|Leo the Isaurian, 717.| Once more fortune favoured the newest rising against the emperor of the day. The troops of Leo beat those of Theodosius III., and then the latter voluntarily abdicated and sent to offer his crown to the victor. He was a mild and virtuous man, who had been raised to the purple against his will by his military partisans, and longed to return to his obscurity, feeling himself destitute of the power needed to cope with the insurgents, and still more unable to face the impending Saracen invasion.
Accordingly the senate and the patriarch formally elected the rebel Leo as emperor, and set him on the throne which had already changed masters seven times in the last twenty-two years. At length the empire had found a master who could defend what he had won, and was fully able to transmit his power to his heirs. The armament of Moslemah might be awaited without dismay, for the state was once more in the hands of one who could be trusted to use its resources aright. Leo was to dissipate once and for all the Saracen storm-cloud, and to free Constantinople from all danger from the East for more than three hundred years. But his achievements demand a chapter to themselves.
CHAPTER XV
THE HISTORY OF THE GREAT MAYORS OF THE PALACE
656-720
The Mayor Grimoald unsuccessfully endeavours to make his son king of Austrasia—Decadence of the house of the Merovings—Ebroin and his tyrannical rule in Neustria—Long civil wars—Rise of Pippin the younger and his victory at Testry—The ascendency of Pippin: his successes in consolidating the kingdom—Missionary enterprises in Germany—Civil wars at the death of Pippin—Final triumph of his son Charles Martel.
In 656 died King Sigibert III., the first Meroving king of Austrasia who had been but a puppet in the hands of his Mayor of the Palace. At his death was made, a full century too soon, the first attempt of that great family which had of late held all real power to add the shadow to the substance by assuming the royal name. King Sigibert had only reached the age of twenty-seven when he died: his son and heir, named Dagobert after his grandfather, was but eight. Taking advantage of the boy’s youth, the Mayor Grimoald had him stolen away from his country by the hands of a bishop, and lodged him in an Irish monastery, where his head was shorn, and he was consecrated as a monk. |Usurpation of Grimoald, 656.| Having got rid of the rightful heir, Grimoald induced his partisans to raise his own son Childebert on the shield, and salute him as king of Austrasia. But the times were not yet ripe: Grimoald had many bitter enemies, and the majority of the people were not yet accustomed to the idea of dethroning the ancient house of the Merovings. Within a few days after the usurpation, Grimoald was seized by a band of Austrasian nobles, cast into fetters, and hurried off to Paris, where his captors laid him before the feet of king Chlodovech II. of Neustria, the brother of the deceased Sigibert.
Chlodovech, a cruel and debauched young man, slew Grimoald with horrid tortures. It appeared as if the greatness of the house of Pippin and Arnulf was destined to be extinguished with the life of its chief: but the Fates willed otherwise. Within a few months of the execution of the great Mayor, king Chlodovech died, leaving the diadem to his little son Chlothar III. All the Frankish realms were once more under the nominal rule of a child, and the last chance of the survival of the kingly power was gone, in Neustria now as well as in the Eastern realm. The house of the Austrasian mayors was within a few years to raise its head once more.
Meanwhile the minority of Chlothar III. was destined to be a time of storm and trouble. Before he had been four years on the throne his Austrasian subjects determined that they would once more have a king of their own, and not obey orders from Soissons or Paris. Accordingly they took Childerich, the younger brother of Chlothar, and crowned him as king of the Eastern realm. The joint reign of the boys Chlothar III. and Childerich I. lasted for ten years: at first the kingdoms were kept in a certain measure of peace by the queen-mother, Bathildis, an Anglo-Saxon lady of great virtue and ability. But after four years, worn out by the troublous task of reconciling the opposing factions of the nobility, she retired into a nunnery, and when her gentle influence was removed, trouble at once broke out.
|Mayor Ebroin. 660-81.| The man mainly responsible for the evil time of civil strife that followed was Ebroin, Mayor of the Palace in Neustria. He was a cruel, ambitious, vindictive noble, who aspired to much the same position that Pippin the Old and Grimoald had once occupied in Austrasia. Strong by the power of using the royal name, by his numerous comitatus, and by his unscrupulous readiness to strike down all who opposed him, he exercised for several years what the contemporary chroniclers called a ‘tyranny.’ He was, we are told, so greedy of money, that to him the man with the longer purse always seemed to have the better cause. Nor was greed his worst fault; however small the offence, any crime committed by a man that he suspected or envied brought the invariable penalty of death. His mandates were as capricious as they were harsh, for example he once issued an order that no Frank of Burgundy should approach the king’s person without the mayor’s express permission. This domination of Ebroin lasted until his young master, Chlothar III., of whose personal influence or character we hear naught, died on the verge of manhood in 670.
The autocratic Mayor of the Palace at once raised on the shield Theuderich, Chlothar’s youngest brother. But the majority of the Neustrians saw their chance of getting rid of their tyrant. Rising under the leadership of Leodegar, bishop of Aûtun, they proclaimed Childerich of Austrasia king of the West, as well as of the East Franks, and called him in to their aid. The personal following of Ebroin was too weak to resist the Neustrian and Austrasian nobles combined. He and his puppet king were made captive, and both compelled to take monastic vows—Ebroin at Luxeuil, Theuderich at St. Denis. It might have been better in the end for the Franks if Leodegar had been less merciful to the vanquished Mayor: he was yet to give much trouble.