IN 768 Pepin the Short, the great King of the Franks, passed away to make room for his greater son, whom the common usage of history knows in Latin as Carolus Magnus, or, to use the familiar French form, Charlemagne. The new monarch may be considered, on the whole, as the most important personage in mediæval history. His reign marked an epoch between the ancient world and the modern, and his commanding personality stamped its impress deeply upon his own age and cast its shadow over several subsequent centuries.
An intimate companion, Einhard, who wrote a biography of Charlemagne far superior to the run of mediæval literary efforts, has left us a well-rounded picture of this truly remarkable man. We are told that he was "large and robust, and of commanding stature and excellent proportions. The top of his head was round, his eyes large and animated, his nose somewhat long. He had a fine head of gray hair, and his face was bright and pleasant: so that whether sitting or standing he showed great presence and dignity. His walk was firm and the whole carriage of his body manly. His voice was clear, but not so strong as his frame might have led one to expect."
We are also told of his simple habits as to dress, his temperance in eating and drinking: his delight in riding and hunting, and in manly sports. "He was ready and fluent in speaking, and able to express himself with great clearness. He took pains to learn foreign languages, gaining such a mastery of Latin that he could make an address in that tongue as well as in his own (Frankish language), while Greek he could understand rather than speak." When at table, he delighted in music or in listening to the reading of pious books or histories. He was fond, too, of attending the lectures on grammar, logic, and astronomy of the learned men of his day. One must not exaggerate the profundity of this royal scholar, however. With all his genuine love of letters he never really learned how to write.
In his temperament Charlemagne had indeed many human infirmities; he could be cruel, and perpetrate acts of manifest tyranny, yet considering his epoch he may be called just, magnanimous, and far-sighted. From his father he inherited an effective war-power, and none of the neighbors of the Franks could match him in arms. He had a high regard for the old Roman civilization, as he understood it, and throughout his reign labored earnestly and intelligently to increase the knowledge and influence the morals of his people. Beginning his career simply as a powerful Germanic king, as he discovered his dominions swelling into a veritable Western Empire he allowed his imagination to lead his ambition to a loftier title. The ruler who began as King of the Franks ended as a Roman Emperor, claiming all the power of the old Cæsars.
It is practically impossible to discuss this great ruler, and to confine the narrative to simply those things which took place on the territory that was to be the later-day France. Almost all that he did outside of the old Gaulish lands rebounded upon their local fortunes, and particularly he engaged in a long series of wars which were destined to react upon France by determining the religion and culture of its eastern neighbors down to the present day. When Charlemagne came to the throne a large fraction of modern Germany was not merely independent of the Frankish kings, but was heathen and savage. Especially behind their swamps and forests the Saxons had resisted every attempt at their conversion and civilization. Many years of Charlemagne's reign (772 to 804, with considerable intermissions) were consumed in the attempt to bring this fierce, untamed people under the yoke of Western culture as it then existed. Modern ethics does not commend the propagation of Christianity and civilization by the sword, yet the fact remains that if the Saxons had been let alone they would probably have remained for centuries in pagan squalor and degradation. Campaign after campaign Charlemagne directed into their country. Usually the Frankish host invaded the swampy Saxon land in the springtime and remained for the summer, chasing the enemy into the fens and forests, taking hostages, bribing or browbeating the prisoners into accepting baptism, and finally erecting a few fortresses in which were left garrisons. Then the invaders would retire; the Saxons would emerge from the greenwood, many of the new converts would solemnly "scrape off" the waters of baptism, and lapse back to their old gods; some of the Frankish fortresses would be stormed and taken, the rest would be besieged. The next spring would bring anew the invading host and the former process would be repeated: each campaign, however, would fasten the Frankish yoke a little more firmly, and would leave the pagan party a little weaker. With the host of Charlemagne would go another host of priests and monks, "so that this race" (says the mediæval chronicler), "which from the beginning of the world had been bound by the chain of demons, might bow to the yoke of the sweet and gentle Christ." Whenever conditions admitted, churches and monasteries were built, bishoprics established, and the whole population duly baptized – usually under sore compulsion, with Frankish men-atarms pointing out with their spears the nearest way to the font.
