of thirty-six his
authority came to an end with his life. It was in the
same year that his countryman Marbod, who, like him,
had been trained and befriended at Rome, having
formed a confederacy of the Southern Suevians, and
defied his former hosts, was driven from power by his
neighbours, at the instigation of Drusus, the son of
Tiberius. It is a curious parallel. Hermann and
Marbod were of the same age ; probably enough they
had consorted together in Rome, and there nursed in
common the twofold ambition of defeating Roman
armies and creating dominions for themselves in their
native land. But the Germans were not yet matured
for wide dominion. There was cohesion enough
amongst the Teuton warriors to form powerful con
federacies, and to face the Roman legions year after
year, never, accepting defeat as a ground for submis
sion. There was not cohesion enough to obey a
common leader for any length of time, or for any
other purpose than the defeat of their enemies, the
preservation of their liberties, and the acquisition of
booty. The defensive policy against Germany prevailed
more or less during the first two centuries of the
Christian era. The desultory wars which occurred
from time to time under the Julian emperors were,
so far as the Romans were concerned, for the most
part defensive. Caligula (37-41) sought martial
glory in the Roman frontier camps, but, if the stories
of Suetonius may be believed, he only succeeded in
covering himself with ridicule. Claudius (41-54),
whom the Gauls hailed as " father of the Provinces,"

THE JULIAN Cj&SARS. 3 1
and by whom large numbers of them were ad
mitted as Roman citizens, was invited by the
Cheruscans to arbitrate between opposing factions
of the tribe. During the reign of Nero (54-68) a
rebellion in Gaul, fostered by Galba, was opposed by
Virginius Rufus with an army from Lower (Belgian)
Germany ; and it was virtually the coalition of the
Gallic and Batavian forces which brought about the
downfall of Nero, and the elevation of the traitor
Galba to the dignity of Imperator. Galba, Otho,
and Vitellius, the last of whom marched to Rome
with an army largely composed of German levies,
were little more than nominal emperors, whose
three reigns extended over less than one year.
Vitellius, after using the Batavians to crush Otho,
dismissed them to their homes, thus reconverting
them into enemies of Rome.
It fell to the lot of Vespasian, or of his generals, to
crush the rebellions which had come to a head under
his weaker predecessor. The Batavians and Frisians,
with allies from both sides of the Middle Rhine, had
conquered several Roman armies, and occupied some
of the larger fortified towns, including Augusta Tfeve-
rorum and Castra Vetera ; but they were eventually
beaten. The story of Civilis, as told by Tacitus — though
his narrative has reached us in an incomplete form
— is full of romance. He was a Frank before the
Franks,1 who had spent his youth as a mercenary
1 It must be borne in mind that the Batavians were an offshoot from
the Chattans. Tacitus (" Germania,"' xxix.) says: — "Of all these
nations the Batavians were especially distinguished for their valour.
They dwelt not far from the sea-shore, on an island formed by the

32 CMSARS FRONTIER POLICY.
in the Roman army, and had learned to despise and
hate his masters. His brother had been put to death
on a charge of conspiracy, and Civilis himself,
narrowly escaping the same fate, now became what
he had been falsely accused of being. He col
lected a large army of Germans and Kelts, which
included the Canninefates and the Frisians, dwelling
between the Rhine-mouths and the northern sea.
During the years 69 and 71, Civilis gave the Romans
a great deal of trouble, defeating the armies of
Vitellius and Vespasian, capturing or besieging
the fortified places on the Rhine, overshadowing for
a time the powerful Sicambrians and Chattans of
the south, and making the name of Batavian a
terror to Rome.
Much of the influence of Civilis amongst the
German tribes was derived from his association
with a Bructerian prophetess, Veleda by name,
who had foretold a return of prosperity for the
Germans, and the destruction of the< Roman legions.
She dwelt apart, in a tower, and one of her atten
dants, "as though he were the interpreter of a
goddess," carried to. and fro the questions sub
mitted to her and the answers she vouchsafed. Her
authority gained for the Batavian leader many friends
on the east of the Rhine who might not otherwise
have espoused his cause. Amongst these were the
Tencteri ; and when the inhabitants of Colonia
Agrippina, who had been constrained to an alliance
Rhine, and were once a part of the Chattan people, who, after an
internal quarrel, migrated to their new home." The list given by Tacitus
of the various German nations will be found in the Note at the end of
this chapter.

civilis. 33
with the enemy of Rome, were called upon by this
German tribe to level their walls, they made a con
ciliatory reply, and referred the question to Civilis
and Veleda.
In the end, however, Civilis lost his hold upon the
anti-Roman confederacy. His fortune waned, and
his allies, especially amongst the Gauls, fell away.
It may have been that his very intimacy with the
wise woman on the banks of the Luppia had led
to a relaxation of his own efforts, or to jealousies
on the part of his comrades — for human nature has
been the same in all ages. At any rate, Veleda her
self was alienated, and began to prophesy evil ; and
the evil followed. A Roman general, Cerealis, who
subsequently conquered the Brigantes in Britain, was
sent against him with a large army ; and Civilis, who
had to choose between making terms for himself and
being virtually delivered into the hands of his enemy,
after some further fighting accepted the invitation of
Cerealis to negotiate for peace. The two leaders
conferred with each other from opposite banks of the
Drusiana Fossa, which connected the Rhine and the
Issala. At this point the narrative of Tacitus comes to an
end, and the story of Civilis is left unfinished.
Domitian (81-96) and Trajan (98-117) were both
compelled to renew the struggle, for the Chattans,
Sicambrians, and their neighbours, the Franks of
the future, were ever prompt to wage war against
their ancestral enemy. In the reign of Marcus
Aurelius (161-180), the descendants of the Southern
and South-western Germans whom Marbod had
4

34

c^esar's frontier policy.

attempted to consolidate a century and a half ago,
once more began to cross the higher Rhine — this
time conspicuously in obedience to the natural law
of westward pressure which was always operative
amongst the Germans, though not always with equal
force. The invaders, who were called Suevians in the
time of Julius Caesar and Tiberius, were now de
scribed by the geographical name of Marcomanni,
the men of the marches. So far as -it is possible
to speak of Teutonic tribes inhabiting the same
district at an interval of more than a century by
the same name, and as standing to each other in
the relation of ancestors and posterity, the " Suevi "
of Marbod were ancestors to the " Marcomanni"
who, in alliance with the Quadi and other neighbours,
were driven upon the legions of Aurelius by the
fierce Alans and Slavons in their rear. The peace-
loving emperor — who might have exclaimed, and
probably did exclaim to himself, like Julian a couple
of centuries later, " What a task for a philosopher ! "
— reaped more than one victory over the German
hosts, but died with his task unfinished, apparently as
far advanced in the territories of his foes as Vindo-
bona, the modern Vienna. On his death, his son
Commodus was content to purchase peace of the
unconquered border tribes.

NOTE.

The German tribes are thus enumerated by Tacitus in the
"Germania" — (2) Quidam, ut in licentia vetustatis, pluris deo
ortos plurisque gentis appellationes,- Marsos, Gambrivios, Suevos,

THE GERMAN TRIBES. 35
Vandalos, affirmant. . . . (28) Validiores olim Gallorum res fuisse. . .
Iulius tradit : eoque credibile est etiam Gallos in Germaniam trans-
gressos. . . Inter Hercyniam silvam Rhenumque et Moenum amnes,
Helvetii, ulteriora Boii, Gallica utraque gens, tenuere. Manet adhuc
Boihemi nomen, significatque loci veterem memoriam, quamvis mutatis
cultoribus. . . . (29) Omnium harum gentium virtute prsecipui
Batavi non multum ex ripa sed insulam Rheni amnis colunt, Cattorum
quondam populiis . . nee tributis contemnuntur nee publicanus
adterit. . . . Est in eodem obsequio Mattiacorum gens. . . . Non
numeraverim inter Germanic populos, quamquam trans Rhenum Dan-
ubiumque consederint, eos qui decumates agros exercent. Levissimus
quisque Gallorum, et inopia audax, dubise possessionis solum occu-
pavere. Mox limite acto, promotisque praesidiis, sinus imperii et pars
provincite habentur. (30) Ultra hos Catti initium sedis ab Hercynio
saltu inchoant. . . . Duriora genti corpora, stricti artus, minax vultus,
et maior animi vigor. . . . (32) Proximi Cattis certum iam alveo
Rhenum, quique terminus esse sufficiat, Usipii ac Tencleri colunt. . . .
(33) Iuxta Tencteros Bructeri olim occurrebant : nunc Chamavos et
Angrivarios. . . . Angrivarios et Chamavos a tergo Dulgibini et
Chasuarii cludutft, aliseque gentes, haud perinde memorata?. A
fronte Frisii excipiunt. . . . (35) Chaucorum gens, quamquam incipiat
a Frisiis, ac partem litoris occupet, omnium quas exposui gentium
lateribus obtenditur, donee in Cattos usque sinuetur . . . populus inter
Germanos nobilissimus. . . . (36) In latere Chaucorum Cattorumque
Cherusci. . . . Fosi contermina gens. . . . (37) Eundem Germanic
sinum proximi Oceano Cimbri tenent, parva nunc civitas, sed gloria
ingens ; veterisque famse lata vestigia manent, utraque ripa castra ac
spatia, quorum ambitu nunc quoque metiaris mojem manusque gentis,
et tam magni exitus fidem. Sexcentesimum et quadragesimum annum
urbs nostra agebat cum primum Cimbrorum audita sunt arma. Ex quo
si ad alterum imperatoris Traiani consulatum computemus, ducenti
ferme et decern anni conliguntur (B.C. 114 to a.d. 96). . . (38)
Nunc de Suevis dicendum est, quorum non una, ut Cattorum Tencte-
rorumve gens : maiorem enim Germaniae partem obtinent, propriis
adhuc nationibus nominibusque discreti. . . . (39) Vetustissimos se
nobilissimosque Suevorum Semnones memorant. . . . (40) Contra
Langobardos paucitas nobilitat. Plurimis ac valentissimis nationibus
cincti, non per obsequium sed proeliis et periclitando tuti sunt. Reu-
digni deinde et Aviones et Angli et Varini et Eudoses et Suardones et
Nuithones flnminibus aut silvis muniuntur. . . . (41) Propior (ut
nunc Danubium sequar) Hermundurorum civitas. . . . (42) iuxta
Narisci, ac deinde Marcomanni et Quadi. . . . (43) Nee minus
valent retro Marsigni, Golhini, . Osi, Burii. . . Latissime patel

36 c^esar's frontier policy.
Lygiorum nomen, in plures civitates diftusum. Valentissimas nomi-
nasse sufficiet Arios, Helveconas, Manimos, Elysios, Naharvalos. . . .
Trans Lygios Gotones regnantur. . . . Protinus deinde ab Oceano
Rugii et Lemovii. . . . (44) Sitionum hinc civitates, ipso in Oceano,
praeter viros armaque classibus valent. . . . (45) Ergo iam dextro
Suevici maris litore Aestyorum gentes adluuntur : quibus ritus habi-
tusque Suevorum, lingua Britannicse propior. . . . Suionibus
Siionum gentes continuantur.

IV.

THE GERMAN RACE.

Our materials for the history of Rome in the time
of her later Caesars, whilst she was engaged, amongst
the other tasks of her decadence, on the critical
duty of maintaining her frontier against the ulti
mately irresistible inroads of Eastern and Northern
barbarism, are somewhat meagre. Contemporary
historians are few, and in such records as remain to
us the details of what would now be particularly
interesting are neither full nor well connected.
For several generations after the death of Marcus
Aurelius we hear comparatively little of the Teutonic
tribes, who, nevertheless, gave a constant account of
themselves along the whole of the extended frontier
of the Roman Empire in Europe.
Before we take up the story of the Franks in its
more definite form, at the time when they had come
to be known as Franks, and when the defenders of
the frontier were found unequal to the work of rolling
back the tide of invasion, it will be interesting to
make some better acquaintance with them on their
own soil, as Germans in Germany, strong in their

38 THE GERMAN RACE.
characteristics, proud of the long-maintained inde
pendence of their race, yet already modified by the
example and influence of their more civilised neigh
bours in Gaul and Italy.
Centuries of constant strife against the armies of
Rome must in any case have made excellent soldiers
out of the unsurpassed raw material of the Teutonic
tribes ; but their inborn fighting qualities had received
direct and effective training in the ranks of the Roman
legions. The armies of the Caesars were very largely
recruited from the nations whom they overcame ;
and from no nation were recruits more willingly
drawn than from the Germans, whose personal valour
had been proved on so many battlefields. It was a
dangerous lesson which Rome taught her ancient
foes when she thus proved her inability to rely on
Italians for the defence of Italy ; and simultaneously
she was teaching them other lessons equally fatal
to her security.
The attitude of Rome towards her enemies on the
European frontier was inconsistent from first to last.
The policy of attack, ending in doubtful victories or
virtual defeats, was alternated with the policy, or
indeed the stern necessity, of defence. In one
generation the Romans would regard with supreme
indifference the inter-tribal quarrels of the Teutons,
whilst in another they would find a pretext for
intervention in precisely similar quarrels. Resolute,
for the most part, in riding down and cutting to
pieces the fugitives who escaped across the river from
their Teutonic, Scandinavian, or Slavonian enemies,
they would occasionally invite and enrol them' in

ROMAN VACILLATION. 39
large numbers, Romans leading them to war against
Romans, or instructing them in all the arts of
treachery and intrigue. One general or emperor
would fight them ruthlessly and haughtily, selling
their prisoners into slavery, or deporting them to
distant lands ; another would buy off their hostility .
with gold. These were lessons, not of firm strength,
but of weakness and vacillation ; and in the long run
they taught the Riparians not to respect but to
despise. If the maritime Frisians and Batavians, the enter
prising Chaucian merchants, the Sicambrians and
Chattans who bore the brunt of the border warfare,
learned to see and take advantage of the growing
weakness of the empire — especially from the time of
Commodus onwards — they had always been attracted
by the comforts and luxuries which the Roman
legions and colonists brought in their train. They
hated the life of cities — a wall had little meaning for
them except as the boundary of a prison — but their,
fighting men loved nothing better than to raid a
Roman town, and bring back everything that was
portable to their wattled homes on the borders of
the forest and the fen. They would barter when
they were not fighting, but the raided treasures were
the sweetest, and many a German home was full of
spoils from Gaul and Rhaetia. Their vast herds of
cattle were their own natural wealth and material
for barter ; but the taste for Roman treasure came
with the opportunity of securing it. " Argentum et
aurum propitii an irati dii negaverint, dubito," says
Tacitus : it is an open question whether the gods

40 THE GERMAN RACE.
were kind or unkind in stinting the Germans of gold
and silver. But the god" of battles gave what other
gods had denied, and no people have been keener
than the Teutons in their quest of booty.
Apart from war, the Roman civilisation found its
way amongst the Germans by trade, by casual inter
course in time of peace between the two banks of
the Rhine, by the sojourn of individual Germans in
Rome, as we have seen in the case of Marbod and
Hermann, and by the return of German legionaries
after their service had expired. For such reasons as
we have mentioned above, the line of frontier defence,
which was pre-eminently a line of war between Rome
and her neighbours, became also, for the latter, a line
of progressive civilisation. All the Roman frontiers,
like the frontiers of every empire which extends its
borders amongst savage tribes, or nations less civilised
than itself, included of necessity, within the extreme
limit of dominion, a more or less considerable element
of the nationalities outside that limit. Rome regarded
the Rhine as a frontier between Gaul and Germany,
but it is doubtful whether, before this definite political
arrangement, it was looked upon as much more than
a natural obstacle for those who dwelt on either side
of it. Caesar mentions frequent crossings of the river
from east to west and from west to east — the stronger
movement being that which was caused by the
pressure in the east, by the overflow of Asia into
Europe, of the arid plains and morasses into the
fertile valleys.
When Rome converted the natural obstacle of the
Rhine into a more distinctly political boundary, for

THE RHINE FRONTIER. 4 1
her own strategic purposes, there were already many
settlements on the west of this line, made by tribes
which had come from the east. It would.be impossible
to say how long the westward stream of humanity had
been steadily flowing- across the northward currents
of the Rhine ; but the first orientalisation of Europe
was at least as old as the settlement of Medians and
Egyptians on the Mediterranean coasts, and it is
reasonable to suppose that the inflow had continued
without long cessation, wherever the geographical
barriers were most practicable, and the human
barriers least effectual. At any rate Rome drew
her frontier on the Rhine and the Danube, and drew
it in both cases athwart a running stream of human
migration. For Roman statesmen and geographers
the Rhine at once created a definite Gaul and a
partially definite Germany ; but it is well to remem
ber that Gaul, as thus defined, already included a
strong Teutonic element, and that the Eastern Belgic
tribes were, as Caesar tells us, actually Germans.
Indeed the greater part of the Belgians were merely
the first Germans who settled on the west bank of
the Rhine, and the first who became imbued with
Roman civilisation. They would thus be closely
allied with the Frisians, Chaucians, Cheruscans,
Sicambrians, and Chattans, who formed the vanguard
of the Germans coming next in order, whilst they
were also kindred in other respects with the Aryan
Kelts who had preceded them. According to Tacitus,
the first Germans to cross the Rhine were the Tungri,
whose name is preserved in the modern Tongres, and
who had settled between the Meuse and the Scheldt.

42 THE GERMAN RACE.
There is another sense in which the frontier-zone
of Gaul exerted a constant civilising influence upon
the Germans. It was at all times a refuge for such
as wanted peace with Rome, and were willing to
accept her terms. The Caesars were not averse to
small migrations of this character, which were easily
combined with their general system of recruiting and
frontier plantations. The imperial armies were com
posed more and more' of foreigners, who received the
citizenship as soon as they were enrolled in a legion.
Italians were too political, too dangerous to the peace
of Rome, to be made the mainstay of the Roman
army. Their number in the ranks was continually
decreased, until Vespasian, the first Flavian emperor,
entirely excluded them. Most of the officers, and most
of the City and Praetorian guards, would continue to be
Italian for a long time to come. But the legionary
soldiers, who were enrolled for twenty years' service,
and the auxiliaries in the Provinces, who served for
twenty-five years, were Gauls, Germans, Spaniards,
and so forth, who became Romanised during their
service, and were frequently settled at the end of it
on the fields of their countrymen, which they had
enabled a Roman leader to add to the confines of
the empire. In this way also a zone of half-civilised
Teutonism was created on the eastern boundaries of
Gaul. Having regard to the composite character of the
population of Eastern Gaul during the Roman occu
pation — of the broad belt which, in the third century,
was partly a Romanised Germany, partly a Romanised
Gaul strongly imbued with German qualities — it will

FRONTIER OF ROME IN EUROPE. 43
serve our purpose to give some closer attention to
the frontier-line of Rome and Germany, the central
and cardinal line of Gallo-German and Franco-German
history in all ages.
After Trajan, early in the second century, had
added Dacia to the list of Roman provinces, the
European frontier extended from the Euxine Sea, at
a point near the mouth of the Tyras (Dniester), by
a vallum, as far as the junction of the Drave and the
Danube. From thence it followed the bank of the
Danube upwards, to a point a few miles above
Regina Castra (Regensburg), at which point the
Alcimona (Altmlihl) enters the Danube on the
northern bank. Instead of keeping to the Danube
as far as its source, and passing over to the source
of the Rhine, the Roman frontier was artificially
constructed between the two rivers, thus uniting
points where the streams were broad and difficult to
cross. After skirting the Altmiihl, and running for
some distance westwards, the vallum known as
Hadrian's turned sharply northwards, crossed the
Neckar somewhere near the town of Wimpffen, and so
reached the westernmost of the two great southward
bends of the river Moenus (Main). There was here
at one time a double rampart, the exact courses of
which it is impossible to trace. It is, as Mommsen
says, extraordinary that Germans should never have
had the enterprise thoroughly to explore the founda
tions of their oldest historical monument. But at the
present moment German archaeologists are engaged
in repairing this neglect.
It may be that Hadrian was the first to construct,

44 THE GERMAN RACE.
or at any rate to complete, the vallum which came to
bear his name. He built strongly when~he did build,
as remnants of his wall in Britain will show. At all
events the line of garrisoned forts, at strategic points
along a difficult tract of country, connected by ram
parts which would naturally vary in character from
stone or brickwork to earthwork or stockade, doubt
less answered its purpose, so long as Rome was
strong and vigorous, as a substantial frontier between
the restless marauders outside and the comparatively
settled colonists within.
Trajan, it would appear, completed or strengthened
the Limes Germanicus, which had been at least
partially drawn in the time of Augustus. Starting
on the Main, and nearly bisecting the great curve of
that river already mentioned, it ran northwards, about
half-way between the modern Frankfort and Karl-
stadt ; then, taking a wide sweep over hill and valley
and morass, amongst the sources of many northward
and southward streams, climbing the crests of the
Taunus, and the northern limits of the Rheingau, it
approached the Rhine opposite to Vosolvia (Ober-
Wesel). Hence it ran parallel to the stream, across
the Lahn, over against Confluentes (Coblenz), at the
embouchure of the Mosella, and past the modern
Ehrenbreitstein, ending in what is now called the
Westerwald, a little above the town of Bonn and the
tributary Sieg.
Not many miles eastward of the Limes Germanicus,
a little beyond Locoritum, which probably corres
ponds with the modern Lohr, a tributary of the Main
called the Sala (Saale) flows down from the north-

THE RHINE COLONIES. 45
east, across what is known to this day as the land of
the Unter Franken. There is another Sala, rising at
some little distance to the east again, in the same
Thuringian section of the great Hercynian water
shed, which flows northward into the Elbe. Here,
we have every reason to conclude, near the springs
of the two Salas, in and around the Thiiringer-
wald, was the very cradle-land of the people called
Franks. The Limes ended at Rigomagus, now Remagen,
on the Rhine, and thence, along the left bank, ran a
line of Roman forts, the chief of which were Bonna
(Bonn), Colonia Agrippina (Cologne), Durnomagus
(Dormagen), Novaesium (Neuss), Gelduba (Gellep),
Asciburgum (Asburg), Vetera Castra (Birten), Colonia
Trajana, Burginatium (Schenkenschanz), and Novio-
magus Batavorum (Nimeguen). From Remagen to
Nimeguen is a distance of about 105 miles in. a
straight line. Near some of these towns there would
be permanent Roman camps, whilst some of them
were Roman colonies. Colonia Agrippina (with
Duitia — Deutz — on the right bank of the river) was
founded by the Emperor Claudius, A.D. 51, on a site
previously occupied by the Ubii, who, as was probably
the case with most of the riparian tribes, had held
both sides of the river before the advent of the
Romans. It must have happened, whenever the
legions expelled the fighting men from a conquered
territory, that many remained behind on their native
soil, and placed themselves at the mercy of the
victors. This would be the natural condition of
things along the whole European frontier, and a

46 THE GERMAN RACE.
remnant of the Teutons would continue to live side
by side with the Roman settlers. Thenceforth the
mixed populations would be safe under the shelter
of the Roman power, and there would be few places
on the Rhine, on the Limes Germanicus, and on the
Vallum Hadriani, where an admixture of Romans
and Germans, with the Germans in great preponder
ance, did not exist.
The springs of Wiesbaden, on the southern
slopes of the Taunus range, overlooking the conflu
ence of the Main and the Rhine, where the latter
river turns abruptly to the west, were known to the
Romans as Aquae Mattiacae. This was one of the
first spots to receive the protection of the Limes, and
at a later period Trajan bridged the Rhine at Mogon-
tiacum (Mainz), so as to give the inhabitants of the
town a more easy access to the springs. The rough
triangle included by the Upper Rhine, the Upper
Danube, and the artificial frontier, of which one apex
was near Aquae Mattiacae, was especially allotted by
Rome to military and other settlers, who paid as rent
for their holdings one-tenth of the annual produce.
But this was not the first systematic re-peopling of
the territory which went by the name of the Decumates
Agri. Caesar speaks of the uppermost reaches of
the Rhine as separating the Helvetians from the
Germans. When the former nation had been
restored to their homes, and the whole of Gaul had
been practically subjugated, the territory which now
includes Baden, Wiirtemberg, the western part of
Bavaria, and the southern parts of Darmstadt and
Nassau, was to some extent denuded of its former

THE DECUMATES AGRI.

47

German inhabitants, and many Gallic settlers were
introduced. For several centuries to come the mixed
population of the Decumates Agri enjoyed a peace
and a culture which were considerably in advance of
those of their German neighbours on the east.

V.

THE DECLINE OF ROME.

The century in which the Franks make their first
appearance, under that name, in the history of
Europe, though in some respects it may seem less
attractive for the reader than those which preceded
and followed it, nevertheless presents many points
of exceptional interest and importance. The third
century of the Christian era was an age of many
significant developments, in which the disappearance
of the old and the substitution of the new continually
challenge our attention.
The rapidly decreasing power of the Roman Empire
is thrown into stronger relief by the almost simul
taneous emergence of the Franks, Allemans (whose
Teutonic name of Alle-manner clearly indicates
another confederacy), and Goths. These, at three
different spots, broke through the frontier which for
more than two centuries had resisted the fiercest
attacks. It was not the vallum, or the limes, but the
human wall which crumbled to pieces at their
approach ; and it was not so much the number as the
spirit of the defenders which proved itself unequal

THE WRATH OF THE GODS. 49
to the task of defence. Rome fell, as an empire,
because its protection had been made to depend upon
jthe nations which it had subjugated, and because the'
Italians who composed the Praetorian Guard, and who
had usurped the right of nominating the emperors,
chose at one time a rich man who was willing to bribe
them, at another a weak man whom they could over
awe, at another an imbecile, or a sot, or a popinjay.
When by way of exception — and after the Flavian
emperors the exceptions were rare — a soldier of real
strength contrived to force himself to the front, the
ancient glories of the Roman arms were for a time
revived, and the strongest enemies of Rome recoiled
before him. But such victories were shortlived, and
they only serve to emphasise the defeats which came
after them. Rome had had her day ; she was now
to experience the " deum ira in rem Romanam " which
Tacitus had seen approaching.
The fall of Rome concerns us here mainly because
it was contemporary with the origin of the new
nationalities. The development of the Germanic
nations corresponded, step by step, with the shrinkage
of the imperial dominion. In the third century, side
by side with the repeated purchase of peace by Rome,
the successful inroads of the Goths, the revolt of
legions and the treachery of generals, we find
emperor after emperor drawn from the subjugated
tribes. In A.D. 193 the empire had been sold by the
Praetorian Guards to the highest bidder ; an outrage
which was, indeed, speedily avenged by the death of
the purchaser and the disbanding of the Guards,
The latter were replaced by an army of fifty thousand
5

50 ¦ THE DECLINE OF ROME.
barbarians, so triat the State of Rome passed at this
time entirely under the control of 'foreigners. In 218
the Syrian priest Heliogabalus became emperor.
Four years later he was succeeded by the Greek
Alexander. After him came the Thracian or Gothic
Maximinus, followed after a brief interval by the
Arabian Philip, who wore the purple when Rome
celebrated her millennium ; by the Illyrian Decius and
his son Hostilianus. It was during the generation
when these six aliens held sway in Rome that the
Goths, the Allemans, and the Franks broke the
Roman frontier in Dacia, in Rhsetia, and in Gaul. It
is not to be supposed that the alien emperors —
especially such emperors as the Illyrians Claudius,
Aurelian, and Probus, and the Dalmatian Diocletian,
who ruled in the last thirty years of this century —
were worse men or worse emperors than the Italians
who had ruled before them. But it is impossible to
deny the significance of the fact that soldiers who
had their origin elsewhere than in Italy swayed the
destinies of Rome during the greater part of the
third century. The Illyrian and Dalmatian emperors
undoubtedly paved the way for the transference of
the seat of empire from Rome to Byzantium.
Another dominion, spiritual at any rate in its
foundation and elements, was in the meantime being
steadily developed. The Christian Church gained
continually in repute and organisation, notwithstand
ing the frequent persecution of its members. The
striking contrast presented by its tenets and its
sober rule of life with the outworn pagan creed and
the demoralisation of Rome secured for it many

PORTA NIGRA (ROMAN).
(Treves.)

52 THE DECLINE OF ROME.
adherents in every generation. In the wake of the
Roman armies followed the missionary zeal of the
converts, until there was not a single province of the
empire in which there had not been sown the seeds
of a future national Church. Before the end of the
third century we read of important Christian com
munities in the province of Gaul — at Augusta
Treverorum (Treves), now the chief seat of Roman
government, at Arelate (Aries), at Tolosa (Toulouse),
at Augustonemetum (Clermont), and at Lutetia
(Paris). Meanwhile the Romanisation of Gaul had rapidly
progressed. The Province of Cisalpine Gaul was
already in the time of Caesar and Augustus one of
the most civilised and cultivated portions of the
Roman dominions. Thence the regular concomitants
of Roman conquest rapidly spread to the transalpine
Province, and so northward, eastward, and westward,
until Roman cults and customs, institutions, coinage,
dress, and language were adopted first by the repre
sentatives of Rome and the Roman "party," and
then by their clients and dependents. The right of
association and the right of citizenship had been
followed by all the other rights and privileges of the
Roman citizen. Municipal life had grown up on the
Roman model. Many amongst the more prosperous
and cultivated of the inhabitants of Gaul — of course
first and foremost in the Roman colonies, Arelate,
Baeterrae (Beziers), Arausio (Orange), Forum Julii
(Frejus), Colonia Allobrogum (Geneva), Decuma-
norum (Narbonne), Equestris (Nyon), Julia Apta
fApt), Vienna (Vienne), Maritima (Martigues), Ne-

LEARNING IN GAUL. 53
mausensis (Nlmes), and the Rhine colonies, Cologne,
Treves, Aquensis (Aix), and Julia Bonna (Bonn) —
became students and patrons of Latin letters, and
with so much zeal that these cities afforded asylums
for Roman learning and culture after many an
Italian town had ceased to shelter them. Several
of the emperors, from Augustus onwards, established
or patronised schools of law, grammar, and rhetoric.
Orators and men of literary activity abounded in the
Gallic provinces. Vafro the historian was a Gaul ;
Cornelius Gallus and Ausonius were Gauls. Three
hundred years after the time of Julius Caesar there
were scores of cities, north of the Mediterranean
and west of the Rhine, which in general freedom, in
learning and culture, in architecture, wealth, and
population, would bear comparison with some of the
leading cities of Italy,
The anarchy of the third century, which often sub
merged the liberties and the lives of men, which
undermined and overwhelmed the classical literature
of Rome, which menaced civilisation, and in some
instances buried its traces under a new flood of bar
barism, visited Gaul, like every other portion of the
empire ; but it is to be remembered that if there was
any permanent upholding of the standard of civilised
life, any effective continuity of Roman genius and
culture through the darkest ages of the first Christian
millennium, we owe it in large measure to the great
cities which stood out above the devastating floods,
which preserved their institutions, their dwellings,
their traditions, their wealth, and something of their
" humanity " and literature.

54 THE DECLINE OF ROME.
No country did more for the preservation of the
best legacy of Rome than was done by Gaul, taking
that term in its widest signification — the Gaul, that is
to say, which stretched from the Apennines to the
delta of the Rhine, and from the Western Pyrenees to
the Adriatic Gulf. Let us remember that, so far as
the legacy of Rome was the heritage of the Franks,
it was the Gallic cities north and west of the Alps
which acted as trustees of the inheritance, and pre
served it during' the minority of the heir. Let us
remember again that the Gallic Church, from the
fourth century onward, began to preside over the
destinies of these cities, and to dispense the learning
and the humanities which survived the general wreck.
And if we think that the Christian priests and teachers,
and at a later period the scholastics, were somewhat
narrow in the interpretation of their trust, and
suffered much to sink in obscurity which might well
have been cherished for its beauty, we must remember
how much they preserved which would have been lost
without them. The earliest Christians were Greeks
and Jews, together with the least cultivated popula
tions, slaves and others, of the Roman towns. It
was not to them that the world could look for the
salvation of Latin literature. But when men of
learning and culture accepted the religion of the
cross, they clothed its doctrines in language which
at any rate guaranteed the continuous study and
comprehension of those doctrines for all time. The
patristic Latin is not Ciceronian, but at least it is to
Quintilian what Quintilian is to Cicero. Minucius
Felix, Lactantius, and. in a less degree Augustine

LITERATURE AND CHRISTIANITY. 55
were Latin writers with a literary style, and with
much of the classical form. If they had not written
in a Latin based on classical models — if they had
insisted on dressing the homely truths of the gospel
in the homely words of their humblest converts—
our Christianity of to-day might be something very
different from what it is. It might have been better
or worse ; but certainly, without the thorough Latini-
sation of the worship and administration of the
Church, the later world would have found it a far
more difficult thing to get back from its mediaeval
sterility to the fecund humanity of pagan letters.
" It is in the reign of Commodus," as Mr. Mackail I
reminds us, "amid the wreck of all other literature,
that we come on the first Christian authors." In the
fourth century Lactantius is still- quoting Cicero,
Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Lucretius. Later in the
same century " Christian poetry reached its full
development in the hymns of Ambrose and Pruden-
tius, and the hexameter poem of Paulinus of Nola."
One if not more of the six writers of the "Historia
Augusta" was a Gallic Christian. The Panegyrists
were especially in favour amongst the Gauls. Two
of the extant panegyrics were delivered at Treves
before the Emperor Maximianus, the colleague of
Diocletian. "A florid Ciceronianism was the style
most in vogue, and the phraseology, at least, of the
old State religion was, until the formal adoption of
Christianity by the government, not only retained ,
but put prominently forward. Eumenius of Autun,
the- author of five or more pieces in the collection,;
1 " Latin Literature," by J. W. Mackail (Murray).

56 THE DECLINE OF ROME.
delivered at dates between the years 297 and 311, is
the most distinguished figure of the group. His
fluent and ornate Latin may be read with some
pleasure . . . Under the influence of these nurseries
of rhetoric a new Gallic school of Christian writers

PNEUMATIC ORGAN, FOURTH CENTURY,
(At Aries; Gallo-Roman.)
rose and flourished during the fourth century."
Bishop Hilarius, the earliest known author of Latin
hymns, presided over the see of Poitiers. Ambrose,
another hymn-writer, was born at Treves. Ausonius,
who was of Gallic origin on both sides, was educated -

ausonius. 57
at his native town of Burdigala (Bordeaux), and
taught grammar and rhetoric at Treves, which in his
time had begun to rival Rome as a centre of civilised
life in the Western Empire. He wrote Christian
hymns, translations from the Greek, elegiac letters
to his friends, epigrams, idyls and eclogues. The
longest and finest of the idyls is in praise of the
river Mosella. After following its course to its
junction with the Rhine, he apostrophises the latter
stream : —
"Caeruleo nunc, Rhene, sinus, hyaloque virentem
Pande peplum, spatiumque novi metare fluenti
Fraternis cumulandus aquis . . .
Dives aquis, dives nymphis, largitor utrique
Alveus extendet geminis divortia ripis,
Communesque vias diversa per ostia fundet.
Accedent vires quas Francia, quasque Chamaves,
Germanique tremant : tunc verus habebere limes."
" In virtue of this poem," says Mr. Mackail,
"Ausonius ranks not merely as the last, or all but
the last, of Latin, but as the first of French poets
. . . alike by the classic beauty of his language and
the modernism of his feeling."

VI.

THE COMING OF THE FRANKS.

We take up the interrupted story of the Teuto-
Roman struggle in the reign of Caracalla, the son
of Septimius Severus. Severus died at York in
211, and his eldest son, Bassianus, who had taken
the name of Marcus Aurelius Antonius, was nick
named Caracalla by his soldiers because he affected
a Gallic dress — the caracalla being a long tunic
with a hood. He combined in his character a
barbarous cruelty with some elements of statesman
like foresight. He conferred the rights of Roman
citizenship on all adult freemen amongst the allies
of Rome ; and, though he may have been prompted
to take this step in order to fill his coffers with
the proceeds of the taxes incidental to citizenship,
one effect of the decree was undoubtedly to pro
mote the civilisation of the included races.
Early in the third century we begin to hear of
the Allemanni, a people dwelling to the south of
the Frank confederacy. They are spoken of as
auxiliaries of the Chattans in the war of 213, when
58

THE FRONTIER BROKEN. 59
Caracalla advanced through Rhaetia, and triumphed
over the allies on the Main. Alexander Severus,
a score of years later, found the Germans so active
and audacious that he proposed to repeat the policy
of Commodus, and purchase a peace which he could
hot enforce. He paid for the suggestion with his
life in 235 ; and his successor Maximinus, eager to
wipe out the new stain, crossed the Rhine at Mainz,
and pushed far into the interior of Germany, whilst
the tribes, as usual, fell back before him.
In 253 the internal weakness of the empire,
showing itself at this time especially by open rival
ries for the imperial throne, drew away several
Roman legions from the frontier ; and there was a
sudden rush of Germans across the Lower Rhine,
which Gallienus, son of the ill-fated Valerian, was
barely able to withstand.
This, then, brings us to the first occasion on
which the Franks are mentioned by Roman writers.
As we have already seen, Vopiscus in the fourth
century gives the name of Franks to the Germans
who crossed in 253 and the following years; whilst
in the fifth century Sulpitius, who is quoted by
•Gregory of Tours, mentions three Frank leaders,
Genobald, Marcomer, and Sunno, who broke the
Roman Limes whilst Maximinus was at Aquileia,
in or shortly before the year 238.
• In both cases, be it observed, the invasion was
made on the Upper, not on the Lower Rhine. We'
shall return once again to this question of the
origin of the Franks when we come to consider
the foundation of the Merovingian dynasty.

60 THE COMING OF THE FRANKS.
When Gallienus was called away from the Rhine, or
from his palace at Augusta Treverorum, to another
part of the frontier, he left his young son Salonius at
Colonia Agrippina, with Postumus in command of
the Roman troops. The general at once betrayed his
trust, slew the boy and his guardian, and induced
the soldiers to proclaim him emperor (260). It was
whilst he was thus engaged in his own nefarious
designs, and defending himself against Aureolus, a
general dispatched from the camp of Gallienus,
that the Franks slipped past him in vast numbers,
followed by a large force of Vandals. Whilst the
latter turned towards the south, sacked Langres in
Campania and Clermont in the Arvernian country,
to be crushed eventually in the neighbourhood of
Aries, the Franks overran a large part of Gaul,
plundered many of the cities of Spain, seized a
fleet of Spanish ships, and made their way across
the sea into Africa. Meanwhile the Allemans broke
through the passes of the Rhaetian Alps, and
penetrated Italy as far as Ravenna, whilst the
Goths were pushing their victories in Pontus,
Thrace, and Greece.
Postumus, who had distinguished himself by per
mitting a greater inroad of Franks than had ever
previously entered Gaul, won the reputation of a
strong and successful governor before he was slain
by his soldiers in 269. He was one of the so-
called Thirty Tyrants who, in the reign of the
worthless Gallienus, assumed authority in various
provinces of the empire— some of them, no doubt,
less from personal ambition than from the necessity

GALLIC INSURRECTIONS. 6 1
of ruling with a strong hand, and preserving the
public peace.
It is during this period of anarchy that we find
distinct traces of those popular risings and insur
rections in Gaul which, then or later, came to be
known under the name of Bagaudae or Bagats.
They remind us, a long time in advance, of our
English peasant insurrections, and they sprang from
very similar causes — constant famine and frequent
pestilence, the cruel exaction of excessive taxes,
military and judicial oppressions, and the general
discontents which naturally gathered round any
champion who strove to effect a redress of griev
ances. The Church was sympathetic towards these
periodical risings, and in course of time she secured^
the appointment of defensores, whose business it
was to plead the cause of those who considered
themselves to be wronged. But several centuries
passed away before we hear the last of the Bagats ;
and the thing itself remained long after the name
went out of use.1 In 271 the Gallic insurgents
1 No doubt the true character of the Bagats, as sporadic popular
insurrections caused by misery or oppression, and easily degenerating
into aggressive plunder, is furnished by Salvian : — ¦" De Bagaudis nunc
mihi sermo est, qui per malos judices et cruentos spoliati, afflicti, necati,
postquam jus Romanae libertatis amiserant, etiam honorem Romani
nominis perdiderunt : et imputatur his infelicitas sua, imputamus his
nomen calamitatis suae, imputamus nomen quod ipsi fecimus. Quibus
enim rebus aliis Bagaudae facti sunt nisi iniquitatibus nostris, nisi
improbitatibus judicum, nisi eorum proscriptionibus et rapinis qui
exactionis publicae nomen in quaastus proprii emolumenta verterant, et t
indictiones tributarias praedas suas esse fecerant ? " ( " De Vero Judicio, "
bk. v.). Salvian wrote in the reign of Honorius, early in the fifth
century. The origin of the word is uncertain, though it is possibly
allied to baguer, and means simply bands of men combined for a
common purpose.

62 THE COMING OF- THE FRANKS.
took Augustodunum (Autun) after a long siege,
when the city was sacked for the third time in less
than half a century. There was a similar insur
rection fourteen years later, when the Bagats aped
the military pretenders, and set up "emperors" of
their own.
Aurelian, a native of Sirmium in Pannonia, was
the next Roman general and emperor who had an
important influence upon the history of the Ger
mans in Gaul. He was a brave, brilliant, and loyal
soldier, who had held the highest commands under
Valerian, Gallienus, and Claudius II. ; and on the
death of the latter he was proclaimed emperor by
the legions of Sirmium. During the reigns of
Gallienus and Claudius, Gaul was practically di
vorced from the empire ; but the operations of
Aurelian, who successively defeated the Goths,
Vandals, Allemans, Franks, and allied forces under
Tetricus, another of the Thirty Tyrants, restored
at once the ancient glories of the Roman arms and
the ancient frontier of the empire, from the mouths
of the Rhine to the mouths of the Danube.
Scarcely had Aurelian quitted Gaul when the
Franks again renewed their raids, and this time with
so much success that they are said to have sacked no
fewer than seventy cities on the left bank of the
Rhine, including Treves. The Emperor Probus, who,
like Aurelian, was a native of Sirmium, and whose
career was in many respects a parallel to that of his
former master, expelled the invaders in 277, and
taught them, by a demonstration on their own side of
the frontier, that even yet they were no match for a

MONUMENTAL TOMB (ROMAN).
(Moselle Valley, near Treves.)

64 THE COMING OF THE FRANKS.
Roman army when skilfully trained and led. Probus
was equally successful as a soldier and as an adminis
trator. He renewed what had formerly existed, on
the German bank of the Rhine, though for some
generations, apparently, it had been effaced — the
riparian limes, a depopulated zone of territory on
which Rome in her strongest days would not suffer
her enemies to reside. He also strengthened the
ramparts between the Rhine and the Danube, and to
him was probably due the outer and stronger wall at
the southern extremity of this rampart, pushed for
ward into the land of the conquered Allemans —
which, however, did not stand long after his death.
A distinct feature in the policy of Probus was his
mode of dealing with the peoples whom he subdued,
and especially with the Germans, whose personal
prowess was a household word with all Roman
leaders. He was not content with crushing his foes
and restoring the frontiers, but he sought to disperse
the more formidable of the warriors, or to find occu
pation for them at a distance from their former camp
ing grounds. It has been said that Probus re-peopled
or re-colonised the old lands of Upper and Lower
Germany on the Gallic side of the Rhine — which
were now included amongst the increasing number
of Roman " provinces " in Gaul z — with his Frank
captives ; and that " these German colonists perma
nently thrust back the Gallic frontier." That would
have been a curious effect of the restoration of the
ramparts, and of the riparian limes, which were rather
1 The Gallic "provinces" numbered seventeen in the reign of
Constantine.

EARLIEST FRANK SETTLEMENTS. 65
a pushing forward of the Gallic frontier into Germany.
But the precautions of Probus — which were nothing
less than a return to the Caesarian frontier-policy —
are quite consistent with the planting of Frank
colonies, or the confirmation of settlements already
made, within the secured frontier, and under the eye
of the Roman garrisons, in Germania Inferior, mainly
beyond the Meuse, in the lands of the Tungrians and
Texuandrians, and on the lower reaches of the
Scheldt. Here their descendants were found by
Julian, three generations later, and by him the more
peaceable amongst them were again confirmed in
their possessions.
Though the records of these earliest settlements
of Franks in Gaul are very indefinite, no doubt
exists as to the general policy pursued by the
Emperor Probus. To his prisoners, and to such as
his offers were likely to tempt, he gave the option of
entering his legions or of settling peaceably in some
of the Gallo-Roman provinces. Many thousands took
service under him ; but he was careful to distribute
them amongst his armies in different parts of the
empire, nowhere leaving them collected in formidable
numbers. But a band of turbulent Franks who
wou]d not be very formidable in the ranks of a well'
disciplined legion might become decidedly formidable
when no longer kept in awe by armed comrades and
stern officers.
An interesting story is told of such a band, which
had apparently been planted on the eastern shore
of the Euxine, in pursuit of the well-meaning policy
of Probus. According to the meagre accounts of
6

66 THE COMING OF THE FRANKS.
Zosimus and Eumenius,1 a settlement of Franks had
been made in Pontus, probably near the town of
Phasis, at the request or with the consent of their
leaders ; but a certain number of them, unable to
change their restless habits, seized some ships and
sailed away. No doubt they plundered as they went
— and if they were to escape alive, and reach their
home again, it would be necessary for them to obtain
food, at any rate, at somebody else's expense. They
disturbed the whole of Greece ; there was bloodshed
when they came to Sicily ; and they were worsted in
an attempt on Carthage. But they managed to
escape from their enemies, and sailed " homewards."
If they did not put ashore amongst their countrymen
already settled in Spain, which is not very likely,
they would have to extend their adventurous voyage
all round the coast of Gaul, reaching after many
months the land of their race-fellows on the northern
shore. Is it enough to say of these wandering Franks of
the third century that they were marauders, and
nothing more ? Those who have told us their story
would naturally not be too well affected towards
them, and it was inevitable in any case that they
1 Qpayicuiv rip fiaciku 7rpo(se\96vTU)v ical tvxovtwv oiK-titsEivg, fioipa
tlq cnroGraaa, irXolcov evirop-fjffaoa, rijv "EUa^a ffvverdpa^ev airacrav,
Kai SiKEAta 7rpoo-E%oSiTa Kai ry 1,vpaKovaiii>v TrpoofiiQaaa. ttoXvv Kara
TavTTjv eipyaaaro fovov ijSri Sk Kai Ai/Svy irpoaopmaBCiaa, Kai
uiroKpovaBiiisa, Svvdfieug sk KapxySovos ImvExQt'GIS, o'ia Te ykyovev
diraBriQ siraviKQeiv oiKaSe. (Zosimus, 'loropia Nsa, bk. i. c. 71).
The same incidents are referred to in a Panegyric of Eumenius on Con-
stantius, where we read that the ships were seized in the Euxine, and
that after their depredations the freebooters sailed further west from
Sicily and Carthage.

THE EMPEROR PROBUS. 67
should be regarded as robbers at large, desperate
pirates who plundered and slaughtered wherever
they came. It is useless to look for the virtues of
peace and self-restraint amongst these hereditary
enemies of Roman civilisation. The Franks were
sworn to enmity against the Romans, and these
particular Franks had tasted the bitterness of defeat
and transportation. But clearly their ultimate object
was to get back to their homes again, and for this
they ran the gauntlet of a hundred dangers, living,
after the manner of their day and their race, by the
sword, and well knowing that there was but one
shore in all the world which would receive them as
friends. In the reign of Probus, all made for peace except
peace. By his colonisation, by his public works at
Rome and in the provinces, by such encouragements
of industry as the permission of vine-culture in
Gaul, which had hitherto been dependent for its wine
on Italy and the merchants of the cisalpine and trans
alpine provinces, he did his best to heal the wounds
of war, and to divert the thoughts of men into peace
ful channels. But the standing armies of Rome had
neither the tastes nor the capacities for peace ; and
Probus fell by the hands of those on whom he had
tried to enforce it. The tide of war flowed on
more vehemently for its momentary check, and Gaul,
throughout its eastern and northern provinces, was
once more the theatre of sanguinary strife. To the
incursions of the Germans were added a new Bagat,
the formidable insurrection of Carausius, who estab
lished himself in Britain and seized the Gallic port of

68 THE COMING OF THE FRANKS.
Bononia (Boulogne), and the inroads of Saxon pirates.
The Allemans broke down the wall of Probus, and
invaded the Sequanian territories, where they met
with a great reverse at the hands of Coristantius
Chlorus, who slew some sixty thousand of them at
Langres. Constantius emphasised his victories over
the Allemans and other German tribes by rebuilding
the ruined town of Autun, and re-opening the
schools for which it had already become famous.
Then followed the important reigns of Diocletian
and Constantine. The division of the empire by
Diocletian into prefectures, dioceses, and provinces —
whereof the dioceses were subsequently adopted as a
scheme of ecclesiastical government — marked a grand
distinction between military and civil administration.
The prefects, their deputies (vicarii) in the dioceses,
and the prcesides of the provinces — of whom the last
were required to be of a different nationality from
that of the provinces over which they presided — were
theoretically more effective for purposes of adminis
tration than any provincial authorities set up by
Rome since the first century, when the proconsuls
and propraetors answered most of the needs of newly
conquered and only partially civilised lands. The
spread of civilisation, and the consequent increase of
taxation, especially from the reign of Caracalla, had
created fresh needs and difficulties, which had doubtless
prompted the organisation introduced by Diocletian ;
and, though history does not for some time afford
much evidence of the success of this organisation, we
may reasonably conclude that it was not ineffectual
under conditions which are essential to the success of

CONSTANTINE. 69
any administration, even in our own days — the
uprightness and skill of the administrators. The
military authorities which existed side by side with
the prefects and their subordinates were the Caesars
(in the absence of the Augusti or emperors), the
praetorian legati (with restricted powers), the duces
and the comites ; and it was only natural that the
military authority was often found in conflict with the
civil. The following table shows the family of Constan-
tius, which swayed the fortunes of the Roman Empire
for a period of nearly sixty years : —

CONSTANTIUS CHLORUS
(305-306)

I I
Constantinus Julius Constantms

(306-337)

I I III
Constantinus II. Constantius II. Constans Gallus Julian,
(d. 340) (d. 361) (d. 350) (d. 354) Caesar
[Prefecture in Gaul
of Gaul 355 ;
seized by Emperor
Magnentius] 361

In 325 Constantine summoned the Council of Nice,
which was attended by three hundred and eighteen
bishops, including Arius, Athanasius, Eusebius, (the
confessor of Constantine, who, like the emperor,
somewhat inclined to the doctrine of Arius), the Papa
of Alexandria, and two representatives of Sylvester,
Bishop of Rome. Constantine himself presided over

70 THE COMING OF THE FRANKS.
the Council, which condemned Arius, and declared
the orthodox belief of the Christian Church — that the
second person of the Trinity is of one substance with
the Father, not of " like " substance, as Arius held.
But the battle of Arianism had yet to be fought out,
as will be seen in succeeding chapters.
The short-sighted policy of Constantius, who
employed Allemans to assist him against his enemy,
Magnentius, had a disastrous sequel. Magnentius
was himself a Frank by origin, in the Roman service ;
but he rebelled, declared himself emperor, and, with
his brother Decentius, gave the Romans a great deal
of trouble. The Allemans performed their part of
the contract with Constantius, for they defeated the
rebels at Agedincum (Sens, the principal town of the
old Senones). For their reward they received settle
ments on the left bank of the Rhine ; and, in the
result, we find a new story of destruction and plunder
laid to their charge. The meaning of the recorded
facts may be that their leaders and Constantius were
not sufficiently definite in their bargain, that they did
not interpret it in the same sense, or did not adhere
to it, or could not control their followers. In any case
the experiment was a costly one, and Julian had to
pay a considerable part of the cost.
In the meantime a second Frank, who had taken
the Roman name of Silvanus, assumed the purple at
Cologne in 355 ; and the poor man enjoyed his self-
conferred dignity for twenty-eight days, when he was
assassinated. Between the hiring of the Allemans
and the arrival of Julian, a period of five years, the
Germans sacked Cologne, Treves, Mainz, Strassburg —

STATUE OF JULIAN.
(In the Cluny Museum.)

