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[ That extraordinary man, Friar Bacon, reveals two of the ingredients, saltpetre and sulphur, and conceals the third in a sentence of mysterious gibberish, as if he dreaded the consequences of his own discovery, (Biog. Brit. vol. i. p. 430, new edition.)]
Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.—Part II.
Constantinople and the Greek fire might exclude the Arabs from the eastern entrance of Europe; but in the West, on the side of the Pyrenees, the provinces of Gaul were threatened and invaded by the conquerors of Spain. [25] The decline of the French monarchy invited the attack of these insatiate fanatics. The descendants of Clovis had lost the inheritance of his martial and ferocious spirit; and their misfortune or demerit has affixed the epithet of lazy to the last kings of the Merovingian race. [26] They ascended the throne without power, and sunk into the grave without a name. A country palace, in the neighborhood of Compiegne [27] was allotted for their residence or prison: but each year, in the month of March or May, they were conducted in a wagon drawn by oxen to the assembly of the Franks, to give audience to foreign ambassadors, and to ratify the acts of the mayor of the palace. That domestic officer was become the minister of the nation and the master of the prince. A public employment was converted into the patrimony of a private family: the elder Pepin left a king of mature years under the guardianship of his own widow and her child; and these feeble regents were forcibly dispossessed by the most active of his bastards. A government, half savage and half corrupt, was almost dissolved; and the tributary dukes, and provincial counts, and the territorial lords, were tempted to despise the weakness of the monarch, and to imitate the ambition of the mayor. Among these independent chiefs, one of the boldest and most successful was Eudes, duke of Aquitain, who in the southern provinces of Gaul usurped the authority, and even the title of king. The Goths, the Gascons, and the Franks, assembled under the standard of this Christian hero: he repelled the first invasion of the Saracens; and Zama, lieutenant of the caliph, lost his army and his life under the walls of Thoulouse. The ambition of his successors was stimulated by revenge; they repassed the Pyrenees with the means and the resolution of conquest. The advantageous situation which had recommended Narbonne [28] as the first Roman colony, was again chosen by the Moslems: they claimed the province of Septimania or Languedoc as a just dependence of the Spanish monarchy: the vineyards of Gascony and the city of Bourdeaux were possessed by the sovereign of Damascus and Samarcand; and the south of France, from the mouth of the Garonne to that of the Rhone, assumed the manners and religion of Arabia.
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[ For the invasion of France and the defeat of the Arabs by Charles Martel, see the Historia Arabum (c. 11, 12, 13, 14) of Roderic Ximenes, archbishop of Toledo, who had before him the Christian chronicle of Isidore Pacensis, and the Mahometan history of Novairi. The Moslems are silent or concise in the account of their losses; but M Cardonne (tom. i. p. 129, 130, 131) has given a pure and simple account of all that he could collect from Ibn Halikan, Hidjazi, and an anonymous writer. The texts of the chronicles of France, and lives of saints, are inserted in the Collection of Bouquet, (tom. iii.,) and the Annals of Pagi, who (tom. iii. under the proper years) has restored the chronology, which is anticipated six years in the Annals of Baronius. The Dictionary of Bayle (Abderame and Munuza) has more merit for lively reflection than original research.]
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[ Eginhart, de Vita Caroli Magni, c. ii. p. 13-78, edit. Schmink, Utrecht, 1711. Some modern critics accuse the minister of Charlemagne of exaggerating the weakness of the Merovingians; but the general outline is just, and the French reader will forever repeat the beautiful lines of Boileau’s Lutrin.]
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[ Mamaccae, on the Oyse, between Compiegne and Noyon, which Eginhart calls perparvi reditus villam, (see the notes, and the map of ancient France for Dom. Bouquet’s Collection.) Compendium, or Compiegne, was a palace of more dignity, (Hadrian. Valesii Notitia Galliarum, p. 152,) and that laughing philosopher, the Abbe Galliani, (Dialogues sur le Commerce des Bleds,) may truly affirm, that it was the residence of the rois tres Chretiens en tres chevelus.]