It was a weary, uneventful war. There were no great battles. The contest was almost entirely of the guerrilla order: petty skirmishes, raids, and sieges. In 785 Wittekind, the most formidable Saxon chief, made his submission: but many of his followers held out till 804. Then at last came peace to the exhausted land. But the war had not been waged in vain. Mediæval civilization (such as it then was) took root in Saxony with surprising rapidity. Within a century the region was reckoned among the most progressive and civilized lands in western Europe, although by that time Charlemagne's empire was rapidly breaking to pieces, and Saxony and France were parting company forever.
The great King inherited from his father a close alliance with the Papacy. The standing dread of the Popes was the seizure of Rome by the Lombards, then dominating northern Italy, and threatening in turn to seize the remainder of the peninsula. Already on their part the Popes were claiming the "secular power" over the city of Rome, and were resentful of any formidable neighbor. If they were to have any overlord in temporal matters it was far better to have one like the Frankish king – too distant to be constantly meddling. In 773 Desiderius, the ambitious King of the Lombards, pressed Rome so hard, the Pope issued an earnest plea to Frankland for help, and he did not cry in vain. With an overpowering host the great King of the North swept through the Alpine passes. Desiderius shut himself up, terrorstricken, in his capital of Pavia, where he was duly blockaded, starved out, and compelled to surrender in 774. Meantime the victor proceeded in person to Rome where the grateful Pope received him with great splendor and rewarded him with the title of "Patrician" (that is, High Protector) of the Holy and Eternal City. As for the Lombard Kingdom it was simply suppressed now in Charlemagne's favor. He called himself "King of Italy" and actually dominated nearly all of that peninsula save the extreme south where the Greeks of Constantinople still held many districts.
As years went on and the Frankish monarchy grew not merely by these conquests, but by the subjection of the Germanic King of Bavaria, and of the barbarous princes of the Avars (in modern Austria-Hungary), and as its ruler grew ever more irresistible in war, ever more indefatigable in spreading the works of peace, the conviction doubtless became very general that here was a sovereign and a dominion for which the old names and titles of a Northern kingdom were totally inadequate. Hitherto, although in practice the power of the old Roman Emperors had absolutely ceased in western Europe, men, even in Frankland, admitted that in theory the Greek-speaking Emperors of Constantinople were the successors of the ancient Cæsars, and were therefore entitled to the highest technical rank among all monarchs. But the Popes had quarreled with these rulers on many theological points and were almost inclined to brand them as schismatics. They were also very anxious to prove their own independence of any secular control, by affecting, as direct successors of St. Peter, to have the right to give the power "in this world" to whomsoever they might choose to honor.
In 800 matters came to a climax. The power of Charlemagne was clearly too great to consider him merely an ordinary "king" (rex). Pope Leo on his part was very anxious to show the marked gratitude of the Roman See to the ruler who had released it from the fear of the Lombards, and rendered many other great favors. He was also desirous of showing his independence of the Greek rulers of Constantinople. If it was said there could be only one true "Emperor" in the world, the answer came conveniently to hand that for the moment at Constantinople ruled only an Empress, Irene, a most unworthy woman who had gained the power by blinding and deposing her own son. All things thus conjoined to promote one of the great spectacular acts of history.
In 800 Charlemagne found himself in Rome to quell certain local disturbances. It was Christmas Day. A brilliant company had gathered in the magnificent Basilica of St. Peter. The King was praying at the great altar. One can imagine the impressive ceremonial: the incense smoke, the chanting choir, the splendidly arrayed courtiers in the nave, the still more splendidly vested ecclesiastics nearer the altar. Suddenly Pope Leo approached the kneeling monarch and placed on his head a glittering crown. Catching the meaning instantly, the populace made the great church quiver with the shout: "To Charles the Mighty, great and pacific Emperor of the Romans, crowned of God – be long life and victory!" Whether Charlemagne was Emperor because the Roman people (decadent successors of the departed empire-builders) had acclaimed him as their monarch, or because the Pope as God's direct deputy had crowned him, or because he had already won the right to the title by his own mighty deeds, no man then really stopped to inquire. The answer was to be fought out in blood during the next centuries, but the problem, as it developed, concerned German rather than French history. In any case, for the next fourteen years, the one-time "king" is "Carolus Augustus," in his proclamations, claiming to inherit all the titles, honors, and power of the original Cæsars. From this time onward also Charlemagne consciously tried to centralize his authority. He never became ashamed of his Frankish traditions and institutions: he never played the tyrant; nevertheless, the world saw something very different from the old Frankish monarchy. The "Holy Roman Empire" was born – an attempt to refound the old Roman Empire of the West, but on a strictly Christian basis. The lands of France were soon to be severed from this pretentious but unstable structure, but in Germany and in the later Austria it was to exist, first as a considerable power and then as a splendid shadow merely, down to the days when Napoleon Bonaparte ground up so much of the venerable rubbish of mediæval Europe (1806).