72 THE COMING OF THE FRANKS.
in all no fewer than forty-five cities of the Upper and
Lower Provinces of the Gallic Germania.
Julian, the nephew of Constantine and cousin of
Constantius, was nominated by the latter as his Caesar
in Gaul, and took up his duties in 356. He cut his
way through the Allemans, who had overrun the
country as far as Augustodunum and the sources of
the Seine, joined forces at Reims with Marcellus, the
magister equitum, who bore him no good will, and
defeated the Franks at Cologne. The German tribes
had once again crossed the Rhine, and occupied or
destroyed most of the Roman stations on the left
bank. The results of Julian's first campaign were
limited to the placing of a few garrisons in such of
the cities as were capable of being held over the
winter, and he himself fell back with a weakened
army into winter-quarters at Agedincum, fifty or
sixty miles to the south-east of Lutetia. It speaks
eloquently of the disorganisation of the Roman
power, and the consequent boldness of the Franks
and Allemans, that he was pursued as far as this
town, and besieged for thirty days by a formidable
host. In the next year Julian defeated a greatly superior
army of Allemans under Huodomar and other chiefs,
near the town of Argentoratum (Strassburg), fortified
and held the town of Tabernae (Zabern in the
Vosges), drove the Germans from various islands in
the Rhine, crossed the Decumates Agri as far as the
Main, and, returning, expelled a body of Franks who
had occupied strong positions on the Meuse. It was
earlier in the same year that he recovered some booty

MARLY PARIS. 73
from a roving force of Franks, who had come from
their cis-Rhenan settlements to the city of Lugdunum
(Lyon). They are described by Ammianus as Laeti
— a name of doubtful signification, which we will
consider later on.
Julian spent the following winter (357-8) in the
town of Lutetia Parisiorum, which, originally built
on an island, was now connected by bridges with the
houses on either bank of the Seine. There was already
a bishop here when Julian came, with churches and
temples side by side, and monuments raised by the
Gallo-Romans. At Lutetia Julian, and after him
Valentinian and Gratian, resided. Here, in the
intervals of war, he wrote and studied. It was here
that the pagan philosopher put into writing many of
his literary and critical ideas on life and morals, on
Christianity and the faith of his forefathers. He
exclaims in one place, thinking of the contrast be
tween the pursuits of his youth and his military
labours and studies, " Oh, Plato, Plato, what a task
for a philosopher ! " It was some years later, in his sati
rical "Misopogon," x that he recalled with affection the
days of his sojourn in Paris. " I wintered," he says,
" in dear Lutetia — for so the Gauls name the little
town of the Parisii, a small island lying in the river,
surrounded by walls. The water is very good, clear to
look at and pleasant to drink ; the inhabitants enjoy a
mild winter, and good wine is produced. Some of
them grow figs, which they shelter from the cold with
straw." Paris was already a noteworthy centre of
Latin civilisation.
1 MiaoTTtbyuiv — i.e., The Hater of Bearded Philosophers.

74 THE COMING OF THE FRANKS.
Ammianus, the historian, who was a contemporary
of Julian, lays to his charge an act of treachery
towards a body of Salian Franks, which reminds one
of Julius Caesar's conduct towards the Tencteri, four
hundred years earlier. The story may not be true as
it has reached us ; Ammianus was not present at the
time, and he can have had no better authority when
he wrote than the information of men who may have
been themselves misled, either by hearsay or by the
jealousy of some of those by whom Julian was
surrounded. Julian was setting out on his third campaign, in
358, ahd, drawing near to a Frank army, was met by
a number of emissaries who sued for peace. It is
said that he gave them a favourable reply, and sent
them away with the presents which would be usual
under such circumstances ; after which he suddenly
fell upon the army, taking it by surprise, and imposing
terms more onerous than before. It is probable that
whatever happened on this occasion was the creation
of circumstances, and that Julian only did what he
felt himself compelled to do. The Romans were
advancing amongst a hostile race, greatly exceeding
them in number ; and behind the Salians there was a
large force of Chamavians. They had no reason to
regard the Germans as trustworthy; a Roman general
opposed to the countrymen of Hermann could never
hold himself safe under the terms of a truce. Gibbon
says that " an inconstant spirit, the thirst of rapine,
and a disregard to the most solemn treaties, disgraced
the character of the Franks." Still, it is only fair to
remember that the first recorded act of treachery

SALIAN FRANKS. 75
between Romans and Germans was committed by
the former, on the evidence of the general who was
responsible for it.
In this year and in the next, Julian made a strong
impression upon the invaders, defeated them in their
own country, and restored several of the Rhine
fortresses ; but it was the campaign of 358, and the
arrangements by which it was concluded, that pro
duced the most lasting effect upon the relations
between the Gauls and the Franks. Whilst the
Chamavians were expelled from the left banks of the
Rhine, the Salians were permitted to remain in the
fields which they had virtually conquered and held
from the time of Postumus, if not considerably
earlier.1 But this concession was made to them on
conditions similar to those of Probus — that they
should annually furnish recruits for the army, and
a stipulated number of cattle by way of tribute.
Hence the Praefectus Laetorum was added to the
praefects of other foreign elements in the Roman
army. It would certainly appear that the immi
grants who were content to settle on the pastures
which they occupied in the third century, whilst their
race-fellows pushed on across the Seine and Loire
and Pyrenees, stayed on and were succeeded by
their children, though Postumus, Probus, and Julian
1 Julian wrote in his report of this campaign : — vm§tZ,dp.T\v pkv
p.6ipav rov SaXiwv 'iQvovc, XapdfiovQ dk i^riXacra (Zosimus, iii. 8).
Ammianus Marcellinus also, it may be noted, uses the term Salii as one
in common acceptation. Julian, he says, " petit primos omnium
Francos, eos videlicet quos consuetudo Salios appellavit, ausos olim
in Romano solo apud Toxiandriam locum habitacula sibi figere
prselicenter " (xvii. 8).

76 THE COMING OF THE FRANKS.
had been able to clear the land of any large body of
aggressors, and to check new incursions.
In 359 Julian is said to have delivered from the
Allemans, in their own country, no fewer than twenty
thousand Gallo-Roman captives — a fact which is elo
quent not only of the extent to which the German
invasions of Gaul had been pushed in the past
generation, but also of the thoroughness of Julian's
triumph. In the following year his career in Gaul

FROM AN ALTAR TO CERNUNNOS IN PARIS.
came to an end. Constantius, who had more than
once created difficulties for Julian, commanded the
latter to send his best troops, Batavians, Herulians,
Kelts, and " Petulantes," to reinforce the army in
Persia ; and these troops, who had engaged only for
service north of the Alps, revolted, and proclaimed
Julian emperor at Paris.1 He remained long enough
1 The Roman army included also, about this time, an "ala
Francorum," an " ala Vandilorum" ; and "cohortes Allemannorum,"
" Chamavorum," and " Gothorum."

DEFENDERS OF THE POOR. "Jf
in the West to inflict defeats upon the Chattuarians
and a new force of Allemans, and then he marched
eastward to meet Constantius.
The quiet of Gaul after the five or six campaigns
of Julian was only comparative, and it was not
of long duration. The Emperor Valentinian took
sundry measures for the maintenance of public
order ; but his measures were scarcely consistent.
It was he who established the defensores, or advocates
of the citizens — not to use the term "advocates of
the poor," which has a special and modern applica
tion, though the defensores were really in a somewhat
similar sense official champions of those on whom the
burden of civilisation fell with the greatest severity.
He issued this decree on the recommendation of the
Christian bishops ; and it may have been at their
instigation that he prohibited marriages between
Roman citizens and barbarians. He was succeeded
by his son Gratian, who had married the daughter of
Constantius ; and Gratian it was who dignified a
Frank chieftain, " Mellobaudes, by making him a
Roman consul. Mellobaudes assisted Gratian, in the
year 378, at Argentovaria on the Rhine, to defeat a
German invasion of forty thousand men, described as
Lentienses — descendants of the Boii, who had come
to avenge their ancestors on the Gallo-Romans.
The emperor and his Frank consul were both slain a
few years later, during the revolt of Maximus.
Arbogast, another Frank, of whom we hear as a
comes under the Emperor Theodosius, had assassinated
Valentinian II. in 392, and proclaimed Eugenius, the
magister officiorum, as emperor in rivalry to his former

78 THE COMING OF THE FRANKS.
master. But this Frank emperor-maker died in the
following year, shortly after the defeat and execution
of his puppet by Theodosius.
In the last year but one of the fourth century,
Treves was once more in the hands of the Germans,
who never ceased to take advantage of any relaxation
of watchfulness on the part of the Roman emperors
and their duces. Stilicho, a Vandal by birth — he may
have been a Goth, or a Burgundian, or a member of
one of the tribes allied to these, who had gravitated
southward and westward from the Baltic shores
through the old lands of the Suevians, for to these the
common name of Vandals had been given — was dux
in Gaul under Honorius, the son of Theodosius. He
belongs to the line of capable Roman generals who
from generation to generation were able with diffi
culty to stem the barbarian tide, and prolong the
existence of the empire ; but the Germans on the
Rhine frontier were not his only enemies, nor was
Gaul his only care. He defeated Alaric in 403, and
Radagasius in 405 ; and, leaving a Gothic lieutenant
to represent him in Gaul, pursued in Italy the course
of personal ambition which led to his death in 408. x
Meanwhile, on the first day of the year 407, a
huge host of Stilicho's countrymen — Germans of
various tribes seeking a refuge in the West from the
fury of the advancing Huns — crossed the frozen
Rhine on foot, and penetrated far into North-eastern
Gaul, sacking the cities as they progressed, and
carrying destruction to the walls of Reims, Amiens,
and Tournai. There must have been ten or a dozen
1 Stilicho found a panegyrist in the poet Claudian, who accompanied

STILICHO. 79
fighting tribes in the country during the first decade
of the fifth century ; and the Franks were prominent
amongst them. We read of them at this time as far
south as the city of Aries, in the neighbourhood of
which place they were beaten by Ulfila the Goth, who
had taken service under Honorius. And it was pro
bably during this period that the land of Hainault
was definitely held by Frank leaders, who were not
only warlike enough to seize and to retain their new
home, but also sufficiently zealous for orderly govern
ment to implant their native Salic law in Belgic
soil.
him in some of his campaigns. Here is one of his apostrophes ("De
Laudibus Stilichonis," i. 220) : —
' ' Rhenumque minacem
Cornibus infractis adeo mitescere cogis
Ut Salius jam rura colat, flexosque Sicambri
In falcem curvent gladios, geminasque viator
Cum videat ripas, qua; sit Romana requirat :
Ut jam trans fluvium non indignante Calico
Pascat Belga pecus, mediumque ingressa per Albin
Gallica Francorum montes armenta pererrent :
Ut procul Hercyniaa per vasta silentia sylvae
Venari tuto liceat, lucusque vetusta
Religione truces, et robora numinis instar
Barbarici nostrae feriant impune bipennes."

VII.

THE MEROVINGIAN FRANKS.

We have traced with some detail — perhaps with a
wearisome detail, because it has too often lacked the
quality of continuity, or the satisfaction of manifest
cause and effect — not only the general relations
between Rome and Germany during the greater
part of five centuries, but also the persistent efforts
of the Franks and other Teutons, over the whole of
that period, to establish themselves in the Romanised
land of Gaul. We have now entered upon the fifth
century of the Christian era — the century which
brings the Roman Empire to an end, which finally
breaks down the political barrier between the Eastern
and Western dominions of the Latin race, which sees
Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Britain overrun and appro
priated by the Teutonic race, and the sway of the
Church in process of establishment on the ruins of
the ancient State.
Henceforth, the story of the Franks will be more
definite in its character, and may be pursued with
some greater degree of confidence ; for now we shall
have to do with a Frank people settled in a Frank

THURINGIAN FRANKS. 01
land, under Frank kings — with a nation some of
whose descendants, living in the same towns,
rearing their cattle on the same pastures, were
doubtless included amongst the Frenchmen of the
France of the Capets.
We have already seen reason for supposing that
the true cradle-land of the Germans who were called
Franks was the country lying between the Middle
Rhine and the Hercynian forest — the same country,
roughly speaking, which a German of the present day
calls Nassau, Hesse, Unter-Franken, Ober-Franken,
and Mittel-Franken, the three last of which correspond
(again roughly speaking) with the kingdom of
Thuringia in the sixth century. But now it is
necessary to subdivide the nation of Franks. We
have hitherto regarded them as a conglomeration of
German tribes, extending eastward almost as far as
the confines of the Boii, and westward as far as the
Limes Germanicus and the Rhine. We must proceed
to draw a distinction between the Franks of the west,
the protagonists of the war against Rome, and the
Franks of the east, from whom the others were
frequently recruited. The conglomeration or con
federacy had made a single nation ; the organised
nation tended at once towards a rivalry of its
organic parts.
Thus in the fifth century we come, in the meagre
accounts of the historians, upon Franks of Thuringia
and Franks who were not Thuringian. It will give a
broad notion of the truth, approximately correct, if
we say that the Thuringians were the Franks who
stayed at home, whilst the Western or non-Thuringian
7

82 THE MEROVINGIAN FRANKS.
Franks are represented by those who poured westward
across the Rhine, in the last and most successful of
the Frank invasions, under Clodion and Merowig,
and founded the Merovingian realm in Gaul. It is
shortly after this juncture — that is to say, in the
lifetime of Childeric and Clovis — that we find the
rivalry spoken of above developing into open hostility.
Of Clodion, or Hlodion, who was perhaps the father
of Merowig,1 and at any rate his predecessor in the
chieftainship of the latest immigration of Western
Franks into Gaul, we know little but what is told
us by Gregory of Tours ; but this Roman bishop of
the sixth century was almost a contemporary of
Clovis, and his testimony on the point is acceptable
in itself, in addition to being the best that we can get.
According to Gregory, " Chlogion " (for that is how
he writes the name), " a man of the highest rank in
his nation, is stated to have been king of the Franks.
He lived in Dispargum, a fortified place, which is on
the borders of the Thuringian land. Now, in our
own territories, that is towards the south, the Romans
continued to occupy the country as far as the river
Loire." Clodion, the writer goes on to say, drove the
Romans out of Camaracum (Cambrai), in the year
445, and occupied the surrounding country up to the
bank of the river Somme.2
We are face to face with a number of interesting
questions which are sure to challenge any one who
concerns himself with the history of the Franks.
1 " There are some -who say that King Merowig, who was the father
of Childeric, descended (de stirpe fuisse) from Clodion." — Gregory of
Tours. 2 See Note at the end of this Chapter.

SOME DOUBTFUL POINTS. 83
What relation did the Merovingian family and their
comrades of the fifth century bear to the Franks who
had already been settled between the Meuse and the
Scheldt, whom Julian, as we have seen, describes as
the nation of the Salians ? What is the meaning of
the word Salian, which is at least as doubtful in its
application as the word Frank ? Why were some of
the Franks at Brabant, or other Germans settled on
the left bank of the Lower Rhine, called in their own
language Lite, and in Latin Laeti ? And, starting
with the passage just quoted from Gregory of Tours,
where was the Dispargum from whence Clodion came?
In spite of Gregory's statement, which appears to
be fairly precise, subsequent history has left the
origin of the Merovingians in doubt. Some writers
have said distinctly that they came from the Low
Countries, and that they were Salian Franks, descended
from the settlers in Brabant whom the Emperor Julian
describes as Salians. But if they came from Dispargum,
on the borders of Thuringia — where the father of Clovis
sought refuge on his expulsion from Tournai by his
leudes — they were not Franks of the Lower Rhine,
and not Salians on that score, though they may lay
claim to the term for other reasons. There is an
element- of doubt as to the exact position of Clodion's
Dispargum ; and it will be interesting to see whether
the German scholars who are making a special study
of the archaeology of the Roman ramparts which
enclosed the Agri Decumates will be able to throw
any additional light on this not unimportant historical
problem. In some historical maps there is a Dispargum

84 THE MEROVINGIAN FRANKS.
placed between the principal forks of the Scheldt,
on what authority it is impossible to say. Grasse,
in his "Orbis Latinus," gives us two localities : (i)
Duisburg, in Rhenish Prussia ; and (2) Disburg, or
Burg-Scheidungen, in Thuringia. Now there is a
town called Deutz, formerly known as Duisburg, a
short distance from Cologne on the right bank of the
Rhine, and in the zone of the old Limes Rhenanus,
which the Romans at their strongest kept clear of
German occupants. The German name of Duisburg
then or later given to it might represent Duicziburgum,
or Tuiscoburgum, the hold or fort of Tuisco, the war
god. Similarly there is a Duisdorf on the left bank
of the Rhine, not far from Bonn. It is possible that
Duicziburg was shortened into Duisburg, Latinised
into Disburgum, and thence corrupted into Dispargum.
But Gregory would scarcely have described this place,
even on hearsay, as " in termino Thoringorum " ; for
there is no evidence whatever in history that such a
phrase as " termini Thoringorum," or Thuringia, was
at any time applied to a district of the Belgian lands.
Again, there is a town called Dieburg, in Hesse, on
the road between Darmstadt and Aschaffenburg,
twelve or fifteen miles to the south-east of Frankfort-
on-the-Main: It would have been within the Roman
ramparts, and its position, though not in Thuringia,
is in the borders of the Thuringian land. The
ramparts were broken both before and after the
time of Probus ; and it is as likely as not that an
ancestor of Clodion was amongst those who broke
them. However this may be, Dieburg and Disburg
may very possibly be two different forms representing

DISPARGUM.

85

the place which Gregory called in Latin Dispargum,
but which Germans in their own. language called
Burg-Scheidungen. Now Scheidungen, which appears
in Low-Latin writers as Schidinga, would mean divisio,
or more correctly secessio. We do, in fact, find Divisio
used as a proper name for the same place which the
Germans called Burg-Scheidungen, a town of division
or secession.1
The adjoining sketch-map shows the position of
Dieburg in relation to the surrounding countries,

\CeU,nx "?-. S*-D
Jfessen -

'"••¦¦.. '•¦••....••¦•'¦'

\ J}ai>ana

£ a den

•.'"' '""" l

\Mitft/

\fran/cen

Mhenish
/ Pa £a ft natej

which are here represented with their modern names
and boundaries.
1 Such a form as Divisio-burgum is certainly conceivable. Dufresne
quotes a passage from a charter of Archbishop Wylbrand of Magdeburg,
dated 1236: — " Equidem praefati praspositus et capitulum emerunt in
Glouch moliendinum cum curia attinente, pomerium etiam adjacens et
sanctum, cum omni utilitate et provenientibus ejus, ab ejusdem fundi
principio usque deorsum ad locum qui Divisio Latine, et Scheidinghe
vulgariter appellatur." The identification of the Dieburg mentioned
above with Gregory's Dispargum, and with a border town of the
Western Franks, is made with some diffidence, but it seems to be
most in accordance with the various indications.

86 THE MEROVINGIAN FRANKS.
If, then, we recognise here, with some approach to
confidence, the origin of the Merovingian dynasty,
and consider Dispargum to have been a frontier-burg
between the Eastern and Western Franks in Germany,
we may go on to ask ourselves the further question,
whether the name of Salian Franks belonged equally
to the eastern and western branches, or specially to
either of them. In considering this question there
are certain points of departure which require to be
kept in mind. The first is that we have no more
probable or satisfactory derivation for the name of
Frank than the statement that it was given to the
Rhine-and-Main Germans from a word in the " Attic "
or Chattan language (that is, in a German dialect), to
indicate their character as fighting men. This, at any
rate, may show that the Western Franks, Chattans
and others, whom S. Remy called by implication
Sicambrians, were the first to receive that name,
which afterwards spread to the eastward, and again
to the northward, being carried and localised along
and across the Rhine, and in the Low Country between
the Rhine and the Scheldt. Then we have the un
questionable fact that the Franks who were permitted
by Julian, and by Probus and others before him, to
remain where they had settled, in the Batavian and
Tungrian (Toxandrian) lands, were called by Julian
and others the Salians, or Salian Franks. Why Salian ?
What were the limits of the Salians? And what
distinction, if any, are we to draw between Salian
and Riparian Franks?
In face of the difficulties created by the loose
application of the names of Frank, Salian, and

THE SALIANS. %f
Salian Frank, to German warriors and settlers in a
zone extending from the mouths of the Rhine to
the Roman ramparts, thence along the banks of
the Main and its tributary the Sala (Saale), and
to the furthest limits of Thuringia, it is impossible
to claim these titles exclusively for any particular
subdivision of the Teutonic van. All that can here
be attempted is to sum up the conclusions which
appear to be most reasonable and probable.
(i) The original Franks were the representatives
or successors of the Sicambrian League which
opposed itself to Julius Caesar. They included the
Catti or Chattans, from whose dialect the name was
drawn, and whose homes lay outside the middle
section of the Limes Germanicus. This view is
supported, amongst other reasons, by the disap
pearance of the separate tribal names of the
Sicambrians, Chattans, and Hermundurians about
the time when the name of Frank came into ordinary
use. And from the Sicambrians and Chattans the
new name was gradually extended throughout the
zone which has just been described.
(2) The name of Salian Franks was then given, for
the purpose of further distinction, to the Franks who
inhabited the country bordering on the ramparts and
the Hercynian forest, in which rise two rivers called
Sala or Saale, one of them flowing with a very sinuous
course to the south-west, into the Main, through the
land of the Chattans, and the other flowing north
wards, between the lands of the Cheruscans and the
Semnones, to empty itself in the Elbe. If this be so,
the Thuringian Franks might be called Salian, as

88 THE MEROVINGIAN FRANKS.
well as the Western Franks whom Clodion led to
Cambrai and Tournai ; but it is equally probable
that the name was taken solely from the tributary
of the Main, and that it properly belonged to the
original Franks, first known as Chattans and
Hermundurians. (3) The Riparian Franks (considered apart from
the Salians on the left bank of the lower stream)
were those who were settled on either side of the
Middle Rhine, a little before and after the time when
the Western Franks under Clovis were establishing
themselves in the greater part of Gaul. Their name
is especially preserved in the Riparian code of
German law, which has various points of distinction
from the Salic and other codes. They had a rex
crinitus, a long-haired king, of their own, until Clovis
annexed their country towards the close of his
reign. (4) The Salians .spoken of by Julian may have
been Chattans by origin, as were their neighbours,
the Batavians. In that case they may be looked
upon as the earliest Salian Franks who obtained
settlements in Gaul, occupying the country which is
now Brabant. The view is supported by their easy
coalescence with the Franks under Clovis, and by the
apparent absence of rivalry and hostility between
the two sections. There is no necessity or reason
to derive their name of Salians from the river Issala
or Yssel. Such similarity as the two names present
is a mere coincidence.
(5) As for the terms Laeti and Leti, which were
applied to the Tungrian and other North-western

ROMAN NICKNAMES. 89
Franks at least as early as the middle of the fourth
century, it would perhaps be impossible, with any
explanation, to feel satisfied that the difficulties con
nected with them had disappeared. Ammianus, as
we have seen, tells us of Laeti who, in 356, found
their way as far as Lyon, and were repulsed by
Julian ; the Code of Theodosius (438) mentions the
Laeti in the Roman army ; and the Riparian Code
speaks of Icetica terra, which was the land held by
Laeti on condition of military service. Was this word
"Laeti" anything more, originally, than a military
nickname, bestowed by Roman soldiers on their
foreign comrades, just as they had nicknamed other
Germans Franci, Petulantes, and perhaps Burgundi,
and as Romans of an earlier day had divided the
Gauls into Togati, Comati, and Braccati ? That is
perhaps the only supposition on which we can accept
any connection between Laeti and Leti. It is possible
enough that Germans who paid no tribute to Rome
applied the contemptuous term of lete or lite to their
race-fellows who consented to pay tribute to, and
fight for, the Italian masters of Gaul, and that Roman
soldiers, hearing the term/made a pun out of it, and
called the more or less contented and lucky settlers
leeti. The explanation of the German term is simple
enough. In the various German dialects, as Thierry I
has said, lite, lide, lete, meant a man of low rank — a
letzte man, or, in English, one of the least of men.2
We return now to Clodion, and to his expedition
from Dispargum to Cambrai. He took the town
1 " Considerations sur l'histoire de France,'' c. 5.
2 The tax which they paid was called lidimoniun}.

90 THE MEROVINGIAN FRANKS.
and occupied the neighbouring country as far as the
river Somme, possibly in the absence of any powerful
Roman force. It was not long before the army of
Aetius arrived ; but in the meantime the Franks had
added to their exploits by capturing Turnacum
(Tournai), the chief town of the Nervii (correspond
ing to the modern Flanders). These victories cut off
the Romans from Itius Portus (Wissant), and thus
deprived them of the trade route to Britain. No
Roman general could sit down under such a blow
without admitting that the cause of Rome in Gaul
was lost. Aetius, a Scythian by birth, but a " comes
rei militaris " and a consul of the empire, was by
no means inclined to submit. He came up with
Clodion's Franks near the town of Helena, and
defeated them (447) ; but history tells us nothing
as to the fate of Clodion himself. All we know is
that the Franks were still in Cambrai, Tournai, and
Teruenna (Terouanne) in the next generation.
The " last of the Romans," as the admirers of
Aetius called him, was a successful general. In 425
he had rescued Aries from the Goths. In the follow
ing years he arrested the progress of more than one
German inroad, and defended the Roman colonies on
the Rhine. In 434 he measured his strength against
the Burgundians under Gundachar, and hurled them
back from the Rhine valley into Rhaetia. Next year
he forced Theodoric to raise the siege of Narbonne,
and almost immediately afterwards quelled a new
Bagat in the north-west, gaining victories at Tours
and Chinon.
But Aetius found, as one Roman general after

THE HUNS. 91
another had found to his cost, that the task of
defending the long and exposed frontier of Gaul, of
simultaneously fighting three or four enemies already
established within their borders, of watching and
opposing the constant popular uprisings, of dealing
with the high-spirited Armorican confederation, and
of repulsing every now and then the piratical attacks
on the northern and western coasts, was an impossible
one. Whilst he marched southwards again, to the
relief of his lieutenant at Toulouse, the Germans
once more gathered in force, crossed the Rhine,
sacked Mainz, Cologne, Treves, and other cities, and
swarmed over the ill-protected land. It was with, or
close in the wake of, these that Clodion had led his
army of Franks, keeping himself, no doubt, to the
south of Brabant, where his race-fellows had been
established since the days of Julian.
Aetius was prevented from pushing things to an
extremity with the Franks by the appearance of
another and more formidable enemy, who threatened
the whole country with overwhelming ruin, and for a
time united many conflicting interests in a common
effort of self-defence. An enormous host of Huns
— Manchu Tartars, according to . some, who had
gradually in the past hundred years closed in from
Asia upon the rear of the migrating Alans and
Germans, and who advanced slowly through Europe
in the third, fourth, and fifth decades of the fifth
century — entered Gaul in 451. Attila (Etzel) had
fairly earned his title as the " Scourge of God."
Eighteen years earlier he had dictated terms of peace
to the emperor at Byzantium, and during most of the

92 THE MEROVINGIAN FRANKS.
intervening time he exacted from Theodosius II. an
annual tribute, constantly increasing, to supplement
the booty drawn by his swarm of locusts from the
lands on which they had settled.
It is a question how far this Asiatic scourge — one
of the most deadly inundations of barbarous humanity
known to history — was a propelling cause of the great
westward movement of Teutons already mentioned.
The Southern Tartars and Chinese are said to have
driven out their neighbours in the second century of
our era ; and the Huns would certainly drive other
races before them. Their plan of thoroughly denuding
and impoverishing their victims before they pressed
on to fresh feeding-grounds might well account for a
migration of centuries — extending over more than
half a century in Europe alone.
Hideous to look upon — half-shaped wooden blocks,
as one writer describes them, and yet more hideous in
their unrelenting and destructive cruelty — they had
nevertheless found or forced alliance (with the Ostro
goths amongst others) during their forward progress.
By their numbers, their spirit and savagery, their
unprecedented force of mounted' men, and the
momentum of their victories, they were for a long
time utterly irresistible. The destiny of Attila
caused him to turn aside from Italy and force his
way into Gaul, which, indeed, offered him at this
time a richer prey. This Yellow Terror passed
through the Hercynian forest and across the Rhine,
devastated the valleys of the Rhine, Moselle, Meuse,
and Seine, sacked the towns, and slew all that stood
in its path.

DEFEAT OF ATTILA. 93
At length the city that bore the name of Aurelian
(Orleans) checked the advance of the conqueror.
Before he could break down its walls he heard of
the approach of a vast army from the south, and,
knowing that his mounted forces required a more
open country in which to move with effect, he fell
back to the Catalaunian plains, probably between
Troyes and Chalons. The bursting of this black
cloud which had hung for so many years over
Europe made all the dwellers in Gaul forget their
minor enmities. With Aetius and his " Romans "
came Theodoric, king of the Visigoths, and his son
Thorismond, Franks under Merowig, and probably
Armoricans, all eager to bear their part in this
supreme struggle for existence. A hundred and
sixty-two thousand men are said to have fallen on
the field (June 21, 451); but beyond this fact, and
the fact that civilisation triumphed over barbarism,
we have the most meagre details of what was
unquestionably one of the decisive battles of the
world. Attila fled ; Goths, Romans, Franks fell asunder
on the morrow of his flight. Within three years
Aetius, Thorismond, Attila, had all died violent
deaths ; and Gaul was once more the theatre of
rebellions, civil war, invasion, and constant assassi
nation. Merowig died in 457 or 458, leaving the chieftaincy
or kingship of the Flandrian Franks — or at any rate <
of the Tournai Franks — to his son Childeric. The
historians are not definite as to Merowig being the
son of Clodion, and this is the reason why we have

94 THE. MEROVINGIAN FRANKS.
come to speak of the Merovingian rather than of the
Clodian dynasty.
But Childeric was certainly the son of Merowig.
Childeric began his reign unfortunately, setting his
youthful desires on wanton pleasure rather than on
the stern delights of war. He was driven from power
in the first year after the death of his father, and
for a while the Comes ^Egidius, successor of Aetius
as military governor of Gaul under the Emperor
Majorian, extended his authority over Tournai, as
well as~ over the Gallo-Romans. Majorian died in
461, and ^Egidius amused himself with the usurped
title of Augustus. Pie continued, with his head
quarters at Soissons, to fight those whom he
considered the enemies of Rome, including Visi
goths, Franks, and Burgundians; whilst at the same
moment fleets of Saxon and Frisian boats sailed
up the Loire, probably welcomed by the irrecon
cilable Armoricans, who never lost an opportunity
of striking at their ancestral enemies. So many
Britons are said to have come over at this time,
fleeing from the Saxon fury, that the Armorican
peninsula retained thenceforth the name which it
bears to-day.
In the year 463 yEgidius was worsted on the
Rhine by a new Frank invasion. The oft-told tale
was repeated — " Cologne was sacked," and the
Germans, scorning to settle in the walled town,
pushed forward across the valleys, and either
threw in their lot with the race- fellows who had
preceded them, or, if the earlier settlers refused to
make room for them, sought new habitations for

CHILDERIC AND BASINA.

95

themselves in the farms and vineyards of the Gallo -
Romans. Whilst the Roman count was
fighting the Franks in the east
of Gaul, the people of Tournai
and Cambrai had grown tired
of iEgidius, and had forgotten
their grievances against Childeric.
Their reason for deposing him,
Gregory tells us, was that he had
made too free with the families
of his chief supporters.1 But
when he was setting forth on his
exile he had divided a gold coin
with a trusty friend, who promised
to do what he could to win back
the hearts of his people. " If you
send me your half," said the king,
" and the two are united again as
they were before, I shall know
that it is safe for me to return."
Then Childeric had gone to the
castle of King Basinus in Thur
ingia ; and Basinus would be more
ready to receive the son of Mero
wig when he came to him with a
grievance against the Western
Franks. Moreover, the young
guest found favour in the eyes of
the Queen Basina.
".Professor Kurth ( " Clovis,'' p. 197) suggests a more probable and
less personal reason for the temporary exile of Childeric.

96

THE MEROVINGIAN FRANKS.

One day a traveller from Tournai brought to
Childeric a piece of broken gold, and he matched it
with his own, and knew that his throne in Gaul was
awaiting him. So he set forth at once, and re
entered his kingdom. He had not been many
months in Tournai before a gay cavalcade came out
of the east ; and, behold, it was his friend Basina, the
queen. Childeric was surprised to see her — or so we
might conclude from the artless tale of Bishop
Gregory. "Why have you followed me from far

BUCKLE.
(From the Tomb of Childeric.)

Thuringia ? " he asked her. " I have followed you,"
said Basina, " that I may live with you, because you
are the strongest and most capable of all men. If I
knew another stronger than you, I should want to
live with him ; but I do not." Then Childeric was
glad, and made her his queen ; and we can easily
understand that the jealousies of the Eastern and
Western Salians were not decreased by this transfer
of allegiance on the lady's part.
Basina, the hero-worshipper, became the mother of

THE LAST ROMAN EMPEROR. gf
Clovis. Childeric reigned for eighteen years, and
died in 48 1 , leaving a boy of sixteen to succeed him.
Meanwhile the last possessions of the Roman Empire
in the west had crumbled away. Odoacer the
Herulian was in Rome ; the imperial trappings which
Augustulus had scarcely had time to wear were
packed off to Constantinople. Gaul and Spain and
Britain were in the hands of the new nationalities,
and the ancient throne of the Caesars was vacant for
ever. Nearly twelve hundred years after the death of

MOUNTED TOOTH.
{From the Tomb oj : Childeric.)
Childeric a tomb, evidently dating from Merovingian
times, Was discovered at Tournai, and identified by
the archaeologists of the day with that of the father
of Clovis.1 " In it were found Frank arms, coins of
the later empire, a gold ring, and sundry other orna
ments, some of which, if the tomb were indeed that
of Childeric, may have been worn by Basina. They
were presented to Louis XIV., and kept in the
Cabinet des Antiques. Thence a part of the collec
tion, having survived the Revolution, was stolen in
1 Cf. Jean Jacques Chifflet, "Anastasis Childerici I., Francorum
Regis," 1655. 8

98

THE MEROVINGIAN FRANKS.

1832, but the remainder may still be seen at Paris, a
link of material fact between the fifth and the nine
teenth centuries.

NOTE.
This is what Gregory of Tours says of the original Franks in the
second book (c. 9) of his " History" : —
" De Francorum regibus, quis fuerit primus a multis ignoratur. Nam
cum multa de eis Sulpitii Alexandri [d. 425 ?] narret historia, non
tamen regem primum eorum ullatenus nominat, sed duces eos hubuisse
dicit : quae tamen de eisdem referat, memorare videtur. Nam cum
dicit, Maximum intra Aquileiam, amissa omni spe imperii, quasi

AXE-HEAD.
(From the Tomb of Childeric.)
amentem residere, adjungit : Eo tempore Genobaldo, Marcomere, et
Sunnone ducibus, Franci . in Germaniam prorupere, ac pluribus
mortalium limite inrupto caesis, fertiles maxime pagos depopulati,
Agrippinensi etiam Colonise metum incussere. . . . Hanc nobis
notitiam de Francis memorati historici reliquere, regibus non nominatis.
Tradunt enim multi eosdem de Pannonia fuisse digressos. Et primum
quidem litora [the left bank] Rheni amnis incoluisse : de hinc, transacto
Rheno, Thoringiam transmeasse : ibique juxta pagos vel civitates reges
crinitos super se creavisse, de prima, et ut ita dicam nobiliori suorum
familia. Quod postea probatum Chlodovei victoriae tradidere, idque
in sequenti digerimus. Nam et in consularibus legimus Theodomerem
regem Francorum, filium Richimeris quondam, et Ascilam matremejus,
gladio interfectos. Ferunt etiam tunc Chlogionem utilem ac nobilis-
simum in gente sua regem Francorum fuisse, qui apud Dispargum
castrum habitabat, quod est in termino Thoringorum. In his autem
partibus, id est ad meridionalem plagam, habitabant Romani usque
Ligerim fluvium . . . Chlogio autem missis exploratoribus ad urbem

THE EVIDENCE OF GREGORY. QQ
Camaracum, perl^strata omnia ipse secutus Romanos proterit . .
usque Suminam fluvium occupavit."
In saying that the Franks formerly dwelt on the nearer side of the
Rhine, Gregory might well have had in his mind such a fact as the
transportation of 40,000 Sicambrians from the left to the right bank
in B.C. 8. Or he may have referred generally to later expulsions of
Franks by Constantius Chlorus and other Roman emperors and
generals, implying that Thuringia was the rallying point from
which the Franks returned to conquer the land of their temporary
sojourn. I add the commentary devoted to this passage from Gregory by
Professor Kurth of Liege, in his elaborate work on " Clovis," because
it presents the opposite view to that which is taken in the text.
Everything — so far as the origin of Clodion is concerned — as the
reader will observe, dates from Gregory of Tours, and the difference
of opinion proceeds from different interpretations of the Latin text.

SPEAR HEAD.
(From the Tomb of Childeric.)
" The origin of this family is buried in obscurity. It was to a great
extent forgotten as early as the sixth century, possibly owing to the
mythological character of the tradition in which., it survived, and there
is now but littla hope of establishing any more than that which is
preserved for us by the father of Frank history. The highly poetical
form impressed on this tradition is indicated in the name which it
assigns to the native land of the dynasty, and to the most ancient of its
dwelling-places. This country was Toxandria, the land of the Tungri,
but the tradition calls it Thoringia, whether because it confounds the
name of the Tungri with that of the Thuringi, or for some other
undiscoverable reason. In regard to the royal residence indicated by
tradition under the name of Dispargum, the most assiduous research
has not succeeded in fixing its locality, and everything tends to con
vince us that the locality exists in poetry alone. At any rate these
two names " (of Dispargum and a Belgic Thuringia) "do not appear
outside of the popular tales of the Franks. Historians and geo
graphers know nothing of them ; they belong to a cycle of legends
which gathered about the nation in its infancy . .

lOO THE MEROVINGIAN FRANKS.
"The Liber Historia, c. 5, deceived by the name of Thuringia,
and a victim to its own craze for geographical corrections, started off on
a false scent, and placed Dispargum on the other side of the Rhine. . .
Other attempts at identification, far more hazardous " than Duysborch
and Duisburg, ' ' have been made ; Famars and even Tongres have been
thought of ; but there is no better proof of the impossibility of fixing
the locality of this legendary place in the domain of actuality. Let it
abide in the mists of fiction ! "
The reader must judge whether a fair interpretation of the text of
Gregory does not dispose of the unsupported notion of a Belgic Thur
ingia, and confirm (in this respect) the Liber Histories.

VIIL

KING CLOVIS.

When Clovis came to the throne in Tournai, the
only part of Gaul which still remained under Roman
organisation and authority was the district governed
by Roman counts in Soissons. It ran from the
boundaries of the Burgundian kingdom in a north
westerly direction to the Channel coast, between the
Seine and the Somme. On the west it was bounded
by the Seine and its tributary, the Yonne — with an
insecure supremacy on the left banks of those two
rivers ; and its eastern limits, beginning with the
upper course of the Meuse, crossed the Aisne and the
Oise to the mouth of the Somme.
The Franks had already four kings in Gaul, (i)
Siegbert ruled over the Riparian lands, which lay
along the Rhine from Coblenz and Cologne towards
the sea, and included Tolbiac and Tongres ; (2)
Ragnacar was king of Cambrai,.the first of Clodion's
conquests; (3) Clovis 'ruled at Tournai,- on the Upper
Scheldt, over a country partly corresponding to the
province of Hainault ; and (4) Cararic was ruler

102 KING CLOVIS.
of the last-formed kingdom of Terouanne, lying
between Tournai and the Somme.
The Allemans had by this time subdued or made
terms with the colonists in the Decumates Agri, and
towards the end of the fifth century they penetrated
as far as the Moselle. They had come in the wake of
the earlier migrating Franks, as well as by way of the
Upper Danube, and occupied most of what is now
Bavaria, as well as Wiirtemberg and Baden, between
the sources of the Rhine and the Danube.
The Visigoths, early in the century, had gained a
footing in the south-west of Gaul, and, after Atolf
had been driven into Spain, their countrymen who
succeeded them overspread the whole of Aquitaine,
from the Loire to the Rhone, together with the
nearer part of the Narbonensian province. Thus
they ruled from Bordeaux to the neighbourhood of
Tours, Orleans, Clermont, and Aries.
The Burgundians, who had followed the Goths,
were settled between Aquitaine and the Alps, stretch
ing southwards from the borders of the Alleman
lands as far as the river Durance, a tributary of the
Rhone which cut them off from the sea.
The possession of Narbonne, Aries, Marseille, Aix,
and the other cities on or near the Mediterranean
shore, was often contested, but they. also fell at length
into the hands of the Goths (a.d. 477).
There remained the north-western section of Gaul,
the " third" and part of the "second Lugdunensis "
of Augustus, which for many generations had been
the general rendezvous of Keltic refugees, fleeing
before the southern and eastern invaders. It would.

ARMORICA. 103
be difficult to assign precise limits to the territories
north of the Loire which, before the conquests of
Clovis, held themselves free of Roman domination,
or even of the authority of ^Egidius and his son
Syagrius, the self-styled kings of the Suessiones
(Soissons). ^Egidius defeated the Visigoths at
Orleans in 463. North-west of Orleans was the
country of the warlike Aulerci, and one tribe of this
formidable association were the Diablintes, mentioned
by Caesar amongst the " Armoricae civitates."
Roughly speaking, it was to the west of a line
running northward from the Loire, through Tours or
Jublains to Bayeux (Augustodurum Baiucassium)
that the descendants of the original Gauls, tempered
by such Romans and Germans as had settled in their
midst, asserted their independence in 383, and again
in 408, and maintained it up to the time of their
alliance with the Franks nearly ninety years later.
It was practically the same country which had formed
a league against the Romans in 56 B.C., and again in"
54 and 52, and which in the intervening centuries
had been conspicuous in every effort to shake off the
Roman yoke, and in every Bagat of Gallic insurrec
tion. The Armorican country which subsequently bore
the name of Bretagne was somewhat narrower than
that which has been described, being limited, approxi
mately, by the present confines of Poitou, Anjou,
Maine, and Normandy. The name of Armorica had
been given by the Romans to the maritime districts
between the mouths of the Loire and the Seine, to
represent the term used by the Gauls themselves (ar

104 KING CLOVIS.
mor — ad mare, that is to say, the seaside). The Gauls
had probably given this term to the whole coast, with
no exact application to a circumscribed locality.
Caesar seems to use it as applying in the limited
sense mentioned above ; but the Armorican cities
which declared their independence in the fifth century,
and finally expelled the Roman authorities, included
those lying between the Loire and Garonne. They
were prosperous cities, strong, and proud of their
immunity as compared with the more exposed inland
towns. Some of them carried on a busy traffic with
Britain, from whence, in the most distracted periods
of British and early English history, they received
many immigrants. When Clovis came he recognised
the strength of the Armorican cities, and rather
conciliated than attempted to conquer them. The
consequence was that they gave him valuable aid
against the Visigoths and Burgundians.
Such, in mere outline, was the political situation of
Gaul in the latter part of the fifth century. The
divisions of which we have spoken were but the
temporary result of the first general scramble for the
fragments of the Western Empire, when the collapse
of that empire was admitted by its last defenders.
Henceforth, for many years to come, the map of
the country changed from year to year. The Alle
mans and the Visigoths had but the shortest lease
of their conquests, the Burgundians were crushed and
humiliated, even the realm of Clovis was parcelled
out again almost as soon as it had been pieced to
gether, and the independent Kelts, Gallo-Kelts, and
Gallo-Britons were constrained to accept a sovereign.

THE FIRST FIGHT OF CLOVIS. 105
But, after all the changes, it was the Franks who
endured, who grew constantly stronger, who built up
a law, a church, and an empire.
Meanwhile Clovis reigned in his father's stead, and
grew to manhood, nursing , the ambitions which had
been bred in him, and resolved to be such a man
as his mother, Basina, thought she had found in
Childeric — not strong, but the strongest. When he
came to man's estate he found himself surrounded by
kings and confederacies all of whom probably thought
themselves as powerful as he. * Amongst them was his
neighbour on the west and south, Syagrius, king of
the Suessiones, the son of his father's enemy ^Egidius.
On this Syagrius Clovis determined to flesh his new-
forged blade. With his kinsman Ragnacar, the king
of Cambrai, he invaded the last remnant of Roman
Gaul, and won a great battle near the town that
is now Soissons. Syagrius took refuge with Alaric
II., king of the Visigoths. The Frank demanded his
surrender, and Agaric, who was not prepared to defy
the young hot-head, delivered the son of ^Egidius to
his enemy. This was in 486, and Clovis, having slain
his captive, added the valley of the Seine to his
kingdom of Tournai. Paris fell into his hands not
long after Soissons, and by this time, when he was
little more than twenty years -of age, he had under
•his command an army on which he could rely.
The typical Frank soldier was a tall, muscular man,
well-strung to his work, and inured by constant*
training in war and the chase. Light of complexion
until the weather had tanned his face and arms, with
red or yellow hair and moustache — the king and his

FRANK WARRIOR (TYPICAL),

THE TYPICAL FRANK. I07
leudes and antrustions wearing two long plaits which
reached the waist— he must have been as handsomely
set-up as he was prompt and vigorous in fight. His
close-fitting vest, lined outside with the furred skins
of animals, gradually gave way to a coat of mail,
under which a short-sleeved tunic hung down to his
knees. His leather shoes were secured by long strips
which crossed each other round the shins and above
the knees ; and he carried a lance (originally the
framea, headed with a flat iron tip, varying in shape),
javelins, a battle-axe, a dagger, a double-edged sword,
and a round, oval, or straight-edged shield, with its
boss drawn out to a point.
Most of the German fighting men were of this
stamp, but the event proved that none of them were
stronger, braver, or more formidable when their blood
was up than the Franks. To say that they were
cruel and bloodthirsty is to speak a commonplace.
In that respect they scarcely differed from the
Romans, who had trained or sharpened their aptitude
for war. It was in the Roman army itself that they
had learned the arts of discipline, the traditions of
soldierly drill and camp-life, which converted a brave
man into a hardened legionary. There is abundant
evidence that the Riparian, the Sicambrian, the
Chattan, the Salian Frank had learned all that Rome
had to teach, and learned it better than the Alleman,
the Goth, the Burgundian, or the Langobard. They
had learned, in short, how to create an army out of a
crowd of men. The swarms by whom Caesar used to
find himself surrounded were formidable enough, even
when they had nothing to oppose to the Rojnan

108 KING CLOVIS.
legions except their bare bodies and a handful of
darts ; but when the enervated Italian began to stay
at home and fill the ranks with trained barbarians, he
was simply creating the instrument which was to
destroy him.
Gregory of Tours gives us a striking picture of
Clovis and his leudes, at the time when the Franks
were overrunning the kingdom of Syagrius, which
incidentally shows us how the old habits of the raid
ing barbarian l\ad begun to be controlled and held in
hand by the spirit of a disciplined army and the
authority of a military king.
About this time, says Gregory, many of the
churches had been plundered by the army of Clovis,
for he was still sunk in his grievous errors. From
one church these enemies of the faith had carried off
a bowl of remarkable size and beauty, as well as
other beautiful vessels used in the services of the
church. Therefore the bishop sent a messenger to.
the king, beseeching that, if he could not prevail to
have any of the other sacred vessels restored, at any
rate the bowl belonging to his church might be given
back to him. And the king said to the speaker :
" Follow me to Suessiones, for there all the treasure
which has been taken is to be parcelled out, and, if
this vessel falls by lot to me, I will do as the Papa
wishes." And when they came to Suessiones, and all
the booty had been arranged in the midst, before
Clovis and his warriors, the king said to his leudes :
" I beg only this thing of my brave warriors, that they
will not refuse to give me yonder bowl, over and
above what falls to me by lot."

