Charlemagne, whom certain historians (whose fame is already secured to them) have presented to the world as a French emperor, was simply and solely of Northern descent; he was, as we have stated, a barbarian, who, having never learned to write even his name, sealed his treaties with the hilt of his sword, and made them respected with the point. His chosen state was Germany, the cradle of his race; his two capitals were Aix-la-Chapelle or Thionville; he spoke Teutonic by choice, and he dressed in the costumes of his ancestors. Eginhard tells us what that dress was. He wore a linen shirt and drawers under a tunic bound round by a silken girdle; socks and fillets round his legs; sandals on his feet. In winter, a jerkin of otter skin kept the cold from his body and shoulders. He was always protected by the saye des Vénètes. He despised foreign clothes, and the more sumptuous they were the less he liked to be dressed up in them. Only twice during the visit he paid to Rome, first at the request of Pope Adrian and then at the instance of Pope Leo, did he consent to don the chlamys and the Roman toga; and, when he saw the Roman tongue gain ground over his own, he gave orders for the collection of all his native songs, so that they should not be lost to posterity.
Those were his acts; now see what he was commissioned to do. We have indicated Cæsar's mission; Charlemagne's mission was to raise in the heart of the Europe of the ninth century, half-way between the time of Cæsar and of Napoleon, a colossal empire, against whose outposts those warlike nations, whose repeated inroads hindered the Word of Christ, and overturned all attempts at civilisation, should dash themselves in vain. Thus the long reign of that great emperor was dedicated to but one object: barbarian repulsing barbarian, driving the Goths back to the Pyrenees, and hounding out Huns and Alans as far as Pannonia. He destroyed the kingdom of Didier in Italy, and, after having overcome Witikind, who was hard to overcome, and being weary of a war that had lasted thirty-three years, anxious to put an end to all resistance, treason, and idolatry at a single blow, he went from town to town, and, planting his sword in the ground in the heart of each city, he drove the people into the public places, and cut off the head of every man who was taller than the height of his sword handle.
One people alone managed to escape him—the Normans, who, later, combined with other peoples already established in the plains of Gaul, were to form the French nation. Wherever they put their foot on the soil of his empire, Charlemagne quickly made his appearance as well, and as soon as he appeared they went back into their vessels, like frightened sea-birds flying along the coasts, skimming over the ocean with rapid motion.
Charlemagne, in ignorance of the future, wanted to exterminate them, and, when old, he wept to see them cast anchor in a port of Narbonnese Gaul. He rose from his table in great fear, and stood looking out of his window for a long time, with his arms crossed, weeping, and not even wiping away his tears; then, as no one dare disturb so deep a grief, he said: "My faithful followers, can you tell why I weep so bitterly? It is certainly not because I fear those men will harm me by their wretched raidings; but I am deeply afflicted because they have dared to approach this sea-board during my very lifetime; I am miserable and utterly wretched when I foresee what sorrow they will cause my children and their peoples."
These Normans whom you wished to exterminate, O noble emperor! those men whom you looked upon as savages and whose escape out of your hands caused you to shed tears of rage—do you know whom they were? They were the ancestors of William the Conqueror; those daring vessels were the embryo of that English navy, which was one day to cover the three oceans, whose thousands of ships and vessels were to put a girdle round the globe.
We have said that Cæsar prepared the way for Christianity and Charlemagne prepared the way for civilisation; let us now see how Napoleon prepared the way for liberty.
When Napoleon appeared before our fathers under the name of Bonaparte, France was just emerging, not from Republicanism but, from a state of Revolution. She had disturbed the balance of the world by feverish political conditions that had shaken her for nine years and put her far in advance of other nations. An Alexander was needed to tackle this Bucephalus, an Androcles to combat this lion. The 13th Vendémiaire placed them face to face, and Revolution was conquered. Crowned heads, who should have recognised a brother at the head of the struggle in the rue Saint-Honoré, believed they saw an enemy in the Dictator of the 18th Brumaire. They took the man who was already the head of a monarchy to be simply the consul of a Republic, and, in their stupid ignorance, they made war against him, instead of incarcerating his energies in a general peace.
Thus Bonaparte gave way to Napoleon with his double-edged instinct for despotic rule and warfare, his two-sided nature, democratic and aristocratic, behind-hand, according to French notions, but in advance of European ideas; conservative in home policy, but a creature of progress in foreign affairs.
He took all the youth and intelligence and strength of France; he formed armies of this material, and spread his forces over Europe; they carried death everywhere to kings, but the breath of life to their peoples. Wherever the genius of France went, liberty made gigantic strides in its wake, throwing revolutions to the winds as a sower scatters seed.