This Empire of 800 embraced all of modern France, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland. It also contained the greater part of modern Germany and Italy, and had some hold on the western portion of Austria-Hungary and the extreme northeast corner of Spain. It was a huge, ill-compacted monarchy, held together really only by the terror of the Frankish arms and the remarkable genius of Charlemagne. While he lived, however, such was his personal ability that it really seemed as if the nations were about to be fused together.
To govern his vast dominions he used no intricate machinery. At his court (usually held at Aachen, or Aix-la-Chapelle, in the extreme west of modern Germany) were a few high officers, and a council of worldly-wise bishops and battle-loving noblemen. In the various districts were "counts" to enforce justice and lead the provincial militia. Over the various frontier districts, or marks, were markgrafs (marquises), usually well-tried military men. To keep these officials in order there were constantly going about "imperial messengers" (missi dominici) to check up injustice, and to make frequent report of local conditions to the sovereign. This system worked admirably so long as Charlemagne lived to cover its defects by his personal genius. The moment he was gone it was to break down almost completely.
But Charlemagne gave more than firm government with law and order (things scarce enough, be it noted, since the fall of old Rome!). Under his fostering there took place a real revival of learning and letters. Literature and mere literacy were at a very low ebb even in the Church when he became king, and he devoted himself with genuine enthusiasm to combating these evils. To aid him in the task he summoned from Anglo-Saxon England a distinguished scholar, Alcuin, who became master of the palace school – a sort of model academy maintained at court and frequented by youths of noble family. The bishops and abbots throughout the Empire were required to establish similar schools for their localities, while earnestly did Charlemagne attack the deplorably prevalent notion that ignorance was compatible with genuine piety. "Let schools be established in each monastery or bishopric" (ran his mandate) "in which boys may learn to read, and to correct carefully the Psalms, the signs in writing, the songs, the calendar, and the grammar, because often men desire to pray to God properly, but they pray badly because of the incorrect books."
Under Alcuin's guidance there was a widespread revival of interest in the old Latin classics. Cicero, Horace, Virgil, and Seneca were copied and studied in numerous monasteries; and their style was imitated in poems, histories, and essays. There was very little originality in these literary attempts – usually merely a slavish rehandling of ideas that had been new eight centuries earlier: but it was a great thing that the wisdom of the ancients ("lost pagans" as the pious often branded them!) should be held in honor, and that a mighty ruler exalted the scholar as well as the warrior.
How Charlemagne disciplined unworthy ecclesiastics, reorganized the Frankish Church, established just systems of laws, promoted skillful agriculture – there is no space here to tell. In 814 the great Emperor died, at the height of his prosperity. Few rulers had seemed so successful as he. Particularly in the old Gallic lands thoughtful men doubtless blessed their days, and said that now Gallo-Roman and German had been welded together as members of a new and better Western Empire, and that the end of the centuries of confusion, following the fall of Rome, had surely come.
The reign of Charlemagne was thus a delightful burst of sunlight in an epoch when there was a sad excess of twilight if not of gross darkness. It was too blessed to last. The forces of lawlessness had been only temporarily checked, and the infirmities of the organization of the Frankish Empire had been too great to be overcome by any but a very great monarch. Four times the Carolingian line had provided such a ruler, but a fifth was not to be forthcoming. Charlemagne handed over an undivided empire to his amiable, but not forceful or especially intelligent, son, Louis the Pious (814-40). The only hope of perpetuating the unwieldy empire lay in a policy of wise, firm consolidation and centralization which would fuse the Gallic, Germanic, and Italian peoples into a single contented nationality. No such highly difficult performance was to be expected of Louis. For a few years his father's old example and his old officers held the Empire tolerably together, then centrifugal influences burst loose.