THE BOWL OF SOISSONS. I09
And the leudes said that they and everything be
longed to the king, that he must do and take what
seemed good to him, for no man could withstand him.
But one foolish fellow, who was greedy and head
strong, raised his battle-axe and smote the bowl, and
said, " Nought shalt thou have, beyond whatever the
lot may give thee ! " And they were all amazed at
these words, but the king governed himself. And
when he had received the bowl he gave it to the
messenger, but he nursed in his heart the memory of
that insult. And when the year was at an end he
ordered the whole army to assemble for a parade of
arms. And as he went slowly round the ranks he
came to him who had smitten the bowl. And he
said to him, " No man has -arms so ill cared for as
thou. Neither spear nor sword nor hatchet is fit for
use ! " And he seized his hatchet and flung it on the
ground. And when the man was stooping to pick it
up again the king raised his two hands and buried ¦
his own blade in the warrior's skull. " Thus didst
thou," said he, " to that bowl at Suessiones."
Within the next year or two Clovis took up the
ancestral quarrel of the Western Franks — a quarrel
which may never yet have come to a violent breach,
and which may have amounted to a mere secession of
one branch of the Salians from the other branch, to a
mere division of the land on the east and west of the
Scheidungen-burg. Jealousy there must have been, as
a natural consequence, and the jealousy had turned
into bad blood when Basina left her husband's castle
to follow her "strongest man" into the plains of Gaul.
So the son of the errant hero-worshipper sent or led

110 KING CLOVIS.
his victorious army, swollen with levies from the
Reparian Franks, and attacked the Eastern Salians.
We have but a scanty record of this expedition.
Gregory of Tours, who possibly knew more about it
than he has told us, is mainly concerned with the
relations between Church and State in Gaul, and is
at this point eager to come to the all-important fact
of the conversion of Clovis. Our knowledge amounts
to little more than the defeat of the Thuringians, and
the addition of their country to the western realm.
How far was this quarrel between Western and
Eastern Franks, or between Franks and Thuringians,
hereditary ? It is impossible to be precise in tracing
the pedigree of Franks to Chattans, or of Thuringians
to Hermundurians, and it may be only fanciful to
refer the reader to a story which Tacitus relates of the
year 58. " The same summer a great battle was
fought between the Hermunduri and the Chatti, both
forcibly claiming a river which produced salt in
plenty, and bounded their territories. They had not
only a passion for settling every question by arms,
but also a deep-rooted superstition that such localities
are especially near to heaven, and that mortal prayers
are nowhere more attentively heard by the gods. It
is, they think, through the bounty of divine power
that in that river and in those forests salt is produced,
not, as in other countries, by the drying up of an
overflow of the sea, but by the combination of two
opposite elements, fire and water, when the latter has
been poured over a burning pile of wood. The war
was a success for the Hermunduri, and the more
disastrous to the Chatti because they had devoted, in

QUEEN CLOTILDA. Ill
the event of victory, the enemy's army to Mars and
Mercury, a vow which consigns horses, men, every
thing, indeed, on the vanquished side to destruction.
And so the hostile threat recoiled on themselves."1
Salt and potash are still plentiful in Saxony, to which
the Elbe Sala is somewhat nearer than the Main
Sala ; but it is most probable that the latter river is
the one indicated by Tacitus as a boundary between
the Chattans and the Hermundurians.
The marriage of Clovis to Clotilda (Chrotechilde),
the Burgundian, is compact with romance — and let
us understand at once that the future history of the
Franks is as full of romance as the most glowing
imagination could desire. The romance of the Middle
Ages is largely Teutonic or Scandinavian, and, more
than anything else, it is Frank, or Gallo-Frank and
Burgundian, not Roman, not even Gothic or Alleman,
or Thuringian, or even Saxon in any large degree,
but by great preponderance Frank and Norse.
Gundachar, king of the Burgundians, son of
Athanaric, whom the Christians had had no cause to
love, was converted in 430. He had suffered at the
hand of Aetius, as well as of Attila ; but, after he had
embraced Christianity (though in its heretical form),
and after the defeat of Attila, he established his
dominion in the south-east of Gaul. He left four
sons, Gundobald, Godegisil, Chilperic, and Godomar,
whereof the two elder brothers were sorry rogues,
even if judged by the standard of their time. Gundo
bald slew his brother Chilperic, tied a stone round the
neck of his wife and drowned her, and would have
1 "Annals," xiii. 57, Church and Brodribb's translation.

STATUE OF CLOVIS (XII. CENTURY).
(Formerly in the Church of Kotre-Dame de Corbeil.)

THE CONVERSION OF CLOVIS. II3
slain her two daughters if they had not been hidden
by their friends. Emissaries of Clovis saw the
maiden Clotilda, and told their master of her beauty,
whereupon the king of the Franks demanded her in
marriage. Gundobald, who by this time was king,
and had recently extended his dominions to Aix and
Marseille, dare not deny his powerful neighbour.
Now Clovis already had a son Theodoric,who was the
child of a pagan wife, but when he saw Clotilda he
loved her very deeply, as all his acts sufficiently
show. Clotilda- was very young when she was married ;
but, however young she may have been, she
was a good Christian, and she made up her
mind to proselytise the king of the Franks. For
tunately for the Church, although she sprang from
a family of rank Arians, she was an Orthodox
Christian — a fact easily accounted for if the friends
who rescued her from her uncle were themselves
Orthodox. Now there was an Orthodox bishop of
Tournai. There had been a bishop of Paris, under
the archbishop of Sens, for a century or two ; but
the archives of the bishopric of Tournai date the
first appointment in 487, and the second in the
following year — that is to say, at the moment when
Clovis was reducing the kingdom of Soissons.
Clotilda's first son was Ingomer, and she had him
baptized at Tournai, as likely as not by Bishop
Eleutherios. Almost immediately the child sick- <
ened and died. Clovis reproached his wife with
her confidence in the God of the Christians. " You
have often told me," he said, " that my gods can .
9

114 KING CLOVIS.
do nothing for me — that they are but wood, or
stone, or iron. Your God you think all-mighty,
one that hears and answers those who believe in
him. You took our son and caused him to be
baptized in the church of the Christians, and behold,
it has killed him. My gods are angry, and yours
cannot help us." Clotilda answered him like a
saint. " I bear up against my sorrow," she said,
" because I believe in the wisdom and goodness of
the true God. Ingomer is with the whitest angels
in heaven."
As for Clovis, he was engrossed at this time in
a fruitless effort to subdue the Armoricans, who
made as good a stand against him as they had
made against former enemies — for a coastwise people
is rarely subdued until battle has been waged by
sea as well as by land. About the end of 495, or
the beginning of 496, Clotilda had her second boy.
Of course he was christened, just as Ingomer had
been, and she called him Chlodomer. As bad luck
would have it, Chlodomer sickened too ; and Clovis
began to storm again, saying that the God of the
Christians was worse than useless. But Clotilda
told him that she was praying for the child ; and
she prayed, and he recovered.
The king was dubious, but not convinced. Full
of joy at the recovery of his son, he set out on
his expedition against the Allemans, at the head
of a large army of Franks, who were not all his
own particular subjects. At any rate he was
accompanied by Siegbert, ruler of the Riparians,
who held his court at Cologne, and who in this

rr*?.s<

STATUE OF CLOTILDA (XII. CENTURY),
(Formerly in the Church of Notre-Dame dc Corbeil.)

Il6 KING CLOVIS.
battle was dangerously wounded in the foot. The
campaign was by no means easily won, though
Clovis was successful in the end, and the South
Germans were finally driven out of Gaul. Clovis
pursued them into their own land, and his victory
was so complete that they did not care to try
conclusions with him again.
It was at a critical moment of his chief engage
ment with the Allemans near Tolbiac that Clovis,
finding himself hard pressed, raised his eyes to
heaven, as Gregory imagines the scene, being
pricked to the heart and weeping sore ; and he
said : " Jesus Christ, whom Clotilda declares to be
the son of the living God, who art said to give
help to those in trouble and victory to those who
trust in Thee, I earnestly pray for Thy succour. If
Thou wilt grant me the victory over these foes, and
if I behold the strength that this people who are
called after Thy name declare that they have
found in Thee, then I will believe in Thee, and
will be baptised in Thy name. For I have called
on my gods, but they are far from helping me,
so that I think they have no power at all, seeing
that they do not aid such as render them obe
dience. Now do I call on Thee, with good will
to believe in Thee, so that Thou save me from
mine enemies." And whilst he was yet speaking,
the Allemans lost their courage and fled.
When the conqueror returned to his home, and
told Clotilda that he had called upon her God in
the day of battle, that his prayer had been heard,
and that he was ready to be baptised, there was

BAPTISM OF CLOVIS. W]
great rejoicing. It was determined to have an
imposing ceremonial, such as, even in those days,
the bishops in their handsome and well - found
churches were able to provide. The church at
Tournai was not fine enough ; moreover Tournai
was not sufficiently central. It was different with
Reims, the old capital of the Remi, already im
portant before the Romans came, and especially
important to them as the strongest place west
ward of Treves, when Augusta Treverorum was
the capital city of Northern Gaul. Reims, as the
ecclesiastical writers say, was the metropolitan
bishopric of Western Belgica, the diocese created by
Diocletian and adopted by the Christian Church;
whilst Tournai, Cambrai, Terouanne and Soissons
were amongst the eleven sees subordinated to it.
Here there was a venerable bishop, Remigius or
Remy, the seventh of his line destined for cano
nisation as a saint. It was therefore at Reims
that Clovis, by direction of the Church, was to be
baptised. All the bishops in his dominions were
apparently summoned to attend ; the church was
richly decorated and censed ; there would be a
magnificent spectacle for a people who loved mag
nificent spectacles, and gay processions in the streets,
both religious and military. For Clovis was attended
by three thousand of his picked soldiers, who were
to be baptised on the same day, the first sheaves
of the harvest which the Church now set itself to
reap. Bishop Remy had the dignity of his order, as
well as the bearing of the saint and the imagina-

n8

KING CLOVIS.

tion of the poet. Gregory gives us no more than the
opening sentences of his address — or perhaps this
was all that he said
to the fierce young
warrior who strode
up to the font,
stripped of his mail
and his casque, and
clad in a long tunic
of white : — " Mitis
depone colla Sicam-
ber : adora quod
2 incendisti, incende
S quod adorasti " —
fc. " Worship what you
s have burned, burn
h what you have wor-
a shipped." And so
a the most powerful
rex crinitus of the
Western Franks be
came a professing
Orthodox Christian
— won over by his
personal interest, no
doubt, but also by
his hour of agonis
ing prayer on the
field of Tolbiac, and,
perhaps most of all, by the love and the adroitness
of Clotilda.
By the cruel irony of coincidence, Albofleda, the

THE SISTERS OF CLOVIS. II9
sister of Clovis, who was baptised at the same time
with her brother, died not many days afterwards.
It is to be hoped that the king did not see in this
misfortune, as he saw in the death of Ingomer, the
avenging wrath of the gods of his ancestors. Appa
rently a little before this time, the other sister of
Clovis, Augofleda, was married to Theodoric, king
of the Ostrogoths, a tolerant Arian in religion, and
naturally mdre attracted than his brother-in-law to
the civilisation of Rome.
It may or may not have been the firstfruits of
his conversion that, in the following year, Clovis
offered terms of alliance to the Armorican cities. No
doubt he found himself partly dependent upon them
for supplies of various kinds, and recognised the
difficulty of their complete subjugation. Moreover
he had other designs in hand ; for it was evident
that he nursed the ambition of ruling over the
whole of Gaul, and the Burgundians and Visigoths
were already in constant dread of his attack. But,
before we deal with the remaining years of the life
of Clovis, it will be well to glance at the position
now held by the Gallican Church, and by the
Christian Church in general, for this will assist us
to understand the narrative which follows.

IX.

CONQUESTS OF CHRISTIANITY.

THE baptism of Clovis, which implied the general
conversion of the Franks to Christianity, set the
crown on a century of striking successes for the
Western Church. The Goths had been partially
Christianised in Moesia, and their migration into
Gaul had established a State in the south-west of
that country which acknowledged and protected
the new faith. The Burgundians in the south-east
were also Christians. The Gallo-Romans had mostly
followed the line taken in the preceding century by
the Christian emperors, and, though since the time
of Constantine there had been more than one
Augustus who either clung openly to the pagan
creed, like Julian, or treated Christian and pagan
with impartial indifference, the Christian religion
was rapidly extending, and the secular imperium
had practically given place to the spiritual. The
Kelts readily embraced the faith of Christ ; there
was a bishop of Nantes in the third century,
though Rennes, the chief town of Brittany, was
behind its sister-city in this respect. The Armori-

ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 121
cans traded with Ireland, and early in the fifth
century S. Patrick, a missionary bishop from the
Breton Church, crossed the seas and (so the fable
runs) converted a new kingdom.
Humanly speaking, the success of the Church in
building up its great authority, not merely over
monarchs and people, but also between different
monarchs and different peoples, was due in a large
measure to its perfect organisation in the midst of so
much that was disorganised. The bishops and their
clergy knew their own minds, and their ambitions
were directed, as a rule, to a single object, external to
themselves, whereas the organisation of the State
constantly varied, and the ambitions of Caesars,
duces, praetors, comites, and fiscal officers were fre
quently, if not usually, centred in their personal
interests. Thus, both on spiritual and on secular
grounds, it was inevitable that Christianity, implanted
in the decaying empire, should strike its roots deep in
the soil, and grow with phenomenal rapidity.
So rapidly did it grow that already in the fou'rth
and fifth centuries, before the last Augustus of the
imperial State had worn the purple and laid it
aside, the Christian bishops afforded many striking
examples of that august imperiousness which dis
tinguished the popes and bishops of a later day.
None of these instances is more striking than the
story of the penance of Theodosius the Great.
Theodosius was associate emperor with Gratian, and
afterwards sole Emperor of the East ; he defeated the
Goths in 382, and the usurper Maximus five years
later. Whilst he was living at Milan, in 390, some

122 CONQUESTS OF CHRISTIANITY.
local trouble broke out at Thessalonika, and a few
soldiers were slain by the rioters. The emperor sent
an armed force, who would of course be mainly
barbarians, with orders to stamp out the disaffection.
The citizens were tempted into the circus by an
exceptionally brilliant spectacle ; and, when the place
was as full as it would hold, the soldiers secured the
entrances and slaughtered all the spectators, to the
number of seven thousand or more. Theodosius
made no secret of his responsibility for this act of
retribution ; but when he went to worship at the
church of Ambrose, the archbishop of Milan,
Ambrose met him in the porch, and refused to admit
him except as a penitent. So Theodosius (who had
doubtless been warned by the archbishop of what he
intended to do) put off his imperial robes, assumed
the white garb of penitence, and openly confessed his
sin before the congregation. As a penance he was
excluded from communion for a period of eight
months. Thus, and thus early, did the Christian
Church assert the supremacy of its authority over
the most mighty potentates.
The gradual assertion of the spiritual dominion
over the hearts of Romans and barbarians alike, the
great part which was played by men like Leo of
Rome, whose eloquence and personal dignity sufficed
to deliver the capital of the empire out of the hands
of Attila and his Huns, the conversion of ruthless
warriors like Clovis, combine to impress us with a
sense of the sublime confidence and inspired courage
of these leaders of a faith which was still young, still
despised by perhaps a majority of intellectual men,

SUBTLETY OF THE CLERGY. 123
and barely at this time recovering from the last of the
general persecutions. It is true that there was often
much subtlety united with the confidence and courage
by which these victories were obtained. It was the
vision of an angel by Leo's side which had turned
the superstitious heart of Attila ; it was a coincidence

ALTAR TRAY AND CHALICE.
(Enamelled gold, fourth and fifth century ; found near Chalons.)
interpreted as a miracle which had persuaded
Clovis that the God of Clotilda would fight his
battles for him. But the builders of the Church
were Italians, who had not ceased to be Italians when
they became Christians ; and it must be admitted
that the means which they sometimes adopted to

124 CONQUESTS OF CHRISTIANITY.
extend the frontier of the faith remind one rather of
the pagan whose cunning had always supplemented
his physical prowess, than of the guileless disciple of
Christ. We have been speaking of the ecclesiastics who
concerned themselves, by choice or necessity, with the
tortuous ways and methods of statecraft, with kings
and warriors who were not to be won for the new
faith by mere admonitions, or even by the champion
ship of civil and social rights. It was by such means
that the humbler converts had been won, and still
continued to be won. The slavery of the slaves, the
sufferings of the poorest taxpayers, the misery of the
unsettled and fugitive population which filled the
ranks of successive Bagats, were a soil prepared
beforehand for the husbandry of the Christian
preachers, and their harvest was already great when
the first barbarian king underwent the rite of
baptism. It was the bishops, as we have said, who
secured from Valentinian the appointment of the
defensores ; it was to them, as being ever ready to
hear and to advise, that all who, had grievances
arising out of the abuse of the civil powers naturally
brought their complaints.
Socially, spiritually, and intellectually, the Gallic
Church stood prominent in the Christian common
wealth, long before the conversion of Clovis. Just as
Roman letters and the pagan culture had been
cherished in Gaul, from the older Province to the
northern sea, from the birthplace of Ausonius to
the home of his maturer years, even when they
languished at Rome and in Middle Italy, so the

THE MOST CHRISTIAN KING. 125
Church in Gaul was stronger and purer, and more
free from widespread heresies, than any other of the
Western Churches. From the Eternal City, as
Hadrian had called her in the palmy days of empire,
from Rome thrice sacked, and often menaced with
destruction, the bishops repeatedly appealed to the
civil power in Gaul for the defence of the Church
against her foes. Thus Sidonius, bishop of Clermont,
who died in 488, addressed a Latin poetical epistle to
Euaric, king of the Visigoths, urging him to go to
the protection of Rome during the visitation of the
Vandals.1 The conversion of Clovis, after his earlier victories
had been achieved, and when the probability of still
greater conquests must have been apparent to all
observers, naturally inspired the then bishop of
Rome, Gregory the Great, with definite hopes of
championship from the young and vigorous nation
ality of the Franks. Clovis was hailed as "rex
Christianissimus." Avitus, bishop of Vienne, in what
was now Burgundian land, wrote to Clovis excusing
himself for not having attended the ceremony of his
1 Gregorovius, "History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages,"
bk. iii. ch. I. " Eorice, tuse manus rogantur
Ut Martem validus per inquilinum
Defenset tenuem Garumna Tibrim."
A century later we find Pope Pelagius II. writing to the Bishop of
Auxerre : " We believe, not without profound acknowledgment of the
providence of God, that your rulers agree in the profession of the
orthodox (Nicene) faith with the supreme authority of Rome (' Romano
imperio ') — to the end that He might raise up neighbours and sup
porters for this city, whence that faith was ordained to spread
abroad. ..."

126 CONQUESTS OF CHRISTIANITY.
baptism ; and he ended in this strain : " This alone
I beseech you, that you will spread amongst the
nations around you the light which you have
received. Sow the seeds of faith from the garner of
your heart, and do not hesitate to send missions to
other states, that they may advance the cause of that
God who has so greatly exalted you. May you shine
for ever, by your crown on those who are present
with you, by the glory of your name on those who
are absent. We sympathise with your joy, and, so
often as you fight in those lands, we conquer."
Whilst these half-converted Teutons fought their
way to a fuller civilisation and a purer Christianity,
the sympathies of the Church were inevitably with
the Orthodox rulers, and against the unorthodox.
For it was clearly understood in those days that the
orthodoxy of the Church could only be established
by force of arms ; that the faith as they saw it at
Constantinople and at Rome, the faith in the equal
godhead of the three Persons of the Trinity, which
Arius had denied at Alexandria, for which Athanasius
had contended against Arius, and which the Council
of Nice had confirmed and defined in 325, would
perhaps never be perpetuated unless Rome could
enlist the strongest nationalities in her service, and
unless she was bold enough to bid them draw the
sword, and shed the blood of the heretics. Rome
saw, with a clearness of intellectual vision which did
more than anything else to establish her predominance
amongst the Christian Churches, that the temptation
to say, " There is only One God, and the Holy Ghost
is His emanation, and Jesus is only His prophet,"

ARIAN HERESY.

127

would evermore be almost irresistible to simple minds.
But at the same time she saw that, in that case, these

TOMB OF S. REMY.
(At Reims : Renaissance).
same simple minds would go on to conclude that
God was vague and impersonal, that Jesus was only

128 CONQUESTS OF CHRISTIANITY.
human and therefore fallible, and that his philosophy
was as open for discussion as that of Plato. There
fore, thirdly, Rome saw that the only chance of
maintaining the saving faith in Christ unimpaired and
effectual for all ages was to establish at once, and
once for all, the full doctrine of the Trinity in Unity
— that God is One, that Christ is one with Him, and
that it is a blasphemy to speak of the procession of
the Holy Ghost from God, and not from Christ also.
This was the foresight of Rome, and this is her
distinctive part in the building of the Christian creed.
For a long time, for nearly two centuries, the issue
between Arianism and Roman orthodoxy was in
doubt. To the beginning of the sixth century it
must have appeared to many that the gospel as
interpreted by Arius, as accepted even by Councils
which had not yet been discredited, would eventually
prevail. The danger apparent in Africa seemed to
be even greater in Northern and Western Europe, for
the Germanic nations were almost unanimous in
favour of the heresy. The Goths adopted the views
of Arius, and so did the Burgundians and the
Vandals. The earlier Teutons, as Tacitus tells us,
had had the notion of one original god, with human
attributes, though they held that Tuisco sprang from
the earth instead of from heaven. They more easily
grasped the idea of divine unity than of divine
triunity. However this may have been, it is necessary
to remember that the invaders who overran or
governed Southern Europe in the fifth century, so far
as they were of European origin — Odoacer, Theo-
doric, Alaric, Gaiseric, Gundachar— were Arians,

EFFECTS OF CONVERSION. 129
whilst the Churches of Greece, Italy, and Gaul were
Orthodox. It was hot without influence on subse
quent events that Athanasius in his banishment lived
and taught at Treves, where Hilary of Aries was
amongst his disciples. For when Romanised Gaul
was overrun by the barbarian hosts, she won this
victory in -her defeat for Christianised Rome, that
the strongest nation of Europe became an Orthodox
Power. As we have already seen, these European invaders
— we may exclude the Huns and other Asiatic races
from consideration — were by no means intractable
when they had secured a settlement in Roman or
Romanised lands. They adopted Christianity, they
respected and imitated the Roman civilisation, some
more readily than others, but all of them sooner or
later. The Goths especially grew comparatively
mild and tolerant in a few generations, and began to
apply themselves to the arts of peace. But if the
ancient animosity between Roman and Teuton was
dying out, the old fighting instincts of the Central
and Western Germans, continually reinforced or
stimulated from the north, by no means tended to
disappear. The enmities were modified in some
respects, and became more sectional in their manifes
tation, but they gained in intensity what they lost in
extent. In the period of transition which we are now
considering, the translated nations, having no longer
a common Roman enemy to contend against, con
tended with each other ; and they fought, not as of
old, for their liberty, but for one form or other of the
Christianity which they had embraced.
IO

130 CONQUESTS OF CHRISTIANITY.
This is an important fact in the history of the
Franks. They came into Gaul, it is true, well-
equipped for the part which they had to play, the
most keen in war, the most resolute in purpose, the
most ambitious of rule, amongst the German peoples.
They had been the foremost opponents of Rome for
five centuries, they were the first settlers in Gaul, and
they were superior in arms, as the event proved, to all
their competitors. But from the end of the fifth
century they had an additional sanction' and en
couragement in the favour of the Orthodox bishops,
which counted for a great deal even in the time of
Clovis, and for incalculably more in the next two or
three centuries. Meanwhile it is evident that the
conversion of the Franks brought even a greater gain
to the Roman and Gallic Orthodox Churches than it
brought to Clovis and his subjects.
A recent historian has said that "the motives which
induced Clovis to accept baptism and to profess faith
in the Crucified One were of the meanest, poorest, and
most unspiritual kind. Few men have been further
from that which Christ called 'the Kingdom of
Heaven ' than this grasping and brutal Frankish
chief, to whom robbery, falsehood, murder were,
after his baptism as much as before it (perhaps
even more than before it), the ordinary steps in
the ladder of his elevation." There is much truth
in the remark ; but the measure of the truth is
only to be estimated when we have decided upon
the true historical scale of measurement. It would
be idle to compare Clovis, as a man of arms, with
anything higher than the typical fighting Frank of

THE GAINS OF CLOVIS. I3I
his age and race, or, as a Christian, with anything
more fit for the Kingdom of Heaven than the
Burgundian bishop who wrote to him, on the
morrow of his conversion : " So often as you fight,
we conquer." To fight was his virtue ; to grasp
fresh territory was his noble ambition ; to rob and
to slay were his ancestral mode and tradition of
warfare. A greater crime than all these, was false
hood, and treachery. We shall see that Clovis is
accused of both these things by a man who was
almost his contemporary, and who had every reason
to take a lenient view of his conduct.
In any case it is clear that Clovis did not suffer
by his repudiation of the Teutonic deities, and he
was quite, entitled to think that the God of the
Christians gave help to true believers. The channels
through which that aid reached him were Clotilda,
the Orthodox bishops, and the Councils which they
were constantly holding throughout the country,
wherever there was a trouble to allay, or a quarrel
to compose, or an incipient mutiny against the
authority of the Church to overawe. The bishops
could raise wars, secure allies, and restore peace ;
the clergy could check popular and servile dis
contents, look after the sick and the poor, make
the women more gentle and serviceable, conciliate
the Gauls and the Romans, and even facilitate the
collection of the taxes. Certainly Clovis had ample
cause for satisfaction. All he had to do was to
fight as his father fought, to add victory to victory
and kingdom to kingdom, and to do honour to the
God of Clotilda,

X.
THE SUBJECTION OF GAUL.
Clovis, as we have seen, offered terms to the
Armorican cities in 497. The cities accepted these
terms, and recognised the rule of the Franks, just
ninety years after they had declared themselves
free of the Roman military and civil authority.
Yet it is doubtful whether they would have accepted
the new authority, however easy the conditions,
if it had not been for the good offices of their
bishops. Whose was the master mind at this crisis amongst
the Orthodox bishops of the Western Church, whether
Remigius, or Avitus of Vienne, or Gelasius of Rome,
or Anastasius who succeeded Gelasius, and wrote a
letter of congratulation to welcome Clovis into the
fold, is not quite clear. Nor is it clear whether the
bishops suggested to Clovis, or he suggested to them,
that Arian heretics like the kings of the Burgundians
and the Visigoths could not be allowed to establish
themselves permanently between the sacred city of
Rome and the champion whom God had raised up
for her in the north. Such ideas must have occurred
132

WAR WITH BURGUNDY. 1 33
simultaneously to the bishops and to Clovis, for
they were in the natural line of development of
the ambitions of both.
But it is not likely that either side would think
of hurrying forward on a career of conquest in
advance of suitable occasion and pretext. About
495 Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, who ruled
at Ravenna and held sway over Rome, had married
Augofleda, the elder sister of Clovis. Ostrogoths and
Visigoths continued to live on terms of mutual amity,
and it would have been perilous, as well as impolitic,
to precipitate a quarrel with either of these nations.
But Theodoric himself was not well disposed to the
Burgundians, and it was understood beforehand that
war was inevitable between Clovis and the uncle of
Clotilda. GUNDACHAR.
 I 

Gundobald. Godegisil. Chilperic. Godomar.

Sigismond. Godomar. Clotilda m. Clovis.
Gundobald, as already said, had murdered the
father and mother of Clotilda. His brother Godegisil,
bearing this in mind, and thinking it wise to make
terms for himself with Clovis at the expense of
Gundobald, sent a secret messenger to the king of
the Franks, offering to be his man. " If you will
help me," he frankly said, "against my brother the
king, so that I may either kill him or drive him
out of the country, I will pay you every year such
tribute as you may decide upon." Here, then, was

134 THE SUBJECTION OF GAUL.
the pretext or occasion for which Clovis had waited" ;
and, in the last year of the fifth century, he prepared
an expedition, and led his army southwards.
Then Gundobald sent to Godegisil and said:
" Come and help me, for the Franks are moving,
and they have made up their minds to seize our
lands. Let us therefore be as one against our
enemies, lest they should make us suffer what others
have suffered." For Gundobald and Godegisil were
already at rivalry ; but Gundobald did not know that
his brother had written to the Frank. And Godegisil
answered, " I will bring an army and help you."
So Godegisil came to his brother ; and the army of
the Franks, which had waited for the arrival of the
traitor, came into touch with the Burgundians, and
there was a great battle. And Godegisil suddenly
turned round upon his brother, and Gundobald saw
that he had been betrayed. He fought bravely for a
long time, but his army was cut to pieces, and he
himself escaped with difficulty to Avenio, which we
call Avignon. Then Godegisil triumphed as if he had
been the conqueror ; but Clovis followed Gundobald
to the valley of the Durance, for he saw that he was
too brave an enemy to leave behind him.
Now Gundobald had a friend in Avenio, by name
Aredius, who seems to have been a Gallo-Roman,
and was certainly a witty and resourceful man. And
the king opened his heart to Aredius, and said :
"Valiant me undique angustiae, et quid faciam ignore"
— "My enemies close me in on every side, and there is
no way out of my difficulties." Aredius listened to
him, and bade him not despair, " for I," said he, " will

AREDIUS. 135
go to the king of the Franks, and will take care that
he shall destroy neither you nor your country. Only
promise to do what is necessary in your own interest."
And Gundobald promised.
Then Aredius went to Clovis, and said he had
come from the luckless Gundobald, and wished to
devote himself for ever to the service of the conqueror.
The Frank eagerly welcomed his new adherent — for
he was just the kind of adherent that a Teutonic king
always welcomed, and perhaps rarely secured, amongst
the Roman inhabitants of the conquered lands. Aredius
was " jocundus in fabulis, strenuus in consiliis, Justus
in judiciis, et in commisso fidelis ; " and, when he had
made his impression as a good companion and a teller
of capital stories, he ventured one day to give the
fierce barbarian a little common-sense advice. " This
Gundobald," he said, " is shut up in the town, which
is very strong. You are not making much headway
against him, but your army is eating up the crops,
and destroying the vines and olives. Why not im
pose a tribute on him, and leave this rich country to
supply part of the money which must come into your
hands?" The Teuton king was persuaded — as nearly
every Teutonic leader could be persuaded by a plau
sible -Roman. He sent to Gundobald to demand
ransom, and a yearly tribute, which the Burgundian
readily promised ; and Clovis withdrew his army
from the Rhone country. But Gundobald did not
keep his promises ; and perhaps Aredius was specially
careful, after that, not to fall again into the hands of
Clovis. Gundobald recovered his army and his kingdom,

I36 THE SUBJECTION OF GAUL.
and hunted down his brother Godegisil at Vienne,
and put, him to death. Then we are told that he
" established a milder code of laws for the Burgundians,
so as to prevent their magistrates from dealing harshly
with the Romans." This is the Burgundian code known
as the Lex Gondoboda, or Loi Gombette — one of the
famous barbarian Codes which go far to prove, as
indeed we already know from Tacitus, that the name
of barbarian must not be too indiscriminately applied
to the Teutonic races.
If the records of the time were not so disappoint
ingly thin, we should be able to reconstruct the
situation as it now stood with far more confidence
and precision. But the few writers who deal as
contemporaries with the events under consideration
paid no attention to dates, and did not attempt to
make their narrative reasonably continuous. One is
almost tempted to think that a man like Gregory of
Tours, who clearly had something of the instinct of
a historian (though without any historic style), must
have had more method in his work than is apparent
in his " History of the Franks," and that he or
some one else cut out many passages from the
account as he originally wrote it. It is easy to
understand that he would think it no part of his
duty to report all the consultations and conclusions
of the Orthodox bishops in regard to their policy
towards the Arians, or to their manipulation or
direction of Clovis. But he rarely mentions the
national or provincial Councils of the Gallic Church,
at which the relations of the Church and the States
were doubtless (more or less formally and openly)

A GALLIC COUNCIL.
(An Eighteenth Century Suggestion.)

I38 THE SUBJECTION OF GAUL.
brought under discussion, although these Councils
were held every few years, and sometimes year after
year. It is not by any means improbable, it may
rather be looked upon as a matter of course, that
the Gallic bishops, in their keen anxiety to deliver
the country from heresy, and to make the most of
their new instrument for this purpose, gave the
Arians ample cause to think that a crisis was
approaching, and that a deliberate attempt would
be made to deprive them of the freedom of belief
and worship which they had secured under the
Gothic and Burgundian kings.
It so happens that we have no record of a Council
in Gaul between that of Aries in 475 and that of
Lyon in 500. The explanation may be that the
peacemakers were for a time in the ascendant, and
that negotiations were being patiently carried on
with the object of bringing about an agreement
between the Orthodox and Arian bishops. At any
rate, the two parties met in council at Lyon in the
last year of the century, four years after the conver
sion of Clovis ; and it may even be that the summoning
of this council of conciliation led Clovis to put a lame
conclusion to his war with Gundobald, and thus to lose
the political fruits of his victory. If the Burgundian
war had come after the failure of the Council — for it
did fail — it is most unlikely that Clovis would have
suffered Gundobald to ride off with a promise, and
Burgundy to slip out of his hands.
Conciliation had failed. The Arian States knew
that the Orthodox bishops would never meet them
on the point of doctrine, and would never rest so

WAR WITH THE GOTHS. 1 39
long as there was a chance of weakening or destroy
ing them. They were nervous, for a twofold reason,
about the growing power of Clovis ; but against
Clovis they were able to set the strong man of the
south, who from Ravenna overawed both the feeble
emperor at Constantinople and the feeble authorities
at Rome. Moreover, they had the tactical advantage
of occupying an unbroken zone of Arian power and
influence, extending from the Danube to the western
sea, and from the Mediterranean to the Loire, be
tween the Orthodox ecclesiastics in the south and
the Orthodox Franks in the north. It was, indeed, a
formidable confederation, and it speaks much for the
awe which Clovis had recently inspired that even
Theodoric, the master of Italy, half of Gaul, and
a large part of Spain, could not feel any confidence
in the issue without making special efforts to detach
the Eastern and Central Franks from the headstrong
convert of Reims.
The first five years of the sixth century were
consumed in preparations, deliberations, and patient
watching for opportunity — Clovis in the meanwhile
striking another blow at the restless Allemans. The
strategy of the Arians, seeing that they undoubtedly
expected an attack from Clovis, is not what one would
have looked for in Theodoric and his allies. Alaric
had assembled his army in the north-western corner
of Aquitaine, away from his capital, and as far as
possible from his father-in-law, on whom he relied
for assistance in case of need. It is true that he
did his best to gain time, and to avoid giving Clovis
the pretext for which he seemed to be waiting. He

140

THE SUBJECTION OF GAUL.

even asked Clovis for a friendly interview, which took
place — the time, more important than the place, is
not mentioned — on an island in the Loire, near to

m

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111

I;

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'VI
f.ji!'

:i "i .\

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the modern Amboise. There they ate and drank
together, and vowed friendship, and parted, as
Gregory says, " pacifici."

THE COUNCIL OF AGDE. I4I
In 506 two things happened in the south of
Aquitaine, at places not very many miles asunder,
which stood to each other almost certainly in the
relation of cause and effect. Quintian, bishop of
the Ruteni, living in the town which is now called
Rodez, fell into disfavour with the citizens because
he was ready, or because they thought he was ready,
to welcome the rule of the Franks. He being
Orthodox, whilst the majority of the citizens would
probably be Arians, such a suspicion might easily
occur during the excitement caused by an immediate
expectation of war. Alaric was at this time with his
army at Poitiers. The affair at Rodez came to an
open dispute, and Quintian was privately warned that
there was a plot against his life. So he escaped
with a few priests, and betook himself to the
neighbouring territory of the Arvernians, where he
was welcomed by Bishop Eufrasius, who gave him
"houses and fields and vineyards," saying that the
Church of the Arvernians was quite rich enough to
support two bishops. Now, it was in the same year
506 that a council of the Orthodox Church was held
at Agde, a coast-town on the other side of the
Cevennes ; and, whether the Council was held before
or after the disturbance at Rodez, it does not seem
to be a violent supposition to conclude that there
was a connection of some sort between the two
events. The significance, in that case, would be
much the same, whether the Council met at Agde
because of the troubles that had arisen in Rodez, or
whether the Arians at Rodez were excited by
reports brought from Agde, where Quintian would

142

THE SUBJECTION OF GAUL.

in all likelihood have attended the gathering- of the
clergy. If the Council, which met on September
nth, came after the ill-treatment of Quintian, there

would be much exasperation amongst the Orthodox
Christians ; and the incident would not be without
effect on the proceedings of Clovis.
" And so," Gregory abruptly says at this point,

DEFEAT OF ALARIC. 1 43
" Clovis the king said to his leudes : ' It goes very
much against the grain with me that these Arians
should hold any part of Gaul. Let us go forth with
the help of the Lord, and overthrow them, and make
their land our own.' " The summons was greeted with
joy, and preparations were made for an advance.
In the spring of 507 Clovis led out his army, and
marched through the country round about Tours, on
the way to Poitiers. The character of the compact
between Clovis and the Church was rendered very
manifest in this campaign. The king issued strict
orders that his army was to touch nothing whatever,
except grass for the horses, during its progress
through the country which had been governed by
the holy Bishop Martin. The Teutonic warrior was
on his way to champion the cause of orthodoxy,
and miraculous appearances were vouchsafed to him,
so that he and his men were convinced that they were
under the special protection of Heaven. Bearing in
mind his experience in the battle of Tolbiac, Clovis
pledged himself to a pious recognition of the Divine
favour if victory should be vouchsafed to him ; and
thus it was an army with the spirit of crusaders which
finally came in sight of Alaric, in the Vocladensian
Plain (near the modern Vougle). The Goths were
the first to attack, and the battle was obstinately
fought ; but it ended in the rout of the Arian host,
and the slaughter of Alaric by his ruthless enemy.
Clovis had a narrow escape from death at the hands
of two Gothic lancers, but the speed of his horse or
the strength of his mail sufficed to save him.
Pushing southward without delay, he took the rich

144 THE SUBJECTION OF GAUL.
seaport of Burdigala (Bordeaux), which was one of
the chief centres of academic learning as well as of
trade in Gaul, and, marching along the right bank of
the Garumna, secured Tolosa, the capital of the Visi
goth kingdom. In the following year he besieged
Carcaso (Carcassonne), between Toulouse and Nar-
bonne. The dominion of the Visigoths in Aquitaine, ex
cluding the Pyrenean and maritime provinces, was
now practically wiped out. Less than a hundred
years had passed since Atolph, brother-in-law of
the earlier and greater Alaric, had made his first
entry in the Narbonensian province, and barely
ninety since Tolosa became the capital of Visi-
gothic Gaul. The Visigoths left but faint traces of
their occupation ; yet here again we have to make a
significant exception in regard to the codification of
the law. Apparently one of the last acts of Alaric
II. was to nominate a commission of bishops and
Roman jurisconsults, who were charged to summarise
the principles and practice of Roman law. They
based their labours to a large extent on the code of
Theodosius, published in 438, which reduced into a
comprehensive summary the jus privatum, the law of
administration and government, the criminal law, the
fiscal laws, the laws of procedure and local adminis
tration, and the ecclesiastical law. Some modification
of these maxims was introduced by the Visigothic
commission, mainly for the purpose of alleviating
their severity and strengthening the principle of
impartiality. The "Breviarium" of Anianus, as it
was called, after the name of the president of the

THEODORIC. 145
commission, survived in the courts of Gaul and
Spain for several centuries.
The conquests of Clovis in the south were now
checked by the Ostrogothic king. Theodoric, as we
have said, had been anxious to prevent the war
between Clovis and Alaric, even to the extent of
appealing to the other Teutonic and Arian nations
to take common action for the preservation of the
Visigothic kingdom. The rapidity of the movements
of Clovis in 506 had anticipated anything that could
have been done in this sense ; but, even apart from
that, it was not likely that the Eastern or Riparian
Franks would conspire against the ruler of Tournai
and Soissons in order to play the game of the Goths
in Italy and Gaul. Another reason which accounts for
the failure of Theodoric's earlier plan is that Gundo
bald the Burgundian, whose interest was certainly to
propitiate Clovis rather than to give him further cause
of offence, was now in league with the Franks; whilst
Theodoric himself was much absorbed in his quarrel
with Anastasius, which made it difficult for him to
quit Ravenna for Gaul, or even to dispatch an army
to the assistance of his son-in-law. So much, how
ever, he did contrive to do, sending his general Ibbas
to oppose the Franks under his namesake Theodoric,
the eldest son of Clovis. The combined forces of
Theodoric and Gundobald were gradually reducing
the whole of Southern Aquitaine, when at last the
intervention of the Ostrogoths became effectual, and
the Franks and Burgundians, in the absence of
Clovis, were defeated by Ibbas. The greater part
of the Narbonensian province, east of the Cevennes,
11

146

THE SUBJECTION OF GAUL.

was restored to Afna-
laric, the son of Alaric,
whilst the older Roman
province of Gaul was
added to the dominion
of the Ostrogoths. It
was not long before the
mutual enmities of these
three kings, Clovis,
Theodoric, and Gundo
bald, were patched up
by a common under
standing. Clovis was
confirmed in the pos
session of his conquests
down to the borders
of Gascony and Septi-
mania, including the
city of Toulouse ; and
his thoughts now re
verted to the north and
east. Meanwhile he ap
pears under a new and
extraordinary guise, as
at once a Consul and
an Augustus of the
Roman Empire. The
titles, or at any rate
that of consul, were
conferred upon him by
the aged Emperor

CLOVIS AS ROMAN CONSUL. 1 47
Anastasius, in recognition of his victory over the
Visigoths ; for Anastasius, involved as he himself
was in the Monophysite controversy, seems none
the less to have been moved to show honour to the
champion of the Trinitarian principle against the
Arian heretics, who was at the same time at enmity
with the masterful ruler of the Ostrogoths. Clovis
evidently took huge delight in his new dignities, his
Roman robes and his somewhat farcical diadem. The
fierce barbarian rejoiced with childish glee in the
toys which the emperor had sent him, and his
courtiers were ready to fall in with his humour by
addressing him as consul or pro-consul. Many of the
ancient forms and traditions of Rome were kept alive
at Constantinople with punctilious exactitude, and it
may be that the consular rank was bestowed on
Clovis by virtue of his temporary possession of the
old maritime province of Cisalpine Gaul.1
It was apparently at this time that Clovis, brought
nearer to Roman ideas by his conversion, by twelve
years of association with the Orthodox clergy, and
now by his consulship, bethought himself how Julian,
Valentinian, and Gratian had dwelt at Lutetia on the
Seine. Thither, at any rate, he moved his family and
his court ; but Paris was not yet destined to become
the capital even of Western Francia. Clovis lived and
died there ; and though he had begun his reign as a
Frank of the Franks, and a determined enemy of
Rome, he now delighted in the imitation of Roman
customs, dressing in purple robes, writing to his
1 See T. Hodgkin, "Theodoric the Goth," p. 222, note (Putnam's
Sons).

148 THE SUBJECTION OF GAUL.
brother-in-law to send him a citharcedus in order
that he might have music at his banquets, and
appointing his commission of learned men to revise
the Latin version of the old Salic Law. Was it in
any sense on a Roman pattern that he modelled his
dealings with his brother Franks during the last
few years of his life? He had no sooner become
a dignitary of the Roman Empire than he prepared
to strike down his actual or possible rivals for the
supremacy of the Franks.
It is no part of the duty of one who relates a
story from historical sources either to defend the
character of his actors or to moralise over their evil
deeds. At the same time, it is not enough to repeat
in bald terms the bare statements even of contem
porary writers. The historian who writes long after
the transaction of a particular group or series of
events is often better qualified than a contemporary
to estimate the significance of facts and the character
of individuals ; just as it is easier to observe and
describe the proportions of a building from the out
side than from the inside, or the characteristics of a
landscape from a distance than from the midst of it.
What is necessary is that we should regard the
central figures of history, not merely as man-slayers,
or as founders or destroyers of states, but as creatures
of their time helping to create the times which suc
ceed them, and as instruments working to certain
ends under certain conditions. Neither aspect should
be left out of sight ; but it is unquestionably more
important to place a character accurately amidst its
historical surroundings than to discuss its goodness

CLOVIS AND SIEGBERT. 1 49
or badness in comparison with men and women of
the present day.
Clovis was fierce, formidable, and generally unrelent
ing, but he carried out, with no greater cruelty than that
of civilised Roman conquerors, the ambitions cherished
by his Teutonic ancestors for four or five centuries.
He availed himself of the treachery of Godegisil, but
he was easily persuaded to spare Gundobald. He
accepted Christianity with mixed motives, but cer
tainly under the influence of a pure and loving wife.
He was ruthless in the slaughter of Alaric ; but
Alaric, since his pledge of friendship, had failed to
protect the Orthodox bishops in Aquitaine, had
assumed the offensive, and called in the aid of
Theodoric. We know that the enemies of Clovis
hated him, whilst his neighbours suspected and feared
him ; but all that we hear of him as a brother, a
husband, and a father, is without exception good.
Full of faults as Clovis may have been, violent,
gusty, unscrupulous in pursuing his larger ambitions,
we are scarcely prepared by what has gone before for
the record of his last two years. This is what Gregory
of Tours has to say about it : —
Whilst Clovis was resting at Paris he privately sent
word to Cloderic, son of Siegbert the Lame, who had
fought on his side at Vougle — as Siegbert had fought
with him against the Allemans — suggesting to him
that his father had grown old and decrepit, and that
if he should happen to die the wealth which had been
accumulated by Siegbert, as well as the kingdom of
the Rhinelands, would in the ordinary course fall into
the hands of Cloderic. So much as this, no doubt,

150 THE SUBJECTION OF GAUL.
Clovis might have said, without any sinister purpose,
in answer to a question as to his own wishes and
intentions concerning the succession. But Gregory
takes the darker view, saying that Clovis sent his
message secretly in order to stimulate Cloderic to
action. However this may be, Cloderic resolved to be king
without further delay. One day Siegbert rode out of
Cologne and crossed the Rhine, intending to spend
the afternoon in the " Burconian " wood — that is, the
wood of Duisburg, about two miles from the right
bank of the river. As the midday heat came on, he
rested beneath an awning, and, whilst he slept, the
assassins hired by his son came in and slew him.
Cloderic then sent word to Clovis, saying, " My father
is dead, and his treasures are mine. Send trusty men,
to whom I may give whatever you desire." And
Clovis sent messengers, who asked Cloderic to show
them the treasure ; and, whilst the murderer was
stooping over a chest of gold, they stabbed him in
the back. When Clovis knew that the son had paid
the penalty of his crime he came to Cologne, and
addressed the leudes, denying his responsibility for
the two murders, and suggesting that the Franks of
the Rhinelands should accept his protection. The
proposal was received with acclamation, and he was
forthwith raised upon a shield and saluted as king.
Now came the turn of Cararic, who ruled over the
Northern Franks between Teruenna and the sea.
Clovis accused Cararic of holding back in the war
against Syagrius, and of playing him false in his
struggle against the Gallo-Romans. Having secured

THE LAST DAYS OF CLOVIS. 1 5 I
the persons of the king and his son, he degraded them
in the old Frank fashion, on which he had improved
after embracing Christianity, by shaving their heads
and devoting them to the religious life, in token that
their days of warriorshi.p were ended. The son con
soled his father by saying that their hair would grow
again, and that they would be avenged ; but the
words were reported to Clovis, who ordered- his cap
tives to be slain, and added their kingdom to his own
dominions. Ragnacar, the king at Cambrai was the next
victim. In this case the task of Clovis was all the
easier because the vices of R.agnacar and one of his
favourites had excited the disgust of his subjects, who
made little or no resistance to the invader, but de
livered their king into his hands. Ragnacar was led
bound into the presence of Clovis, who, feigning
indignation, demanded of his prisoner, " Why have
you disgraced our race by suffering yourself to be
bound ? It would have been better for you to die."
And, suiting the action to the word, he smote Rag
nacar on the head with his axe, and slew him. Then,
all his relatives having been removed, he publicly
lamented, as Gregory tells us, that he was " left as a
stranger amongst strange people, without a kinsman
to stand by him if misfortune should befall him."
Either the bishop, or the bishop's corrupted text, with
an utter absence of consistency, suggests that Clovis
was only seeking to ascertain if any of the Franks
would claim to be a member of his family, so that his
work of extermination might be complete ; though in
connection with the same events we are assured that

152 THE SUBJECTION OF GAUL.
every day God cast down his enemies, and added
increase to his kingdom, because he walked before
Him with an upright heart, and did what was pleasing
in His eyes.
Soon after these events Clovis died at Paris, and
was buried in the church of the Holy Apostles,
which he and the Queen Clotilda had combined to
build. He passed away, says Gregory, in the fifth
year after the battle with Alaric ; and the days of his
reign were thirty years, and the span of his life was
forty-five years. Queen Clotilda, after the death of
her husband, came to live at Tours, and there she
abode all the days of her life, rarely visiting Paris,
but rendering Christian service at the basilica of S.
Martin, with all modesty and benevolence.

XI.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FRANKS.

THOUGH we may not yet speak of France as a
kingdom created by the Franks in Gaul,1 at any rate
we have the Franks exercising dominion in the land
1 A Roman, of course, might at any time give the name of Francia
to the land where the Franks were found. So Claudian ("De Laudi-
bus Stilichonis," i. 236) : — " Provincia missos
Expellet citius fasces quam Francia reges
Quos dederis."
But Francia is not P'rance, even when it is found in Gaul. Claudian
uses the term vaguely as an equivalent for the Franks, but especially
for the Franks in Germany. Hieronymus, writing about the same
time, at the end of the fourth century, speaks of " Francia antiqua" in
reference to the country between the Rhine and the Danube, subse
quently known as Franconia, in a limited sense of that term. Eumenius,
in his panegyric on Constantine, had employed the word Francia for
Gaul, which was afterwards known as "Francia interior," "Latina,"
and " Occidentalis." Some writers speak of Neustria as " Francia
Nova," and of the country partly dividing Neustria from Austria as
"Francia Media." Germany, on the other hand, was known at times
as "Francia Magna," or " Orientalis." As late as the end of the
twelfth century, the chronicler Godfrey of Wittemberg, under the date
881, wrote : " Arnulfus totam Franciam Orientalem quae hodie Teuto-
nicum regnum vocatur, id est Bavariam, Sueviam, Saxoniam,
Thuringiam, Frisiam et Lotharingiam rexit."
153

154 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FRANKS.
from which they were never to be expelled, and which
they never wholly abandoned. Their laws, their
customs, their characteristics, were now planted in
Gallic soil, and bore fruit, not only from the original
sap, but also in some sense from the sap of the stocks
on which they were grafted. Kelts, Teutons of the
pre-historic settlements — whom we have included
under the name of Gauls — Romans, Gallo-Romans,
Britons, Gascons, even Goths and Burgundians,
were all concerned with the Franks in compounding
the nation to which the last-mentioned people gave
their name, but -not their language, and to which all
contributed in varying proportion their physical,
domestic, and intellectual qualities. Let us interrupt
for a moment the progress of our story of events in
order to take a rapid survey of some of the more con
spicuous national characteristics of the Franks.
The confederated tribes whose border-wars with
Rome had welded them into a distinct people, and
prepared them for definite nationalisation, cannot in
the truest sense be said to have assumed a national
type until they were both settled as regards territory
and governed by the administration of a settled law.
So far as settled territory is concerned, we have seen
that Franks had been established in Brabant from
before the time of Julian, more than a hundred years
before the occupation of what was afterwards called
Flanders, Artois, and Northern Picardy. These
earlier Frank settlers, it is true, were bound to Rome
by an obligation of military service, an obligation
which thej' doubtless discharged so long as Rome
was powerful enough to enforce it. But at any rate

THE GROWTH OF A NATION. 1 55
they were settled ; the institutions of a settled people
had time to strike root, and the laws of their ances
tors I were brought together, written down, and con
sistently applied in the administration of justice.
Then, at length, there would be a community of
interests under a single impersonal authority, which
would deserve to be called a nation.
At what time this bringing together of the Frank
laws in a written code took place, it would be im
possible to say. The Salic Law, such as we find it
in the most ancient Latin translations, is specially
attributed, in one of the titles, to the nation of the
Franks living between the Carbonarian forest (partly
corresponding with the Ardennes) and the river
Ligeris (Lys).2 Some take Ligeris here to mean the
Loire. But there was never a time at which the
1 " De minoribus rebus principes consultant, de majoribus omnes, ita
tamen ut ea quoque quorum penes plebem arbitrium est apud principes
pertractentur. Coeunt, nisi quid fortuitum et subitum incidit, certis
diebus. . . . Considunt armati. Silentium per sacerdotes, quibus turn
et coercendi ius est, imperatur. Mox rex vel princeps, prout astas
cuique, prout nobilitas, prout decus bellorum, prout facundia est,
audiuntur, auctoritate suadendi magis quam iubendi potestate. . . .
Licet apud concilium accusare quoque, et discrimen capitis intendere.
Distinctio pcenarum ex delicto. Proditores et transfugas arboribus
suspendunt, ignavos et imbelles et corpore infames cceno ac palude,
iniecta insuper crate, mergunt. Diversitas supplicii illuc respicit, tam-
quam scelera ostendi oporteat, dum puniuntur, flagitia abscondi. Sed
et levioribus delictis pro modo poena ; equorum pecorumque numero
convicti mulctantur. Pars mulctse regi vel civitati, pars ipsi qui vindi
cator, vel propinquis ejus, exsolvitur. Eliguntur in iisdem conciliis et
principes qui iura per pagos vicosque reddunt. Centeni singulis ex»
plebe comites, concilium simul et auctoritas, adsunt" (Tac, " Ger-
mania," xi., xii.).
2 See tit. 47 ("Lex Salica, the Ten Texts , , ." by J. H. Hessels.
Murray).

i56

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FRANKS.

recognised possessions of the Franks could be de
scribed as lying between the Ardennes and the Loire.
The description is just conceivable as applied to the
dominion of Clovis alone, immediately before and
after his marriage — which, to be sure, was not an
unlikely time for the translation of the ancient code
into Latin. But elsewhere the text speaks of the

EARLIER FRANK SETTLEMENTS IN BELGIAN GAUL.

Franks as being governed " per proceres." This
expression may have been left standing by the care
lessness of the translator. The date of the transla
tion, however, is not a question which lends itself to
confident statement.
Now the country between the Ardennes and the
river Lys is the district which may be regarded as

THE TEUTONIC CODES. 1 57
the third zone of Frank settlement — Batavia J being
the first, Brabant the second, Hainault the third, and
Flanders the fourth ; and the time of settlement was,
roughly speaking, between the concessions of Julian
to the Salians in 358 and the invasion of Clodion in
447. All these settlers would, as a matter of course,
have their own customs and laws, if not identical yet
closely similar for all the Franks and their most
neighbourly allies. In intervals of peace the chiefs
and their leudes, the men of religion and counsel,
would meet together, to administer, or build upon,
or, if necessary, collect, the laws of their ancestors.
The fact of our finding the earliest copy of the
Salic code with a defined application to the third
zone of settlement does not, of course, in any way
prove that the code originated with the Franks of
Hainault, or that the Salic law was in a special sense
the law of the Belgian Salians. The code comes
down to us as that which was in force under the
Merovingian dynasty, and the identity of the laws
observed in Hainault with the laws promulgated by
Clovis is enough in itself to show that they were the
common laws of the Western Salian Franks, extend
ing from the Scheidungen-burg, on the borders of
Thuringia, to the mouths of the Rhine, Scheldt, and
Somme, and afterwards over a great part of Gaul.
It is fair to conclude that, early in the fifth century,
there was a Salic, or Salian, code wherever there was
a strong Salian chief ruling over a defined territory, •
1 That is, the first known settlement of Chattans. Constantius
Chlorus is said to have cleared Batavia of its Chattan settlers in 288 ;
but that is scarcely to be taken in an absolute sense.

I58 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FRANKS.
and that all these codes were fundamentally one and
the same. In any case the laws of the Franks, as of
other Germans, existed in their own tongue before
they were translated into Latin for the benefit of
the Gallo-Romans, and of the Latin clerics who would
naturally assist in expounding them. Grimm, indeed,
was of opinion that the Salic law itself came into
existence in the fifth century, being composed in
Latin by jurists who would necessarily use many
indigenous words in a Latinised form. But, as Mr.
Hessels points out, all the material for such a com
position would be in existence beforehand, so that
the work of these jurists, whilst it probably amounted
to a codification, must also have been in the nature
of a translation, article by article, and perhaps phrase
by phrase. " Due allowance being made for the
legendary character " of statements concerning the
origin of the code, " we may fairly infer from the Pro
logues that, in the tradition of the Franks, their Salic
Law dated from a period considerably anterior to the
fifth century, and had remained essentially the same,
notwithstanding such modifications and additions as
became necessary in course of time." * A Latin ver
sion before the acceptance of Christianity by the
Franks need not create much surprise or difficulty
for those who consider that war had not been the
only mode of interchange between the Roman and
the Teuton. There had been a traffic of thought and
culture, as well as of merchandise, even across the
Lower Rhine ; and amongst the Franks there would
certainly be many who understood the Latin tongue,
1 " Lex Salica," as above.

ORIGINS OF TEUTONIC LAW. I 59
and some who had consulted the law of Rome. There
had been Roman captives and settlers in Germany,
as well as German captives and settlers in Gaul;
thousands of German mercenaries in the Roman army
must have returned to their native land after acquiring
a Roman tongue ; and many generations of trade
and intermarriage must have contributed to a set of
conditions which made a Latin version of the law a
thing to be desired.
It will be interesting to glance at some of the more
characteristic features of the Teutonic law prior to
the year 500, and of the national customs and institu
tions from which their written laws had been evolved.
The most characteristic features in any body of law
will be found in its method of dealing with offences
committed by individuals against the interests of the
community, resolving itself into various forms of vin
dication or punishment, and into a system of alterna
tives allowed by the community for the avoidance of
punishment. Such alternatives to punishment are the
first signs of mitigation in the law, based as it natu
rally is, in the first instance, on the cruelties of total
or partial suppression. Now the root-fact of Teutonic
law in this secondary phase of mitigation was the
institution of wehrgeld, or money paid in redemption
of crime. And a further characteristic of Teutonic
law was its clear conception of the double character
of crime. Wherever there was an offence against an
individual, it was recognised that there was also an
offence against the community ; and the adminis
trators of the law were not content — as was generally
the case amongst the Romans — to punish on behalf

l60 CHARACTERISTICS OP THE FRANKS.
of the community without regard to the damage
suffered by the individual. In fact, the vindication
of the individual (when crime touched an individual)
was always the most prominent idea of Teutonic
punishments. The redress of the injured person
under the authority of law was a substitution for
the natural right of private vengeance ; and the
Teuton saw that the vindication of individuals was a
vindication and a defence for the State. This simple
intuition gave a distinct character to Teutonic law,
which has counted for much in the national develop
ments of the Teutonic race. There was amongst the
Teutons a systematic scale of wehrgeld, based not
only upon the nature of the crime, but also upon the
status of the injured person ; and the system itself
introduced a further mitigation by the fact that indi
vidual sufferers had a stronger motive than the State
for accepting a pecuniary indemnity for a wrong in
flicted upon them. In most cases the offender had
to pay a fine to the royal treasury (known by the
name of "fredum," or peace-making), as well as to
indemnify his victim. When the parties concerned
were slow in coming to an agreement, the judge
intervened to hasten the settlement ; and he also had
the power, in circumstances of special aggravation, to
double or treble the stipulated payment.
Wehrgeld differed, as above said, according to the
status of the injured person. Amongst the Franks,
the highest class after the king was that of the king's
leudes and nobles, the latter, under the Merovingians
(and before their time) being criniti, or families en
titled or accustomed to wear their hair long ; and

ORDEALS.

161

after them came the antrustions. Of the Leti, or
Lites, settled on the land, we have spoken elsewhere.
Below them were the slaves, and amongst the slaves
there was a varying estimation of value, decided
according to their worth in the eyes of their masters.
The payment of wehrgeld did not, at any rate in the
earlier periods, apply to offences against the king,
or to public crimes.

IRON SAUFANG.
(Cologne, sixth century.)
Another institution of the Teutons arising out of
the commission of crime was that of the urtheil, or
ordeal, which was the judgment or detection of the
criminal by means of an appeal to the deity, which
was naturally resorted to in the absence of personal
witnesses. It was, in this older and less superstitious
sense, a sort of sacrament and act of faith, employed
12

1 62 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FRANKS.
with all sincerity in the belief that God would judge
between the wrongdoer and his victim when human
means failed to provide a remedy. The Church not
only sanctioned this form of ordeal, but also added to
its solemnity by requiring that the parties concerned
— that is to say, the victim and the person suspected
of the crime — should attend mass and communicate.
Then, in the case of ordeal by boiling water, which is
mentioned in the Salic Law, the priest blessed the
water, and a ring or a stone, suspended by a cord, was
immersed, three times in succession, at increasing
depths. The person called upon to undergo the
ordeal had to draw out the ring or stone, and his
arm was afterwards wrapped in bandages for three
days. If, at the end of that time, his flesh had not
recovered its ordinary appearance, his guilt was held
to be proved.
Ordeal by cold water, which survived for many
centuries as a test of witchcraft, required that the
arm of the suspected person should be bound to
his leg, and that he should be thrown into a
pond, his guilt being declared if he floated instead
of sinking.
The ordeal of the cross was, in effect, a trial of
endurance between two suspected or mutually accused
persons, who had to stand with extended arms whilst
divine service was proceeding ; and the one who first
dropped his arms stood convicted.
Ordeal by hot iron consisted in holding a heated
bar in the hand, or walking barefoot over hot iron
bars or plates.
In ordeal by fire, the person submitted to the test

TEUTONIC SLAVES. 1 63
had to walk, with the consecrated host in his hands,
between two adjacent fires.
Another form of decision in contested cases was to
employ the Gospels after the manner of the sortes
Virgilianm. The book was opened, and an oracle
was drawn from the first sentence of the page
exposed. Ordeal by single combat involved the loss of a
hand by the defeated combatant ; or, in the most
serious cases, he was buried alive. This, and the
ordeal by cold water, survived longer than the other
forms. Charles the Great forbade the ordeal of the
cross as tending to profanity.1
The law affecting slavery amongst the Franks —
concerning which something will be found hereafter,
in the fifteenth chapter of the present work — again
contrasts favourably with the severity of Roman
institutions. The manumission of slaves, which,
especially after the adoption of Christianity, was a
frequent operation in an epoch and in a country
which knew more than one or two modes of reduc
tion to the state of slavery, was effected in various
ways, described in the Formulas preserved for us by
Marculfus, a monk of Frank origin, who wrote in
the seventh century, and therefore dealt in particular
with the Merovingian age. Enfranchisement per
denarium was the most formal and symbolic of
these methods. When a master was prepared to
liberate his slave, he took him before the count of
his district, to whom he announced his intention.
'See Lalanne, "Diet. Historique de la France," under the word
"ordalie,'-

164 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FRANKS.
Thereupon the slave produced a coin, and offered it
to his master as a sign that he wished to purchase
his freedom. The master, not receiving the denarius,
but striking it from the hand of his slave, signified
that he was willing to complete the contract, and at
the same time to forgo the price. A carta denarialis
was then drawn up by the order of the count, and
delivered to the former slave as evidence of his
emancipation ; and the latter (as indicated in the
Riparian law) assumed or resumed the condition of a
free-born man.
Another mode of enfranchisement (traced back to
the Chamavians) was per handtradam, when the slave
was surrounded by a ring of twelve persons, one of
whom was his master, and this master took the slave
and passed him outside the circle — a written charter
being subsequently given, as in the case previously
described. Yet another mode of enfranchisement amongst the
Franks was by the master's last will and testament,
when, as Marculfus says, the owner liberated all his
slaves " for the remission of his sins and the salvation
of his soul." But this case of emancipation was
regarded as inferior in kind to the other two, for it
did not confer the complete civil rights acquired by
those who had earned their freedom before their
masters came within sight of death.

XII.

THE SONS OF CLOVIS.

The death of Clovis was followed at once by the
subdivision of his realm amongst his four surviving
sons, the oldest of whom, born of his first wife, before
his marriage with Clotilda, would be about twenty-
five, whilst the youngest could scarcely have been
more than thirteen years old.
If Clovis had had one son instead of four, the
history of Gaul would have presented a very different
aspect. Clovis, if only for a moment, had been
virtually an emperor. Kings in subjection to him
ruled parts of the dominion which he had conquered ;
the Allemans and Burgundians were tributary, though
in two different senses ; the Franks of the Lower
Rhine were content to hold their lands intact,
acknowledging Clovis as the head of the Salians ; his
sway over Aquitaine was confirmed by treaty with
Theodoric, and by formal recognition from Constanti
nople. All this was enough for empire, if there had'
been an emperor. Clovis assumed the title of
Augustus, but he died at the moment when he had
set the coping-stone on his edifice by overthrowing
165

1 66

THE SONS OF CLOVIS.

the kings at Cologne, Cambrai, and Tournai. Then
came the division of territory and authority indicated
below, which made all talk of empire impossible.

Merowig I 

Childeric (458-481) I
Clovis
481-51 1)

Siegbert (grandson)
Riparian ( -509)
I
Cloderic (509).

! • I "~ I !
Theodoric Clodomer Childebert Clotair
Metz (511-534) Orleans (511-524) Paris (511-558) Soissons (511-561

I
Theodebert (534-547) I
Theodebald (547-555)

I
Theodebald ;
Gunther slain by
Clotair ; Clodo-
vald (Saint Cloud)
became a priest

Sole King of the
Franks in 558

It might almost be concluded from this subdivision
of the Frank dominion that the custom of division by
lot had been modified on this occasion, in order that
Theodoric, the oldest of the. four brothers, might
receive the kingship of the Riparians, as being
already a tried soldier, because it was in the east that
fighting was most likely to occur in the near future :
and, indeed, the riverain districts were disturbed
immediately before and after the death of Clovis.
Theodoric had been well treated and trusted by his
father, and doubtless by Clotilda also, though he was
not her son. The queen probably had something to
say in arranging the succession of.her infant sons, and
it may have been she who drew the capitals near
together, and advised that the city of Paris itself

THE FOUR KINGDOMS. l6f
should be neutral ground, a centre of amity and
counsel, to which none of the sons of Clovis might
come at the head of an army. Clotilda lived until
545, and witnessed many of the victories, quarrels,
and crimes of her children.
The map on the next page roughly shows the
possessions of the Franks in Gaul, on the death of
Clovis. The apportionment of this territory amongst
the sons of Clovis would be made rather by an
enumeration of towns than by a detailed tracing of
boundaries, where there were no marked natural
features. The kingdom of Metz included Metz, the capital,
Cologne, Treves, Chalons, Troyes, Tolbiac, Clermont,
Rodez, Cahors, Albi, Toulouse.
The kingdom of Orleans included Orleans, the
capital, Chartres, Le Mans, Angers, Tours, Bourges,
and Auxerre.
The kingdom of Paris, or Sens, included Sens, the
capital, Melun, Meaux, Evreux, Rouen, Rennes,
Vannes, Nantes, Poitiers, Saintes, Bordeaux.
The kingdom of Soissons included Soissons, the
capital, Laon, Amiens, Cambrai, Terouanne, Tour
nai, Limoges.
Theodoric, it will be seen, had the march-country,
which served as a bulwark to the other three.
Clotilda's oldest son had the smallest kingdom ;
Childebert nominally ruled along the whole of the
Armorican coast ; whilst Clotair, who turned out to
be the fiercest and most grasping of the four, and
who survived his brothers and succeeded to all their
possessions, held sway, in the first instance, over the

i68

THE SONS OF CLOVIS

old Frank land, between the Seine and Waal, the
Meuse and the sea.
There was just half a century between the death of
Clovis and the death of his youngest son, Clotair ; and
it was, upon the whole, a period of continued conquest
for the Franks. An early invasion of Northmen from

GAUL AFTER THE DEATH OF CLOVIS.

the Cimbric chersonese was successfully opposed —
apparently by the energy of Theodoric. In 516 the
old Burgundian, Gundobald, the nominal tributary of
Clovis, passed away, and left his kingdom to Sigis-
mond his son. Clodomer of Orleans, aided by Clotair
and Childebert, either found or picked a quarrel with

THE OLD AGE OF CLOTILDA. 169
Sigismond, invaded Burgundy in 523, and again in
524, carried the king and his family to Orleans, and
there slew them. Towards the end of the war, how
ever, Clodomer lost his own life ; and Clotair, now
about twenty-six years of age, combined with his
elder brother, Childebert of Sens (Paris), to murder
two of the sons of Clodomer, and to appropriate his
realm. The youngest son, Clodovald, was saved by
his grandmother, and in good time cut off his
lengthening locks, and served the Church, by which
he was subsequently canonised.
Clotilda, too, of whom we may here take leave, was to
be canonised after her death. Little but what is very
good is related of her by the historians ; and, making
every allowance for the natural disposition of ecclesi
astical writers to deal tenderly with one who rendered
great services to the Church, her acts were ever those
of a virtuous and true-hearted woman. The two grand
children who were murdered by their uncles had been
taken out of her charge against her will, and she
bitterly mourned their death. She caused the poor
little bodies, Gregory tells us, to be laid side by side
on a bier, and followed them at the head of an im
posing funeral procession, with many dirges, to the
basilica of S. Peter, where they were buried in one
grave. It is doubtful, in spite of what Gregory writes,
whether she had counselled Clodomer's attack on the
Arian Burgundians. If she had, the advice cost her
very dear ; for not only was the attack unsuccessful,
but it caused the violent death of her cousin Sigis
mond and his family, of her son Clodomer, and of her
grandsons Theodebald and Gunther.

170- THE SONS OF CLOVIS.
Gregory is enthusiastic in his praise whenever he
has occasion to speak of her. Queen Clotilda, he
says, was honoured by all for her good qualities and
her greatness of soul. She gave alms every day,
prayed through the night, lived a pure and holy life,
and endowed churches, monasteries, and other sacred
places, giving with open and lavish mind, more like
the handmaid of the Lord than an earthly queen.
" The kingship of her sons, the craving tendencies of
the age, the constant seductions of her position, were
powerless to corrupt her. Her very lowliness raised
her to the height of grace."
Meanwhile Theodoric, leaving the west to the
vigorous hands of his half-brothers, had been turning
his attention to the other side of the Rhine. The
Thuringians, who had not been thoroughly subdued
by Clovis, and had even contemplated an alliance
with Theodoric the Goth for the defence of Aquitaine,
were naturally all the stronger for the withdrawal of
the Western Franks. The eldest son of Clovis, whose
sphere of kingship of course extended eastward to
the ancient seat of his ancestors, would have no lack
of pretexts for, and opportunities of, attacking the
Thuringian king. He called his brother Clotair to
his aid, and, whilst Childebert continued to pursue
the political objects of the dynasty in Gaul, Theodoric
and Clotair advanced in the old familiar highway of
the Franks, and reduced the Thuringians to submis
sion (528). In the following year Clotair married
Radegund, the daughter of the conquered king. Once
more a princess of the Eastern Franks acknowledged
her " strongest man " amongst the enemies of the

CONQUESTS OF CHILDEBERT. If I
Thuringian house. The immediate fate of the Main
valleys, and of the uppermost valleys of the Danube,
vaguely known as Bavaria to the chroniclers of the
time, was decided simultaneously with that of Thur
ingia, and the Western Franks asserted their dominion
as far eastward as the Upper Elbe, Augsburg, and
possibly the banks of the river Inn.
Childebert, at the request of his brother Theodoric,
overran, in 530, the revolted province of Auvergne, of
which Clermont was the principal town, and brought
it into subjection. Thence he turned southward in
the following year, penetrated almost to the walls of
Narbonne, expelled from Gaul the Visigoth Amalaric,
and shortly afterwards received a cession of territory
from another grandson of Theodoric the Great, the
Ostrogoth Athalaric, the young and ill-fated son of
Amalasuentha. One object, if not the principal one, of Childebert's
expedition against Amalaric was to avenge his sister
Clotilda, who had been married to the king of the
Visigoths — an Orthodox. Christian to the Arian, the
daughter of Clovis to the son of Alaric. The mar
riage had been a failure, and the young queen, com
plaining of Amalaric's cruelty, had asked her brother
to come to her rescue. In one sense Childebert was
too late ; for, though he defeated Amalaric, who fled
as far as Barcelona, and was there slain, the unhappy
queen died on the journey home, and was buried by
the side of her father in Paris.
On the return of the two brothers from Thuringia,
they aided Childebert to complete the conquest of
Burgundy, which was effected in 534. Godomar, the

172 THE SONS OF CLOVIS.
brother of Sigismond, fought in vain for his kingdom,
and lost his life in the struggle. As he was the last
male heir of Gundachar, Burgundy would now
naturally fall to the heirs of Clotilda. In the same
year the eldest son of Clovis ended his not ignoble
life, and his son Theodebert reigned in his stead.
It is likely enough that Theodebert had no great
confidence in his uncles, and at any rate he was soon
at war with them. One of his first acts was to come
to an understanding with the Greeks of Marseille and
with the Ostrogothic king Vitiges, who had married
the sister of Athalaric (536). Childebert and Clotair
not unnaturally took this amiss, and threatened their
nephew with vengeance. Theodebert vacillated. He
sent a force of Burgundians to aid Vitiges, who, after
failing in his long siege of Rome, was now expecting
at Ravenna the return-siege of Belisarius. That did
not prevent Theodebert from taking advantage of the
misfortunes of Vitiges in Italy to invade Provence,
and inflict defeat both on the city of Marseille and
on the weak force of Ostrogoths who opposed his pro
gress. In this way the old Roman province fell into
the hands of the Franks ; and the Emperor Justinian,
severing the last figment of a tie between the Roman
Empire and its conquests in the West, renounced
whatever claim he may have had upon the land of
Gaul. One hears comparatively little of the Frank women
folk amidst these narratives of the warlike deeds of
their fathers and brothers. Procopius, in his history
of the Gothic war in Italy, tells a story of Totila, who
twice made himself master of Rome — how he fell in

TOTILA. 173
love with the daughter of Theodebert, and asked her
hand in marriage. It had happened that the victo
rious Goth, on his first entry into the Eternal City, had
allowed it to be sacked, pulled down one-third of the
walls, and threatened to turn it into pasture for cattle.
Belisarius had appealed to his enemy to spare what
long ages had built and cherished ; and Totila had
listened to the old general, who was then supposed to
be at the point of death. He contented himself by
carrying off the Senate, and driving out the inhabi
tants ; but he had no sooner left the city than Beli
sarius re-entered it, and defied the efforts of the Goth
to recover it. And when Totila asked Theodebert for
his daughter, the grandson of Clovis replied that he
could not regard as king of Italy, or think him likely
to become king of Italy, a man who did not know
how to hold Rome when he had conquered her, but
allowed the city, half-destroyed, to fall again into the
hands of the enemy (547).
Fortune favoured Totila with the chance of respond
ing at once to the challenge of Belisarius and to the
reproach of Theodebert — perhaps, also, of deserving
and winning the hand of Theodebert's daughter.
Rome was retaken. Totila found the city barely
inhabited, stricken with poverty, though full of
hoarded grain, and all the open spaces covered with
fields of wheat. " To repopulate it he recalled Goths
as well as Romans, even senators from Campania ;
and, providing for their needs, gave orders that every
thing which had been destroyed in his first conquest
should now be restored. He then invited the people
to the Circus Maximus, and the last chariot races

VOTIVE CROWN OF KING SUINTILA.
(Gold and Precious Stones : — " Suintilianus Rex offert."
Early seventh century.)

PLAGUE IN EUROPE. I 75
which the Romans saw " — the same Romans who saw
the last consul of Rome — " were those given in fare
well by a Gothic king." I
Theodebert did not withdraw his taunt, for he died
in the year in which he made it. He, too, had
dreamed the German's dream. His ambition had
lured him into Italy. If he had lived he might have
made common cause with Totila, or even turned his
arms against him. Six years after his death we read
of Allemans and " Franks," under Lentharis and
Bucelin,.who devastated Sicily and Southern Italy, as
well as the northern Adriatic shore, and who were
ultimately defeated by Narses. But these were not
the Franks of Theodebert. They seem to have come
southward through the land of the Allemans, and
were associated with Goths and Huns.
Childebert and Clotair, in the meantime, had made
a disastrous expedition into Visigothic Spain, whence
they were forced to retreat empty-handed. For the
next few years they had sufficient to occupy them on
their eastern frontiers, where the Saxons had replaced
the Franks as the most aggressive German power,
behind whom the pent-up swarms of the Danes and
other Northmen were already pressing for an outlet.
They had enemies within, as well as without their
borders ; there were revolts on which history has
dwelt more lightly than on the wars which made for
greater political changes. And there was an enemy
which fought not with hands, but with the finger of
God — the terrible recurrent plague, which, bred in the
East, and propagated in the track of the invader, and
1 Gregorovius, -" Hist, of Rome in the Middle Ages," bk. ii., chap. vi.

176 THE SONS OF CLOVIS.
on a thousand battlefields, decimated Western Europe
in the latter half of the sixth century. From 542
onward there was scarcely a year without some
more or less deadly visitation of the lues inguinaria,
Gregory, Procopius and his continuator, Paul
Diaconus, and other contemporaries, abound in
gloomy details.
" Confined to no season, and spreading without
contact, it seized alike on men and animals. The
frenzied imagination heard in the air the braying of
trumpets, saw the mark of the destroying angel on
houses, and stalking in the streets the demon of
pestilence himself, or ghosts (fao-fiara Saiftovwv) who
imparted death to those they met by a blow. The
consequences were not always immediate, but gene
rally followed in three days. The stricken died, over
powered by sleep or consumed by fever. . . . Gregory
assures us that men with their own eyes beheld
arrows shot down from heaven, apparently piercing
their fellow-men. Fear gave birth to visions." *
Half a floating poison, half a nervous disorder, this
earlier Black Death may be regarded as both effect
and cause of some of the most ghastly human
tragedies which stained the annals of the time.
Theodebald, who succeeded his brother Theodebert
in the kingdom of Metz, died without issue in 553,
and Clotair entered into his possessions. With them
he inherited the duty of defending the whole of the
German marches ; and an immediate war with the
powerful Saxon confederation taxed his energy, and
was not always waged with success. If he had not
1 Gregorovius, bk. iii., ch. I.

A BLOODTHIRSTY KING. 1 77
been so well engaged at home, he might have
directed another expedition to Thuringia, which was
at the mercy of the unruly mixed hordes — Allemans,
Huns, Goths, so-called Franks — who constantly
harassed the dwellers on both sides of the Danube,
and some of whom had recently been ejected from
Italy by Justinian's martial eunuch. In addition to
his Saxon war, Clotair had to face the menaces, and
even the attack, of his brother Childebert, who does
not seem to have acquiesced in his appropriation of
Metz. But in more ways than one the ruthless modes
of self-aggrandisement which had been adopted by
the youngest son of Clovis had to be expiated in his
riper years. On the death of Clodomer, Clotair had
married his brother's wife, Gondeucha, though he had
caused two of her three sons to be murdered. It is
easy to imagine a direct chain of cause and effect
which made the son of Clotair and Gondeucha rebel
against his father. For five years (555-60) the open
breach continued, and during the latter part of this
time Chramnus secured an asylum and practical aid
amongst the sturdy Bretons. He even contrived to
raise an army, in alliance with Cenober, whose name
recalls some of the most heroic enemies of Julius
Caesar. But Clotair defeated this army at Dol,
took his son prisoner, and burned him with all his
family. That is almost the last scene in the life of this
bloodthirsty Frank. Childebert of Paris had died
childless in 558, and thus the last quarter of the
dominions of Clovis passed into the hands of Clotair.
He did not live long to enjoy his full splendour as
13

1 78

THE SONS OF CLOVIS.

sole king of the Franks, for he died in 561, not
many months after taking his brutal vengeance on
Chramnus. Clotair, like Clovis, left four sons, who immediately
divided their father's compact realm. The chief
political changes of the next hundred and ten years
are shown in the table on the opposite page.

CLOTAIR I. (Sole King, 558-61).

Caribert.
Paris, 561-7 (no
issue : estates
divided. )

Gontran.
Orleans and
Burgundy (561-93)

Siegbert II.
Austria (633-56)
Dagobert II.
(674-9)

Clotair IV.
(uncertain origin),
717-20.

Childeric III.
(tmcertain origin),
742-52 : deposed.

Chilperic
Soissons (561-84)
Clotair II.
(584-613).
Third Sole ICing
(613-28)
Dagobert I.
(628-38) I

Siegbert I.
Metz (561-75)
Childebert II.
(Metz (561-75)
Metz, Paris, Orleans and
Burgundy (593-6)

Theodebert II.
Metz (596-612)

Clovis II.
Neustria and Burgundy (638-56)

Theodoric II.
Orleans, Burgundy,
593-613 (his brother
Siegbert assassinated).

I
Clotair III.
Neustria(656-70)

I
Childeric II.
Austria (656-73)
with
Neustria (670-3)

Theodoric III.
Neustria, 670 : deposed by
Childeric.
(Restored 673-91)

I I
Clovis III. Childebert III.
(691-5) (695-711)
Dagobert III. (711-15)

Chilperic II. (uncertain
origin), 715-20

I
Theodoric IV.
(720)

to
8
o
2

XIII.

THE SONS OF CLOTAIR.

THE subdivision of the realm of Clotair was made,
as was usual (though not universal) with the Franks,
by lot. Speaking approximately, Caribert received
what had been formerly known as the kingdom of
Childebert, Gontran the kingdom of Clodomer,
Chilperic the kingdom of Clotair, and Siegbert the
kingdom of Theodoric.1
It was not long before Siegbert was forcibly
reminded that he occupied the post of greatest
danger and honour, for a new generation of Huns,
descendants of those who had ravaged Europe under
Attila, invaded the borders of his territory in 562.
He repelled the attack, but his absence in the east
1 Gregory says: "Inter se hi quatuor . . . divisionem legitimam
faciunt : deditque sors Chariberto regnum Childeberti, sedemque habere
Parisios : Guntheramno vero regnum Chlodomeris, ac tenere Aiire-
lianensem : Chilperico vero regnum Chlotaris patris ejus, cathedramque
Suessionas habere : Sygiberto quoque regnum Theodorici, sedemque
habere Remensem." Reims, it will be noticed, takes the place of
Metz as capital of the north-eastern kingdom ; but if a Frank instead
of an ecclesiastic had been giving an account of the matter, he would
probably have written Metz, not Reims. Siegbert is more associated
with Metz than with Reims. 1S0

FREDEGONDA. I»I
was sufficiently prolonged to enable his treacherous
brother Chilperic to encroach upon his dominions.
When he returned he found it necessary to drive
Chilperic out by force of arms ; and, though he
succeeded in doing so, he had henceforth on his
western borders an enemy for life — an enemy whose
malice was made more deadly by one of the most
venomous women encountered in the pages of
history. There came one day in 566, into the land of
Austria, and to the court of King Siegbert, two
beautiful daughters of the king of the Spanish
Visigoths, by name Brunhilda and Galeswintha.
Brunhilda was the bride of Siegbert, and for nearly
fifty years she was destined to play a sinister part
in the country of her adoption. Now Chilperic in
the meantime had married Audovera, who, to her
misfortune, had a seductive and intriguing maid
called Fredegonda. Audovera had borne her husband
three sons, Theodebert, Merowig, and Clovis, when she
fell a victim to a cruel plot of Fredegonda, and was
repudiated by the king. Chilperic, though already on
intimate terms with the traitress, married his sister-
in-law, Galeswintha ; but from this defeat Fredegonda
plucked a barbarous victory, for within a year the
king's daughter was strangled, and Audovera's maid
sat on the throne of Soissons.
Brunhilda and Fredegonda are fit heroines for
the most sanguinary of the Teutonic sagas, in which*
they appear much distorted, and amidst different
surroundings, but with a manifest parentage of fact
and suggestion. They were mortal enemies, and it

1 82 THE SONS OF CLOTAIR.
would be hard to say which was the more implac
able ; but perhaps Fredegonda's crimes were the
most fiendish and unprovoked.
Caribert of Paris having died in 567, his kingdom
was divided by his three brothers ; and this was a
new cause of enmity amongst the sons of Clotair.
For a while, their internal quarrels were checked
by invasions of Lombards and Saxons, who were
successively expelled by Mummolus, the Count of
Auxerre, and a general in the service of Gontran,
at the head of a Burgundian army. Siegbert, in the
meantime, had made terms with the Huns, in the
year of his marriage with Brunhilda.
Ever since the murder of Galeswintha, her sister
had been urging Siegbert to make war on Chilperic,
and to avenge her on the hated Fredegonda. Hos
tilities broke out in 573, and Chilperic sent his eldest
son, Theodebert, to hold that part of Aquitaine which
had fallen to the lot of Siegbert. The latter, who found
both his brothers, as well as his nephew, arrayed
against him, called in large armies from the other
side of the Rhine. Theodebert "was defeated and
slain in Aquitaine, and, Chilperic being driven back
in the north, Siegbert allowed himself to be pro
claimed king of his brother's dominion. At this
point (575), the women come once more to the
front. Chilperic was beaten, and could no longer rely on
his army. His capture, or at any rate his expulsion
from his kingdom, was imminent, when Fredegonda
persuaded two unhappy youths, whom she armed
with poisoned daggers, to assassinate the victorious

BRUNHILDA. 1 83
Siegbert at the moment when he was raised on the
shields of his soldiers, and saluted as king of Soissons
and Paris. This turned the tide of failure ; for almost
everything depended in those days upon the presence
and energetic direction of the king. Chilperic's
leudes gathered round him again; Siegbert's friends
were paralysed ; the auxiliaries fell away ; and
Fredegonda had the satisfaction of securing the
persons of Brunhilda and her children.
The widowed queen had not been long in durance
when she found a friend in Merowig, the second son
of Audovera, who contrived her escape. In gratitude,
or under stress of circumstances, Brunhilda married
Merowig ; but their union was short, for the son fell
into his father's hands, and, at the instigation of
Fredegonda, he was put to death. Fredegonda's
thirst for blood seemed to be stimulated by each
new crime. In 580 she secured the death of Clovis,
Audovera's third son, of Audovera herself, who, as
Gregory tells us, " died a cruel death," and of certain
other sons of Chilperic, who might not have been
considered as out of the line of succession merely
because they were not legitimate. In this way she
made a clear path for her own son, Clotair ; and
shortly afterwards, in 584, there followed what was
perhaps the inevitable sequel of such a series of
achievements, the assassination of Chilperic, at the
town of Chelles, by the woman to whose insatiable
cruelty he had ministered for eighteen years.
In the meantime Chilperic had been fighting with
his brother Gontran ; and he had so ruthlessly taxed
and oppressed his subjects that they rose in rebellion

I84 THE SONS OF CLOTAIR.
against him in Brittany and at Limoges. In 580 his
excitable soul was subdued by a terrible outbreak of
the plague, by an earthquake, by a destructive over
flow of the Loire, and by the attitude of the bishops
in their Council at Braisne, near Soissons — where the
Merovingians had one of their royal residences (see p.
306). He solemnly burned his more tyrannical decrees ;
but the contrition does not appear to have made any
permanent change in the character of his misrule.
Gontran of Burgundy was as warlike as any of the
sons of Clotair. Some of the greatest victories of the
Franks of Burgundy had been gained by Mummolus,
already mentioned ; but Gontran himself conducted
one or two successful campaigns against Chilperic.
He also conquered Gundobald, an illegitimate half-
brother, who was backed by Didier, the duke of
Toulouse, and raised the standard of revolt near
Orleans ; and after one defeat he overthrew
Reccared, king of the Visigoths, at Carcassonne.1
A black stain seems to rest on the character of
Gontran in connection with the death of Mummolus;
but the circumstances are too much in doubt to render
a judgment on this point in any way safe. He
behaved admirably to his nephew Childebert, the
son of Siegbert and Brunhilda, whom he protected,
adopted as his son, and, being childless, nominated as
his successor. Nevertheless, in some of his acts he
showed himself true to the Merovingian type. Tired
1 It was this Reccared who, with his subjects at Narbonne, turned his
' back on the Arian heresy in 587 ; and a Council of the Gallic Church was
held at Narbonne in 589, apparently in the vain hope of arranging
terms between the old and the new converts.

CHILDEBERT. 1 85
of, or incensed against, his wife Marcatrude, he put
her away, and married one of her attendants,
Austrachjlde ; and, when his two brothers-in-law
took him to task for his cruelty to their sister,
he killed them both. Four years later, Austrachilde
fell sick and died, whereupon Gontran gave orders
that her physicians should pay with their lives the
penalty of their failure.
Childebert, whilst still a boy, marched at the head
of an army against the Lombards in Northern Italy.
We even read that the Emperor Maurice sent him from
Byzantium a subsidy of fifty thousand sous of gold,1
with a letter in which he spoke of the ancient amity
of the Franks and Rome : " Priscam gentis Frankorum,
et Ditionis Romanae unitatem." Childebert lost two
armies in the vain attempt to drive out the Lombards.
In 593 Gontran died, and Brunhilda's son became
King of Paris, Orleans, and Burgundy, as well as of
the eastern realms of his father.
Two women now governed, or attempted to govern,
the fortunes of the race of Franks. Fredegonda,
the queen-mother of the western kingdom, was
approaching her fiftieth year when Gontran died,
and Brunhilda's son held for a moment by far the
larger part of Francia. It was not for this that
A-udovera's tirewoman had unsexed herself in her
early youth, betrayed her mistress, duped her royal
lover, strangled her Spanish rival, poisoned the
daggers for her brother-in-law, used her husband
as an instrument for the murder of his own sons,
hired cutthroats to rid her of Chilperic, and
' The Frank sou (solidus) of gold weighed 73-5 grains.

1 86 THE SONS OF CLOTAIR.
assassinated the bishop of Rouen when he re
proached her for her crimes. We shall look in
vain through the pages of history for a woman
capable of more deliberate, sustained, and successful
murders than those by which she carved her path to
the throne, advanced the cause of her husband so long
as it suited her that he should live, removed every
possible rival to her son Clotair, and transferred the
crown from father to son as soon as Clotair had
reached what in those days was regarded as the
age of militant manhood.
The alliance of Gontran and his nephew Childebert
was probably conceived, in part, as a measure of
defence against the treacheries of Fredegonda. The
succession of Childebert to the united kingdoms of
Orleans, Burgundy, Metz, and two-thirds of the
patrimony of Caribert, would unquestionably be
looked upon by Fredegonda as an injury and
a menace to Clotair. And her spite at the
aggrandisement of Brunhilda's son would be none
the less keen because Childebert was high in
favour with the Church, which she herself had
grievously offended.
There was, however, no necessity for Fredegonda
to wait for pretext or opportunity of fighting.
Brunhilda, on her side, had studiously nursed her
vengeance against the murderess of her sister and
her two husbands. She was the guardian of her
son, and exercised in his name many of the functions
of royalty, living most of her time at Metz, and
entirely failing to keep the confidence or goodwill
of Childebert's leudes. She quarrelled also with more

DEATH OF FREDEGONDA. 1 87
than one of the prominent ecclesiastics, and, like
Fredegonda in this respect, made enemies of the
principal men in the kingdom. The war between
Metz and Soissons, in 593-6, was fought mainly in
the latter country, and the invaders had the worst of it
throughout. It was virtually the private war of the
two queen- mothers, and the younger woman triumphed.
So far the. fates had fought for Fredegonda; but
she was not destined to witness the full realisation of
her ambitions, and to see the whole Frank nation
united under the sceptre of her son. It is doubtful
if we ought to add the poisoning of Childebert (575)
to the long list of her achievements. At any rate the
son of Brunhilda died by poison on his return from a
campaign against the Bretons, as he was preparing
to take his place at the head of the invading army
between Soissons and Laon. Discouraged by the
death of their king, the eastern army lost the battle ;
and the leudes, refusing to continue a war in which
they had probably never been enthusiastic, withdrew
to their own country.
It was at this moment, or very shortly afterwards,
that Fredegonda died. She died, so far as we know,
a natural death ; but in that age, with such a woman,
at such a crisis of far-reaching hatred and revenge,
all forms of death are conceivable. When, sixteen
years later, Brunhilda, an old woman verging on her
eightieth year, fell into the hands of Fredegonda's son,
and, after three days of continuous torture, was bound ,
to an unbroken horse and dashed to pieces, many of
the Franks must have thought that her violent death
was a fitting close to the career of the Gothic

150 THE SONS OF CLOTAIR.
princess who had wrought so much evil to their
race. To this extent the drama of Brunhilda's life
is more complete than that which centres in the life
of Fredegonda. History, so lavish of her tales of
blood, sometimes capriciously drops her curtain over
the last scene of a moving tragedy, without satisfying
the interest which she has aroused.
Though the ill-starred Brunhilda survived her enemy
for so many years, they were years of diminished
power and influence, but not of diminished malice.
Her quarrels with the leudes of Childebert, inter
rupted for a moment by the war with Soissons, came
to a head after the murder of her son and the triumph
of Fredegonda. Those two events seem to have de
prived her of all self-control and caution. The duke
of Campania (Champagne), who lived at Troyes, and
was one of the strongest subjects in the kingdom of
Metz, aroused the fear and rancour of the defeated
queen, who held the leudes responsible for the
disasters of the last few years, as they held her
responsible both for the war itself and for the con
sequences which followed from it. In 598 Duke
Wintrion was assassinated by the hirelings of Brun
hilda. From that time her position became unten
able ; she was compelled to flee from Metz, and took
refuge with her younger grandson Theodoric II., a
boy of twelve, who ruled in Burgundy. The elder
son, Theodebert II , sat on the throne of Metz. Both
were loyally served by their leudes, and Clotair, who
seems to have been quite ready for the role of usurper,
was driven back as he advanced along the Gatinais
plains, between the Loire and the Yonne.

CONQUEST OF GASCONY. 1 89
The brothers now turned their attention to the
south-western corner of Gaul, the old Novempopu-
lania — the original Aquitania— which had been left
by Clovis unsubdued. It had recently been overrun
by the Vascons from Northern Spain, who had
never owned the sway of the Visigoths. Theode
bert and Theodoric mastered the country without
much difficulty, and appointed a duke to govern it
(602). From that time forward this interesting country,
which includes Navarre. and Beam, and the Basque
descendants of one of the most obscure of the Asiatic
migrations, has followed the fortunes of the Franks
and of the French.
But whilst the kings were building up their father's
realm, their grandmother was still plotting mischief
and weaving disaster. Brunhilda had so far secured
an influence over the Burgundian clergy that in a
synod in 603, held at Chalon on the Saone, they de
posed and banished the bishop of Vienne. Didier
returned to the see a few years later, only to be
assassinated by order of the relentless old woman.
Worse than this, she sowed dissension between
Theodebert and his brother, the latter of whom was
encouraged to make war upon the king of Metz. It
was not until 610 that the sons of Childebert opposed
each other in the field. Theodoric was successful in
two battles, fought at Toul and Tolbiac ; and he
crowned his victory by slaying Theodebert and his
family. Pushing on to Metz, he enjoyed there for a
few months the triumph of his trebled kingdom, and
there he died (613).
Clotair soon arrived on the spot at the head of his

190

THE SONS OF CLOTAIR.

army. Brunhilda encouraged a part of the forces
which had followed her grandson to make a stand on
behalf of his illegitimate son Childebert ; and, no
doubt, she did her best to avoid falling into the hands
of Clotair. But the son of Fredegonda, now fairly
entitled to the sole dominion of the Franks, swept

REALM OF THE FRANKS UNDER CLOTAIR II. (613).
aside the partisans of Childebert, seized the unhappy
creature whom the atrocities of his own mother had
tortured into a malevolent fiend, and stamped her out
of" existence with barbarous cruelty.
Clotair II. was the third king of the Franks who
exercised sole dominion over the conquests of his
race in Germany and Gaul. He did not exercise it

THE OSTER RIC. 191
long. Even before his death in 628, he made his
eldest son Dagobert king of the eastern half of
Francia. Clotair thus practically recognised the
broad distinctions existing between the compara
tively unmixed Germans who lived in the Oster Ric,
or Reich, and the amalgam of Kelts, Romans, and
Franks, who inhabited the country which Germans
learned to call the Frank Reich, whilst the Gallicised
Franks accepted the Latin form of Francia, France.
The continuator of Gregory's history transforms
Oster Ric, dropping the guttural, into Austria,
wherein both of the German words are more than
half concealed. From the time of the third partition
of the Frank realm — which, as we have seen, took place
during the life of Clotair II. — it is correct enough to
speak of the eastern and western halves as Austria
and Neustria. The frontier between the two was not
rigidly fixed. When Clotair assigned Austria to
Dagobert, he retained Soissons, Paris, Orleans, Bur
gundy, Provence, Aquitaine. On his death, Dagobert
was king both of Austria and of Neustria, though a
kingdom made up of Provence and Aquitaine was
for three years under the rule of his younger brother
Caribert. As a rule, the old kingdom of Burgundy
fell within or followed the fortunes of the Neustrian
State. In 633 Dagobert followed Clotair's ex
ample in making his son Siegbert, at the age of
three, nominal king of Austria, a still younger son,
Clovis, being styled king of Neustria (with Bur
gundy). This anticipation of the heirship was
probably an attempt to avoid some of the evils
which had followed participation by lot.

192 THE SONS OF CLOTAIR.
The idea of empire, it will be observed, was of
slow growth in the minds of the Franks. Indeed, the
eastern and western empires of Rome had not sup
plied them with many .arguments in favour of a
centralised government of widespread dominions, nor
was the organisation of their provinces and towns,
especially outside of Gaul, sufficiently advanced to
encourage a military ruler to try an experiment after
the Roman model. Of course there had been local
organisation in Gaul, both within and without the
Church, before the Goths, Burgundians, and Franks
overran the country ; and the local subordination
which had guaranteed a _ large measure of public
order for settled communities was not likely to be
destroyed by the invaders, since to them it guaranteed
revenue as well as order. Apart from the dislocations
of actual war, and such capricious or punitive dispos
sessions as the invaders would have recourse to
when they appropriated land for themselves and
their followers, the old state of things would be
continued for all who paid their taxes, rendered
their services, distributed their merchandise, or plied
their trades. Some landowners would contrive to
hold their own ; some cities would escape the de
structive flood and preserve their municipal privi
leges. And we know that, at any rate so far as the
names and fashions of the Roman duces and comites
were concerned, the Franks accepted them willingly
enough. It is impossible to feel much confidence as
to the precise duties of the Frank dukes and counts,
or as to the precise limits of their authority, though
we know that these duties were at different times

FRANK TITLES. 193
military, civil, and judicial, and that the titles were
of wide geographical application. We read in the
sixth and seventh centuries of dukes of Champagne,
Toulouse, and even Aquitaine, counts of Brittany,
Laon, &c, lords or seigneurs corresponding to the
old senatorial landowners, and to the leudes of the
Frank courts, with others of inferior wealth and
standing, and patricians (especially in Provence)
who owed their titles of honour to Byzantium, but
were recognised* as being of noble rank by the Frank
kings whose subjects they became.