The wedge was first driven in the Emperor's own household. Louis had been an only surviving son, but his own sons – Lothair, Louis, and Charles "the Bald" – soon reached out greedy hands, even in their father's lifetime, for their own selfish share in the government. Never was the absence of genuine primogeniture more to be deplored in a monarchy than in the Frankish Empire of the ninth century. The three unscrupulous brothers quarreled and fought among themselves, deposed their father when he would not divide the inheritance to suit the stronger of them, then reinstated him again – at every turn weakening the imperial power, and strengthening the ever-assertive nobles by greater concessions of the government domain lands, wealth, and authority. Louis died in 840 with his realm already on the point of flying to pieces.
Lothair, the eldest of these unfilial sons, claimed the title of "Emperor," and this his brothers were willing to concede him. But over the boundaries of their personal dominions there was bloody war. In 841 at Fontenay (near Troyes) was a battle of large importance. Lothair was defeated by Louis and Charles the Bald and presently was forced to make peace on their terms. In 843 came the once famous "Treaty of Verdun" which was practically the end of the Frankish Empire. Louis received substantially all of Germany; Lothair a long, narrow strip from the North Sea along the west of the Rhine and clear into Italy (hence the name of "Lothair's Land" – "Lorraine" – for the debatable territory between France and Germany); and Charles the Bald took the remainder of the distracted Frankish Empire – virtually the whole of France. The shares of Louis and Charles were along genuine geographical and national lines and were destined to endure. That of Lothair was a mere artificial block of territory without fixed national antecedents, a veritable apple of discord between France and Germany as each power developed. In 843 began this question of a debatable land, and in 1914 the Alsace-Lorraine question was still troubling the peace of Europe.
The Treaty of Verdun was, of course, a mere breathing-spell between new wars. Lothair presently died and his sons and their unfriendly uncles soon quarreled over his dominions. Once or twice the Empire of Charlemagne was nearly united, not thanks to the capacity of any one prince, but because of the elimination or dying off of nearly all the other candidates. Some of the later Carolingians were men of fair ability, but many were only a grade better than the Merovingian sluggards whom their grandfathers had supplanted. In 884 for the last time the Frankish Empire seemed united under the Emperor Charles "the Fat" – incapable and lazy, with undoubted imperial blood as his chief if not sole asset.
By this time, not pitiful Charles the Fat, but Charles the Great himself might have been sorely taxed to put health into the vast, unwieldy realm. Not merely were the local counts (the ordinary imperial governors) showing more and more of "feudal" independence and playing the part of petty kings, not merely were the monarch's domain lands nearly all granted away to grasping noblemen while his mandates were ever less respected, but a serious foreign danger was afflicting the whole empire – particularly the part soon to be known as France. All through this sorrowful ninth century, from the Scandinavian fiords the pagan Northmen were descending in their dragon ships to harry the Frankish coasts. Year by year they would ascend the French rivers for many miles, burn, pillage, and carry captive; defeat the local levies mustered against them, and quickly make off with their spoil when at last a regular army had been gathered. These "vikings" were first-class fighting men, able to outmatch almost any equal number, and directed by chiefs possessed alike of valor and of skill. Many famous Frankish towns were devastated by them, and finally in 885-86 they ascended the Seine and laid systematic siege to Paris.
Paris was already a town of increasing importance: now it won a lasting name for itself in history by the valiant defense put up by its brave Bishop Gozlin and its secular chief Count Eudes against the destroying pagans. The capture of Paris (in the then demoralized state of the region) would probably have been fol- lowed by the permanent conquest by the vikings of all northern France, just as their comrades mastered Anglo-Saxon England. But Paris held out. The city was still not much more than the island in the Seine whereon stands to-day Notre Dame, and the main fighting was for the possession of the bridges connecting the city with the mainland. The pagans were able to capture one of these bridges, but not the other. The siege was long and desperate. Count Eudes left the city to urge the Emperor to hasten with succor, but presently he valiantly returned with a small band, cutting his way through the Northmen with his battleaxe, and heartening the defenders. At last Charles the Fat appeared with a huge relieving army, but the degenerate Emperor lacked the courage to put it to the touch with a decisive battle. He shamefully ransomed Paris by a heavy payment, and by allowing the repulsed vikings to depart to ravage Burgundy "because the inhabitants thereof obeyed not the Emperor."