14

XIV.

THE MAYORS OF THE PALACE.

From the beginning of the seventh century the
history of the Franks includes more and more
frequent mention of certain honourable and influ
ential persons associated in the government of the
country, to whom it is now necessary that we should
devote special attention. These are the Mayors of
the Palace.
The Major Domus, or Magister Palatii, was a
functionary appointed during the last century and
a half of the Merovingian dynasty to exercise
authority in the palace and household of the king.
The term itself was borrowed from the old imperial
regime. The office, under the Franks, was the
creation of circumstances ; the officer, who would be
able to relieve a strong king of some of the more
irksome of his duties, would be indispensable when
the king was fighting at a distance from his principal
palaces, or when he was a minor. It would be neces
sary that his authority and his administrative power
should extend over the leudes ; and thus he would
inevitably be, from the beginning, the most important
i94

The earlier mayors. 19^
man in the kingdom, after the king. It cannot be said
with certainty who was the first Frank Mayor of the
Palace, or under what circumstances he was appointed.
The office doubtless existed before the Latin name :
the most influential of the king's leudes may have
discharged such functions as those just mentioned
soon after the house of Merowig was established at
Soissons, or, at any rate, soon after Clovis extended
his kingdom to the western sea. Whether the Mayor
increased in authority step by step from small begin
nings, or — as is more likely — was established by the
leudes as a check on the abuse of power by the king
and his family, at all events we first hear of him at a
time when some check of this kind was absolutely
necessary. It seems probable that the simultaneous presence
of the two queen-mothers, Brunhilda and Frede
gonda, in the two palaces of Metz and Tournai, and
the extraordinary part which they played in the
affairs of the Franks, did more than anything else to
call the office into existence, or to give it its special
importance. Certain it is that the strong line of
Mayors of the Palace in the seventh and eighth
centuries led ultimately to the downfall of the Mero
vingian dynasty. Both Fredegonda and Brunhilda
had been seriously embroiled with the leudes of their
sons or grandsons. The Franks were well accustomed
to the counsels and even to the strictures of their
women ; but, as the Salic law excluded women from
succession to estates, so the fighting men and the
court officers, the judges, administrators, and clergy,
would be sure to watch with jealousy, and seriously

I96 THE MAYORS OF THE PALACE.
to resent, the endless intrigues and disastrous machina
tions of the queens. Fredegonda was more than once
.in danger from the leudes at Tournai. Brunhilda's
quarrel with the leudes at Metz came to a crisis, as
we have seen, by her compassing the death of Duke
Wintrion of Champagne, and being driven out of the
country in the following year (599).
During the minority of Childebert, about the year
575, the Major Domus was in no sense the king's
creature and instrument, or his appointed representa
tive with the leudes ; he became rather the representa
tive of the aristocracy at the court, and the overseer
of the king. In this change the power of the aristo
cracy was making itself felt, though the innovation was
strenuously resisted by a monarch here and there, and
doggedly opposed by the queen Brunhilda, until her
party was defeated, and she herself was captured by
Clotair. Clotair, as we have seen, united the Frank
kingdoms under his sway, but even he was forced by
the Austrian and Burgundian aristocracies to promise
that he would not interfere in the elections of the
Mayors of the Palace. He swore, moreover, to
Warnaher, Mayor of Burgundy, and Rade of Austria,
not to dispossess them of their offices. According to
a chronicler, Clotair was a " patient " monarch, and
he seems to have played his cards with considerable
success. On the death of Warnaher, in 626, he
asked the Burgundians if they would elect a new
Mayor. This invitation, as Clotair had doubtless
anticipated, they declined, asking that they might
be allowed to treat separately with the king. The
return to the old system, however, brought about a

KING DAGOBERT. 1 97
state of aggravated anarchy and disunion much more
serious than the internal dissensions which existed at
the same time in Austria, where the continuance of
the mayoralty formed a kind of national balance of
powers. Clotair II. died in 628, and was succeeded by his
son Dagobert. Dagobert contrived to keep his
brother Charibert out of his inheritance, and in 630
was in full enjoyment of authority. But the aris
tocracy was distinctly against him, though the
prudence of Pepin of Landen, the Mayor of Austria,
restrained them from openly breaking with the king.
At length, under pressure of an invasion of the
Slavonians (633), Dagobert agreed to recognise a
separate government for Austria, and he nominated
as king his three-year-old son, Siegbert II., with
Grimoald, son of Pepin, and Otho to manage the
kingdom, while Pepin was to live in Neustria.
Dagobert was one of the most kingly monarchs of
the Merovingian line, and the little that we are told
of him creates the desire to know considerably more.
He revised and promulgated the laws of the Franks,
and was a patron of the ecclesiastical scholars and
artists of his day. He fought many battles, most of
them successfully, headed an expedition into Spain,
suppressed a revolt of the Gascons, and broke the
growing power of the kings of Brittany' Amongst
his ministers were S. Audoenus (Ouen), his chancellor,
and S. Eligius (Eloi), his " magister nummorum," a
famous worker in gold, who designed and adorned
many thrones (including that of Dagobert), tombs
(including that of S. Germain, bishop of Paris), and

198 THE MAYORS OF THE PALACE.
other details of church and palace architecture, with
the taste of a true artist. Though he had never

REPUTED THRONE OF DAGOBERT.
(The Work of S. Eligius ; restored by Suger in the twelfth century)
been ordained, Eligius was made bishop of Noyon ;
he founded several abbeys, and was long held in

THE BAJULUS. 199
peculiar reverence. To swear by Saint Eloy, as
Chaucer tells us, was held a venial oath for nuns
and friars. He seems to have been an artist in words
as well as in gold, and left behind him a number of
popular homilies. His life was written by his friend
S. Ouen, ahd is preserved for us in the "Spicilegium"
of the Benedictine bookworm Achery.
Dagobert's death in 638 marked the beginning of a
series of Merovingian rois faintfants, lasting for about
a century. Dagobert himself had shown something
of the earlier Merovingian force in an attempt to
impose Christianity upon the Frisians, and he
founded the first Christian church at Utrecht. Ega,
who had been appointed by Dagobert guardian of
his infant son Clovis, now became Mayor of Neustria,
whilst Pepin returned to Metz. In the following
year Grimoald, on the death of his father, secured
the position of sole Major Domus of Austria, though
only after considerable trouble from Otho, described
as the " bajulus " I of Siegbert, who was slain in 642
by a partisan of Grimoald's. Some years later
Grimoald caused Dagobert, son of Siegbert, to be
shorn and sent to Ireland, while he set his own child,
Childebert, on the throne. The mass of the people,
however, refused to recognise this act, and finally
both father and son were slain. Grimoald met the
fate of many prescient persons who are too ' eager to
assist the natural course of evolution. He had
1 That is, " baillivus de palatio " — a different office from that of
"magister de palatio," or major domus. Some have regarded
"seneschal" (seniscalcus) as a quasi-Teutonic equivalent of "major
domus." But it is unnecessary to look for such an equivalent. Latin
was freely used at the Frank court before the office was created.

200 THE MAYORS OF THE PALACE.
anticipated "cbming events by .something like a
century. The table on the opposite page (which .should be
compared with that at the end of the twelfth Chapter)
shows the descent of the hereditary mayors of the
family of Pepin of Landen, who were the ancestors
of the Carolingian Franks. Landen is a town of
Liege in Belgium, close to the present border of Bra
bant, and about thirty miles due west of Tongres.
Siegbert of Austria died in the year .656, and
Erkinoald, who was then Mayor of Neustria, suc
ceeded in making Clovis II., and after him his son
Clotair III., sole king of the Franks.1 When
Erkinoald died in 657, Ebroin was elected Mayor
by the Neustrian vote. But the union of the. king
doms did not long remain firm, for in 660 the
Austrians demanded that Childeric, second son of
Clovis, should be sent to Metz, and Wulfoald was
elected Mayor. Ebroin made violent struggles to
maintain his position, until he was finally slain in
681. In 673 the Austrians recalled Dagobert from
Ireland, and made him king. He was disinclined to
play the part of roi faineant, and an insurrection,
headed by Pepin of Heri'stal, the nephew of Grimoald,
and his cousin, Duke Martin, ended in his death. In
6yg the Merovingian monarchy virtually disappeared
from Eastern Francia. From the year, just mentioned
Austria was governed by an aristocracy headed by
the cousins, of whom Martin, however, was slain in
the next struggle with Neustria. Pepin had better
1 See the genealogical table, p. 179.

Pepin the Old,
i.p. of Austria (d. 639)
(canonised).

Grimoald
M.p. Austria, 642-56.
Childebert, d. 656.

Drogo, Duke
of Champagne.

I
dau. Begga, m. Anseghis.
son of Arnulf, Bp. of Metz.
Pepjn of Heristal,
. Austria and Neustria, 679-714.

d. Hertruda
(canonised).

Grimoald,
m.p. Neustria, 714.

Carloman
(a monk).

Charles the Great,
, King, 768,
Emperor, 800-814.

I
Charles Martel,
m.p. Austria, 714-41.
I

I
Pepin the Short
m.p. 741,
King of the Franks, 752-68.

Carloman.

Childebrand.

Grippo, Duke-
Of Le Mans (d. 753).

dau. Bertha, m.
Count of Angers.
I '
(?)Roland, Duke
¦ of Brittany.

SB
O

O

202 THE MAYORS OF THE PALACE.
fortune, and, after the death of Ebroin, he practically
ruled both countries. He continued to recognise
Theodoric as king, while taking on himself the
government of Neustria, the control of the royal
treasures, and the supreme command of the army.
Under the title of Mayor of the Palace he governed
until his death in 714. After this event, Neustria
broke into open revolt. Pepin of Heristal's widow,
Pletruda, cast his natural son Charles (Martel) into a
dungeon, and set out for Neustria with a force drawn
from the leudes of Pepin and Grimoald, apparently
designing to govern under cover of the name of
the young Dagobert III. The Neustrians, how
ever, cut this force to pieces, and the Austrians
were for a time in great danger. Charles, fortunately
for them, managed to escape from his prison, and
rallied round him the Austrian army, with whose aid
in 717-9 he utterly crushed the Neustrians, and was
then recognised as Duke of Austria. According to
Fredegarius he had enthroned Clotair IV., of whose
parentage we are ignorant, .and who did not survive
the fourth year of his nominal reign at Metz.
Charles began at an early age to display those
qualities of impetuosity and sustained force, both in
fighting and in the exercise of government, that were
to earn for him the title of Martel. He never
accepted defeat, but, like his grandson after him,
struck again and again until his purpose was accom
plished. Scarcely had he triumphed over the
Neustrians when it became necessary for him to turn
his attention to his German neighbours on the east.
Still maintaining the hereditary Merovingian puppet

CHARLES THE HAMMER. 203
on the throne — Theodoric IV., a boy of seven,
succeeding Chilperic II. of Neustria in 720 — he
played in every other respect the part of king, and in
particular led the armies of the Franks to victory
against their enemies. Saxons, Bavarians, and
Allemans successively felt the weight of his heavy
hand. Fresh troubles arose and were quelled in
Neustria. Aquitaine, never yet wholly restful under
the sway of its conquerors, defied the son of Pepin
more or less openly for several years. In the Frisian
lands, in Burgundy and Provence, this greatest of the
Mayors reasserted the supremacy of the Franks, and
confirmed the power which the effete Merovingians
were no longer able to wield.
But the crowning triumph of Charles Martel was
gained over the encroaching Saracens, who in 730
began to pour into Aquitaine, and who soon overran
Gascony and Septimania. Odo, the Duke of Aqui
taine, was now only too glad to appeal to the warlike
Mayor of Austria. Charles led an army across the
Loire, and found the Saracens advanced as far as the
plain country lying to the north of Poitiers. Here,
in October, 732, he overthrew them in a famous vic
tory, and turned the tide of infidel conquest in Western
Europe. The Saracens fled southwards again, but
they continued to hold Avignon, Narbonne, and other
towns on the Mediterranean seaboard. As soon as
Charles had settled other difficulties on the north and
east of the Austrian kingdom, he marched once more
against the Moslems, took Avignon in 737, and drove
the Saracens from the neighbourhood of Narbonne.
He was now the acknowledged champion of Christen-

204 THE MAYORS OF THE PALACE.
dom, and Gregory III. sent an embassy from Rome,
soliciting his aid against the Lombards. It cannot,
however, be said that Charles was popular in his
character as a champion. He levied toll of those
whom he assisted, as conquerors have frequently
found themselves compelled to do ; and his leudes
are said to have been enriched at the expense of the
Church. Both Pepin of Heristal and his warlike son renewed
the attempt of Dagobert to subdue and Christianise
the Frisians. Charles Martel so far succeeded that
Radbod, the Frisian duke, consented to undergo the
rite of baptism. But Radbod admitted a qualm of
conscience at a fatal moment. Standing with one
foot in the font, he suddenly turned round to the
presiding bishop, Wolfran, and said, " Where are my
ancestors who have gone before me ? " " They are in
hell," said Wolfran, " with other infidels." " Good,"
said Radbod, as he withdrew from the water ; " I had
rather feast with my" forefathers 'in the halls of
Woden than live in heaven with those fasting little
Christians of yours" The chance was gone, and
Charles had to do his fighting over again. He
defeated Poppo, the son of Radbod, in 750; but it
remained for Charles the Great to bring the double
work of subjugation to an end.
Charles was not destined to see Rome, nor yet to
work out the problem of kingship in Austria. He
died in his fifty-second year (741), leaving three sons,
Carloman, Pepin, and Grippo. During the next few
years Carloman and Pepin signalised their accession
to the government of Austria and Neustria by

THE CAROLINGIANS. 205
repeating the achievements of their father in Alle-
mania, Bavaria, Saxony, and Aquitaine ; whilst
Childeric III. — another puppet of unknown parent
age, the last of his family — had been brought from
a convent and crowned king of Austria. In 747
Carloman assumed the cowl, and the authority of
Pepin (distinguished from others of his name as
Pepin le Bref, owing to the shortness of his stature)
was recognised throughout the Frank dominions.
It has been suggested by some writers, though on
insufficient evidence, that Childebrand, the younger
brother of Charles Martel, was the ancestor of
Hugues Capet, the first King of France.
In 752 Pepin considered that the fitting moment
had arrived for setting the crown of Francia on his
head. Childeric was of so little account in his
kingdom that no strong opposition was to be feared
from him or his friends ; but there was more reason
to hesitate over the jealousy which might be aroused
on the part of the Frank aristocracy. It is possible
that encouragement had already been given to the
ambition of Pepin by the ecclesiastics, by the memory
of Pope Gregory's appeal to his father, and by the
growing perplexities of Pope Stephen. At any rate
the last of the Mayors could reckon on the powerful
influence of the Church. And so the fateful step
was taken ; Childeric was hustled off to another
convent, and Pepin became King of the Franks.
We may note, before concluding this chapter, what
Sismondi has to say in his "History of the French "
concerning the origin of the Mayors. Fredegarius,
or a writer to whom this name has been given,

206 THE MAYORS OF THE PALACE.
speaks of the election of a Mayor during the minority
of Siegbert I. ; but, as Siegbert was never a minor,
Sismondi concludes that the chronicler was thinking
of Childebert II. (561-75), and that at any rate he is
to be trusted as proving that the Franks, not later
than 575, elected their own officers to represent their
interests .at the court of the king. " The nation some
times dispensed with the election, but, when it did
nominate a Mayor, it was for the purpose of subjecting
the nobles to discipline," when the king was not yet,
or no longer, able to control them.
Sismondi goes on to say that "a name translated
from one language to another has been the cause of a
long-lived error about the functions of this officer." He
believes that a confusion arose, and was allowed to
grow up, between the " mord-dom," or judge in cases
of murder, and the " Major Domus," or chief domestic
officer of the court. Gregory, in fact, calls Waddon,
manifestly an officer of the latter kind, major domus.
Bandegisil, bishop of Le Mans from 581 to 586, is also
named in Gregory's chronicle under the same title,
though he would certainly not have been elected by
the Franks to control the leudes.
The fact remains that, as early as the sixth
century, the title of Major Domus was given to the
controlling, popularly elected officers — to the officer
mentioned by Fredegarius, to Duke Wintrion or
Quintrion, elected after the death of Chilperic of
Soissons, in 584, and to a similar officer elected by
the Burgundians after the death of Gontran, nine
years later.

XV.

ROME APPEALS TO THE FRANKS.

BEFORE we follow the history of the Franks under
the Carolingians it will be well if we turn aside for a
moment, and glance at the position of affairs in Italy,
at the increasing temporal and spiritual authority of
the Roman Church, and at the, waning influence of
the Byzantine Empire in the concerns of Western
Europe. We have already seen how Narses, who came to
Italy in 582, on the mandate of the Emperor
Justinian, triumphed over the last efforts of the
Gothic invaders, and hurled back the hordes of
Allemans, Bavarians, Franks, and others who followed
in their train. The long agony of Rome and Italy,
assailed in succession by so many ruthless foes, had
left the land too feeble to resist another and a fiercer
visitation. The Langobards, who in the general
shifting of the German tribes had for some time
found a temporary home in Pannonia, now poured
through the passes of the Rhaetian Alps, and overran
the country whose name of Lombardy still bears
witness to their presence. Alboin, who crossed the
207

208 ROME APPEALS TO THE FRANKS.
frontier in 568, had in a few years fixed his seat at
Pavia; and it was against his successor that the
gallant Childebert, urged alike by emperor and
pope, vainly contended between the years 584 and
590. The Lombards made good their footing, and
withstood all attempts to expel them. The empire
was now but weakly and formally represented in
Italy by the Exarch of Ravenna ; though corre
spondence was still maintained between the popes
and the emperors, with little practical outcome. The
very names of the former Roman government were
rapidly passing away : consuls and senate had ceased
to exist, consulares and prcesides were no longer ap
pointed under the Exarch Longinus (567), and there
was no further significance in such terms as those of
the praefecture of Italy or the vicariates of Italy and
Rome. Nevertheless in the seventh century judices
were still appointed under the supervision of the
bishops, and the military terms of duces, magistri
militum, and. tribuni continued to- imply much the
same thing as they had signified for centuries past.1
But in Italy, as in Gaul, the dukes assumed with their
territorial titles an element of fixity which tended
steadily towards hereditary transmission.
The Lombards seized practically the whole of Italy.
Only Rome, Ravenna, and other ports to which
succour could more easily be dispatched, maintained
or purchased immunity from the ruthless barbarians.
It has been said that necessity had made the bishops
of Rome her advocates, and was soon to make them
her rulers. At all events the Eternal City had at this
1 Cf. Gregorovius, bk. ii. ch. j.

LOMBARDS IN ITALY. 209
time no leadership or protection except such as was
furnished to her by the Church. The first of the
Gregories more than once turned back the besieging
Lombards by using the all-prevailing " silver spears "
with which the patrimonies of the Church supplied
him — for Christian Rome was already a wealthy
temporal, as well as a spiritual, power, though her
wide domains had not yet acquired the political
authority of a State.
This Gregory it was who sent Augustine on his
mission to England ; and he and his successors never
ceased to labour for the conversion of the Lombards
to the Orthodox faith. With scanty help and sym
pathy from the exarchs at Ravenna — on whom, as
representatives of the imperial power, the popes at
this time depended for the ratification of their election
— Rome continued her faithful struggle against the
barbarians. After her ineffectual efforts to expel the
Lombards from Italy by the aid of the Orthodox
kings, she waged throughout the seventh century a
spiritual war, alike against the barbarism and against
the heresy of the half-converted Arians. Early in
the eighth century, in the pontificate of John VII.,
Aribert the Lombard restored to Rome the estates
of which the first invaders had robbed her ; and
henceforth the countrymen of Alboin may be regarded
as an Orthodox and a civilised nation.
Yet in the next generation we find the Church of
Rome, with its rapidly developing temporal authority,
opposed to two rival powers, either of which in the
preceding century she would have found it impossible
to withstand. Under Gregory II. Rome was. virtually
15

2IO ROME APPEALS TO THE FRANKS.
at war with the Emperor, Leo the Isaurian, and with
the Lombard king. Liutprand, aiming at a kingdom
of united Italy seized Ravenna and advanced against
Rome ; and once more the wealth of the Church and
the diplomacy of its spiritual head availed to save the
Eternal City. A second time, in 729, Liutprand
approached the walls of Aurelian, and a second
time, more dramatically than before, Gregory raised
the sacred symbol of his authority, and put his enemy
to flight.
The awe of the Lombard was soon dissipated ; for,
seeing a new energy in Gregory III., who opposed
his schemes with new intrigues and alliances, he
made a third advance upon Rome in 739. It was
now that the Pope, fortifying his belief in the divine
authority of the Church by an appeal to the sword of
the faithful, bethought him of the conqueror of the
Saracens, and invoked the aid of Charles Martel.
He wrote two letters to the son of Pepin, entreating
him to defend the Holy Church, his spiritual mother.
But the appeal was in vain. The Franks may not
have cared at that time to attack their Teuton race-
fellows, or may not have been convinced that the
quarrel of Rome with a Christian king was either
sacred or just. It is doubtful whether Charles would
have changed his mind if he had lived. Both he and
Gregory passed away in 741 ; and Liutprand, after
disarming Gregory's successor by a not very honour
able treaty — whereby the Pope abandoned his former
allies — died in the following year. It was the year of
the birth of Charles the Great.
Nine years later, towards the close of the prosperous

THE POPE APPEALS TO PEPIN. 211
pontificate of Zacharias, Ravenna once again fell into
the hands of the Lombards. Astolf, pursuing the
ambitions of his predecessors, expelled Eutychius
(751), declared himself successor to the Byzantine
exarchs, and demanded the submission of Rome.
The threats of Liutprand were repeated ; Rome was
in imminent danger of siege and massacre ; no aid
could be expected from the emperor, who had been
unable to prevent the extinction of the exarchate. In
these dire straits, Pope Stephen II. appealed (753) to
the son of Charles Martel, who had recently assumed
the title of king. Pepin welcomed an invitation which
chimed so well with his own needs. Stephen travelled
to Paris, and there, at S. Denis, consecrated Pepin, his
wife, and his two sons ; whilst Pepin undertook (in
the Treaty of Kiersey) to defend Rome against the
Lombards, and to restore Ravenna, with the five cities
lying further to the south which had formerly owned
allegiance to Byzantium.
So the wolf of the Hercynian Forest was called in
to protect and nourish the Eternal City, precisely the
same number of years after the birth of Christ as had
elapsed, when Christ was born, since the foster-son of
the Palatine wolf had laid its foundations.
Pepin and his sons received the title of " Patricius
Romanorum"; and the honours bestowed by the Pope
upon the usurper of Childeric's throne were doubtless
considered by the Franks, or at any rate by the most
devout Christians amongst the Franks, as an addi
tional confirmation of his right to rule over them.
Astolf, who was under no illusion as to the formidable
character of the Pope's new champion, prevailed on

212 ROME APPEALS TO THE FRANKS.
Carloman, the monk of Monte Casino, to induce his
brother to come to terms. But Carloman travelled
no further than the city of Vienne, where he died — as
did also the deposed Childeric — in the same year ;
and Pepin, who had held a council of his leudes at
the royal palace of Braisne, advanced against the
Lombard, and defeated him at Susa and at Pavia.
Receiving the eastern cities from Astolf as the" spoils
of war, he immediately conferred them upon "the
Republic of the Romans," by deed of gift. This
gift is to be regarded as the foundation of the
temporal dominion known as the States of the
Church ; for such sovereignty as the Emperor had
latterly wielded over Eastern Rome was now virtually,
if not formally, at an end.
Pepin was every whit as energetic and as warlike
as his father had been before him, and as his son was
to be after him. He completed the overthrow of the
Saracens in Septimania, and of the Germans who had
rebelled in Bavaria. He exchanged embassies with
the Emperor in Constantinople, inflicted a fresh
defeat on the Saxons, and put down with a strong
hand, though not without fighting a series of cam
paigns, the opposition which had been raised against
him in Aquitaine by his half-brother Grippo (the son
of Charles Martel by a Saxon captive). Shortly after
the close of this war, his eventful reign of sixteen
years, which laid a solid basis for the victories of
his more famous son, came to an. end, and the first
of the crowned Carolingians passed away.
We have now arrived at a specially interesting
, crisis in the story of the Franks. Two hundred years

FRANK REFINEMENT. 21 3
in Gaul, with almost undisputed supremacy on both
sides of the Rhine, close contact with Roman civili
sation, the increase of social ease and legal stability,
the life of cities and courts — boons of partial civili
sation to which the Christian Church had added its
precepts and pomps, its discipline and brotherhood,
its amenities and culture — had brought out the best
qualities of this vanguard of the Teutonic race, and
converted the valiant barbarian into a man of com
parative refinement and dignity. The Merovingian
Franks, with their cruelty, their truculence, their un
relenting feuds, their unscrupulous and bloodthirsty
methods of self-advancement, were giving way, under
the Pepins and the Karls, to Franks of equally
vigorous self-assertion, but of greater restraint in
victory, of less ungovernable fury, of more equable
manners, and of a certain instalment of culture. If
anything could have saved the world from the worst
of its trouble to come, from the submergence of
letters, the corruption of Christian faith and prac
tice, the inundation of Asiatic barbarism, and the
constant seething of Europe in national and sec
tional warfare, the young Teutonic nationalities might
have effected it. Under Charles in the eighth century,
as under the English Alfred in the ninth century, if
there was not much settled peace, there was at any
rate the encouragement and patronage of learning,
with some advance in craftsmanship, art, social com
fort and refinements, and the various incidents of
civilisation. The growth was more or less continuous
in the cities, where it had its root in the old Roman
colonies and other settlements, and where from the

214 ROME APPEALS TO THE FRANKS.
same stock it was to flower luxuriantly in the
Renaissance. But if the growth persisted, it was
for a long time choked and starved, so that for
centuries the light of learning seemed almost to have
been extinguished, and the partial culture of the
courts of Charlemagne and Alfred seem to the casual
observer like the flame of a candle in the darkness.
The causes of this inevitable relapse are neither
remote nor obscure, but they cannot be fully dealt
with in this volume. The subject would be too large
even for suggestion if it were not important to bear
in mind that the Franks, the Angles and Saxons, the
Goths and the Lombards, did show themselves, up to
a certain point, susceptible of the classical culture,
and a polish which, under happier circumstances,
might have developed a literature, an art, an orderly
system of national and municipal government. But
the conditions in which they lived rendered such
development partial and transient. Society was ex
posed to sudden and violent changes. The lives and
fortunes of men, their very food and domicile, depended
on the physical prowess of those who were free, and
on the constant labour of those who were in a state
of servitude. There was scarcely a year of intermis
sion, throughout the reign of Charles, from internal or
external war. In the forty-five years between his
accession and his death, Charles and his sons waged
fifty-two campaigns. The Saxon war alone lasted
thirty-five years The Frank Emperor of the West
fought in every country of Western, Central, and
Southern Europe, and he fought not only with his
brother Teutons, but also with the Eastern Huns, the

ORIGINS OF FEUDALISM. 21 5
Slavonians, the Saracens, and the Africans. If for a
time he checked the advancing hordes of Asia and
Africa, he was not able to raise a durable barrier
against them.
When Charles came to the throne — or at any rate
three years later, on the death of his brother Carloman
— he found himself at the head of a nation which
already presented many of the characteristics of what
was afterwards known as the feudal organisation.
There was, indeed, this grand distinction in the
tenure of land, before feudal tenure became a rule,
that the estates of the king's leudes, and other impor
tant and wealthy men, obtained by gift or purchase,
were held by an absolute title, in " franc-alleud," I on
allodial tenure, and descended from father to son.
The owners of allodial estates bore their share of the
public burdens, and they followed the king to war,
as a matter of course in an age when it was almost
the first duty of manhood to fight. But military
service was not the exclusive condition of tenure.
Treason — and refusal to follow the royal standard
when summoned might, of course, be construed as
treason — involved the forfeiture of these estates to
the king ; but it is evident that the conversion of
franc-alleud into a tenure-in-chief became a com
paratively simple matter.
Military tenure in Gaul, as we have seen, was at
least as old as the grant of lands to the Lasti, who
were German auxiliaries in the Roman army. Such
grants were made to other than Germans, and when
1 Old High German allod, Latinised as allodium. An equivalent
German form was od all: hence adel, the nobility.

2l6 ROME APPEALS TO THE FRANKS.
the Franks had established themselves in Gaul their"
kings very naturally continued the custom. The first
Clotair was induced to ordain that an estate which
had been held on these terms for thirty years should
become the absolute property of the holder. Even
such as were already in possession of allodial estates
received beneficia of land as rewards for particular
services, and converted them into absolute property
in a similar fashion, thus gradually acquiring broad
domains which conferred upon them, virtually or
actually, something near akin to the rights of sove
reignty. Charles and his immediate successors were
strong enough to impose or to restore the military
and other duties attaching to the tenure of land, as
well as to add stringency to the old German condi
tions of vassalage ; and thus it was that, in the ninth
century, the feudal organisation became a potent reality.
In addition to the holders of land, there were, of
course, other classes of freemen amongst the subjects
over whom Charles was called to rule. Such were
the citizens, merchants, and functionaries of a higher
order ; descendants of urban and rural colonists who
had contrived to retain their freedom ; vassals of the
king and of the greater or smaller landlords ; ecclesi
astics and men under their tutelage ; capitales, who
paid an annual due for the patronage of others ; lites,
who rendered domestic or agricultural service without
being actually serfs ; and enfranchised serfs, who
passed into one or other class of freemen, according
to the circumstances of their enfranchisement.
It is scarcely necessary to add that the serfs, as
recognised by the Franks — and the institution sur-

RIGHTS OF SLAVES. 21 J
vived even to the date of the great Revolution —
were not so utterly degraded as the Roman slaves
had been. The counter-civilisation bestowed by the
Teuton upon the Roman, of which we have already
noted conspicuous instances, is nowhere better illus
trated than in the treatment which the Teuton
accorded to his slave. So far as the observation of
Tacitus went, Germans did not employ their slaves in
menial duties to minister to their personal ease ; each
slave had a dwelling and a home of his own ; he tilled
the land and paid dues to his master, but the rest of
his time and labour was his own. He supported
his wife and family, lived much in common with free
men, and was able in a large measure to preserve his
self-respect. It was a rare thing for a German to
strike his slave ; and the chief right and defence
secured by a freedman was that his former master
would thenceforth have to pay a fine for killing him.
When the Franks settled in Gaul, it was not amongst
the slaves of the Gallo-Romans that the new domi
nation would be most unwelcome.
No doubt an institution like that of serfdom is
liable to constant deteriorations. Serfdom in France
was never more odious, relatively if not actually, than
it was in the eighteenth century ; but already in the
time of the Merovingians the laws affecting slaves
had borrowed harshness from the Roman codes. The
beneficence of the Gallic Church, which was constantly
exercised in defence of the poor and the wretched,
succoured the slaves as it had previously succoured
those who were ground down by over-taxation. The
clergy preached, the bishops remonstrated and in-

2l8 ROME APPEALS TO THE FRANKS.
sisted, the annual Councils formulated their demands
— which, appealing to Divine authority, were virtually
decrees — in the interests of humanity. Churches,
abbeys, and monasteries, stood ever open as asylums
for the oppressed ; and at one of the Councils held at
Lyon, early in the sixth century, the bishops were
enjoined to excommunicate any master who killed
his slave without giving him the opportunity of
defence. The public law reinforced the law of the
Church. In the time of Charles a slave could not be
sold into a foreign country, nor by a Christian to a
pagan, nor even at home by Christian to Christian,
except under a prescribed form, and in the presence
of witnesses.
On the death of King Pepin, the realm which he
had usurped and maintained, which he and his father
before him had saved before collapsing under the
weak hands of the later Merovingians, was once
more in danger of falling to pieces. Charles was
twenty-six years old : his brother Carloman was a
year or two younger ; and it is to be remembered
that there was now no Mayor to assist the monarch,
or represent him in his absence. Both Charles
and Carloman were consecrated, the former at
Noyon, and the latter at Soissons. There seems
to have been a feeling of rivalry between them
from the beginning, which soon broke out into
an open quarrel. By a strange coincidence the
same Duke Hunald of Aquitaine whose revolt
had been put down by Pepin and his brother
Carloman, and who had retired into a monastery
three years before Carloman decided on the same

THE SONS OF PEPIN. 2ig
course, now threw off his cowl and sought to avenge
the death of his son Waiffe, whom Pepin had slain
in 768. The sons of Pepin advanced against him,
but their association in arms did not continue as
long as that of their father and uncle. Carloman
withdrew in dudgeon, and left his brother to face
the Aquitanians alone. It was hardly less fatal to
his career as a king and a soldier than if he also
had determined to enter a monastery.
Charles persevered, and won his first campaign.
Hunald was taken prisoner ; and it may have been
due to the magnanimity of his captor that the pug
nacious monk was able to escape with his life, and take
refuge with Desiderius, king of the Lombards. Shortly
after his victory in Aquitaine, Charles married the
daughter of Desiderius, by whom he had no child,
and whom he repudiated and sent back to her father.
By a former wife, Himiltrude, he had a son Pepin,
nicknamed Le Bossu, who subsequently rebelled
against him.
The queen-mother, Bertha, succeeded in reconciling
her two sons. Before they had time to quarrel again,
or to give proof that their reconciliation was com
plete, Carloman died (771); and his Austrian leudes,
meeting at Cobeny, not far from Reims, passed over
the sons of their deceased monarch, and elected
Charles in his stead. It was another mark of pro
gressive civilisation that the widow of Carloman
should be allowed to take her sons to the court of
Desiderius at Pavia. Charles, we are told, con
sidered their flight as a matter with which he need
not concern himself. Between himself and Desiderius

220

ROME APPEALS TO THE FRANKS.

there were now three separate causes of grudging,
apart from the political heritage which had descended
to Charles from his father — the repudiation of
Desiderata by Charles, and the welcome accorded
by the Lombard king to Waifre and to the sons
of Carloman.

XVI.
CHARLES THE GREAT.
CHARLES was now sole king of the Franks, able
to indulge his dreams of ambition — dreams which
assuredly were neither few nor humble, though he
may not have set his mind from the beginning upon
imperial dignity.
From his father Pepin he had inherited a crown won
by the sword, which it was necessary that he should
keep with the sword. That, in itself, was no light
task ; but he had also inherited quarrels with most
of the surrounding peoples — with the Saxons and
Bavarians and Lombards, with the Saracens and the
Moors. These quarrels he undoubtedly meant to
take up ; and behind the Lombard quarrel there
was the far-reaching question of the championship
of Rome. He, like his father, was a Patricius of
Rome; he had been consecrated by the Pope, and he
took an early opportunity of sending his two sons,
Louis and Pepin, by his third wife the Suabian
Hildegard, for the papal benediction.
The most urgent need of the -moment was to
protect the eastern frontiers against the constant

222 CHARLES THE GREAT.
attacks of the Saxons, who, pressed behind by
Northmen and Slavonians, were apparently bent on
renewing the ancient Rhine war, and wresting from-
their ancestral allies a portion, at least, of their
hard-won possessions. Since the outflow of Saxons,
Angles, and Frisians to Britain, the Saxons who
remained had extended their name and influence
from the Baltic to within a few miles of the Rhine,
at its confluence with the Lippe, and from the
mouths of the Weser and the Elbe to the borders
of Thuringia. Charles was anxious to turn south
wards into Italy, but he was unwilling to leave in his
rear a nation of so much vigour and pugnacity
without fighting the first campaign in what he fully
intended to be a definitive and conclusive war.
The campaign against the Saxons in 772 was
dramatic in its circumstances, and it illustrated at
the outset of his career some of the traits of genius
which earned for Charles the title of Great. As a
general he was the flower of the Frank race, and
displayed their best fighting qualities to perfection :
the unexpected and dashing attack, the combination of
furious hand-to-hand encounters with an extremely
agile recovery, and the annually-repeated expeditions
— continued as they had been by the earlier Franks
for generations, and even for centuries. There is no
reason to doubt that Charles had resolved on war
a outrance with the Saxons, and that his first
campaign was specially calculated to make such a
war inevitable. For in this struggle there was some
thing else involved beside the determination of the
Frank to hold his own, and to strengthen and extend

FRANKS AND SAXONS. 223
his boundaries. Charles was by inheritance the chief
defender of the Church ; he knew how much the
Franks owed to the Pope and the bishops, and how
the friendship of Rome made for the security of his
realm. It was therefore a part of his policy to
utilise to the utmost this instrument which Clovis
and his successors had found so serviceable. His
aim was not only to subdue but to Christianise the
Saxons ; and he began by striking a blow at their
national pride and their national religion. After
consulting the general assembly of the Franks at
Worms, he crossed the Rhine, marched up the
course of the Lippe, laid the land waste with fire
and sword, took the fort of Ehresburg, a little above
Paderborn, and " threw down the idol which the
Saxons called Irminsul." The course of the Lippe
skirts the southern extremity of the Teutoburg
Wald. It appears reasonable to conclude that
Irminsul was the Hermann's Pillar (Saule) set up
to commemorate the hero of the Teutons who, seven
and a half centuries before, had entrapped and
annihilated the legions of Varus, and arrested the
progress of Roman conquest in Germany.1 Whether
treated as an idol or not, this pillar would represent
whatever was strongest in the collective feelings of
the North Germans ; and its deliberate destruction
by Charles must be taken as showing how com
pletely the king of the Franks had imbued himself
with the ideas of Southern and Western civilisation,
1 Some, however, think that it was an idol of Irmin, a national god.
A new pillar was set up in its place eleven centuries later.

224 CHARLES THE GREAT.
and how ruthlessly as a Christian he could trample
on the sacred traditions of his race.
Almost yearly now, for a generation to come, there
was war between the Franks and their neighbours.
When Charles did not lead or send an expedition
across the Rhine, to carry war into the enemy's
country, there was trouble on his own side of the
frontier, caused by the raids of the indomitable
Saxons. But the king's policy was to attack without
intermission. Twenty-three times within thirty years,
either he or one of his sons marched eastward against
the Saxons, or against the Slavonians behind them,
or against the Huns on the Danube. But in the
meantime he had his foes to face elsewhere ; and in
773 he set out for Italy to assist Pope Adrian against
the Lombards.
It has already been said that Charles had married
Desiderata, the daughter of Desiderius. He had
done so partly at the entreaty of his mother, Queen
Bertha, and against the dissuasion and threats of
Pope Stephen, who did his utmost to sow dissen
sions between the Frank and Lombard kings.
Charles appears to have treated his unfortunate
wife with great cruelty. Eginhard, his biographer,
professed to be ignorant of the reason for which
she was put away. A later writer * declares that
the separation was effected on the advice of " priests
of the utmost piety," because Desiderata could not
provide her husband with a legitimate heir. If it
were safe to affirm historical facts on the sole ground
* Monachus Sangallensis, " Gesta Karoli," c. 17.

CHARLES IN ITALY, 225
of their probability, we might conclude that the same
authority which had sought to prevent the marriage
by a menace of excommunication and the pains of
hell contrived to dissolve it by painting an act of
treacherous cruelty in the colours of a Christian
duty. Charles married, without much delay, the
Swabian Hildegard ; and there were many Franks,
Queen Bertha amongst them, who blamed the con
duct of the king, and lamented the fate of the
Lombard princess.
Thirty years after the death of Liutprand, and
nearly twenty years after the appeal of Pope
Stephen to Pepin, Desiderius came to an open
rupture with Pope Adrian, one of his demands
being that Adrian should consecrate the sons of
Carloman as heirs of their father's kingship. The
Pope refused ; and in 772, other causes of quarrel
having in the meantime come to a head, and Rome
being once more threatened by a Lombard army,
Adrian sent an urgent summons to the king of the
Franks. It was not until the autumn of 773 that
Charles set out for Italy. He besieged Desiderius in
Pavia, little or no resistance having been attempted
by the Lombards ; and, perceiving that the capture
of the city would be a work of time, he sent for his
queen, set up his court, built a chapel, and paid such
attention as was possible to the internal affairs of his
kingdom. As the Easter of 774 approached before
Pavia had fallen, the son of Pepin paid a visit to the
Eternal City, where he was received with great pomp
as Defender of the Church. He was the first Frank
king who had entered the city of the Caesars ; but
16

226 CHARLES THE GREAT.
sixteen years were still to pass before he himself
would be indued with the imperial purple.
After a series of the most solemn and impressive
ceremonies, after repeated celebrations of the mass
at different shrines, with gorgeous ritual, pompous
processions, triumphal music, and ascending clouds
of incense, after viewing the relics of pagan Rome
and the newer but more venerated relics of the
Christian saints and martyrs, and after brilliant enter
tainment of the young monarch as a conquering hero
whom Rome herself was prepared to recognise as her
temporal lord, Charles was in a mood to which the
Pope had naturally desired to reduce him. Adrian
treated the subjugation of the Lombards as a fore
gone conclusion ; he addressed Charles as already
king of Italy ; he reminded him of Pepin's deed of
gift at Kiersey, and asked for its confirmation.
Charles not only granted this request, but also added
to his father's donations, then or subsequently, other
cities and provinces. The full extent of his liberality
has been much in dispute amongst the historians of
the Roman Church ; but the question of less or more
is one which need not here concern us. The main
thing for our present purpose is to realise the position
now occupied in Rome by the successor of Hermann,
of Marbod, of the proud Sicamber who bowed his
neck to receive the chrism of S. Remy. A Patricius
from his boyhood, Defensor Ecclesiae since the death
of his father, the king of the Franks was henceforth
Dux of Rome and ruler of the Byzantine exarchate.
Desiderius accepted the inevitable, and the victor set
upon his own head the iron crown of Lombardy.

SWORD AND CROSS. 22f
Charles was beginning to earn his title of Great.
The Pope had already bestowed it upon him, and
henceforth his subjects learned to speak of him as
Charles le Magne. He soon showed that he was no
mere pope's man, but a proud and ambitious monarch,
who knew how to secure the whole value of his con
cessions. He did not at once hand over to the Pope
all that he had promised, or all that Adrian held him
to have promised. For years to come there were
difficulties between pope and king on questions of
possession, of jurisdiction, and of disputed authority,
in which the monarch, with his constantly increasing
dominion, took care to maintain a clear distinction
between his liberal benefactions as king of the Lom
bards, as well as of the Franks, and a subserviently
weak acquiescence in all the demands of the grasping
successor of Saint Peter.
After his return in 774, Charles renewed the war
with the Saxons, and was more than ever bent on
showing that it was a war waged by a Christian king
against pagans, and by Germans who had accepted
the light of Roman civilisation and Christianity
against their still benighted race-fellows. Mission
aries armed only with the cross were allied to the
mail-clad warriors of the west. Wherever Charles
threw down an image of the dumb, discredited gods
of his ancestors, he set up a cross or a church side by
side with a fort and a garrison. Too often, when his
armies withdrew, the pagans closed in from the rear,
massacred the garrisons and burnt the churches ; but
each advance of Charles was more effectual than the
last. The number of converted Saxons steadily in-

228 CHARLES THE GREAT.
creased ; and if, as appears probable, large bodies of
the enemy submitted to the rite of baptism as a mere
device to lull the suspicions of the invaders, there can
be no question that the cross and the sword together
were gradually prevailing over the outstanding bar
barism of the Teuton.
In 776, and again in 780, Charles was compelled to
. return to Italy, where Adelchis, the son of Desiderius
— the latter having retired to a monastery — disputed
the authority of his father's conqueror, as well as the
authority of the Pope. He found allies in his brother-
in-law Arichis, Lombard Duke of Beneventum, who
was already in alliance with the Greeks, in the Dukes
of Friuli and Spoleto, in the Patricius of Sicily, and
even in the Archbishop of Ravenna. The territories
of the Pope were thus surrounded and encroached
upon, and Charles, who in the earlier year above
mentioned had chastised the people of Friuli and
Treviso, led his army into Italy for the third time in
780, forced Arichis to acknowledge his supremacy,
and had his sons Carloman and Louis consecrated as
kings of Italy and Aquitaine — the former receiving
the new baptismal name of Pepin, already borne by
Pepin le Bossu, son of Himiltrude. Years, however,
elapsed before Beneventum was finally reduced to
quietude, and Charles, in the meantime, paid his
fourth visit to Italy — his third to Rome — in 786.
The Saxon war was continued, in the absence of
the king, by his counts and generals. In 777, Charles,
who by this time reckoned the banks of the Lippe
as included within his dominions, called a general
assembly of his people at Paderborn, a little below

BAPTISM OF SAXONS.

229

Ehresburg, on the right bank of the stream. Thither
came not merely Franks, and representatives of the
most distant provinces, but (as Eginhard expresses
it) " the whole senate and people of the perfidious
race " of the Saxons, professing obedience and
loyalty. Westphalians and Ostphalians, men of the

SAXON REALM OF CHARLES THE GREAT.

western and the eastern pale of the Saxon confeder
ation, Angria'ns who dwelt between the two, and
perhaps Tran'salbinians from the other side of the
Elbe — though their chief Witikind was not amongst
the number — submitted themselves to the king, and
declared their readiness to be baptised. " An immense
multitude" were accordingly gathered in to the Church,

230 CHARLES THE GREAT.
and they were warned by Charles that if they again
violated their promise to submit they would forfeit
both their country and their liberty. The absence of
Witikind was ominous. He was the most energetic
of the Saxon chiefs, brother-in-law of Siegfried the
Dane, and on terms of amity with the Frisian ruler.
Charles might have decided to cross the Elbe at
once in search of this dangerous absentee ; but his
impetuosity drew him in haste to the other extremity
of his dominions.
There had come to Paderborn, all the way from
Saragossa in Spain, one Ibn-al-Arabi, who solicited
his aid against a Saracen foe. Charles remembered
the deeds of his grandfather, and was irresistibly im
pelled to seize this chance of striking a blow at the
African invaders of Europe. With the consent of his
people he set out in the early spring of 778; and it
was not long after his departure that the Saxons,
stirred up by the reckless Witikind, fell once more
upon the eastern frontier. They had no means of
crossing the Rhine, but, as Eginhard tells us, "they
laid waste with fire and sword every town and home
stead between Diutia (opposite to Cologne) and
the confluence of the Moselle and Rhine. They
made no distinction between what was sacred and
what was not sacred. Their fury spared neither age
nor sex, in order that it might be plainly seen that
they had crossed the frontier of the Franks not for
booty but to gratify their revenge." In the meantime
Charles was destined in the same year to experience
a still greater calamity.
He had arranged that two armies, one from the

DUKE ROLAND. 23 I
north and another from the south of his kingdom,
should converge upon Saragossa, apparently not
altogether confiding in the power of Ibn-al-Arabi to
place the city in his hands. Marching himself through
Aquitaine, and through the dukedom of Lupus, son of
the rebel Waifre, he crossed the Pyrenees by the
valley of Roncesvalles, whilst the Provencals and the
Italians, under Duke Bernard, took the eastern route,
and advanced to meet him by way of Barcelona. At
first all went well; but Saragossa did not open its
gates, and the Saracens, putting aside their own
quarrels, combined against the king, and harassed
him on all sides. Charles might have been strong
enough to beat them, and the enemy showed their
respect for him by offering him a large indemnity if
he would withdraw his armies. The cost of victory
appeared too great; the troops were attacked by
disease; and the word had already been brought to
the king of the perfidious raids of the Saxons. Charles
therefore resolved to abandon the campaign. His
retreat was turned into a disaster, not by the Saracens
but by the Vascons ; whether incited by the treachery
of Duke Lupus or by the hope of plundering the
baggage-train of the Franks.
Eginhard's account is meagre, but it is the only
contemporary version of a story which supplied the
later romancers with one of their favourite themes, at
a time when every French romancer was singing and
adding to the legend of Charlemagne. The Song •
of Roland became a national epic of France; the
Norman-French heard it chanted before them as they
faced their foes at the battle of Hastings. Eginhard

232 CHARLES THE GREAT.
tells us simply how the Vascons lay in wait on the
wooded heights of Roncesvalles, until the main army
of Charles had disappeared, and fell upon the rear
guard under the king's nephew, Roland, who was in
charge of the baggage-train. Every Frank in the
rearguard perished ; the treasure was carried off, and
the marauders dispersed, so that Charles had no one
but Duke Lupus on whom he could wreak his ven
geance. But the poets fill in the details for us, and
describe what none of Roland's warriors had survived
to tell. They convert the Vascons into Saracens;
Roland, a giant of eight feet, slays all who come
within reach of his magic sword Durandal, and
sounds a blast on his horn at which the birds fall
dead, and which Charlemagne hears many miles
away; his friend Oliver fights by his side, with
Turpin, the gallant archbishop ; a hundred thousand
of the enemy are killed, and the fifty Franks who
then remained alive are only vanquished by the
arrival of a new army of fifty thousand.
Thenceforth, Aquitaine, under the kingship of
Louis, was held responsible for the safety of the
Pyrenean marches, and waged a long and not always
successful war with the Africans in Spain.

XVII.

THE WESTERN EMPIRE REVIVED.

AFTER the return of Charles from Spain, the Saxon
war was renewed regularly every year, from 778 to
785. The king led his army in person, each year
except 781, when, as we have seen, he was paying his
second visit to Rome. In 779, he only went as far as
Osnabriick, in Westphalia, where he took vengeance
for the Saxon raid of the previous year. He struck
first at the west, then at the east, but rarely stopped
short of the Elbe. Witikind seems to have been un
willing to meet him, but from his home across the
Elbe, or from his second home amongst the Danes, he
continued to be the leading spirit of the confederation.
The presence of Charles at the head of his army
was always a pledge of victory. Early in 782 an
isolated force of the Franks was cut to pieces on the
banks of the Weser; and Eginhard relates that
Charles, as soon as he heard the news, assembled his
army without a moment's delay, set out for the spot
where the massacre had taken place, and summoned
the leading men of the neighbourhood, from whom he
insisted on knowing who were the prime movers in

234 THE WESTERN EMPIRE REVIVED.
the outbreak. "And as they all readily declared that
Witikind was the originator of the crime, but that
they could not hand him over because he had fled to
the Northmen directly afterwards, no fewer than four
thousand five hundred of those who had been in
duced by him to commit that terrible outrage were
delivered up ; and there, on the bank of the river
Aller, at a place called the Ford (Verden Tuli-
phurdum), by order of the king, between sunrise
and sunset, they were all beheaded. After this
notable act of vindication, the king settled down
for the winter at Thionville (Theodone villa)."
Three more campaigns were fought before the
resistance of Witikind could be overcome. In 785,
according to Eginhard, Charles was staying at
Ehresburg on the Lippe, the first strong place which
he had taken from the Saxons, which he had fortified
and adapted as a royal residence. His constant word
to the Saxon nation had been that they must choose
between Christianity and extinction ; and now, as the
fighting months had passed away, he resolved to
send a peaceful message to Witikind, who was living
with his people across the Elbe. The messengers
selected were Saxons, and they appealed to Witi
kind to abandon his struggle against the king, and
rely upon his goodwill. Witikind and Abbis, who
was with him, remembered all the injuries they had
inflicted on Charles and his peopie, and dare not
trust themselves in his hands; but at length, when
pledges had been given of their safety, and Charles
had sent them hostages in the charge of Amalwin,
one of the officers of his court, they came back with

CONVERSION OF WITIKIND. 235
the latter to where the king was now sojourning,
at his residence of Attigny, in the Ardennes, and
were solemnly baptised.
Guizot, in his " History of France," quotes a legen
dary account of the conversion of Witikind, from a
life of the Empress Matilda, written two centuries
later, when all that happened in the reign of Charles
was surrounded with fable, and when the sober and
comparatively trustworthy records of Eginhard were
replaced, or were beginning to be replaced, by the
pious legends of monks and the imaginative chansons
de geste. We will take the story as it stands, remark
ing how the spirit of the age of chivalry, as in
the Song of Roland, adorned almost every historic
tradition with pictures of single combat and the
prowess of knights.
" Now in those days Charles the Great sat on the
imperial throne, who was the most Christian of men, a
mighty warrior, learned in the law, catholic in the
faith, full of goodwill and devotion for all who wor
shipped God; and on behalf of the faith he made war
upon Witikind, as he was ever .wont to do on all
pagans. One day these two met and determined on a
single combat, so that both the armies should render
obedience to him who gained the victory. And they
met, and fought long and hard; and finally our Lord
was aroused by the tears of the Christians, and
enabled his faithful warrior to overcome, as his faith
entitled him. Then was wrought such a change in
the obstinate mind of Witikind that he willingly
submitted himself, with his family and the whole
army of the pagans, to the power of the king and to

236 THE WESTERN EMPIRE REVIVED.
the Orthodox faith. And the emperor welcomed him
with kindness, and caused him to be baptised by
Saint Boniface the bishop, and with his own hand
raised him from before the sacred font. And Witi
kind put aside his errors, and in a spirit of penitence
accepted readily the knowledge of the truth. Whereas
he had been a zealous persecutor and destroyer of the
Church, he was henceforth distinguished as a most
Christian patron of churches and worshipper of God." x
There were battles still to be fought between Franks
and Saxons; and at no great interval of time the
Northmen with whom Witikind had been on friendly
terms were to take up the ancestral quarrel, and to
score a new triumph for the north and east over the
south and west. Even before the death of Charles,
the first waves of the incoming flood broke upon the
coasts of the western empire. But meanwhile the
policy and the work of Charles in Saxony, so far as
the policy was reasonable and the work practicable,
had been accomplished. The backbone of Saxon
resistance had been broken; the spirit of paganism
had been" crushed. The new empire had not yet
been formally established when the lines by which
empire was to be transferred from the west to the
east were already traced out and laid down.
On more than one occasion Charles imitated the
policy of some of the Roman emperors and generals,
by transplanting whole tribes of pugnacious Saxons
from Germany into Gaul, and even into Italy.
It would probably have been a task beyond the
energies of Charles himself to attack and subdue the
1 Pertz, " Monumenta Germanise Historica," x. $j6.

THE SWORD OF CHARLES THE GREAT.
(Imperial Treasury at Vienna.)

238 THE WESTERN EMPIRE REVIVED.
Northmen — even the Northmen of Denmark and the
nearer coasts and islands — as he had attacked and
subdued the Saxons. He did not attempt it; and the
pacification of the broad zone lying between the
Rhine and the Oder may well have seemed to him
an ample guarantee against further trouble from the
north. He had crossed the Elbe into Witikind's
country in 789, and pushed his arms against the
northern Slavonian tribes who dwelt on the lower
reaches of the Oder. One of the last acts of his
reign, more than twenty years later, was to return to
the same district at the head of an army, and repeat
the lessons of 789, after the Wiltzes had been
encouraged in fresh defiance by the growing aggres
siveness of the Danes.
Beyond the limits of Saxony and Thuringia, Charles
now struck frequent blows at the Slavonians, the
Avars, and other Eastern hordes which continued
without intermission to obey the historic law of human
pressure from east to west. In 787 he was compelled
to chastise the Bavarians, who, under their duke
Tassilon, contested the king's authority ; and Tassilon
embraced the fate of many a defeated king and chief
when worsted in battle against a champion of the
Church — he retreated to the more or less honourable
captivity of a monastery. It was at any rate a merciful
alternative to the older doom of immediate death.
From Augsburg Charles went to Ratisbon, on the
Danube, and southwards as far as Friuli, beyond the
Drave. In this country, and for a considerable dist
ance along both banks of the Danube, restless masses
of Avars and Huns continued to prey upon their

FLOWERING OF THE FRANKS. 239
more settled neighbours ; but by hard and repeated
striking, with his own hands or by those of his sons,
Charles held them at bay on the borders of his
dominions, and prevented them at a critical moment
from establishing themselves in Central Europe.
It is unnecessary to enter into details of all these
wars, which in a wide semicircle from the shores of
the Baltic to the shores of Spain flamed up incessantly
on the frontiers of the empire of the Franks. For the
Franks had won their empire before the end of the
eighth century, and before Pope Leo, the successor of
Adrian, added the nominal glory of Roman imperial
ism to the glory of actual conquest and domination.
After an unbroken struggle of more than eight hun
dred years, the heir of the Sicambrian League gave
just laws, and so much of civil liberty as the times
admitted, to the subject populations of Germany,
Gaul, and Italy.
Charles is more interesting to us as the president
of a chivalric court, as a lawgiver, a dispenser of
justice, a bulwark of Christianity, a patron of learning,
a representative of the first efflorescence of German
civilisation, than as a mere conqueror. Without his
military genius he could not have had much scope
for his political and peaceful qualities ; but the flower
attracts us more than the soil from which it springs,
and the remainder of our story of the Franks may
concern itself chiefly with the mark which they made,
at the period of their highest development, in the
history of human thought and progress. It is
necessary, in the first place, to see how Charles, having
created an empire, came to assume the imperial
crown and title.

24O THE WESTERN EMPIRE REVIVED.
Pope Adrian died in the twenty-fourth year of his
pontificate, on Christmas Day, 795. Charles wept
him, Eginhard tells us, as a son, or as though he had
lost a dearly loved brother, and he sent to Rome a
marble slab, with Adrian's record in letters of gold,
which may be seen in Saint Peter's to the present day.
The two men had wrought a great work together,
and had recognised each other, without subservience
on either side, as leaders of the civilisation of Europe.
Leo III. announced to the king his election to the
papal chair, and doubtless asked for his confirmation.
The letter no longer exists, but Charles was both
Patricius of Rome and successor to the authority of
the Exarch. His biographer mentions that Leo
asked him to send one of his nobles to receive the
oath of allegiance and submission from the Roman
people ; and therewith the Pope forwarded to the
western potentate the keys of Saint Peter's grave and
the banner of the city of Rome. The acknowledgment
of temporal suzerainty could not have been more
explicit and significant. Charles replied by sending
Bishop Angilbert with gifts and a letter, promising
his continued defence of the Church, and asking for
a renewal of the treaty already existing, and a con
firmation of his patriciate. Leo conceded to the king
more than his predecessor had done ; he acknow
ledged his jurisdiction not only in Italy, and in the
exarchate which had been a province of the Byzan
tine empire, but even in the Roman duchy and in
the city.
The recognition of the authority of Charles was so
complete, and his temporal power in the west was so

THE POLICY OF ROME. 24 1
free from rivalry on the part of other monarchs, that
if the king had specially desired the imperial title in
796 it might well have been assumed by him. But
the idea seems to have originated with Leo, and that
for reasons which are very easy to understand.
Wealthy and influential as the popes had now be
come, they were not strong enough to stand alone.
Even after the destruction of the Lombard kingdom,
their neighbours in the south, in Sicily, and beyond
the Eastern Alps, could still form combinations full
of menace and danger to Rome ; whilst Rome, though
she could put, and had already put, fighting men
of her own in the field, was not in a position to
draw the sword precisely as though she had been a
temporal and military State. It served the purpose
of the Church to have a supreme earthly power
identified as her protector, whose authority might
stand between her and her enemies, and to whom she
could always in the last resort appeal. Leo seems to
have perceived this fact from the very beginning of
his pontificate, and he took every opportunity
of giving prominence to his political relations with
Charles. And an opportunity was soon provided
for a direct exercise by the king of his sovereign
authority in Rome.
Two nephews of Pope Adrian, Paschalis and Theo-
dorus, the former of whom occupied the influential
post of Primicerius, whilst the latter was Dux and
Consul of Rome, took umbrage at the court which
had been paid to the king of the Franks, and stimu
lated the jealousy of the optimates, amongst whom
there had been a strong party opposed to the papal
17

242 THE WESTERN EMPIRE REVIVED.
supremacy in temporal affairs. A conspiracy was
formed for the deposition of Leo ; his person was
seized during the ceremonial procession on the feast
of St. Mark : he was imprisoned in a monastery, and
the conspirators remained masters of the city. Leo
had been wounded in the tumult ; it was alleged that
an attempt had been made to pull out his eyes and
cut out his tongue. This news reached Charles as he
was setting forth on an expedition to quell a new
outbreak of the Saxons. Hearing that the pope had
escaped from the cell in which he had been confined,
and that he was coming in person to solicit the aid
of his defender, the king arrested his march at Pader-
born, and sent his son Pepin of Italy, the Count
Ansarich, and the Archbishop of Cologne, to escort
Leo to his camp.
Paschalis and his friends did not venture to defy
the authority of Charles. They sent him an account
of their proceedings, brought various charges against
the deposed pontiff, and submitted themselves to the
judgment of the Patricius. Charles determined that
the matter should be tried in Rome. Late in the
year 799 he sent Leo back under a sufficient escort,
and, with him, ten envoys to hold the inquiry and
determine as to the truth of the charges on both
sides. These envoys were Archbishop Hildebald of
Cologne, Arno of Salzburg, Bishops Cunibert, Bern-
hard, Hatto, Flaccus, and Jeffe, and Counts Helmgot,
Rotgar, and Germar. It is not without significance
that Leo was reinstated in the papal chair as soon as
he arrived in Rome. The cause of the nobles had to
be pleaded against a pope restored to full authority,

CHARLES CROWNED EMPEROR. 243
and against a king whose temporal jurisdiction was
admittedly supreme. Neither the substance of their
case nor the advocacy by which it was maintained for
several weeks has come down to us ; all that we know
is that judgment went against them, and that they
were condemned to death, subject to an appeal to the
king as Patricius.
Charles himself came to Rome in November, 800.
He had marched into Italy at the head of an army,
part of which was detailed under Pepin to reduce the
Duke of Beneventum to submission. The king was
received with great pomp, and after a few days he
summoned a tribunal of bishops and nobles. The
accounts of the proceedings are vague, except that we
are told that the bishops declared their inability to
occupy the position of judges over their apostolic
head, and that Leo purged himself by oath from
the charges which had been brought against him.
After this, the sentence which had been passed on
Paschalis and his fellow-conspirators was commuted
into one of exile.
It was a day or two later, on the Feast of the
Nativity, that Charles was suddenly crowned by Pope
Leo, as he rose from his knees before the high altar
of Saint Peter's. The congregation saluted him as
Charles Augustus, " crowned by God, the great and
peace-giving Emperor of the Romans." The monarch
protested, but he was overruled, and the imperial
diadem remained on his head.
There is, of course, little ground for surprise in the
apparently hurried character of an act which must
have been long foreseen and prepared. King Pepin

244

THE WESTERN EMPIRE REVIVED.

had come back from Beneventum almost as soon as
he had reached it, and was present at his father's
coronation. Alcuin, Abbot of Tours, the friend and
adviser of the new emperor, had hailed him by the

DIADEM OF CHARLES THE GREAT.
(At Vienna ; see f. 290.)
imperial title before he had set out for Rome. Every
thing tends to show that the assumption of the higher
dignity was a matter of policy which had been con
sidered and determined upon ; and at least one
ecclesiastical writer, Johannes Diaconus, tells us that

THE NEW "ROMAN" EMPEROR. 245
the matter was arranged between Leo and Charles at
Paderborn. But the desire to avoid difficulties with
Byzantium, even if the difficulties amounted to no
more than a feeling of jealousy, is amply sufficient to
explain the absence of elaborate ceremonial, and the
reluctance displayed by the king. According to
Eginhard and others, Charles was elected emperor by
the Frank nobles, by the Roman optimates, by all
orders in the Church, and by the general assembly of
the people. In any case the act of Leo was endorsed
by the universal assent of the nations ruled over by
Charles. Some well-discussed and intricate problems have
arisen out of this coronation of Charles as emperor of
the western half of the old Roman Empire. It is
perhaps more academic than profitable to consider
whether the Pope and the "nations" in Rome had
inherited the power of the ancient Senate ; whether
the imperial authority now vested in Charles was
transferred from Byzantium to Rome, or to Aachen ;
and whether the phenomenon witnessed at the end
of the eighth century was, as many have contended,
an actual revival and renovation of the Roman
Empire. These are considerations rather for a history
than for a story, and we need not pursue them
further. So far as our Story of the Franks is Concerned, it
is manifest that we have now reached the climax of
its interest, the true dramatic crisis to which every*
thing that went before contributed, and upon which
so much of subsequent history has turned. The
Frank stood now at the very summit of contemporary

246 THE WESTERN EMPIRE REVIVED.
civilisation. Batavian of the north, Sicambrian or
Chattan of the south, the men who fought in the van
of Teutonism when the Caesars held the frontiers of
Gaul were now undisputed masters of Gaul and Italy.
So thoroughly had they enjoyed the fruits of their
prowess and ambition that they were identified to-day,
and loved to identify themselves, with the Latin
empire which they had replaced. It was now their
turn to feed the lamp of learning, to impose law and
culture, and to stem the fated flood which was pour
ing in upon them from the north. With a refine
ment differing in many respects from that of Hadrian
and Aurelius, the flower of all the Franks united (or
strove to unite) at his court some of the highest ideals
of which the human mind had been, or was hereafter
to be, capable — the ideals of Greek and Roman cul
ture, of German freedom and domesticity, of Christian
grace and altruism, of feudal subordination, and of
knightly companionship.
It is important to bear in mind that, although
Charles the Great was now Emperor of the Romans,
he was not, and did not wish to be considered, a
Roman Emperor. If he had listened to those who
had advised him to make Rome his capital, the
history of Europe might have turned out very
differently, whilst the future of the Papacy would
scarcely have been less disturbed and distracted.
But the emperor was too essentially a Frank to be
tempted by the dream of an impossible Roman
revival. He did not even restore the ancient palace
of the Caesars in Rome, but took up his residence, so
long as he remained there, in one of the ecclesiastical

RECOGNITION FROM BYZANTIUM. 2\7
buildings near Saint Peter's. Here he exacted an oath
of obedience from the Roman optimates, appointed
his legate or missus to dwell with the Pope, and
confirmed the latter as territorial ruler, under his own
supremacy, of the estates of the Church: Meanwhile
his son Pepin continued to be recognised as king of
Italy. Though Byzantium had naturally taken umbrage
at the coronation of Charles, the usurping emperor of
the East, Nicephorus, was glad to conclude a treaty,
and formally recognised the western empire. At
Rome and at Aachen it was held to matter little or
nothing what Nicephorus might have to say on the
subject. The latest legitimate emperor, Constantine
VI., had died in 797, and his mother, Irene, who was
strongly suspected of having caused him to be assassi
nated, had ruled as empress up to the time of her
deposition by Nicephorus. The statesmen and jurists
of the West considered the Eastern throne to be
vacated, and looked upon Charles as the only emperor.
" He was held to be the legitimate successor, not of
Romulus Augustulus, but of Leo IV., Heraclius,
Justinian, Arcadius, and the whole Eastern line ; and
hence it is that in all the annals of the time, and of
many succeeding centuries, the name of Constantine
VI., the sixty-seventh in order from Augustus, is
followed without a break by that of Charles, the
sixty-eighth." I
1 Bryce, " The Holy- Roman Empire," ch. v.

XVIII.

THE GOVERNMENT OF- CHARLES.

CHARLES, as we have seen, resided at different
times in many places, and much of his time must
have been spent in journeying from one to the
other. Apart from his military expeditions, and
from his repeated sojourns in Italy, he rarely moved
far from the Rhine ; but the Rhine was the central
highway of his empire, and between Geneva and
Nimeguen, Valenciennes 1 on the west and Paderborn
on the east, he was frequently in motion. Twice
every year he held general assemblies of the great men
of the empire, duringwhich he promulgated his laws
(capitula), and inquired into the condition of the state.
These " March-parades " and " May-parades " were
attended by dukes, counts, and laymen of inferior
rank, and by bishops, abbots, and other clergy,
the laity and clergy sitting and deliberating
apart. Held often at Aachen, they were sometimes
summoned at Nimeguen, Thionville, Worms, Frank
fort, Paderborn, Ratisbon, Valenciennes, Boulogne,
and elsewhere. Charles delighted to show that his
1 Valentiniana, one of the royal residences under the Merovingians.
248

AACHEN. 249
movements were free and safe in any part of his
dominions ; and there can be no question that his
energetic movements and ubiquity would contribute
to the general security.
Two of the emperor's favourite residences, superior
to the rest in point of magnificence, were at Ingelheim,
a little below Mainz, on the Rhine, and at Aachen
(Aix-la-Chapelle), between the Rhine and the Meuse.
These, curiously enough, are the two towns mentioned
by different writers as the place of his birth. Aachen
was of no great importance before the time of Charles.
On the direct western road leading from Cologne, the
ancient Aquis, or Aquisgranum, must have been at the
mercy of most of the German invaders of Gaul ;, but
there was, so far as we are aware, no important Roman
settlement at this point, in spite of its springs of
tepid water. Charles was attracted to the place,
constructed large baths there, in which, we are told,
he and his friends could swim to the number of a
hundred at a time, built a palace, and set architects and
builders at work to raise a costly basilica — the capella
regia which is to this day commemorated in the dis
tinctive French name of the Rhenish Prussian town.
As early as 784 we find Charles writing to Pope
Adrian, asking for his concurrence in the removal to
Aachen of the decorations of Theodoric's palace at
Ravenna. "The palace of the great Theodoric,"
Gregorovius says, "afterwards the residence of the
Exarchs, though falling to decay, still retained its
splendid pillars, mosaic pavements, and panels of
marble. These treasures were carried away to
Germany, there to be used in the decoration of

ORGANISTRUM.
(Ninth century.)

THREE-STRINGED CROUT.
(Ninth century.')

SPOILS. 25I
the new basilica at Aachen." Eginhard says that
other works of art were brought to Aachen from
Rome, as well as priestly adepts in ecclesiastical
music, since the king could not procure them else
where. Amongst other spoils of Italy, the great
equestrian statue of the Gothic king was also re
moved to Aachen. x
The architects employed by Charles to build the

lyre (Ninth century).
basilica, or royal chapel, had a model before them in
the church of San Vitale at Ravenna, which had been
designed on the plan of the Holy Sepulchre. It is
a .noteworthy coincidence that, in 801, the Caliph
1 This statue, described by Agnellus in his history of Ravenna, was
''raised on a pyramid six cubits high. Horse and rider were both of
brass, ' covered with yellow gold,' and the king had his buckler on his
left arm, while the right, extended, pointed a lance at an invisible foe.''
¦^T. Hodgkin, " Theodoric the Goth " (Heroes of the Nations).

252 THE GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES.
Haroun al Raschid, with whom Charles had already
exchanged compliments, having dispatched an em
bassy to him in 797, sent presents to the new
emperor in token of his respect, amongst them
being a deed of gift of the Holy Sepulchre
itself.1 Already the Patriarch of Jerusalem had
remitted to Charles the keys of the sacred edifice,
with the " banner of Calvary." The Saracens were
steadily encroaching on the doomed empire of the
Greeks, and Haroun had laid the Eastern emperor
under tribute. This fact no doubt helps to explain
the somewhat remarkable action of the caliph ; but
all the time Charles was striking hard at the infidels
in Spain and the Mediterranean islands.
Aachen, then, was not only the frequent residence
of Charles the Great and his court, and the meeting
place of many of the general assemblies of the Franks,
but it was also the permanent seat of empire, the
centre from which emanated the imperial edicts and
ordinances, whence the missi dominici periodically
went forth, armed with the emperor's authority,
superior to dukes and counts and bailiffs where-
ever they might come, charged to inspect, to inquire,
to dispense justice and to arrange disputes, where
money was coined, where the imperial treasures and
the public archives and records were guarded.
It would be interesting if at this point we could
distinguish more clearly amongst the various national
elements of the population over whom Charles ex
tended his sway. There would be representatives
of all these nations at the court of Aachen, and the
1 Eginhard.

NATIONAL CONTRASTS. 253
names of Charles's courtiers, officials, advisers, and
assistants,- enable us frequently to perceive that
he had his friends and willing helpers amongst
the descendants of the Gallo-Romans of the old
and the newer Provinces, as well as amongst the
Christianised Germans of the north and east. But
this does not tell us much about what we should
most desire to know — the nature and the extent of
the assimilation which had taken place in the last
three centuries between the Gallo-Roman and the
Teuton. And the absence of any clear indication
of a blending of character and feeling, of language
and of sympathy, is a proof that the assimilation had
not gone far, and that the races had not, and could
not have, combined. The Franks had been super
imposed upon the Kelts, they had not permeated and
transfused them ; in Brittany and on the western
coast they had not even thoroughly subdued them.
The Romans, within something like an equal period
of time, had had a larger measure of success, in spite
of the probability that Kelt and Teuton were more
nearly akin in blood than the Kelt and the Roman.
We need scarcely hesitate about assigning a reason for
the phenomenon. With the Roman arms came a
superior civilisation,, intellectual culture and physical
comfort, immediate order, adaptive and even sym
pathetic qualities. With the victorious arms of the
Franks there came no peace, no order, an inferior
civilisation, an inordinate spirit of plunder, a series
of bloodthirsty quarrels amongst the" conquerors
themselves, little desire or capacity for sympathetic
adaptation. This contrast applies rather to the

254 THE GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES.
Merovingians than to the Carolingians ; but, before
the happy usurpation of Pepin, the mischief had
already been done. If Clovis had been a Charle
magne — if the grape had grown upon the thorn — ¦
we might conceivably have seen a Gallo-German
amalgamation ; but in the eighth century this was
no longer possible.
In the long wars between Neustria and- Austria,
though these . had been nominally, and perhaps
mainly, wars between rival Merovingian kings, the
fundamental race-hatreds had had an opportunity
of coming into conflict. In the Breton outbreaks,
in the long disaffection of Aquitaine, there was
unquestionably a strong element of Gallic self-
assertion and anti-Germanic fervour. The Gallo-
Roman, the Gaul who had rapidly coalesced with
the Roman settler, learning his language and
adopting his manners, had never been able to
accommodate himself to the more brutal and over
bearing Frank and Burgundian. And if he could have
adopted the manners of the Frank, he would never
have risen to the heroic height of . learning his
language. Perhaps there is no stronger reason,
amongst all that can be alleged for the mutual
incompatibility of Frank and Gaul, than the radically
contrasted genius of their forms of speech. The
Frank, when he clothed his thought in words,
was broad, full, loud, uncompromising, where the
Gaul was mincing, rapid, and ever ready to com
promise. The Frank loved his consonants, especially
such as he could evolve from the throat outwards ; he
garnered' them every one, and brought them forth

THE INFLUENCE OF SPEECH. 255
with explosive energy. The Gaul took the Latin
tongue and proceeded to clip and mutilate it,
shedding consonants and syllables, and articulating
as little as possible behind his lips, his teeth, and the
tip of his tongue. The race which had taken so in
distinct an impression of the soft speech of a nation
with which it was largely in sympathy was not very
likely to assimilate the harsh speech of the cruel and
unsympathetic Teuton.
Thus when the Carolingians came to the front, with
their ambition for culture, and their devotion to the
Christian Church polity, they found a gulf which it
was impossible to bridge ; and they did not seek
to bridge it. The hostility which they encountered in
the dukes of Aquitaine and Gascony proceeded, as
they knew, from deeper causes than the Merovingian
descent of those dukes.1 One of the first acts of
Charles, as we have already seen, was to place his
two infant sons on the thrones of Italy and
Aquitaine, providing them with astute councillors
and administrators, but leaving both Governments
to develop a national and almost autonomous State,
Italian or Aquitanian, and not forcing upon them
a directly centralised rule, like that of North-eastern
Gaul and the Rhine lands. With all -his Roman
learning and Christian fervour, Charles was always
frankly German. Even more than his father and
grandfather, he recognised that the Frank supremacy
had its deepest roots in Eastern Francia, in Austria
and not in Neustria, or in Aquitaine, or in Provence,
or in Lower Burgundy. He had ascended the throne
1 Hunald was the great-grandson of Caribert, brother of Dagobert L

256 THE GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES.
as a German ruler ; his chief determination had been
to extend his dominion over the Eastern Germans ;
and, when he had been crowned as the successor
of the Caesars, he had never dreamed of centralising
his empire further west or south than Aachen. If he
looked forward to the time when his vast dominion
should break to pieces, he had taken the best means
of ensuring that the banks of the Rhine should be the
backbone of the dominion of his descendants. By a
freak of history, the name of his glorious race —
France, Frankreich — was to be assigned, both by
Gauls and by Germans, to the country and the nation
with which the Franks could never assimilate ; but,
in reality, when the ancient races came once more
to a parting of the ways, all that was most essentially
Frank tended to draw back to the eastward, and that
which remained on the west of the Vosges and the
Ardennes was essentially Gallo-Roman.
" It is no longer necessary to show," says Mr.
Bryce, " how little the modern French, the sons of
the Latinised Kelt, have to do with the Teutonic
Charles. At Rome, he might assume the chlamys
and the sandals, but at the head of his Frankish
host he strictly adhered to the customs of his country,
and was beloved by his people as the very ideal of
their own character and habits. Of strength and
stature almost superhuman, in swimming and hunting
unsurpassed, steadfast and terrible in fight, to his
friends gentle and condescending, he was a Roman,
much less a Gaul, in nothing but his culture and his
schemes of government, otherwise a Teuton. The
centre of his realm was the Rhine : his capitals

GENERAL ASSEMBLIES. 2$7
Aachen and Engilenheim ; his army Frankish ; his
sympathies — as they are shown in the gathering of
the old hero-lays, the composition of a German gram
mar, the ordinance against confining prayer to the
three languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin — were
all for the race from which he sprang, and whose
advance, represented by the victory of Austrasia, the
true Frankish fatherland, over Neustria and Aqui
taine, spread a second Germanic wave over the
conquered countries."
At the same time, Charles was sufficiently cosmo
politan to aim at, and in a remarkable degree to
attain, harmonious government, law, and ecclesiastical
discipline, throughout the countries which owned his
sway. Absolute harmony was, of course, out of the
question ; but at least there were identical principles
which could be applied wherever the Missi Dominici
came, and wherever the Church provided channels
through which the influence of its earthly defender
could operate. The General Assemblies of the
Franks were held partly, as has been said, for the
promulgation of new laws. The custom had grown
out of the folk-moots which were usual amongst the
Germanic tribes at the date when written history first
takes cognisance of Teutonic institutions ; but, whilst
the witenagemot in England was being developed
amongst the migrated Anglo-Saxons in a more and
more popular form, the work of the assemblies of the
Franks had tended gradually to narrow itself down
to little else than the dictation of the monarch.
There is not much indication in the eighth century
of what might be called a consultative legislation.
18

258 THE GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES.
Charles took counsel with his chosen advisers, and
laid his new capitula before the laity and clergy at the
general assemblies ; but he was virtually an autocrat,
and decided as he wished. This is evident from the
account which we have received from Archbishop
Hincmar, writing towards the end of the ninth
century, on the authority of one of the councillors
of the emperor.
In order, as Hincmar says, that the chief men of
the empire assembled at the placita in March or May
"might not seem to have been summoned without
reason, the capitula, predetermined and arranged,
which had been either conceived by himself through
the inspiration of God or else specially commended
to him since the last assembly, were by the king's
authority laid before them for adoption or consider
ation. And the assembly took these texts, and asked
for one day, or two, or three days, according to
the importance of the matter in hand, making such
representations to the king as they thought fit, and
receiving his replies through the palace messengers,
whilst no man from without was permitted to come
near them, until every point had been submitted to
the ears . and to the pious consideration of that
glorious monarch, and until all concurred in what he
with his divine wisdom determined. And in this
way they dealt with each of the capitula, until all
that was necessary at the moment was by the mercy
of God transacted.
" In the meantime, whilst this business was proceed--
ing in the absence of the king, he was engaged with
the rest of the assembly, receiving their offerings,

FRANKS IN COUNCIL. 259
greeting his nobles (such as were not councillors),
exchanging -words with those whom he seldom saw,
walking with the elders, relaxing his mood with the
younger men, and comporting himself in similar
fashion towards the ecclesiastics ; but ever ready to
visit those who were consulting apart, if such was
their desire, and to sit amongst them as long as they
wished, whilst they with entire freedom mentioned
everything which had occurred to them, and candidly
informed him of all their discussions, disputes, or
friendly deliberations.
" I must not omit to say that, if the weather was
fine, the assembly met in the open air, but if not
they were entertained in separate halls so that the
councillors were kept well apart, and the rest of the
assembly found quarters elsewhere, though persons of
less consideration were not permitted to mingle with
them. But the places appointed for the meeting
of the elders (councillors) were divided into two
chambers, so that the bishops, abbots, and clergy of
higher rank met in the first chamber without associ
ating with the laity. In like manner the counts and
other principal personages were early in the day
entertained apart from the general body, until the
time arrived for the assembly, with or without the
presence of the king ; and then the councillors
assembled as usual, with clergy and laity in their
respective chambers, being provided with seats in
the order of their rank. But when they had retired,
from the general assembly, it was for themselves
to determine when they would sit together and
when apart, according to the nature of the questions

260 THE GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES.
submitted to them, which might be spiritual or
secular, or of a mixed character. And it was
equally in their discretion to call in the attendants
when they wished to eat, or witnesses when they
desired to conduct an inquiry. So much for their
manner of dealing with the questions submitted to
them by the king.
" A second custom of the king was 'to ask whether
any one had brought information from the district
whence he came, which ought to be reported or dis
cussed with him. This was not merely allowed to
them, but even strictly enjoined, so that each one
during the interval between the two assemblies was
to make diligent inquiry, both within the realm and
beyond the borders, into anything which had taken
place, from fellow-subjects or from foreigners, from
friends or from enemies, and with the aid of intermedi
aries, without too closely inquiring whence they had
their knowledge. The king demanded whether the
people in any part, district, or remote corner of the
realm were disturbed, and what was the cause of the
disturbance ; or whether popular complaint had been
made, or any grievance had been overheard, which it
might be necessary for the general council of the
kingdom to discuss ; and so forth. And he desired
to know whether any conquered nation meditated a
rebellion, or any rebellious nation were disposed to
submit, or if a nation still unsubdued were plotting
against the kingdom, or were disposed to plot. In
all such cases, wherever any danger was threatened,
he sought out the reason of its occurrence."
This is evidently a very interesting document from

A TEMPERED AUTOCRACY. 26l
the historical point of view, for it bears witness to
a distinct, assiduous, and systematic method, which
Charles had adopted before the end of the eighth
century, of governing his wide dominions. It was
arrived at by grafting autocracy upon the old, popular
general assembly of the Franks, and it depended
very largely upon the wisdom and assiduity of the
monarch. Such is the strength, and the weakness, of
all democratic monarchies — of all monarchies, that is
to say, which combine popular assemblies with a
real controlling or directing power on the part of a
monarch. If the monarch is as wise and as benevo
lent as Charles, all is likely to go well for his lifetime ;
but too much is staked on the wisdom of an
individual, and on the duration of his life. Charles
was persuaded that his control, and ultimately his
fiat, or the exercise of his will, were better calculated
to give welfare and happiness to his subjects than the
decision of a popular assembly, arrived at after the
excitement of debate, and imposed by the majority
(which, under the Merovingians, was . exceedingly
violent and discordant) on the minority. He being
what he was, and his heterogeneous realm still depend
ing for peace and stability upon his sword, it is
probable that this persuasion was rightly grounded.
At all events his experiment appears to have been
as successful as any conceivable form of government
which could at that time have been devised.
It is clear from Archbishop Hincmar's account that
the General Assembly or Council of the Franks
included (i) a Senate ("seniores") composed of dis
tinguished men, divided into the two orders of clergy

262 THE GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES.
and laity, with absolutely independent powers of
discussion on projects of law introduced by the king,
though these may have been suggested and even
framed by others. The Senate could deliberate in
private, taking as long a time for discussion as they
pleased, could interrogate the king, propose amend
ments, call for evidence, and ask for the king's personal
attendance at their sittings ; but in the last resort
the monarch had power to determine (Hincmar's
word is " eligere ") as he saw fit. (2) Outside the
Senate there were dukes, counts, probably vicars of
counts and sheriffs (" scabini "), with other officials, as
well as clergy, from all parts of the kingdom, each of
whom was charged to report to the king whatever
might have transpired in his district affecting the
peace and contentment of the realm ; and on the
strength of these reports, when the matter seemed to
require it, a Missus Dominicus might be sent on
a special mission of inquiry, with full authority to
arrange the difficulty which had arisen.. (3) The
General Assembly also included others of inferior
rank, possibly as a survival of the earlier custom,
when all the ranks of freemen were represented at
these popular gatherings. They clearly still continued
to possess an element of festivity, in addition to their
serious concerns of legislation and administration.
(4) There would also be the personal entourage of
the king, including the Chancellor, whose business it
would be to provide a record of the capitularies in
their final shape, and to affix thereto the imperial
seal ; with such other advisers and councillors as might
not be comprised amongst the "seniores," and yet

DEVELOPED LAW. 263
would not belong to the second category, of those
who came, from more or less distant parts of the
kingdom. Such, then, was the basis of the personal govern
ment set up by Charles the Great, which secured
comparative peace and order in the countries subjected
to his rule, and did what could be done to reproduce
the refinement of Rome and Byzantium. Law, as we
have seen, had ever been in a special degree the
sanction and protection of the common rights of the
Teutonic peoples ; and amongst the German codes
the Salic law was conspicuous. But with the process
of time, and particularly after the constant internecine
wars of the Merovingian period, the want was felt of a
more modern system, adapting itself year by year to
rapidly changing circumstances, and rising from the
level of mere fine and punishment, artificial restraints
and remedies, to subtler questions of equity, and even
to something like a general rule of life for more
peaceful and self-respecting men. The Christian
equity had to a large extent supplied this need, and
the Carolingian kings, who were thoroughly convinced
Christians, at any rate in a political sense, sought to
embody the ideas of Christianity, as well as the more
universal maxims of ethics, in what We know by the
name of the capitularies. The practice began at the
close of the Merovingian epoch, in the reign of the
unfortunate Childeric II. ; but it may be safely
attributed to the genius and initiation of the Caro
lingian Mayors.
Between 742 and 921, as many as two hundred and
fifty-six capitularies were promulgated by the kings

264 THE GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES.
and emperors in General Assembly. Some of them
were entirely general, both in character and in their
application. Some were specially devised as ex
tensions of particular national codes. Some were
primarily intended for the instruction of the political
commissioners ordered to represent the authority of
the monarch in various parts of the empire. A
certain number were domestic in their scope ; others
were civil or penal ; others again, originating no

TINTINNABULUM. (Ninth century.)
doubt, with the clerical chamber of the Senate, were
canonical or strictly religious. They varied consider
ably in length. The sixty-five capitularies attributed
to Charles the Great include 1,151 separate articles,
arnongst which are reckoned 87 moral, 293 political,
130 penal, no civil, 85 religious, 305 canonical, 73
domestic, and 12 relating to particular incidents.
Truth to tell, the Carolingian book of law is void of
system, and classification. Its contents vary between

CAPITULARIES. 265
the definite assignment of a penalty for a definite
crime, and the moral maxim which might adorn the
commonplace book of a devout and simple-minded
man. One is a laconic injunction to be hospitable ;
another defines and warns against covetousness ; a
third declares that no man is bound to give alms
to beggars who will not work ; a fourth bids men
beware of venerating the names of martyrs falsely
so-called, or the memory of doubtful saints ; a fifth
decides that prayer may be effectual in any language.
A large majority of the capitularies of Charles were
drawn up after he had been crowned emperor. It
was in 802 that he specially set himself to revise or
supplement the codes of the subject nations ; and
at this Assembly, as Mr. Bryce has pointed out,
he put forth a capitulary on the distinction between
the oath to the king and the oath to the emperor.
All male subjects in his dominions, as well ecclesias
tical as civil, who had already sworn allegiance to
him as king, were now commanded to swear to him
afresh as Caesar ; and all who had never sworn,
down to the age of twelve, were now to take the same
oath. "At the same time it shall be publicly
explained to all what is the force and meaning of
this oath, and how much more it includes than a
mere promise of fidelity to the monarch's person.
Firstly, it binds those who swear it to live, each
and every one of them, according to his strength
and knowledge, in the holy service of God ; since the
lord Emperor cannot extend over all his care and
discipline. Secondly, it binds them neither by force
nor fraud to seize or molest any of the goods or

266 THE GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES.
servants of his crown. Thirdly, to do no violence nor
treason towards the holy Church, or to widows, or
orphans, or strangers, seeing that the lord Emperor
has been appointed, after the Lord and His saints, the
protector and defender of all such."
As no fewer than forty-nine of the capitularies of
Charles were promulgated in the last fourteen years
of his reign, and more than half of these in the years
801-6, it is evident that his added authority on the
assumption of the purple was turned to account for the
formulation of a fresh body of institutes in political
and domestic legislation.

XIX.

THE COURT OF CHARLES.

One of the constant attendants upon the person of
Charles the Great, his biographer Eginhard — it is
doubtful whether we ought to reckon him amongst
the imperial Chancellors — has left us a somewhat
minute description of the first Emperor of the
Franks. According to this account, Charles " was
stout and strong of body, of a lofty stature, yet
not beyond just proportion, for his height was
certainly not more than seven times the length of
his feet. His head was well rounded, his eyes large
and piercing, his nose rather long, his luxuriant hair
of a flaxen hue, and his face bright and pleasant to
look upon. His whole person, whether he stood or
sat, was marked by grandeur and dignity ; and
though his neck was full and short, and his body
fat, he was otherwise so well proportioned that
these defects passed unnoticed. He was firm in
gait, and his appearance was altogether manly ;
but his refined voice was not entirely in keeping
with his figure."
Charles had been brought up by an ambitious
267

268 THE COURT OF CHARLES.
father, and by a mother — Bertha " aus grans pies,"
celebrated in a thirteenth - century (entirely un-
historical) romance of Adenes the trouvere — who
lived until 783, and who, we are told, never had
a disagreement with her son, except when he
repudiated the daughter of Desiderius. Like most
of the Franks, Charles was a warrior before every
thing, and gave early token of his heroic strength
and prowess. But he was a man of thought as
well as of action, and his love of learning and
letters is beyond dispute. Amongst his earlier
tutors and advisers were Archbishop Boniface, of
Mainz, who had consecrated his father at the time
of the usurpation, Francon and Hithier, who were
Chancellors to Pepin the Short, and Peter of Pisa,
who taught him to compose fair prose and verse
in Latin, which elicited the courteous praise of
Pope Adrian.
Prudent and dutiful as Charles displayed himself
in most of the relations of life, he was one of
those who may be said to have " erred along the
line of the emotions." Attractive in his personality,
accustomed to secure without much difficulty most
of the objects on which he set his mind, there was too
much temptation and licence in his position to make
it very remarkable that he overstepped the borders of
continence. He had in all nine wives, bound to him
with or without the sanction of the Church. In his
eighteenth year he formed a connection with the
beautiful Himiltrude, whom he repudiated in order to
marry, at his mother's request, the daughter of the,
Lombard king, and whose son Pepin he did ,not

THE WIVES OF CHARLES. 269
formally acknowledge. The romances of a later age
have done Himiltrude probably more than justice.
The author of the " Croquemitaine " describes her as
fairer than all other women. " Her neck was tinged
with a delicate pink, like that of a Roman matron in
the olden time. Her locks were bound about her
temples with gold and purple bands. Her dress was
looped up with ruby clasps. Her coronet and her
purple robes gave her an air of surpassing majesty."
But her beauty availed her nothing when necessities
of State intervened, and Charles was called upon to
contract a marriage with a view to providing
successors to the throne.
The marriage with Desiderata was ill-omened from
the first. It was an act of weakness on the part of
Charles to yield, two years after the death of his father,
to the entreaties of Queen Bertha, and to marry the
daughter of a rival monarch, alliance with whom
involved enmity to Rome, as well as the sacrifice of
ambitions in which he had been trained from his boy
hood. Hildegard, the Suabian, to whom he was after
wards married with the full sanction and benediction
of the Church, was happy in giving her husband six
children : — ( 1 ) Charles, who had the title of king of
Burgundy, and who died in 811. (2) Carloman, re-
christened Pepin, king of Italy, who died in 810, when
his kingdom came under the direct imperial govern
ment. (3) Louis, king of Aquitaine, who succeeded
his father as emperor. (4) Rotrude, whom the Empress
Irene wanted to marry her son Constantine, and
who died in 810. (5) Bertha, who married the poet
Angilbert, her father's secretary, and successively count

270 THE COURT OF CHARLES.
of the palace to Pepin of Italy and duke of the Western
Scheldt lands. Angilbert took the cowl in 790, with
the consent of his wife ; and he figures in the calendar
of the saints. (6) Gisela, the youngest daughter of
Hildegard, born in 781, had a motherless childhood,
with associations that only accentuated the loss of
her mother. She was shut up in a convent by her
brother Louis, at the age of thirty-three.
Hildegard retained the affection of her husband
until her death in 783, when Charles lost his mother
and his wife within the space of a few months.
Thereafter he married Fastrada and, on her death,
Liutgard, and adorned his court — it can scarcely be
said successively — with Maltegard, Geswinda, and
others. He had children by several of these, and
most of them were provided for by the ever-generous
and all-embracing Church — Hugues, a gallant abbe of
S. Quentin, who died fighting against the Saracens in
844 ; Drogon, bishop of Metz ; and the abbesses
Theodrada and Hiltrude, daughters of Fastrada.
Meanwhile the unhappy Himiltrude, who had pre
cedence of all her rivals, was in some measure
avenged by her hunchbacked son Pepin le Bossu,
who stirred up a plot against his father, and levied
war upon him, and whom the Church, still all-
embracing, received in 792 as an inmate of the
monastery of Pruym.
Our knowledge of the social aspects of the court of
Charles is not direct. In tradition and fable there is
enough to furnish materials for a detailed romance ;
but for the facts that can be weighed, and that are
entitled to mention in a sober narrative, we depend

ALCUIN. 27 1
mainly upon the internal evidence of documents
written by contemporaries, on the slight description
of Eginhard, and on the letters of Alcuin and others.
And from this evidence it is apparent that the court
of Charles was a centre of refinement and culture, of
noble thoughts and high aspirations. This is true
especially of the period during which Charles was in
his prime as a king, and in the earlier years of the
empire. Abbot Alcuin was unquestionably the most remark
able man at the court of King Charles, and did more
than any one else to give tone and character to his
surroundings. He was a member of a Saxon family
settled in the North of England, and was brought up
at York under Archbishop Egbert, and the school
master Ethelbert, himself afterwards archbishop.
Ealhwine, as he then spelt his name, was one of
the most brilliant pupils of a school distinguished
for its cult of Latin letters in an age when the Latin
Church as a whole did little enough for the preserva
tion of the .monuments of pagan learning. Ealhwine
first assisted and then succeeded Ethelbert as
"magister scholarum." He taught Virgil, and he
practised himself and his pupils in writing Latin
prose and verse. Returning in 781 from Rome,
whither he had been to fetch the pallium of the new
archbishop, he fell in at Parma with the Frank
Defender of the Faith. Charles was seven years
younger than Alcuin, and the bright and learned
Saxon ecclesiastic — a relation of the S. Willibrod
who had preached Christianity to the Frisians, and
carried the cross through Saxony in advance of

272 THE COURT OF CHARLES.
the royal armies — found favour in the eyes of the
king. Charles pressed him to come and live at
Aachen, and to take in hand the education of his
children ; and Ealhwine, after returning to York,
and handing over his school to a successor, arrived
in the valley of the Meuse with a few students
who had resolved to follow his fortunes, and a
selection from the beloved texts which he and his
master Ethelbert had spent many months of travel
and much wealth to seek out and secure. He
came at first for a term of three or four years,
after which he paid a visit to England, and
obtained permission from the king of Northumbria
to settle permanently in the Frank dominions.
Thus, in the year 782, was set up at Aachen the
school of the palace of Charles ; and the first pupils
were the children of Hildegard, the king's sister Gisela,
the king himself, with such of his friends as were
studious enough, or courteous enough to exhibit a
desire for instruction, Sigulf and the other North-
countrymen whom Alcuin had brought with him
from York, and doubtless a fair number of persons
admitted by the royal favour. Alcuin's method was,
of course, oral, and chiefly dialectic. A dialogue
between him and the young king Pepin, in which
the latter propounds to the magister a series of
ingenious questions, remains to this day as an
example of early mediaeval school work, which
combined the master's monologue and the child's
exercise of memory with the philosophic argument,
or literary theme, of the most advanced students.
We have seen that at Aachen, as in a few other

ALCUIN AS TEACHER.

273

schools ,in Gaul c and Italy, in Northumbria and
Me'rciay in Ireland,, and rarely elsewhere in the
eighth century, ¦ Latin literature was the groundwork,
or' a^large ,p"aft :6f. the groundwork, of mental culture.

CHIMES.
(From a ninth century MS.)
There were, of course, the trivium and the quadrivium,
for which Alcuin made himself in a special manner
responsible : grammar, rhetoric, logic — arithmetic,
music, geometry, and astronomy. The favourite
studies of Charles's " magister scholarum " were
19

274 THE COURT OF CHARLES.
included in the first of these two systems, though
he claimed authority to' teach in the other also.
In a letter to Charles from Tours, where he lived
and taught in the later years of his life, he said,
" To some I give the honey of the Scripture ; others
I set myself to nourish upon the fruit of grammatical
subtlety. Now and then I intoxicate a student with
the wine of the ancient sciences, and a few I dazzle
with the brightness and the fixed order of the stars."
Charles had caused to be set up at Aachen, whether
at the instigation of Alcuin or not, a large plani
sphere, which might literally dazzle the eye with its
brightness ; for it was sufficiently valuable for his
grandson Lothair to break up into small pieces, at
a crisis in his fortunes, for distribution amongst his
soldiers. The scholastic work of Alcuin, as of his master
Ethelbert, and the patronage accorded to it by
Charles, point to a kind of revival of learning
in the eighth century. The schools opened by
Alcuin and his disciples were in some instances
maintained after his death, by the assistance of
royal or other benefactors, so that the effect of the
Carolingian revival was not entirely lost ; but com
parative darkness succeeded as it had preceded the
brief illumination which had been diffused by the
English teacher and the Frank emperor. It had
been a revival, so far as it was scholastic, of the
ideas of Cassiodorus, and Augustine, and Boethius,
and of the pagan learning of the schools of the
later Roman Empire.
In 796 Alcuin, now over sixty years of age, and

THE SCRIPTORIUM AT TOURS. 27$
perhaps wearying of the worldly aspects of the
court at Aachen, retired to the abbey of S. Martin
of Tours, which, with two other abbeys, had been
conferred upon him by the king. At Tours he
established a school and a scriptorium, over which
he presided until his death, eight years later. To
the end of his life he retained the friendship and
esteem of Charles, who had valued his advice on
political affairs, as well as on questions of learning
and theology. A large number of letters, many of
them written to Charles, are preserved amongst his
works. One of the labours of Alcuin at Tours was the
correction and reproduction of the service books
employed in the churches, and the preparation of
other manuscripts, ecclesiastic or scholastic. Whether
Charles could write well or ill, he ordered that the
sacred books should be examined for the removal
of errors, and renewed if necessary. Alcuin there
fore opened a scriptorium, and employed cunning
scribes to write on parchment with loving care and
devotion. The result was a school of caligraphy
which brought the art to great perfection, and
produced manuscripts in what has come to be
called the Caroline script, superior to anything yet
accomplished, and admired to this day for its clear
ness and artistic treatment. Alcuin, and perhaps
his scribes, came from England and had English
models to work upon. It is on these, rather than
on Italian, Gallic, and other models that the excellent
Caroline hand is based ; and the experts tell us that
the influence of this hand is manifest in the best of

276 THE COURT OF CHARLES.
the subsequent scripts, down to the day when the
printers began to relieve the caligraphists of their
work. In the school of the palace Alcuin had assumed or
accepted the name of Flaccus. The king was known
amongst his intimate friends as David — a title suffi
ciently appropriate in more senses than one ; and
the king's son-in-law, Angilbert, answered to the
pseudonym of Homer. Other men of letters at the
imperial court, who were also Commissioners of the
king, were Theodulf (who called himself Pindar), an
Italian Goth, bishop of Orleans ; Smaragde, abbot
of S.' Michiel ; Leidrade, archbishop of Lyon ; and
S. Benedict of Aniane, whose zeal for the strict
observance of monastic rules Entitles : him to be
remembered in association with his namesake and
brother-saint, who established the first monastery
on Monte Casino two centuries and a half before.
Eginhard, the . Bezaleel of the courtly game of
make-believe, has been mentioned already as the
biographer of Charles. He was still young when
the emperor was well stricken in years,, having
been one of Alcuin's earlier disciples at Aachen.
There he afterwards lived as master of public
works— the same position that William of Wykeham
occupied in relation to Edward III. He was by
birth an Austrian Frank, but wrote in Latin, for
which he apologises to his readers in the preface
to his Vita Caroli Magni in these words : " Perhaps
you wonder that I, a barbarian, too little versed in
the Latin language, should have imagined that I
could write in Latin with any elegance or propriety."