This caitiff deed was almost the last important act by a ruler of the entire Frankish Empire. In 887 Charles the Fat was deposed by his high nobles, but his dominions were not passed on undivided to a rival. A bastard Carolingian reigned in Germany: in the present southeast of France there soon appeared a "King of Burgundy," and in France proper (as we may now call old Frankish "Neustria"), after some pretenders and contentions, a legitimate Carolingian, Charles "the Simple," continued in nominal power (893-923).
It was a very nominal "power" indeed which this representative of a mighty name (not quite so "simple" as his name implied) could exercise. The "Holy Roman Empire" was now in complete abeyance. When it was to be revived it was to be in Germany and Italy, and was never really to include France. The feudal system was now in full process of development, and every gain for the warlike barons was a corresponding loss of authority for their monarch. Because the feudal system of vassals and suzerains needed an apex no one thought of abolishing the kingship, and for a long time it was easier for the great lords to unite on a Caroling to enjoy the honor, than to confer it on a rival nobleman of non-royal lineage.
Charles the Simple thus reigned in name, at least, in about a fourth of his famous ancestor's one-time dominions. One important act he ratified which was pregnant for the future. The Northmen were becoming somewhat tamer, thanks to steady contact with the Christians, but they were becoming anxious for a permanent settlement. Charles bargained therefore with Rollo, the master of a strong fleet of dragon ships. The Frankish King would grant Rollo a broad strip of land along the Channel, including the important city of Rouen. This territory was to become a feudal principality, and Rollo its new duke would marry Charles's daughter and "do homage" to him for his fief. The viking chief and his best sword-hands were also to become Christians and to adopt civilized customs. The bargain was made and honestly carried out in 912. The Northmen speedily became "Normans" in their land of "Normandy." Their rude Scandinavian speech soon was merged as a mere dialect of what was now clearly "French." Rollo, who had duly renamed himself Robert, and all his chief warriors soon took on the standard virtues and vices of feudal barons. On the whole, Normandy was speedily better governed, more devoted to the arts of peace, more clearly the home of chivalrous knighthood (as that institution developed) than almost any other part of France. The last great racial contribution had been made to the French people – to the Celt, the Latin, the German, had now come the Scandinavian, bringing all the vigor of the extreme North, a strengthening and not a weakening of the new nation.
The Carolingian kings of this survival of old Frankland lasted till 987. Their power had ever dwindled, despite vigorous attempts of a few of these princes to reassert it. "Kings of Laon" they were sarcastically called, from the only city – in the wide lands of their great barons – where they seemed to have actual authority. At last in 987 the dynasty had nearly died out. Its only real representative was still another Charles, Duke of Lorraine. It was alleged that this man was really a vassal of the German Emperor. He was otherwise very obnoxious to the western barons, and an eager candidate from another line came forward. Hugh Capet, "Duke of France" (that is, the region then centering around Paris), was a descendant of the brave Count Eudes, who had defended the city against the vikings. He was wealthy, ambitious, tactful, and above all was supported by the great influence of the Church. Thanks to bribing the other great nobles by heavy gifts out of his possessions, and therefore compromising his future authority, he gained their consent so that on July 1, 987, he was solemnly crowned in Reims as "King of the Gauls, the Bretons, the Normans, the Aquitanians, the Goths, and the Gascons."
This new power of Hugh Capet did not seem very well assured. Doubtless many of the dukes and counts who did homage to him at Reims, silently expected that the new dynasty would soon perish as had that of other upstarts. If they imagined this, however, they were wrong. Hugh Capet was founding a dynasty which in one or another of its branches was to reign uninterruptedly until 1792. With his coming we can justly say that "Frankland" had perished, "France" was fairly upon the scene.