EGINHARD. 277
He goes on to explain that he only did so in order
the more surely to perpetuate the memory of Charles ;
his thought was not for his own reputation, but for
that of his great master. It is fortunate for historians
that he was actuated by such motives, for his biography
of Charles, as Guizot says, is the most distinguished
piece of historical writing between the sixth and the
eighth century, the only one, in fact, which can pro
perly be called history at all, inasmuch as it is " not a
mere chronicle, but a true political biography, written
by an eye-witness of the events described, and that
eye-witness one who understood the importance of
the events." Eginhard's other works, consisting of
letters and annals, do not possess the same literary
merit as the Life above mentioned. After the death
of Charles, he became the confidential' adviser of his
son Louis, and died at the age of 73, in the year 844'.
Raban Maur, archbishop of Mainz, wrote his epitaph,
in which he styled him " Vir nobilis, ingenio prudens,
probus actu, ore facundus."
A certain literary ability, as well as literary taste
and patronage, has been attributed to Charles by his
biographers, who may have been disposed to". flatter
hirh in this respect, or to attribute to -'him directly
what was only due to his initiation. We are told that
he knew Latin well, and even understood some Greek;
that he could write good Latin verse; that he studied
astronomy, was learned in theological controversies,
planned a German grammar, ordered a collection to
be made of the old Germanic hero-lays, and re-named
the months and the winds in his native tongue. All
these things are credible enough, and they would

278 THE COURT OF CHARLES.
suffice to draw from Alcuin his subtle word of
praise : — " If your zeal were imitated by others, we
might see a new Athens rising up in Francia, more
splendid than the old Athens, for it would be
Christ's Athens."
There is less reason for accepting the statement
that Charles was the actual author of the four books
which bear his name (Libri Carolini), written against
the resolutions of the second Council of Nice (787),
which declared in favour of image-worship. The
Empress Irene brought about this reaction on a
point which had helped to alienate the Eastern
and the Western Churches. Pope Adrian was well
pleased by the change, but the mind of Charles
revolted against the encouragement of what he
regarded as a superstition. We cannot tell who
wrote the Caroline Books ; but, in 794, in order to
give effect to his convictions on the subject, the
king called together a national Council at Frankfort
on the Main. By this Council the adoration of
images was condemned ; and its action drew from
Rome a repudiation which does not appear to have
greatly troubled the conscience of the Teuton.
Though Charles was, according to his first
biographer, "a ready and fluent speaker, able to
express himself clearly," it seems doubtful whether
he was proficient in actual penmanship — though his
signature is a work of art, which almost suffices to
prove that he was so. Eginhard, indeed, tells us
that he " tried to write, and would keep under his
pillow his tablets and writing-book, so as to practise
his hand when he had leisure. But he began late

BYZANTINE ENAMEL RELIQUARY.
(From Mt. Athos. Tenth century)

280 THE COURT OF CHARLES.
in life, and made little advance," Few laymen at
this period, however, could do as much as to sign
their names decently : and, even if Charles had to
employ an amanuensis, his zeal for the improvement
of education, especially among the" clergy, cannot
be doubted. A letter from him to the Archbishop
of Mainz is extant, in which he says : " You are
striving with God's help to conquer souls, and yet
you are not anxious to instruct your clergy in
letters, at which I cannot too much wonder. You
see on all sides those who have submitted to your
rule plunged in the darkness of ignorance, and
. . . you leave them in their blindness." In a
general letter to all the bishops and abbes he tells
them that " in agreement with Our faithful advisers,
we have thought fit that, in all bishoprics and
monasteries entrusted by Christ's grace to our
government, care should be taken not only to live
regularly and in conformity with holy religion, but
also to study letters seriously, to teach and to learn,
each man according to his ability and by the help
of God, so that the religious rule of life, which brings
with it honourable conduct and zeal for teaching and
learning, may give regularity and beauty to language."
He complains that he has noticed in a greater part of
the addresses presented to him from the monasteries
that the excellence of the sentiments was not matched
by the elegance of the diction, a fault which could not
be cured save by the diligent study of other men's

1 For further information on the literary efforts of Charles the Great,
see Jaffe, Monumenta Carolina.

LETTERS OF CHARLES AND ALCUIN. 28 1
We have only to read Alcuin's letters to see how
real he believed the enthusiasm of Charles to be. He
writes to his patron on one occasion : " I knew how
strong was the attraction you felt towards knowledge,
and how greatly you loved it. I knew that you were
urging every one to become acquainted with it, and
were offering rewards and honours to its friends, in
order to induce them to come from all parts of the
world to aid in your noble efforts." And after speak
ing of the king's invitation to himself, he adds,
"Would I had been as useful in the service of God
as I was eager to obey you." " I loved so much in
you," he says again, "what I saw that you were seek
ing in me." Charles in his turn addressed Alcuin, in
a letter written about 800, as his " beloved master,
always to be named by us with love " (" dilectissimo
magistro nobisque cum amore nominando Albino
abbati ") ; thanking him in the same letter for his
" welcome blessing on us and our family," and
proceeding to dilate upon a point of ecclesiastical
nomenclature on which Alcuin had written to him.
He concludes with this sentence: "Since you have
borrowed the words of the Queen of Sheba to
Solomon about the happiness of those servants
who wait upon him, and listen to the words of
wisdom, if you know this to be true, come, be with
me, listen, and let us be happy together in the Lord,
rejoicing in the many flowers that bloom in the
luxuriant meadows of Holy Writ " (" et pariter, in
Domino in pratis vernantibus varietate florum
Scripturarum jucundantes delectemur ").
It is unnecessary to say that we do not look to

282 THE COURT OF CHARLES.
Charles, or to Alcuin, or to any writer of their day,
for anything striking in the way of literature, and still
less for any wealth of new ideas. The zeal of the
emperor and the abbot was for the preservation or
revival of Roman letters, and in this they were
imitators, but in no sense creators. If they wrote
vaguely in a language not their own, it was from
necessity rather than from choice. The German
tongues were not yet literary. The " Heliand," a
Saxon religious poem, produced a generation or two
after the death of Charles, is almost the oldest known
written work — not reckoning the ancient runes and
lays which are said to have been collected by order
of the emperor — in the newer continental tongues.
Alcuin doubtless knew something of Bede, and,
through him, of the English of Caedmon ; and Charles
himself would be able to understand Caedmon's verses.
But for the monarch and for the ecclesiastic, Latin
was the only tongue in which their ideas and purposes
could find expression. The statecraft of Charles and
the scholasticism of Alcuin employed as a matter of
course the only form of speech which was common
to the monarch and all his subjects, to the teacher
and to the taught.
Nevertheless, it is to be observed — for it goes far
to explain the darkness of the centuries which closed
the first and began the second millennium of the
Christian era — that Latin such as could have been
comprehended by a Roman of the Augustan epoch
had become by this time almost a sealed language to
the generality of the inhabitants of Western Europe.
"The revolution of language," Hallam says, writing

A LINGUISTIC FAULT. 283
of this period, " had now gone far enough to render
Latin unintelligible without grammatical instruction.
Alcuin and others who, like him, endeavoured to
keep ignorance out of the Church were anxious, we
are told, to restore orthography ; or, in other words,
to prevent the written Latin from following the
corruptions of speech." The new tongues were but
slowly assuming a literary shape ; the old tongue was
rapidly becoming unfamiliar. And as it was with
words, so it was with ideas. The old philosophy,
poetry, historic method and style were passing out of
sight half-a-dozen centuries before Germans, French
men, and Englishmen would be ready to evolve new
systems of philosophy and a style of their own.
If it were just and sufficient to say that the
occurrence of the six or seven darkest centuries
which the world has seen — for darkness following the
daylight of Greece and Rome must be considered
relatively as well as absolutely — was due in the main
to this break in the continuity of human speech,
when dominion passed from nation to nation, but law
and letters and religion could not flow without
interruption from the old nationality to the new, this
fact would surely be one of the most remarkable and
significant in the history of the world. It would be
a strong attestation of the absolute dependence of
the literary spirit upon the written language, not
alone for its existence — which is a truism — but also
for its continuing effect and development. And
though this fault in the linguistic strata is by no
means the sole cause of intellectual relapse, still
there is perhaps no other cause which accounts for

284 THE COURT OF CHARLES.
it in an equal degree. If the education of Gauls and
Teutons in Latin schools had continued steadily from
the times of Ausonius, Ammianus, Cassiodorus, and
Fulgentius, until the patronage of such monarchs as
Charles and Alfred had encouraged scholars of the
northern races to teach in their native tongue as well
as in Latin, it is probable that the chasm of darkness
between the Roman and the Teutonic brilliance would
have been more rapidly and easily bridged. The
devastating brutality of the Merovingians, which all
but emptied Gaul of its Gallo-Roman schools, and
against which the Gallic Church battled manfully but
in vain, submerged the light of learning in Western
Europe, even more completely than the Lombards
submerged it in Italy, and the earlier Saxons and
Danes in England.
It is when we bear these facts in mind that the
literary work of Charles, his encouragement of
schools and his patronage of learning, assume their
true proportions. His own illumination, and the
illumination of Alcuin, were feeble enough as
compared with our own standards ; but, if the spirit
of Charles and Alcuin could have been diffused and
maintained, the brightness would have steadily
accumulated, and the millennium might have ended
with an earlier renaissance. But the diffusion was
confined within narrow limits, and the spirit of
Charles, though it did not actually die with him,
waned for several generations until it finally disap
peared. It is true that the schools of Gaul, which
had been founded or revived at the beginning of the
ninth century, endured, and were even developed,

THE SCHOOLS OF GAUL.

285

under Louis the. Pious and his immediate successors.
In point of fact, poor as was the outcome of the
Carolingian revival, it must be admitted that the
schools of the later Franks made their mark in the
history of education, and that the school of Paris in
particular, which is known to have been in existence
at the end of the ninth century, became the head
quarters of scholasticism, and was expanded into a
famous university.

XX.

THE LIFE AND WORK OF CHARLES.

CHARLES the Great reigned as emperor during the
first fourteen years of the ninth century. Though, as
we have seen, he concerned himself largely during
the later portion of his life with the laws and internal
government of the empire, yet these fourteen years
were by no means years of peace. The submission
of the Saxons was practically complete from 804 ;
but almost immediately their place was taken by
an enemy more formidable and more pertinacious,
against whom Charles was too old to renew the
determined policy of his youth. The northernmost
Saxons, the Danes, and the Scandinavians, of whom
we may speak collectively as Northmen, a hardy and
persistent race, especially at home upon the sea,
began to harry the Franks on the northern coast as
early as 808. The Frisian shore was overrun in 810
and the succeeding years, and became a nearer point
of vantage from whence a rapid succession of piratical
attacks were made upon the exposed towns and
villages on the western shores and estuaries. So long
as the Franks remained strong and vigilant, even
286

THE NORTHMEN. 2%f
after the separation of Neustria from Austria, these
attacks were held in check ; but the time was at hand
when the north-western section of the empire of
Charles was unable to withstand the perpetual inroads
of the teeming North.
These buccaneers of the olden time, some of whom
were ancestors of the Normans who were soon to
descend upon our own coasts, ruled the waves with
almost complete immunity. Close on fifty separate
expeditions, including Irish Kelts as well as Scandi
navians, are mentioned by Frank chroniclers of the
ninth and tenth centuries ; and amongst them were
some which ventured across the Biscay, and found
their way as far as the southern shores of Gaul. The
traders of the Armorican coast, and of the northern
and southern ports, were no match for the fierce sea-
dogs whose only trade was war and plunder. Charles
himself, at the very beginning of the long epoch
of Viking aggression, foresaw the danger which
threatened his country, and wept, as one of his
biographers tells us, when he thought of the evils
which the Northmen were destined to bring upon his
descendants and his people.
Meanwhile a dozen wars continued to rage along
the whole extended frontier of the Empire ; and,
though Charles marched less frequently than of old
at the head of his army, his three sons proved them
selves worthy to continue his policy and to uphold
his reputation. Pepin of Italy imposed peace upon
the Duke of Beneventum without actually subduing
him. Between 806 and 810 he fought several battles
against the Saracens, and drove them out of Corsica ;

288 THE LIFE AND WORK OF CHARLES.
and in 809-10 he struck a heavy blow at the Greeks
in Dalmatia. The younger Charles, in addition to
his constant, and on the whole successful struggle
with the Saracens, contrived to keep the Gascons in
subjection, and fought two campaigns against the
Slavonians in Bohemia. Louis also distinguished
himself in Spain, and led his troops against the still
indomitable Bretons. Twice in the last four years of
his lifethe emperor himself revisited the scenes of his
earliest victories, in 810 driving back the Danes from
the Weser, and in 812, in his seventieth year, advanc
ing against the Wiltzes on the right bank of the
Elbe. Then, at length, not willingly but on compulsion,
the hero of a hundred fights returned his sword to
its scabbard. After the death of his two elder sons,
in 810-11, he summoned Louis of Aquitaine to his
side, and bade him prepare to assume the imperial
dignity. Stimulated by Benedict and others, he had
determined that the abuses which they had noticed
in the practice and discipline of the Church should
be reformed, and to this end he took it on himself to
order the meeting of six national Councils at six
of the principal metropolitan seats, Aachen, Reims,
Chalon on Saone, Tours, Mainz, and Aries, which
were accordingly held in the year 813, and took
measures for the purification of ecclesiastical govern
ment within the empire. The Aachen Council was
simultaneous with a General Assembly of the Franks,
held in the summer, to which all the principal men of
the country had been specially summoned, in order
that they might promise allegiance to Louis. Charles

THE CROWNING OF LOUIS. 289
took counsel with the most powerful amongst them,
and, as Eginhard says, " invited " them to make his
son their emperor conjointly with himself, to which
they all agreed, saying that it was prudent and
pleased them well. A little later, in the basilica of
Aachen, the emperor, wearing his own crown, laid
another upon the altar, and, having publicly addressed
his son on the duties of the monarch towards God
and man, the Church and the people, he asked Louis
if he were solemnly determined to perform these
duties. Louis swore it before the altar, and Charles
then bade him take the crown and place it on his
own head. All the congregation shouted, " Long live
our Emperor Louis ! " Thereupon Charles declared
his son joint-emperor with himself, and cried aloud,
" Blessed be Thou, O Lord God, who of Thy favour
hast permitted me to see my son seated on my
throne ! "
The last days of Charles are thus described by
Eginhard. After sending his son back to Aquitaine,
he proceeded, according to his usual custom, and in
spite of the weakness caused by old age, on a hunting
expedition in the neighbourhood of Aachen, and,
after spending the remainder of the autumn in this
pursuit, returned about the beginning of November.
In the course of the winter, in the month of January,
he took to bed, suffering from a severe attack of
fever. At once, as was his custom in cases of fever,
he ordered himself a lowering diet, thinking that such
abstinence would cure, or at least reduce, the illness ;
but pleurisy (" lateris dolore quern Graeci pleuresin
dicunt") followed, and, as he persisted in his starva-
20

290 THE LIFE AND WORK OF CHARLES.
tion diet, chiefly consisting of infrequent draughts, he
rapidly grew worse. On the seventh day after taking
to bed he received the last offices of religion, and
died in the seventy-second year of his age, and the
forty-seventh of his reign.
Charles was buried on the same day in the basilica
which he had built at Aachen. There is now in the
nave of the church a marble slab bearing the inscrip
tion "Carlo Magno," but some of the relics buried
with the body were removed by Otho III. in 997, and
are now in Vienna. Frederic Barbarossa opened the
vault for the second time in 1165, but caused the
body to be enshrined again, the throne being now
in the upper gallery of the nave.
The life and work of Charles the Great must be
considered in relation to the times in which he lived.
So far as his personal characteristics are concerned,
the conclusion has already been drawn that Charles
at Aachen, like Alfred in England, though in a
higher degree than Alfred, represented a culture
which was in advance of his generation, and which
the Teutons over whom he ruled were not able to
assimilate. A few there naturally would be who
could live at his level of thought and art and refine
ment, and who, in the intervals of annual war, could
return again and again to the life of mental activity
and study. But such men would be very few amongst
the Franks, whose bodily vigour was more conspicuous
than the agility of their minds ; and the few would
have made little or no mark upon their generation if
they had not been brought into prominence by the
patronage of the monarch. A generation or two

AN ABORTIVE REVIVAL. 29I
after the death of Charles the effect of his example
began to disappear ; the memory of his real service
to learning gradually faded away, and gave place
to more or less idle and exaggerated legends. The
time for a renaissance of letters had not arrived ; the
intellect of the ancient world had but flickered up
for a moment before its death, and the intellect of
the modern world needed centuries of gestation
before it could acquire the strength to be born. For
Charles, though he was modern by race, drew little of
his culture from the essentially modern ideas. The
mould of his mind was Roman, and his models had
been placed before him by Roman ecclesiastics. In
so far as the Franks were mentally cultivated, it
was because their minds had been partly Romanised,
and the ambitions of Charles led him to imitate the
empire which his ancestors had done so much to
destroy. Beyond the Teutonic principles of law, and
the traditions of popular meeting and election, not
much that was political or intellectual in the ninth
century can be traced as the special contribution of
the Germans to the progress of mankind.
Their contribution, it is true, was both large and
important, but it was practical rather than theoretical,
domestic rather than political, and physical rather
than mental. The Frank had beaten the Roman
and the Gallo-Roman by his superior strength and
energy ; but civilisation and culture are not amongst
the natural gifts of physical strength and energy.
This is one of the main reasons why such culture
as was to be found at the court of Charles the
Great could not be expected to abide amongst the

292 THE LIFE AND WORK OF CHARLES.
nation of the Franks, still less to survive the incur
sions of the Northmen. We cannot wonder that the
imitative refinement of Aachen turned out to be
little more than a transient phenomenon.
Nevertheless the legend of Charlemagne was more
permanent, and produced a more potent result, than
his eager encouragement of learning. Whilst the
discussions at Aachen, the benefactions at Tours and
elsewhere, and the high-minded appeals to the bishops,
can scarcely be held to have led to any more effective
advance than the slow evolution of scholasticism, there
was something more widely striking and impressive
in the imperial grandeur of Charles, his stately court,
his energetic rule, his supremacy over Europe, his
expeditions year after year, at the head of a magnifi
cent array, surrounded by his paladins (knights of
the palace), to beat back the infidel, to chastise his
enemies, to succour the oppressed, and to impose
Christianity on conquered nations. The eyes of those
who saw him, and the imaginations of those who sang
his famous deeds, preserved and embellished for future
generations one of the most picturesque and romantic
figures in the history of mankind, around which his
glorious legend was developed and crystallised, until
it became the inspiring model of chivalry and the
germ-idea of the Crusades. This was a spectacle
which could be appreciated and understood by all the
Franks, and after them by all the Teutons. It supplied
them with a literature in advance of learning, and with
an ideal of life not hopelessly beyond their reach.
There was a time, both before and after Clovis, when
to be a Frank and not a- brave and patriotic fighting

THE LATER FRANKS. 293
man was almost impossible. Under the later Mero
vingians the energy and temper of the race began to
show signs of relaxation, especially in and about the
courts of the kings ; and it was then that the election
of Mayors of the Palace revived the older and
stronger tradition. The vigour of the Carolingians
was transfused through the nation, which regained its
earlier force, and made its name once more a symbol
of irresistible power. Eginhard mentions a proverb
of Greek origin which shows how the more formidable
qualities of the predominant race had re-asserted
themselves in the time of Charles the Great: — "tov
Qpayicbv (jt'iXc f'xi'P' ys'irova ouk e'x^C " — "You may
have a Frank as your friend, but beware of him
as a neighbour." The Franks were aggressive and
masterful, but in their best days they were simple in
domestic life and loyal in war. It was chiefly under
the Merovingians, and through the Merovingians,
that they earned their worst repute for treachery and
corruption. Charles, as we have seen, the descendant of Austrian
Mayors, was, by circumstances and by his own choice,
a German emperor, and the distinction between the
eastern and the western halves of the Frank domi
nions was emphasised after the extinction of the
Carolingian house. But the dominant character of
the Franks did not disappear with the Carolingians,
even amongst the Franks who were gradually
assimilated to the Gallo-Romans, and converted into
Frenchmen; and it was through these later Franks
that the old Frank energy passed into the veins of
the Crusaders. " From what part of Europe the

294 THE LIFE AND WORK OF CHARLES.
crusading impulse really came," says Freeman,1 "we
see by the name which all the nations of Western
Europe have ever since born on Eastern lips. From
those days till ours they have always been the Franks,
Franks of course in the sense which the word Franci
bore at Paris, not in that which it bore at Aachen.
And among such Franks the Normans held a foremost
place." So, indeed, it was throughout the long period
of the settlement of the Easterns in the West, and of
the Northerns in the South — the strongest strain of the
settlers was always that which had been re-transfused
with Eastern and Northern blood.
Something, again, has already been said of another
permanent achievement of the first Frank emperor,
the confirmation and enrichment of the Roman
Church, concerning which it would be hard indeed to
say whether the ultimate results of his intervention
were more profitable or more disastrous for the Chris
tian Church at large. The lust of empire affected
both the popes of Rome and the Frank kings. The
ambition of Charles was natural and honourable, and
his exercise of imperial authority was undoubtedly
benevolent. In order to secure his coronation he
played, though reluctantly, into the hands of the
pope, and strengthened the foundations of the
temporal power, which he regarded as inconsistent
with the religion of Christ, and an encroachment on
the secular dominion. In succeeding centuries, the
German emperors of the Holy Roman Empire took
steps to check the growth of the papal states by force
of arms, but they did not go so far as to secularise
1 " The Norman Conquest," v. 356.

CHRIST AND HIS MOTHER.
(Ninth century fresco.)

296 THE LIFE AND WORK OF CHARLES.
what had come to be known as the patrimony of
Saint Peter. Thus it fell out that the wealth of the
Church corrupted the purity of the faith ; and, in
respect both of discipline and of dogma, all but the
most undiscriminating apologists of Rome have ad
mitted the truth of what Wyclif was one of the
earliest to affirm, that there is a distinct contrast
between the tenets of the first millennium and the
tenets of the second, between the attitude and de
cisions of the Church before its temporal aggrandise
ment and the claims of the Vatican at a later period.
The influence of the Franks, and of Charles the
Great in particular, upon the Angles and Saxons in
England was indirect, but none the less important.
It is the more difficult to measure its extent because
both nations inherited many customs and characteris
tics from their common ancestors in Germany; but
there can be no question that Englishmen were
indebted to the Franks of Gaul for large and durable
contributions, before as well as after the Norman
conquest. The Anglo-Norman law has been spoken
of by jurisprudents as a daughter of the Frank law.
"The Frankish monarchy,1 the nearest approach to a
civilised power that existed in Western Europe since
the barbarian invasions, was in many things a pattern
for its neighbours and for the states and principalities
that rose out of its ruins. That we received from the
Normans a contribution of Frankish ideas and customs
is indubitable. From the time of Charles the Great
onward, the rulers of both Mercia and Wessex were
1 " The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I.," by
Sir F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland (Cambridge University Press).

KING OFFA. 297
in intimate relations with the Frankish kings." They
were relations of marriage, of trade, of social inter
course and borrowed ideas ; and, amongst these
borrowed ideas, the maxims and methods of law are
not the least significant.
The friendship between Charles and Offa, king of
the Mercians (d. 796), was somewhat intimate, and
the two kings took practical steps to encourage
trade amongst their subjects. Charles proposed a
marriage between his eldest son and the daughter
of Offa, but was offended when the Mercian king
claimed a reciprocal alliance for his own son. The
quarrel was ultimately adjusted ; the kings became
good friends again, and renewed their correspondence.
A letter from Charles to Offa asks for the recall of a
Scottish priest who was residing at Cologne ; others
promise that English merchants and pilgrims shall
be protected, and others again speak of gifts which
had been sent to Offa, and to various Mercian and
Northumbrian bishops. Like all the best Teutonic
kings, Offa wrote or re-wrote the laws of his people,
which Alfred incorporated with others in the following
century.

XXI.

THE PARTITION OF THE EMPIRE.

AFTER the death of Charles, the power of the
Franks in Gaul rapidly declined. The government
of the empire, so far as it had been systematic and
effectual, depended on the spirit and energy of one
man. Without the strong personal authority of
Charles, the wisdom of his ministers and commis
sioners would have been of little avail. To succeed
him was a task demanding consummate skill and
firmness, and these were qualities in which his son
Louis was conspicuously deficient.
Louis the Pious, who is also called the Debonnair,
presents the melancholy spectacle of a man essentially
good by nature, full of lofty intentions, amiable and
magnanimous in private life, quick to repent when he
had done amiss, and quicker to forgive an injury, yet
wanting in vigour and resolution, easily relying on the
advice of others, and destitute of the worldly wisdom
which would have enabled him to choose his advisers
well. Men of his character are numerous in every
age ; they are doomed to suffer themselves and to
bring suffering on others ; and when they are born, as
298

LOUIS THE PIOUS. 299
Louis was born, to hold the reins of government, their
life is apt to be a tragedy. So it was with the son of
Charles the Great, who not only had to face the rebel
lion of half-subjected nations on the borders of the
empire, with disaffection on the part of his leudes, and
incessant ravages by the Northmen, but also expe
rienced the fate of our own Henry II. at the hands of
his turbulent and ambitious sons.
The Slavonians, Gascons, Bretons, and Burgundians
were amongst the earlier foes who imposed on Louis
the necessity of fighting for the preservation of his
father's conquests. Expeditions against the two first-
mentioned nations were followed by the revolt of the
emperor's nephew Bernard, son of Pepin of Italy,
who had not been confirmed in succession to his
father, and whose animosity had been increased by
the nomination of his cousins, the sons of Louis, to
imperial and royal dignities. If Charles or Louis
had recognised Bernard as king of Italy, he would
virtually have established a hereditary dynasty in
that country, whereas it was essential to maintain
it as an integral part of what was looked upon as
the rejuvenated Roman empire. The rebellion of
Bernard was suppressed ; he was condemned to lose
his eyes, and died a few days after the infliction
of this barbarous punishment. The cruelty is
incongruous with most of what we are told about
the character of Louis ; but he took the responsibility
upon himself, and performed a public act of penance
for it at Attigny, in 822.
Louis, who had made enemies for himself at the
beginning of his reign by suddenly substituting a

300 THE PARTITION OF THE EMPIRE.
decorous, if not an ascetic, court for the freedom
and laxity permitted in the later days of Charles,
weakened his authority in 817 by a premature
bestowal of crowns upon his three sons. The eldest,
Luther or Lothair, who was just nineteen, he
associated with himself as emperor ; Pepin, who
was eleven, ¦ was made king of Aquitaine, and
Louis, who was eight, became king of Bavaria.
They are shown, with their descendants, to the last
of the Carolingians, in the table on the opposite page.
In connection with the sanguinary quarrels of the
sons of Louis the Pious, Sir F. Palgrave makes the
following very pertinent observation : — " Amongst
other inherent germs of evil in the Carlovingian
Empire was the absence of any definite law of
succession or heritable representation : the children
acknowledged the parent's power of appointing or
partitioning his dominions, but never obeyed that
power practically or honestly unless under compul
sion, or when it suited their own interest. No
certain principle could be discovered, whether an
appropriation once made to this or that son or
nephew was or was not revocable or irrevocable.
Some portions of the empire had distinct constitu
tional rights, Aquitaine especially so : so also
Armorica, so also Bavaria. Austrasia and Neustria
were sometimes considered as united in one great
national Assembly, and sometimes not. Popular
assent was sometimes solicited and sometimes
neglected." *
The successive subdivisions of the Frank empire
1 " The History of Normandy and of England."

Louis the Pious,
Emperor, 814-840.

Lothair,
Emp., 840-855.

Louis II.
K. of Italy,
Emp., 855-75.
Irmengard m. Boson.

I I
Lothair, Charles,
K. of K. of
Lorraine, Provence,
855-869. 855-863.

I
Pepin,
King of
Aquitaine, 817-838.
Pepin II.

Louis of
Provence,
K. 890, Emp. 901.

Louis III.
of Neustria,
879-882.

Louis the German,
K. of Bavaria, 817-876.
1
i

Charles the Bald,
King of Neustria, 838.
Emp., 875-7.

Louis,
876-881.

Charles the Fat,
Emp., 884-7.

Charles, King of
Aquitaine, 855-866.

I
Louis the
Stammerer, King of
Aquitaine, 866-879.

I
Carloman
of Aquitaine, 879 ;
and Neustria,
8S2-4.

Charles the Simple
of Neustria, &c,
898-922.

Louis D'Outremer,
954-986. _l_ I

I
Lothair, 986. I

Charles.

Louis le Faineant,
d. 987.
[Followed by Hugues Capet.]

to
8
ri
toto

OJ O

302 THE PARTITION OF THE EMPIRE.
which will have to be mentioned in this chapter
will be more clearly understood if we recall the
partition of authority made by Charles the Great
amongst his three sons. The empire, it will be
remembered, was drawn together again before the
death of Charles, and came entire into the hands
of Louis. The States reserved by Charles under
his direct government, or subsequently annexed by
him, were as follows : — ¦
I. Neustria, bounded by the English Channel, the
Atlantic, the Loire, the Lower Meuse, and the
Scheldt. 2. Austria, bounded by the Scheldt, the Upper
Meuse, the left bank of the Upper Rhine (so as to
include what was afterwards called Alsace), and the
Alleman lands between the Upper Rhine and
Danube. 3. The Frisian Lands, between the Rhine and
the Weser.
4. Saxony, between the Weser and the Elbe,
stretching southwards to Franconia and Thuringia.
5. Thuringia, between the Upper Weser and the
Eastern Saale (tributary to the Elbe).
6. Northern Allemannia.
7. Tributary States to the empire were Moravia,
partly corresponding to the present Hungary, right
and left of the river Morava ; Bohemia, right and
left of the Upper Elbe ; the Sorabian (Servian)
land between the Saale and the Upper Oder ; the
land of the Wiltzes, north of the Sorabes, extending
to the Baltic ; the land of the Obotrites, between the

PARTS OF THE EMPIRE. 303
Wiltzes and the Nordalbingians ; and the duchy of
Beneventum, which was not under the direct sway
of the Italian king.
The kingdom of Italy included the peninsula
north of Beneventum, excepting the territories of the
Church; the old Lombard lands eastward of Provence;
Southern Allemannia, Bavaria and Carinthia, almost
as far eastward as Vienna.
The kingdom of Aquitaine included the countries
of Aquitaine and Burgundy, as already defined in this
volume, bounded by Neustria, Austria, Allemannia,
and Northern Italy, and touching the Pyrenees south
of Toulouse ; Provence, between the river Durance
and the Mediterranean ; Septimania ; Gascony ; the
Marches of Spain, a little beyond Barcelona and
Pampeluna ; with Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearic
Isles.1 Louis the Pious, it will be seen, was more spar
ing in his devolution of authority. Outside of the
Aquitanian kingdom he only assigned the duchy of
Bavaria to the youngest of his three sons by his
empress Hermengard, raising it to the status of
a kingdom, bounded by the Lechs and the Ens, the
Danube and the Eastern Alps. But even this sub
division, made so soon after the beginning of his
reign, was taken as a sign of weakness, and, added
to his elaborate prostration before Pope Stephen IV.
on his coronation at Reims in 816, to his public
penances, to the relaxation of his father's stringency
of imperial rule, and to the too sudden and stringent
'See Lalanne, " Dictionnaire Historique de la France," under the
word " France."

304 THE PARTITION OF THE EMPIRE.
curbing of his court, had the effect of making his
leudes restive, his sons presumptuous, his subjects
unsettled, and his tributaries rebellious.
After the death of the Empress Hermengard,
Louis married Judith, daughter of Count Welf of
Bavaria, and by her, in 823, he had a son who is
known to history as Charles the Bald. When this
boy was six years old his father carved out for him
a kingdom, including Allemannia, with Rhaetia and
a part of Burgundy. By this time the impatience
of the Franks under the weak, yet autocratic rule of
their emperor had come to a head. Judith — between
whom and the Queen-Empress Victoria there is a
titular tie, if not actually a tie of blood — appears
to have been masterful and intriguing. She and her
son were even more unpopular than Louis ; and, as
the result of a conspiracy in which the sons of
Hermengard took part, she was suddenly removed
from court, and imprisoned in a convent at Poitiers.
The emperor submitted to his leudes at his palace of
Compendium on the Oise (Compiegne), where he was
deposed in favour of his son, Lothair, whilst Charles
was deprived of his kingdom, and the Aachen arrange
ment of 817 was insisted on. There was, however,
very little delay before a counter-plot reversed the
decisions of Compiegne ; and a General Assembly at
Nimeguen restored Louis to his throne. Pepin of
Aquitaine had taken part both in the plot and counter
plot, but he was still unwilling to lose the Burgundian
provinces which had been conferred upon Charles.
He revolted once more, and took up arms against his
father, with the result that Louis deprived him of his

LOUIS AND HIS SONS. 305
kingdom, and gave it to Judith's son. The three
sons of Hermengard again made common cause ;
Louis, deserted by many of his supporters, on what
came to be called the Luegenfeld, or Champ des
Mensonges, near Colmar, again submitted (833), and
Lothair was once more recognised as sole emperor.
The English reader will find, perhaps, the best
account of this period in the first volume of Sir F.
Palgrave's " Normandy and England." He quotes
the following passage from the Conquestio or Com
plaint of Louis, who was imprisoned in the Abbey of
S. Medard at Soissons : — " They placed me here,
striving to drive me to an abdication, being well aware
how I honour the sanctuary, and how I venerate the
memory of S. Medard and S. Sebastian." (Louis
bestowed the neighbouring Abbey of Choisy on the
Abbot and monks of S. Medard.) " They continually
perplexed me by false intelligence. Sometimes they
told me that my wife had become a nun, sometimes
that she was dead ; sometimes that my innocent
Charles, whom they knew I loved above all things,
was shorn as a monk." (Charles was at this time
imprisoned at Pruym.) " And inasmuch as I, deprived
of my kingdom, my wife, my child, could not bear
these griefs, I passed my days and nights in tears and
sorrow." Then a new reaction took place ; Pepin and Louis
of Bavaria refused to acknowledge Lothair ; Judith
resolutely espoused the cause of her husband and her
son ; assemblies at S. Denis and Thionville played the
same part as that at Nimeguen ; and the twice-restored
emperor confirmed Charles in his kingdom. The
21

306 THE PARTITION OF THE EMPIRE.
animosities and intriguing of the empress, the sons of
Hermengard, the political clergy, the leudes and
court officials, continued to be keen and warm for
some years to come. Pepin regained a part of his old
dominion, but did not acquiesce in the loss of the
remainder ; and a majority of his subjects appear to
have remained loyal to him. There were Councils at
Cremieu in 835, at Aachen in 836, and at Aachen
again in 838. A raid of Northmen in 837 created
a temporary suspension of this bitter and fatal

controversy. But in the following year there was
another Council at Aachen, and a General Assembly at
Kiersey on the Oise, the latter being held for the
special purpose of crowning Charles, now a stripling
in his sixteenth year, as king of (German) Francia,
Burgundy, and Neustria. Aquitaine was left to
Pepin, but in the same year, before he had had time to
stir up fresh trouble, he died, at the age of thirty-two.
His son Pepin was elected in his stead, though, like
Bernard of Italy, he did not secure the confirma
tion of the emperor. The kingdom of Aquitaine

DEATH OF LOUIS. 307
was claimed by Judith for her son, and Louis sum
moned an Assembly at Worms, declaring his intention
to make a new partition of the empire. Louis of
Bavaria had again revolted, after the settlement made
at Kiersey ; but Lothair was now at his father's side,
discharging the duties and forming the expectations
of an eldest son. At Worms, then, in 839, Louis
divided his empire into two parts, separated from each
other by the Meuse and the Rhone, the sources of
which are but a few miles distant from each other.
Lothair, who had his choice in the inheritance,
selected the eastern half, leaving the western to his
half-brother Charles ; whilst Louis, in spite of his
rebellion, was allowed to retain the kingdom of
Bavaria. It remained to quell the opposition of Louis
and the younger Pepin ; and the emperor had
advanced as far as Mainz, on the way to Bavaria,
when he was struck down by a fever, and died at
Ingelheim, in June, 840.
This event had the effect of destroying the agree
ment which had been come to at Worms. In order
to maintain the last dispositions of Louis the Pious,
it would have been necessary for Lothair and Charles
to combine against Louis the German and Pepin II.;
but Louis was rapidly extending his sway over all
the Frank lands east of the Rhine, and Lothair, at
whose expense this aggression was being made, had
neither sufficient honesty to keep the pledges which
he had made to his father in the interests of Charles,
nor sufficient wisdom to retain Charles as an ally
against Louis. He had, in fact, broken his pledges
on the morrow of his father's death by conspiring with

308 THE PARTITION OF THE EMPIRE.
his nephew Pepin against his younger brother, and
this, apparently, before he recognised that Louis had
made himself exceedingly formidable. It came to the
knowledge of Charles that his mother, the Empress
Judith, was threatened by her old enemies, and was
practically a prisoner in Poitiers. He hastened to
her relief, and by her advice entered into an alliance
with Louis of Bavaria. The latter at once led a large
army of Bavarians and Saxons across the Rhine, and
joined forces with the army of Charles. Lothair and
Pepin encountered them at Fontenai (Fontenailles),
some eighteen miles from Auxerre, and a sanguinary
battle, fought on June 25, 841, ended in the defeat of
Lothair and his ally.
During the next few months the emperor was
gradually recovering from this disaster, and preparing
for a new effort, whilst Louis and Charles cemented
their alliance, confirming it by a solemn exchange of
oaths at the town of Argentaria, on the Rhine, some
little distance to the south of Argentoratum, the
modern Strassburg. The precise locality is doubtful.
Some identify it with the Roman Argentovaria, now
Arzenheim, nine or ten miles from Colmar ; others
with Colmar itself; and others again with the village
of Arburg.
In order to give special weight to their pledges, the
two kings exchanged them in the presence of their
armies ; and the circumstances are particularly in
teresting because a contemporary writer has preserved
the exact words of the oaths taken by the monarchs
and by their armies, in Gallo-Roman (" romana ") and
German (" teudisca lingua ".), thus providing us with a

THE OATHS OF ARGENTARIA. 309
co'nVenfent opportunity of illustrating side by side the
forms which .these, two languages had assumed in the
ninth century.
The oaths of Argentaria, taken in the spring of 842,
were as follows : —
In the first place Louis, being the older of the
two kings, pledged himself in these words : — " Pro
Deo amur, et pro christian poblo et nostro commun
salvament, dist di in avant, in quant Deus savir -et
podir me dunat, si.salvaraeio.cist meon fradre- Karlor
et in adiudha et in cadhuna cosa, si cum om per dreit
son fradra salvar dist, in o quid il mi altresi fazet ; et
ab Ludher nul plaid numquam prindrai, qui meon vol
cist meon fradre Karlo in damno sit."
That is to say — " For the love of God, and the
Christian people, and our common salvation, from this
day forward, in so far as God shall grant me know
ledge and power, so will I succour this my brother
Charles, both in aid and in everything, as a man by
right ought to save his brother, in the (case) that he
shall do even so to me ; and never will I take any
plea (order) from Lothair, which by my will shall
injure this my brother Charles."
We must remember that Louis (Ludwig) in Bavaria
was surrounded by courtiers and officers who, with
the exception of the clergy in the churches, rarely
spoke any other language than that of Southern
Germany, and that his army would speak Tudesque
almost to a man. But the object of the oath-taking *
was that each of the two armies should hear the
leader of the other army swearing in a language
which they could understand ; and • this is why Louis

3IO THE PARTITION OF THE EMPIRE.
swore in Roman speech, for the men of Neustria
and Aquitaine, whilst Charles swore in Tudesque for
the men who lived in Germany.
It will be no waste of time to compare the oath
of Louis, word by word, with the older Latin form of
speech on the one hand, and with the modern French
equivalent on the other. The reader will observe
that every word is Latin in its origin ; there is no
trace whatever (beyond the proper names) of German
or of Keltic contribution or influence.
Latin — Pro Dei amore et pro christiano populo et nostro
Romana — Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro
French — ¦ Pour de Dieu amour et pour Chretien peuple et notre
L. communi salvamento de isto die in advenientem, in quanto
R. commun salvament dist di in avant, in quant
F. commun salut de ce[t] j[our] en avant, [en tant que]
L. Deus sapere et po[te]sse me donet, sic salvabo [cejistum meum
R. -Deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvaraeio cist meon
F. Dieu savoir et pouvoir me donne, ainsi sauverai ce [celui] mon
L. fratrem Carolum, et in adjumento et in quacunque causa, sic
R. fradre Karlo, et in adiudha et in cadhuna cosa, si
F. frere Charles, et en aide et en chacune cause, ainsi
L. quam homo per directum suum fratrem salvare debet, in eo quod
R. cum om per dreit son fradre salvar dist, in o quid
F. que on par droit son frere sauver doit, en ce que
L. ille mihi alterno modo sic faciat ; et a[b] Luthero nullum placitum
R. il mi altre -si fazet ; et ab Ludher nul plaid
F. il me autrement ainsi fasse ; et a Luther nul plaid
L. nunquam prehendam quod mea voluntate ce[isti] meo fratri
R. numquam prindrai qui meon vol cist meon fradre
F. [jamais] prendrai qui ma volonte ce[lui] [a] mon frere
L. Carolo in damno sit.
R. Karlo in damno sit.
F. Charles en dommage soit.
The oath of Charles, repeated in German for the

TUDESQUE. 311
better understanding of the army of Louis, was to the
same effect — "In Godes minna ind in thes christianes
folches, ind unser bedhero gealtnissi, fon thesemo dage
frammordes, so fram so mir Got gewizci indi madh
furgibit, so haldih tesan minan bruodher, soso man
mit rehtu sinan bru[od]her seal, in thiu thaz er mig
sosamo duo ; indi mit Ludheren in nohheinin thing
ne geganga, the minan willon imo ce scadhen werhen."
As the Roman has been compared with the more
ancient Latin, so the Tudesque oath may be placed
side by side with the modern German equivalents of
the separate words : — -" In Gottes Liebe, und in die-
sem Christlichen Volk und unser beider Erhaltung,
von diesem Tag von nun an, so wie Gott Wissen und
Macht vergibt, so [will] ich halten diesen meinen
Bruder, wie Mann mit Recht seinen Bruder soil, in
dem dasz er mir so [English, same] thut ; und mit
Luther in keinem Ding nicht gehen [will] das [mit]
meinem Willen ihm Schaden werke."
The oath taken by the army of Charles was in
these words:— "Si Lodhuvigs sagrament quae son
fradre Karlo iurat conservat, et Karlus meos sendra
de suo part non lo stanit, si io returnar non int pois,
ne io ne neuls cui eo returnar int pois, in nulla aiudha
contra Lodhuwig nun li iner." And to the same
effect was the oath taken by the army of Louis the
Germanic in their own tongue : — " Oba Karl then eid
then er sineno bruodher Ludhuwige gesuor geleistit,
ind Ludhuwig min herro then er imo gesuor forbrichit,
ob ih inan es irwenden ne mag, noh ih, noh thero,
nohhein then ih es irwenden mag, uidhar Karle imo
ce follusti ne wirdhic." That is to say — " If Louis (or

312 THE PARTITION OF THE EMPIRE.
Charles) keeps the oath which he has sworn to his
brother Charles (or Louis), and Charles (or Louis),
my lord, breaks that which he swore to him, if I
cannot turn him aside, nor myself, nor any of those
whom I might turn aside, I will not be with him in
-any aid against Louis (or Charles)." J
These oaths were in themselves very solemn, cir
cumstantial, and stringent ; they became still more
so by the conditions under which they were taken,
and by the events which followed during the next
few years. The Thuringians, Bavarians, and South
Saxons on the one .part, the Gallo-Romans, Bretons,
and Gascons on the other, distinct in history, customs,
manners, and language, had been thrown together by
their political necessities, and were to be linked in
feeling for many a long day by the importance of
their achievement and the permanence of its results.
They were virtually, nay, actually, the founders of
Germany and France as we have them to-day.
Their kings were Carolingians, their leaders and
their fighting men must have included a considerable
number of Franks ; and yet it is in the highest
degree important to note that they were not Frank
by great preponderance, nor characteristically Frank
in spirit. All the nations which are mentioned above
— and they are the nations expressly mentioned by
the contemporary historian Nithard — had been fight
ing the Franks for centuries ; and the moment had
come when, at Fontenai and at Verdun, a great
combination of anti-Franks, yet under Frank leader-
1 Pertz, " Monumenta Germanias Historica" : Nithard, bk. iii., ann.
842, " De Dissensionibus Filiorum Ludovici Pii."

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE OATHS. 313
ship, was able to throw off as much as was detachable
of the Frank yoke.
The significance of the crisis from this point of
view has been somewhat overlooked, and it is worth
while to dwell upon it on that account. The battle
of Fontenai, the oaths of Argentaria, and the
subsequent compact at Verdun created two of the
mighty States which were to play a leading part in
the second Christian millennium — so much so that,
as Sir F. Palgrave has said, "The history of modern
Europe is an exposition of the treaty of Verdun."
It is true that they definitely broke up the Frank
empire as established by Charles the Great, which
the ecclesiastics in particular had loved to picture as
the Roman Empire restored, and which the Roman
people and Church had helped to build on the old
foundations. But that empire could not by any
possibility have endured in its entirety as a political
dominion including the whole of Italy, Germany, and
Gaul. It was heterogeneous, incohesive, and certain
to break to pieces, leaving the three chief component
nations to stand apart in their original distinctness,
though with a common civilisation and a common
religion. The title of emperor remained, to be in
herited, or fought for, or bestowed by election. The
more descriptive title of Holy Roman Empire was
to descend through the pages of German history, now
as a substantial fact with practical and important
consequences, now as a brilliant memory. The
French monarchy was to vaunt itself as the eldest
son of the Church, and to claim a special hereditary
right to defend the integrity of Rome. But mean-

314 THE PARTITION OF THE EMPIRE.
while the political empire of Charles the Great had
fallen asunder, and the principal work of the
Carolingians, and of the Franks, may be held to have
been completed.
The army of Lothair, on the other hand, must
have been far more characteristically Frank than
that of his brothers. He was the Frank emperor,
in possession of Aachen, with all the symbols and
machinery of the imperial power. Though his
authority east of the Rhine was diminished by the
rapidly increasing influence of Bavaria, it is said that,
in his anxiety to recruit his forces after the battle of
Fontenai, he gained the adhesion of a certain number
of Saxons by permitting the restoration of the pagan
worship which his grandfather had so sternly sup
pressed — a cynical apostasy not out of keeping with
the violation of the pledges which he had made to
his father on his deathbed.
The emperor, however, in spite of his efforts and
those of Pepin of Aquitaine to renew the strength of
their army, and to take revenge for their defeat at
Fontenai, did not muster courage for a fresh attack ;
and in the summer of 842 he approached his brothers
with proposals of peace. They were now close to
Chalon on Saone, having advanced so far from
Argentaria ; and the three brothers met to discuss
the terms of peace and partition. But it was not
until August, 843, that an agreement was come to at
Verdun. Pepin was allowed to keep Aquitaine, and
the remainder of the empire was divided, after much
consultation and negotiation, into three parts, which
were regarded as precisely equivalent. Charles the

THE TREATS OF VERDUN. 3 1 5
Bald took everything to the west of the Rhone, the
Saone, the Meuse, and the Scheldt, except a few
districts on the left bank of the last-named river.
Next to him came the Emperor Lothair, whose
territory extended from the North Sea to the borders
of Calabria in Italy, his eastward boundary being the
Rhine and the Carnic Alps. The kingdom of Louis
comprised the whole of Germany from the Rhine to
the Elbe, and from the North Sea and Baltic down to
the Alps.
This, as we have said, was virtually a definitive
partition of the conquests of the Franks, which is a
very different thing from saying that it was acquiesced
in by all who were concerned in it, or that its details
remained without change for any considerable length
of time. As a matter of fact, Charles the Bald
attacked Pepin in the year following the conclusion
of the treaty of Verdun, and gained a victory over
him in the neighbourhood of Angouleme, though it
took him ten years to make himself master of
Aquitaine, and he failed to overcome the resistance
of the Bretons. Lothair also had trouble with Pro
vence, but, most of all, the three brothers began to
trouble each other again, each two in turn combining
against the third. All this did not prevent Central
and Western Gaul from developing steadily into
France, or the kingdom founded by Louis of Bavaria
from developing into Germany.
Lothair died in 855, and was succeeded in the
kingdom of Italy and the imperial title by Louis IL,
whilst his second son, Lothair, became king of Lorraine
(Lothringen, " Lotharii regnum "), and his youngest

3l6 THE PARTITION OF THE EMPIRE.
son, Charles, king of Provence. Charles the Bald,
after setting his son on the throne of Aquitaine, and
repelling an invasion by Louis the German, presently
attacked his nephew in Provence, and, the young king
dying in 863, his uncles divided the kingdom between
them. They did the same thing in 869 with the
Lothringian kingdom ; and, six years later, Charles
invaded Italy. The Emperor Louis died in this
year (875), and the son of Judith seized the oppor
tunity of having himself crowned as emperor at
Rome. The king of Germany died eight months
later, before he could contest with his brother the
possession of the imperial crown ; but in the follow
ing year his son and namesake defeated Charles at
Andernach. Exactly one year later, the last son of Louis the
Pious came to the end of his strenuous and adven
turous life, and Louis the Stammerer, who was
already king of Aquitaine, succeeded him as king
of Neustria, but not as emperor. Some writers have
concluded that the imperial dignity would pass, on
the death of Charles the Bald, as naturally as the
kingship — as easily as it passed from the Emperor
Lothair to his eldest son in 855. But the son of
Charles was never emperor, and there was no
succession between 877 and 884. There may have
been, and probably would be, a claim, and more
claims than one ; but that was not sufficient. In
877 the line of Lothair was represented solely by his
granddaughter Irmengard, who was married to Boson
of Provence, and her blind son. The line of Pepin
was extinct. The reigns of the three Kings of

CHARLES THE FAT. 3 17
Aquitaine and Neustria, in succession to Charles the
Bald, endured a little less or more than two years.
It is possible that they claimed the imperial crown,
but had not time to secure their coronation by
the Pope. Moreover, the son and grandsons of
Charles had to reckon with the rivalry of the sons
of Louis the German, and thus there was quite
enough to account for the inter-imperium of seven
years. Louis the Stammerer died in 879 ; his son,
Louis III., king of Neustria, died in 882 ; and his
second son, Carloman, king of Aquitaine, died in 884.
Charles the Fat, second son of Louis the German,
being for the moment, after the many casualties of
the past ten years, sole remaining king of the Frank
dynasties, was recognised and crowned as emperor
in 884. More than that, the empire of Charles the
Great was for the next three years reunited, but it
fell to pieces again on the deposition of Charles
in 887.
One of the chief crimes of Charles the Fat,
for which, amongst others, he had been deposed by
his subjects, was the conclusion of a disgraceful
treaty with the Northmen, by which he ceded to
them a part of Friesland. Ever since the latter
years of Charles the Great, the storm from the north
had been beating disastrously upon the shores of
Neustria and Aquitaine. Scarcely a year passed by
that was not marked by audacious inroads of Scan
dinavians, Danes, and Saxons. In 837 they plundered
Menapian and Frank cities on the Lower Rhine. In
841 Rouen was sacked and burned. A year later
they ascended the Loire, and sacked Blois and

318 THE PARTITION OF THE EMPIRE.
Amboise. Next year the Gironde was visited.
Within the two following years Nantes was sacked
and Rouen occupied. In 846 the city of Paris, from
which the defenders had fled at their approach, was
seized and plundered, and Charles the Bald, who had
taken refuge in the abbey of S. Denis, was compelled
to purchase the withdrawal of his foe by a payment of
seven thousand pounds' weight of silver. Saintes,
Bordeaux, Tours, Orleans, Perigueux, Bourges, Aries,
Nimes, Chartres, Paris twice again, Noyon, Amiens,
Meaux, Angers, Arras, fell in turn before the ruth
less marauders, whilst the king of the devastated land
was attacking or defending himself against his
brothers. In 859 and 866 he renewed his purchase
of a temporary peace. Picardy was ravaged in 883,
and, two years later, siege was laid to Paris, which
had now been strongly fortified by the valiant Counts
of Paris. The assault was prolonged for eleven
months. Burgundy was overrun in 886, and it was now that
Charles the Fat, at the moment when Eudes, Count
of Paris, was making himself famous as a champion
of the distressed and goaded land, submitted to terms
dictated by the invaders. Verily the proud supremacy
of the Western Franks had come to an end, when the
last of their emperors, only four generations after the
founding of the new Roman Empire, submitted on his
own territory to a pagan foe. Count Eudes fought
heroically at Paris, in Brittany, and elsewhere ; but
he could not, even after he had been elected to the
Neustrian crown, expel the Northmen from the coasts
on which they had begun to settle down. From 886

THE NORMANS.

3'9

onwards the Norwegian Rollo, after establishing him
self at Rouen, gradually mastered the whole country
of the Lower Seine, with much of that of the Eure ;
and at length, in 911, he obtained from Charles the
Simple the recognition of his claim to the Duchy of
Normandy. It was held by his descendants as a
hereditary fief of France ; and a century and a half
later the sixth of these descendants, Gallicised as the
Frank warrior had never been, . crossed the sea and
became King of England.

XXII.

FRANCE AND GERMANY.

The deposition of Charles the Fat, the last Caro
lingian emperor, led to the formation of seven king
doms west of the German frontier, whilst Germany
was governed by Arnulf, who, in 896, was crowned
emperor at Rome. Of the western kingdoms, that
which was presently to take and keep the name of
France passed into the hands of Eudes, Count of
Paris. A kingdom of Navarre, including most of the
marches of Spain, between the Pyrenees and the Ebro,
asserted its independence. Rainulf, Count of Poitiers,
enjoyed for a few months his assumed title of king of
Aquitaine. Boson, Count of Autun, had already ruled
over a kingdom of Provence, extending northwards
to the Jura, and his son Louis the Blind succeeded
him in 890. Burgundy beyond the Jura acknow
ledged Rodolf, or Raoul, formerly duke of that
country. The Duke of Spoleto ruled at Langres with
the title of king ; and Berengar was king of Italy.
The Carolingians, however, were not quite extinct.
Louis the Stammerer had left a posthumous son,
Charles the Simple, who at the age of fourteen,

ROBERT THE STRONG. 32 1
amidst the general anarchy which then distracted the
land of the Franks, was brought forward by Zwinti-
bold, duke of Lorraine, and crowned at Reims as
king of Neustria. He had a son, Louis d'Outremer
(whose mother Ogive was the sister of the English
king Athelstan), two grandsons, Lothair and Charles,
and a great-grandson, known as Louis V., or, more
appropriately, Louis le Faineant, who had a nominal
reign in Neustria of less than one year, and who died
by poison in 987. With him the line of Charles the
Great finally passes away.
The line, but perhaps not the blood, of Charles was
exhausted on the death of this unfortunate youth.
For Louis the Pious is said to have had a daughter
Adelaide, married to Robert the Strong, who may have
been the descendant of a Gaul or Gallo-Roman, and
who fought his way to greatness. He was amongst
the earlier opponents of Charles the Bald, who gained
him over by making him Count of Anjou, and giving
him his sister Adelaide in marriage. Robert fought
valiantly for his king against the Bretons and the
Normans, and -met his death in a victorious combat
against the Northern invaders in 866. On the deposi
tion of Charles the Fat in 887, Robert's elder son
Eudes, Count of Paris, was made king of Neustria,
and proved himself in every way worthy to wear the
crown. After him his brother Robert was elected
king. Robert's son, Hugues the Great, would have
been king of Neustria by heirship, but he resigned
his claim to the crown to his brother-in-law, Raoul,
Duke of Burgundy. Hugues, successively Count of
Paris and Duke of France, died in 986, in the same
22

322

FRANCE AND GERMANY.

year as the Carolingian Lothair ; and, on the death
of the roi faineant already mentioned, Hugues Capet,
the young son of Hugues the Great, was elected by
the nobles as king of France.
The following table should be compared with that
of the descendants of Louis the Pious on p. 301.
The claims of the family of Robert are now in con
stant conflict with those of the later Carolingians.

Robert the Strong,

Count of Anjou,

d. 866. 1
1
Eudes,
1
Robert,
Count of Paris,
Duke of France,
:ing of Neustria 887-98.
King of Neustria
922-3.
[Followed by Charles
1
the Simple, &c,
|
I
898-987.]
Hugues the Great,
Emma m.
Count of Paris,
Raoul,
Duke of
Duke of
France,
Burgundy,
d. 956. 1
King of
Neustria,
Hugues Capet,
923-36.
Elected King of France,
987-96.
It is only now, in 987, that we can feel ourselves
justified in speaking of a kingdom of France ; and,
even now, we must take the name rather as enlarged
from the title of the Dukes of France, or Francia,
than as a restricted use of the word applied by
earlier Latin writers to the dominions of the Franks.
There was a similarly localised use of the term, at a
later period, in Central Germany, where Dukes of
Francia ruled over a wide stretch of country extending
between Lorraine and the borders of Bohemia and
HEREDITARY FIEFS. 323
Bavaria, with, of course, a better title to the name
than could be possessed by Hugues the Great and his
descendants. In any case, the map of Europe from the tenth to
the thirteenth century, roughly speaking, included a
kingdom of France, with an eastern frontier which
varied slightly from time to time, but was approxi
mately marked towards the south by the Rhone and
the Saone, and which, in the north, excluded the
duchies of Lorraine and Brabant.
One fact of the highest importance remains to be
mentioned, which goes far to explain the chaotic state
of government in Western Europe at the close of the
ninth century, and which accounts both for the rapid
decline of the power of the crown and for the ultimate
reconstruction of society on the feudal basis. One of
the last acts of Charles the Bald, in June, 877, before
he set out on his fatal expedition to Italy, was to
summon a general assembly at Kiersey, where he
dictated a capitulary more or less imposed upon him
by the dukes, counts, and other holders of land, who
had in the aggregate become too strong for farther
resistance. This capitulary amounted to an edict
acknowledging and declaring the heredity of fiefs.
The fiefs, as we have already seen, arose out of the
original assignments of territory for the purpose of
government, to duces, comites, and others, who were
appointed by the king to render service in their
administration ; or out of benefices allotted by way
of reward or favour; in order that the holder might
receive the revenues during his life, or during the
royal pleasure. It has been abundantly manifest that

324 FRANCE AND GERMANY.
such fiefs were transmitted from father to son before
the time of Charles the Bald ; but the custom had
grown up by assumption of privilege, through the
weakness or goodwill of the monarch, and always
subject to revocation if the monarch saw fit to exer
cise his inherent power. It had not attained to legal
sanction before 877 ; but the significance of the edict
of Kiersey was that by it the king pledged himself
and his successors to leave the holders of fiefs, in the
absence of treason on their part, and on conditions of
military or other service, in undisturbed possession,
and with the right of transmission and disposition.
There were at this time thirty great fiefs, the lords
of which were in a large measure independent of the
royal authority, or at any rate so powerful that the
kings did not lightly attempt to constrain them.
These nominal vassals were the Dukes of France,
Aquitaine, Burgundy, Gascony, and Normandy ; the
Marquis of Septimania ; the Counts of Toulouse,
Barcelona, Carcassonne, Roussillon, Urgel, Poitiers,
Auvergne, Angouleme, Perigord, Laonnais, Chalon,
Vexin, Vermandois, Valois, Ponthieu, Boulogne,
Anjou, Maine, and Brittany ; the Viscounts of Beam,
Narbonne, and Limoges ; and the Seigneurs of
Bourbon and Beaujolais. In course of time the great
fiefs began to split up, until, at the end of a few
centuries, the feudal lordships exceeded one hundred
and twenty.
At the accession of Hugues Capet, Duke of France,
to the chief throne of the West, with the title of king
of France, the royal domain, the only territory over
which he could exercise unimpeded sway — though

FEUDALISM. 325
nominally overlord and king of all the fiefs in addi
tion — consisted of his own duchy and part of the
Laonnais : in other words, the counties of Paris,
Senlis, Orleans, the Gatinais, and a certain extent of
territory surrounding Beauvais and Amiens. Aries
at this time was still a kingdom, with dominion over
Provence and the duchy of Burgundy, the last king
dying in 1 125 ; whilst Lorraine had passed back from
the state of a kingdom into that of a duchy.1
The development of the system of feudalism cannot
be adequately treated in the space at our command,
but we may observe that it arose gradually, by
historic growth and necessity, and that it began to
assume definite shape in the ninth century, under the
reign of the Carolingian Franks. A capitulary dic
tated at Mersen in 847 (after the conclusion of peaGe
amongst the three sons of Louis the Pious), ordered
that every freeman should be the vassal of a lord,
whether of the king or of one of his great vassals, to
whom he should owe fealty, and from whom he should
obtain protection of his life and property. This was,
in fact, the true personal basis of the whole feudal
organisation, just as the capitulary of Kiersey indi
cates the basis of feudal tenure by service to the over
lord. In each case the edict merely sanctioned and
legalised a pre-existing custom. Voluntary vassalage
had existed from early times amongst the Germans —
the word " vassal " itself belonging to them — and the
institution of feudalism, though, as has been said} a
natural and inevitable product of the political situa-
1 Lalanne, under the words fief and France.

326 FRANCE AND GERMANY.
tion, was built out of German rather than out of
Roman or Gallic ideas.
The appropriation of public lands, especially by
means of beneficia or precaria conferred on individuals
by royal favour, whether spontaneously or at the
importunity of petitioners, had gone to such a length
that weak kings and popes were stripped of a large
part of their possessions. "The Roman Church,"
says Gregorovius, speaking of the time of Pope John
VIIL, "desired to farm out her property as before.
She strove in vain, however, to exclude the principle
of German feudalism, and its inevitable results, the
complete alienation of the property with which she
had been vested, and the appearance of a crowd of
dangerous hereditary tyrants." The alienation of the
royal (and therefore national) domains, particularly
when the fiefs were made hereditary, was an evil
which had crept in as a consequence of a public benefit.
Feudalism, in its essential features and at the time of
its institution, made for the organisation of society and
the protection of the individual.; and it is one of the
evils incidental to human progress that institutions
which in their origin contribute largely to the general
weal can rarely be dispensed with after they have
served their purpose until their gradual abuse and
decay have counteracted much of the advantage
which they originally conferred.
Any full account of the system of feudalism will
be found to be laden with terms which have grown
out of the original root in the Chattan dialect which,
in a casual moment, was applied, more or less
in scorn, to a confederacy of German freebooters.

"frank." 327
There is one meaning implied in all of them, that of
personal freedom or privilege, and this meaning is
derived, not immediately from the Chattan word,
though it had a signification not far removed from
that of freedom (as in the colloquial German phrase,
" frank und frei "), but rather from the condition and
privileges of the Frank people in a conquered land.
It was from the Franks, again,' not from the word
" frank," that a score or two of geographical names
in Central and Western Europe have had their origin
— and these names, as we should expect, are more
numerous in Germany than elsewhere. Thus we
have Franken Wald, Frankenau, Frankenhausen,
Frankenheim, Frankenstein, two Frankenbergs, two
Frankenthals, Franconia, Frankfort, Frankfurt,
Frankenhofen, Frankische Crumbach, and the
Frankische Rezat, as well as the race-names of the
Unter, Mittel, and Ober Franken. In Austria there
is a Frankenfels ; in Denmark, Frankekleist and
Frankenhausen ; in Belgium, Francorchamps ; in
France, a Franche Comte, seven Villefranches, and
Franconville. The list is not exhaustive, but it is
enough to bear witness to the predominance of the
race during a long series of generations. Of the
national name of Francia something has already been
said in an earlier chapter.
Localised names of a more generic character are
to be found in " francland," or " terra Francorum,"
which was at first merely indicative of the occupation
of particular districts ; but at a later period " franc-
land," " franca terra," and " franca villa," were used pf
estates and occupations held by men who were not

328 FRANCE AND GERMANY.
subject to taxation, or who were free from the con
ditions of villenage. An inhabitant of such a locality
would be a " franchilanus," or franklin. It was
apparently an old English "Villefranche" which was
described by Sir John Fortescue, writing in the
fifteenth century, in which " none can be found who
is not a miles, an armiger, or a paterfamilias such
as is there commonly known by the name of Fraunc-
lein." The use of the term " francus " as the opposite of
" servus " produced in course of time the abstract
nouns " francitas " and " franquitas," and the verb
"franchire," to express the manumission of a slave,
and his reception into the ranks of freemen. Charles
the Bald gave a charter to the inhabitants of Barce
lona, " whether Spaniards or Goths," conferring upon
them the full immunity and liberty enjoyed by the
Franks, which were implied in the word " francitas,"
or " francdad." There we see the actual name of
the nation passing into the language for common use,
in the sense of liberty, immunity, and privilege.
Later instances of the same word and signification
are " franc taupin," " Franc archier," and, by associa
tion, " franc tireur." I
In a similar manner, on the other side of the
Pyrenees, the words " franchisia " and " franchise " had
their origin, first as signifying the law or rights estab-
1 ' ' Franck archers were these : King Charles the 7, in the yeere 1449,
being destitute of footemen, appointed that every three score houses in
his realme should arme a man, who in time of war received paie of the
King, and were exempt from all subsidies and payments : for the which
cause they were al called francke, that is free." — Danett's note to his
translation of Philippe de Commines.

FRANCHISE. 329
lished for the Frank people, then as common words
in the sense above mentioned, and eventually as dis
tinctive terms for the privileges of municipal govern
ment. " Tenir en franchileges " was a phrase applied
to the fullest and freest method of holding property.
The late use of the Roman word " franchire," with
the meaning of " enfranchise," is quoted by Dufresne
from a charter dated 1 185 : — " Franchio, manu et ore
manumitto a consuetudine Legis Salicae Joannem
Pithion de Vico, hominem meum, et suos legitime
natos, et ad sanum ihtellectum reduco, ita ut .suae
filiae possint sibi succedere : dictumque Joannem et
suos natos constituo homines meos francos, et liberos
ab omni usagio bono et malo Legis Salicae, et pro hac
manumissione et franchesia habui et recepi 18 libras
Viennensium bonorum." In this case we have the
noteworthy fact of a man purchasing his " franchisia,"
and becoming " francus," as a consequence of being
liberated from the fetters of the Salic law, in order
that his daughters as well as his sons might succeed
to his property. That is to say, a state of things had
arisen in which the Salic law was no longer a symbol
of the highest freedom and immunity — at any rate to
a man who wished to give his daughters an advantage
which the Salic law denied to them. Pithion de Vico
elected to divest himself of his status under the Salic
law, with all its customs good or bad, and was ready
to pay a good price to his feudal superior, so that his
daughters might have reason to appreciate the provi
dence of their father.
The " Francum plegium," which our English
ancestors knew as "frankpledge," or "ten-manne-

330 . FRANCE AND GERMANY.
tale," was a custom observed probably by all the
Teutonic nations, but at any rate by the Franks and
the northern nations ; and its name is derived either
directly from the Franks or from the earlier use of
the word which they had contributed to the common
speech of their country. The pledge given by every
ten men, or tithing, in a community, which was
required of them in case of an infraction of the law
by any one of their number, or of their families, was
earlier in its origin than the custom which required
every man in a feudal community to be covered by
the authority and responsibility of his superior. It
was also different in kind, being founded on the notion
of mutual and equal responsibility, not on that of the
control of many by one — which, as shown in Pithion's
case, led often enough to the exploiting of many by
one. The tithings were a development upon the
more ancient hundreds, of which Tacitus tells us that
" what was once a number is now a name only." The
court of the hundred was one of the main instruments
of justice under the Frank monarchy.
If feudalism was, in the limited sense which has
been indicated, a bequest of the Franks to succeeding
generations, so also was the Teutonic imperialism
which began with Charles the Great in the year 800,
and which, with sundry gaps and modifications in the
meantime, subsists to the present day. No doubt
the popes of Rome used the name and symbols of
the old Roman Empire to serve (as they conceived
it) for a bauble wherewith to flatter the ambition of
the northern barbarians, in order that a German
warrior in the trappings of a Roman Augustus might

THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.

331

confirm them in their worldly possessions, and pro
tect them against their enemies. But this was only
the Roman point of view. The popes crowned the
emperors, and thought their solid advantages cheaply
purchased by so doing. There remains the fact that
the German kings had both the ambition to wear an
imperial crown and the power to wield an imperial
sceptre. So far as the papal object was concerned, the

TURRET BELL NOW AT SIENA (1159).

popes might have gone anywhere for a puppet emperor,
to Italy, to Spain, to Asia or Africa, provided that an
instrument could be found of sufficient strength for
their purpose. But the important fact is that they
could find no such instrument outside of the German
race, though they tried to do so more than once ; and
amongst the Germans they could find none sufficiently
strong except the Frank, and his successor the
Saxon. The imperial dignity was not in its nature here
ditary. The Frank emperors needed at least a

332 FRANCE AND GERMANY.
nominal election by the Romans, followed by corona
tion at the hands of the pope ; but Charles the Great,
and some of those who came after him, secured the
succession to their sons by having them crowned in
their own lifetime. The emperors of the ninth and
tenth centuries were as follows : —
i. Charles the Great, Emperor 800-814.
2. Louis the Pious, his son, Emperor 814-840.
3. Lothair, eldest son of Louis, Emperor 840-
855. 4. Louis II., eldest son of Lothair, Emperor 855-
875. 5. Charles the Bald, fourth son of Louis the Pious,
Emperor 875-877.
6. Charles the Fat, grandson of Louis the Pious,
through his third son, Emperor 884-887.
7. Guy, Duke of Spoleto, of Austrian descent,
Emperor 891-894.
8. Lambert, son of Guy, Emperor, 894-898.
9. Arnulf of Bavaria, Emperor 896 (repudiated).
10. Louis of Provence, fourth in descent (through
Irmengard) from Louis the Pious, grandson of Louis
II., Emperor 901^915.
11. Berengar, Margrave of Friuli, grandson of
Louis the Pious (through Gisela), Emperor 91 5—
924. 12. Otho the Great, son of Henry the Fowler, a
Saxon duke, elected King of Germany, Emperor
962-973. 13. Otho the Red, son of Otho the Great, Emperor
973-983-

THE SAXON EMPERORS. 333
14. Otho III., son of Otho the Red, Emperor 996-
1002. Though the Saxon Otho, summoned to Rome by
Pope John XII., carried on the tradition of the
Roman Empire, it was no longer the Empire of the
Franks over which Charles the Great had held sway.
He was, indeed, the king of a wider Germany, to
whom Slavonians, Danes, and Hungarians were sub
ject ; he was arbiter of the fate of Italy, and at any
rate the protector of France ; but, as Gregorovius
says, it was no light task to struggle against the
self-assertion of the growing nationalities, the feudal
privileges, and the Papacy. Yet the Othos undertook
their task in the spirit of Charles. Saxons as they
were, they called their country the land of the Franks,
and their language the tongue of the Franks. Otho
the Great " brought the Roman imperial power to the
German nation, and this energetic people," in the
words of the German historian, "assumed the honour
able but thankless task of becoming the Atlas of
universal history. The influence of Germany soon
brought about the reform of the Church and the
restoration of learning, while in Italy itself it was the
German element which fostered the civic republics."
If Germany was the heir of Roman imperialism,
France was the heir of Roman speech, law, and
letters. If the Frank spirit of domination had created
and sustained the German Empire, the energy of the
Franks and of the Northmen had blended itself with
the milder characteristics of the Romanised Gauls,
and helped to make a nation which fought crusades,

334 FRANCE AND GERMANY.
organised feudalism, regularised the newer principles
of national government, upheld the Church in the
moments of its greatest danger, and marched in the
van of chivalry, scholasticism, and the Renaissance.

THE END.

INDEX

Aachen, the seat of government
under Charles the Great, 245-8,
249 ff. , 272 ff.
Adelchis the Lombard, 228
Adrian, Pope, 224 ff., 240-1, 249,
268, 278
^Egidius, Roman Comes in Gaul,
94. i°3
Aetius, Roman Comes, 90-93
Agde, Council of, 141
Alaric I., king of Visigoths, 78,
139 ff., 171
Alaric II., 105, 139 ff., 149
Albofleda, sister of Clovis, 118
Alboin the Lombard, 209
Alcuin, Abbot, English ecclesi
astic, at Aachen and Tours,
271 ff., 275, 281, 289
Alfred of England, 7, 213-14, 290
Allemans, 6, 48, 50, 62, 68 ff.,
102, 175, 203, and passim ; see
"Charles the Great" and
"Clovis" ; 302
Amalaric the Visigoth, 171
Ambrose, Archbishop, imposes
penance on Theodosius, 122
Ammianus, historian, 73_5> 284
Anastasius II., Pope, congratu
lates Clovis on his victories, 152
Anastasius, emperor of the East,
145-7
Angilbert, Bishop, 240
Angilbert, son-in-law of Charles
the Great, 269
Angles, 7, 35. 214, 222, 257, 296

Aquitaine, 9, 17, 139 ff., 165, 182,
189, 191, 203, 218, 228, 231,
254, 288, 300, 303, 320
Arbogast, Franco-Roman Comes, 77
Aredius intervenes between Clovis
and Gundobald, 134 ff.
Argentaria, the Oaths of, 308-12
Arianism, 69, 113; its character,
126-9, :32> 209. &nd passim
Arian States, 138-43
Aribert the Lombard, 209
Arichis, Lombard Duke of Bene
ventum, 228
Ariovistus in Gaul, 23
Armoricans, 94, 102-4, 114, 119,
132, 167, 300, and passim
Arnulf, Bp. of Metz, ancestor of
Charles the Great, 201
Astolf the Lombard, 211-12
Athalaric, Ostrogoth, 1 7 1-2
Athanasius, Bishop, 126-9
Attila (Etzel), the Hun, 91-3, 122
Audovera, first wife of Chilperic,
181
Augofleda, sister of Clovis, wife
of Theodoric the Goth, 119
Augustus (Emperor Octavian),
27. 44. S3. 247; "Augustus"
as an imperial title, 69, 94, 120,
146, 165 <•
Augustulus, last emperor of Rome,
97
Aurelian, Emperor, 62
Ausonius, a Gaul, 53, 56
Austria (Austrasia), realm of the
Eastern Franks, 153, (and Neus-

335

336

INDEX.

tna), 191, 196 ff., 200, 254 ft.,
293. 302
Avitus, Bishop of Vienne, 125
B
Bagats (Bagaudae), 61, 67, 90,
103, 124
Bajulus, the office of, 199
Basina, mother of Clovis, 95-7
Basques, 189
Batavians, 17,29, 31,38,156-7,246
Bavaria, 153, 171, 203, 212, 221,
238 ; as a kingdom of the
Franks, 300 ff., 323
Belgians, 13, 23-4, 31, 75, 79, 88,
117, 156, 167, and passim
Belgic Thuringia, imaginary, 84,
99-100
Belisarius in Italy, 172-3
Beneficia of land, 216, 326
Bertha, mother of Charles the
Great, 211, 219, 224, 268
Bertha, sister of Charles the
Great(?), 201
Bertha, daughter of Charles, 269
Bernard, grandson of Charles, 299
Boson, king of Provence, 316, 320
Brabant, 83, 154, 212
Breviarium of Anianus, 144
Britain, 2 ff., 97. See under
"Angles," "Alfred," "Alcuin,"
" Offa "
Brittany, 103, 120, 184, 193, 197,
253, 321 ; see "Armoricans"
Brunhilda, 181 ff.
Burgundians, 90, 102-4, 119, 203 ;
war with Clovis, 132 ff. ; their
code, 136 ; 169, 172, 189, 203,
254. 318
Byzantium, 193, 207, 245, 247,
252, 279, 323 ; see "Empire of
the East "

Caesar, Julius, 12 ff., 22 ff. ; his
frontier policy, 26 ff. , 65 ;
' ' Caesar " as a sub-imperial
title, 69
Caligula, Emperor, 30
Capitularies, 258, 263 ff., 323, 325

Caracalla, Emperor, his benefits
to Gaul, 58-60, 68
Cararic, king of Terouanne, 101 ;
his kingdom annexed by Clovis,
15°
Carausius from Britain, seizes
Boulogne, 67
Caribert, king of Paris, 179, 182
Carloman, brother of Pepin the
Short, 201, 204
Carloman, brother of Charles the
Great, 215-19
Carloman, king of Aquitaine, 301
Caroline script, 275
Carolingians, see ' ' Franks "
Charles the Bald, 5th Frank
emperor, 301, 3046°., 316
Charles the Fat, 6th Frank
emperor, 301, 317 ff.
Charles the Great, 1st Frank
emperor, 9, 210-11, 213 ; king
of the Franks, 215 ; his first
campaign, 218 ; sole king, 219 ;
marries Himiltrude, 219, and
Desiderata, ibid. ; begins the
Saxon war, 222 ; the Lombard
war in Italy, 224 ; marries
Hildegard, 225 ; visits Rome,
225 ; confirms his father's grants
to the Pope ; renewed visits to
Italy, 228 ; his sons, Carloman
and Louis, consecrated as kings
of Italy and Aquitaine, 228 ;
expedition to Spain, 230 ; death
of his nephew Roland, 231 ;
subdues the Saxons and Witi
kind, 234 ; defeats the Slavo
nians, Wiltzes, Avars, Bavarians,
Huns, 238 ; confirms Leo III.
as Pope, 240; reinstates him,
242 ; is crowned emperor, as
Carolus Augustus, 243 ; the
character of his empire, 245 ;
his government, 248 ff. ; his
court, 267 ff. ; his later wives
and children, 270 ; his meeting
with Alcuin, 271 ; patronage of
learning, 276; his life-work,
286 ff. ; his death, 290; his
descendants, 298 ; his legend,
235, 270

INDEX.

337

Charles, king of Provence, 301
Charles, king of Aquitaine, 301
Charles the Simple, king of Neu
stria, 301, 319-20
Charles le Faineant, 301
Charles Martel, Mayor of the
Palace, 201 ; his character,
202 ; conquests, ibid. ; . defeats
the Saracens, 203 ; appealed to
by Gregory III., 204; dies,
ibid.
Chattan origin of the name
" Frank," 19, 86 ; see "Frank "
Childebert, king of Paris, 166 ff.,
177
Childebert IL, king of Metz, 179,
185, 208
Childebert IIL, 179
Childeric I., king of Tournai,
82"3. 93 ff-. 166
Childeric II., king of Neustria,
179, 263
Chilperic I., king of Soissons,
179 ff.
Chilperic II., 179
Chilperic the Burgundian, in, 133
Chramnus, son of Clotair I., 177
Christian authors in Gaul, 55
Christianity, its growing power at
Rome and in Gaul, 50 ff. ;
Orthodox and Arian, 113;
policy of the bishops towards
the barbarians, 120 ff. ; supre
macy in Europe of the Roman
Church, 126 ff. ; its appeals to
Visigoths, 125 ; to the Franks,
185, 204-5, 210-12, 221, 225 ff.,
240 ff. ; the temporal power,
•240 ; the dispute between the
Eastern and Western Churches,
278 ; effects of temporalities,
294 ; and passim ; see Gallic
Church
Civilis, his half- told story, 31
Claudius, Emperor, 30, 45, 62
Cloderic, his kingdom annexed by
Clovis, 150, 166
Clodion invades Gaul, 82 ; his
origin, 84 ff. , 89
Clodomer, son of Clovis, 114,
166-9, 177

Clodovald (Saint Cloud), 166, 169
Clotair I., 166 ff, 177 ; his des
cendants, 179 ff. ; the sons of
Clotair, 180
Clotair II., 183, 190
Clotair III., king of Neustria,
179
Clotilda, ill; married to Clovis,
113, 152, 167 ff.
Clotilda, her daughter, 171
Clovis I., king of the Franks, 16 ;
his mother, 97 ; comes to the
throne of Tournai, 101 ; wins
Soissons and Paris, 105 ; fights
the Thuringians, 109 ; marries
Clotilda, in; converted to
Orthodox Christianity by his
wife, 1 13 ft. ; baptised by Bishop
Remy, 117; his sister married
to Theodoric, 119 ; " rex Chris-
tianissimus," T25 ; makes terms
with the Armoricans, 119, 132;
the Burgundian war, 133 ff. ;
the Aquitanian war, 139 ff. ;
Clovis attacks the Allemans,
139 ; checked by Theodoric,
145 ; receives the title of Con
sul, 146 ; resides at Paris, 147 ;
subjugates North-eastern Gaul
and becomes sole king of the
Franks, 149 ff. ; dies, 152 ; his
sons, 165 ff.
Clovis II., king of Neustria, 179
Clovis III., 179
Clovis, son of Chilperic, 181
Commodus, Emperor, 34, 55
Complaint of Louis the Pious, 305
Constantine, Emperor, 64, 68 ff.
Constantius, Emperor, 69 ff., 157
Council of Nice, 69, 126
Council summoned by Charles the
Great at Frankfort, on the
adoration of images, 278
Councils of the Church in Gaul,
136-8, 141, 184, 189, 288
D
Dagobert I., king of the Franks,
179, 191 ; a patron of learning
and art, 197
Dagobert II., 179

23

338

INDEX.

Dagobert III., 202
Danes, 175, 233, 238, 284-6, 333
Decumates Agri, 35, 46, 72> §3.
102
Desiderata, second wife of Charles
the Great, 219 ff.
Desiderius, king of the Lombards,
219 ff.
Didier, Bishop of Vienne, 189
Didier, Duke of Toulouse, 184
Dieburg, 84 ff.
Diocletian, Emperor, 50,-55, 68
Dispargum (Scheidungen-burg),
82 ff., 98, 109, 157. 168
Domitian, Emperor, 33
Duisburg, 84, 150

Ebroin, Mayor, 199
Eginard, biographer of Charles
the Great, 224, 231, 240, 245,
267, 271 ; account of his life,
276-7, 289, 293
Eloy (Eligius), S., 197-9
Emperors, Frank and Saxon, the
first fourteen, 332
Empire (ancient) of Rome, passim;
its collapse, 97. See under
names of emperors.
Empire of the East, 50, 165, 185,
193, 207, 211, 245-7
Empire (Holy Roman), 243. See
"Charles the Great," 294, 313,
330
Euaric, king of Visigoths, urged
to champion Rome, 125
Eudes, Count of Paris, 320-1

Feudalism, origins of amongst the
Teutons, 215, 246, 323
Fiefs, hereditary, 323-4
Fontenai, the battle of, 308
Franc (various meanings of the
word), 18, 327
France, the kingdom of, 256, 322,
333.
Francia, the land of the Franks,
57, .147. 153. 185. 191,200,255
Francia, the French duchy, 321-2

Francia, the German duchy, 322
Franconia, 327
Frank Reich, 191, 256
Franken (German geographical
name), 45, 81, 85, 327
Frank (various meanings of the
word), 18, 79, 293, 326
Franks, their relations to other
nations, 1-10 ; their origin as a
confederacy of Sicambrians,
Chattans, Tencterians, &c, 11
ff, 21 ff., 31, and passim ; the
evidence of Vopiscus, 15-20,
59 ; of Gregory of Tours, 16-17,
82, 98 ; of Sigebert, 19 ; of
Lydus, 20 ; of Sulpitius, 59 ;
fabled Pannonian (Trojan)
origin, 17 ; their German
home, 37 ff. ; they break the
Roman frontier, 50, 59, 60,
62, 72 ; their first settlements
in Gaul, 64, 75, 86, 89, (Laeti),
91, 154 ff. ; a Frank sea-raid,
65-7 ; Frank usurping emperors
of ancient Rome, 70 ; a Frank
consul, 77 ; a Frank comes, 77 ;
qualities of the Franks, 67, 74,
in (see "characteristics"
below); Salian Franks, 16, 74"
5, 79, 83 ff, 107, 155 ff. ; the
Merovingians, 80 ff., 212, 263,
284 (see also under " Clovis,"
&c, and passim); Franks of the
Thuringian border, 81 ff., 95,
no, 170; Clodion of Dispar
gum, 82 ff. ; Merowig, fights
with Romans, Gauls, and Goths
against the Huns, 93 ; Childeric
of Tournai, ibid. ff. ; Clovis of
Tournai, 101 ff. (follow up
under "Clovis"); the typical
Frank warrior, 105 ; conversion
of the Franks, 117 ; Rome aids
the Franks, 123 ff., and appeals
to them, 125 ff. ; the Franks,
as Orthodox Christians, become
champions of the Papacy, 211
ff. , 240 ff. ; characteristics and
institutions of the Franks, 153
ff, 166, 180, 191, 212, 215,
248, 253 ff, 293; their laws,

INDEX,

339

155 ff., 257 ff. ; their ranks,
108, 160 ff., 186-8, 193, 216,
262 ; complete masters of Gaul,
168 ff. (follow up under " The
Sons of Clovis" and "The
Sons of Clotair ") ; they elect
Mayors of the Palace, 194 ff. ;
the Carolingians, 200 ; Pepin
the Short usurps the kingdom,
204 (follow up under "Charles
the Great ") ; the summit of
their glory, 245 ; their arts and
culture, 197, 249 ff, 271 ff. ;
incompatibility with the Gauls,
253 ff. ; their influence on other
Teutons, 296 ; decline of their
power in the West, 298 ;
Carolingians after Charles the
Great, 300; their royal and
imperial seats, 306 ; their lan
guage, 254, 282, (examples)
309 ; anarchy in the Gallic
Franklands, 320 ; ultimate
preference of the Franks for
Germany, 8
Fredegonda, third wife of Chil
peric, 1 8 1-8
Fredum, 160
Frisians, 28, 39, 41, 94, 199, 204,
271, 286, 302, 317

Galba, Emperor, 31
Galeswintha, second wife of Chil
peric, 181
Gallic Church, 124, 137-8, 184,
189, 217, andpassim
Gallienus, Emperor, 59-60, 62
Gascons, 154, 189, 203, 232, 255,
288, 299
Gaul, 3, 8, 13, 24, 41 ; Romanised;
52 ; the Frank kingdom of,
101 ; and passim
Gelasius, Pope, 152
General Assemblies, 223, 248,
257 ff, 288
Germanicus, 29
Germans, 4, 8, 21, 37, 71, *29 5
their tribes, 34 (Note); and
passim
Germany, passim ; 333

Godegisil the Burgundian, 133
Gontran, king of Burgundy, 179,
180, 184-5
Goths, 48 ff., 90, 102, 129 ff., 154,
172 ff, 32S
Gratian, Emperor, 77, 147
Gregory I. (the Great), Pope, 125,
209
Gregory II., 209
Gregory III., 204-5
Gregory of Tours, 17, 82, 85, 108,
136, 149, 176, 206
Grimoald, Mayor of the Palace,
197, 199
Grippo, son of Charles Martel,
204, 212
Gundachar the Burgundian, 90
Gundobald the Burgundian, 133,
145, 168 H
Hadrian, Emperor, 43, 246
Haroun-al-Raschid, his present to
Charles the Great, 252
Hermann, 29, 40, 74, 223
Hincmar, Archbishop, on the
General Assemblies, 258
Honorius, emperor of the East,
73
Hugues Capet, king of France,
10, 324
Hugues the Great, 321
Hunald, Duke of Aquitaine, 205,
218-19, 255
Huns, 91-3, 122, 180, and passim
I
Italy, 80, 124, 139, 185, 208, 225
ff., 246, 251, 287,299,and/a!j'«V» I
John IL, Pope, 209
John VIIL, Pope, 326
Judith, Empress, 304 ff.
Julian, emperor of the East,, 69
ff. ; in Paris, 73, 76
Justinian, emperor of the East,
172, 177 K
Kelts, 3 ff., 23, 102, 120, 154,
191, 254-6, andpassim

340

INDEX.

Kiersey, Treaty of, 21 1
Kynesioi, the westernmost race in
Europe known to Herodotus, 3

Laeti, (Leti), 73, 75. 88-9, 161
Leo I., Pope, 123
Leo IIL, crowns Charles the
Great, 240 ff.
Libri Carolini, 278
Limes Germanicus (or Imperii),
12, 43-7, 64, 81-7
Limes Rhenanus, 64, 84
Liutprand the Lombard, 210
Lombards, 4, 182, 185, 207 ff.,
241, andpassim
Lorraine, 315
Lothair, 3rd Frank emperor,
330 ff., 314-16
Lothair, king of Lorraine, 301
Louis the German, son of Louis
the Pious, king of Bavaria,
300 ff.
Louis II. , 4th Frank emperor,
301
Louis le Faineant, 301, 321
Louis IIL, king of Neustria, 30L
Louis d'Outremer, 301, 321
Louis the Pious, 2nd Frank
emperor, 221, 269, 288, 298 ff.,
3°5, 3l6
Louis of Provence, loth Frank
emperor, 301
Louis the Stammerer, king of
Aquitaine, 301, 316-17
Luegenfeld, the Field of Lies,
near Colmar, 305
M
Magnentius, a Frank usurping
emperor, 70
Major Domus, see Mayors
Majorian, Emperor, 94
Marbod, 30, 33, 40
Marcomanni, 34
Marculfus, Frank monk and his
torian, 163
Marcus Aurelius, Emperor, 33-4,
37, 246
Martin, Bishop, 143, 275
Maurice, emperor of the East, 185

Mayors of the Palace, 178, 194
ff. ; Sismondi on, 205-6
Mellobaudes, Franco-Roman con
sul, 77
Merovingians, 80 ff. ; see under
"Franks"
Merowig, founder of the Mero
vingian dynasty, 93 ff.
Merowig, son of Chilperic, 181,
183
Missi Dominici, 247, 252, 257 ff.
Mummolus, 182, 184
N
Narses in Italy, 175-7, 207
Neustria, 178, 191,200, 302, 321 ;
and passim
Nicephorus, usurping emperor of
the East, 247
Northmen, 26, 175, 238, 286,
292-4, 299, 317 ff.
Novempopulania, 189
O
Odoacer the Herulian in Rome, 97
Offa of Mercia, his friendship with
Charles, 297
Ordeal, the laws of, 161-3
Orthodox bishops, 130, 138
Oster Ric (Austria), 191
Ostrogoths, 145, 172; see Theo
doric P
Paris, 73, 105, 147, 166, 318, 320
Pepin of Heristal(P), Mayor of the
Palace, 200
Pepin of Landen(?), Mayor of the
Palace, 197, 200; his descen
dants, 201
Pepin the Hunchback, son of
Charles the Great, 219
Pepin the Short, son of Charles
Martel, 204, 212, 268
Pepin I., king of Aquitaine, 300
Pepin II. , king of Aquitaine, 301,
317 ff.
Plague, 175, 184
Postumus, 60, 75
Probus, Emperor, 62 ; his policy
in the Rhenish provinces, 64,
67, 75

INDEX.

'34i

Provence, 6, 172, 191, 193, 203,
3°3, 32°

Quintian, Bishop, 141

Radbod the Frisian, 204
Ragnacar, king of Cambrai, 101,
105, 151
Ravenna, exarchate of the Eastern
Empire, 139, 172, 208, 211, 240,
249
Reccared, king of Visigoths, 184
Remy, Bishop, 16, 86, 117 ff., 127
Rhine frontier, 12, 27-8, 40
Riparian Franks, 14, 16-17, 39.
86 ; the Riparian kingdom,
101 ; its absorption, 149
Robert, Count of Anjou, 321
Rois Faineants, 199 ff.
Roland, reputed nephew of Charles
the Great, 201, 231
Roman frontier after Trajan, 43
"Roman Republic," 208, 212,
221, 226, 241 ff.
Roncesvalles, 231

Sala, the two rivers, 45, 87, in
Salians, see under " Franks"
Salic law, 79, 155 ff, 162, 195,
263, 329
Saracens, 203, 215, 221, 230, 270,
288
Saxons, 94, 176, 182, 190, 203,
221 ff., 228 ff, 271, 282, 296,
302, 312-14
Scheidungen-burg, 85, 109, 157
Seneschal, 199
Septimania, 203, 303
Sicambrian League, 12-15, 87, 239
Siegbert, king of Riparian Franks,
101, 114, 149, 166
Siegbert, king of Metz, 179 ff.
Sigebert of Gembloux, 19
Silvanus, a Frank usurping em
peror, 70
Slavery among the Franks, 163,
217

Slavonians, 215, 299, 333
Spain,'6o, 66, 80, 102, 145, 175,
230-2, 288, 328
Stephen II. , Pope, 205, 211
Stilicho the Vandal, 78-9
Suevians, 13, 23
Syagrius, king of Suessiones, 105

Tacitus, 11, 12, 31 ff, 49 ; "Ger-
mania " quoted, 34 (Note), 155
(Note)
Tencteri, 13, 25, 32
Tetricus, 62
Teutoburg forest, 29
Teutonic law, 154 ff.
Teutons, 4, 38, 42 ; and Romans,
38, 149, 282 ff. ; and passim
Theodebald, king of Metz, 166,
176
Theodebert, king of Metz, 166,
172; his daughter, 173
Theodebert II. , 179, 188-9
Theodoric, king of Ostrogoths,
133, 139, 145, 165, 249-5i
Theodoric, king of Visigoths, 90,
93
Theodoric, son of Clovis, 145, 166,
170
Theodoric II. , king of Orleans,
179, 188-9
Theodosius, emperor of the East,
77, 1 2 1-2 ; his code, 144
Thirty Tyrants, 60, 62
Thuringia, 81 ff., 98 ff. ; 302, 312 ;
and passim
Tiberius, Emperor, 30, 34
Totila the Goth, 172
Trajan, Emperor, 33, 44
Tribe names of the Teutons, 28
(Note)
Trojan origin of the Franks.
legendary, 17
Tungri, 41, 65, 86, 88, 101 ,
U
Urtheil (ordeal), 161 ; various
ordeals, 162-3
Usipii (Usipites), 12, 13

342

INDEX.

Valentinian I., emperor of the
East, 19, 77
Valentinian II., emperor with
Gratian, 77
Vandals, 35, 60, 62, 78
Varus defeated by Hermann, 29
Veleda, Bructerian wise woman,
32-3
Verdun, the treaty of, 313
Vespasian, Emperor, 31-2, 42
Virgil, the Trojan legend, 17
Visigoths, 93, 102, 104, 144, 171,
190. See " Alaric "

Vitellius, Emperor, 31-2
Vitiges, the Ostrogoth, 172
Vocladensian Plain, 143, 203
Vopiscus, historian, 15, 19, 59
W
Warnaher, Mayor, 196
Wehrgeld, 160
Witikind, 229 ; in fable, 235 ; 238
Wintrion, Duke, 188, 196, 206

Zacharias, Pope, 211

ROMAN PLACE NAMES, &c, MENTIONED IN THE TEXT,
WITH THEIR MODERN EQUIVALENTS.

Agedincum Senonum, Sens
Agri Decumates
Albis, Elbe R.
Alcimona, Altmuhl R.
Amisia, Ems R.
Angli, Angles
Aquae Mattiacae, Wiesbaden
Aquae Sextiae, Aix
Aquis (Aquisgranum), Aix-la-
Chapelle, Aachen
Aquitania (praa-Augustan), Gas-
cony
Arausio, Orange
Arduenna Silva, Ardennes
Arelate, Aries
Argentaria (?), see p. 308
Argentoratum, Strassburg
Argentovaria (p. 308), Artzenheim
Aremorica (Armorica)
Asciburgum,' Asburg
Atuatuca, Tongres
Augusta Suessionum, Soissons
Augusta Treverorum, Trier,
Treves
Augusta Vindelicorum, Augsburg
Augustodunum (Bibracte), Autun
Augustodurum Baiucassium,
Bayeux
Augustonemetum, Clermont-Fer
rand

Aulerci Cenomani (Diablintes),
Maine R.
Aureliani Cenabum, Orleans
Avenio, Avignon
Axona, Aisne R.
Baeterrae, Beziers
Batavi, Batavians, Betuwe
Belgica, Belgian land
Beneventum, Benevento
Boihremi, Bohemia, Bohmen
Bonna, Bonn
Bononia, Boulogne
Braina, Braisne
Bructeri (mediaev. Borahtra-gau)
Burdigala, Bordeaux
Burginatium, Schenkenschanz
Burgundi (Burgundiones), Bur
gundians
Byzantium, Constantinople, Is-
tamboul
Camaracum, Cambrai, Kamerijk
Campania, Champagne
Caninefates, Kennemerland
Carcaso, Carcassonne
Carisiacum, Kiersey, Quierzy
Catalauni (Durocutalauni),
Chalons-sur-Marne
Cebenna, Cevennes
Chamavi (mediaev. Hamaland)
Chatti (Hessen)

INDEX.

343

Chattuarii (medicev. Hattera-gau)
Colonia Agrippina, Cologne,
Koln
Confluentes, Coblenz
Dispargum (Divisio-burgum), Die-
Diutia, Diutz, Deutz
Divisio, Scheidungen-burg
Divodurum Mediomatricorum,
Metz
Durnomagus, Dormagen
Durocortorum Remorum, Reims
Forum Julii, Frejus
Fossa Drusiana, the dyke of
Drusus
Garumna, Garonne R.
Gelduba, Gellep
Germania Inferior, Superior (Gallic
provinces created by Claudius —
the latter extended by Domitian
across the Rhine, to the Limes
Germanicus)
Gottones, the Goths
Hermiones, Hermunduri (?) ;
Thuringians
Issala (Navalia), Yssel R.
Itius Portus, Wissant
Julia Apta, Apt i
Laugona, Lahn R.
Lemanus Lacus, Lake Leman
Locoritum, Lohr
Lugdunum, Lyon
Luppia, Lippo R.
Lutetia Parisiorum, Paris
Matrona, Marne R.
Mogontiacum(Magunt-),Mayence, Mainz
Mcenus, Main R.
Mosa, Meuse R.
Mosella, Moselle R.

Nicer, Neckar R.
Noviodunum Diablintum, Jublains
Noviomagus Batavorum, Nime
guen
Regina Castra, Regensburg
Rhenus, Rhine R.
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