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[ Omnis homo ex sua proprietate legitimam decimam ad ecclesiam conferat. Experimento enim didicimus, in anno, quo illa valida fames irrepsit, ebullire vacuas annonas a daemonibus devoratas, et voces exprobationis auditas. Such is the decree and assertion of the great Council of Frankfort, (canon xxv. tom. ix. p. 105.) Both Selden (Hist. of Tithes; Works, vol. iii. part ii. p. 1146) and Montesquieu (Esprit des Loix, l. xxxi. c. 12) represent Charlemagne as the first legal author of tithes. Such obligations have country gentlemen to his memory!]
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[ Eginhard (c. 25, p. 119) clearly affirms, tentabat et scribere... sed parum prospere successit labor praeposterus et sero inchoatus. The moderns have perverted and corrected this obvious meaning, and the title of M. Gaillard’s dissertation (tom. iii. p. 247-260) betrays his partiality. * Note: This point has been contested; but Mr. Hallam and Monsieur Sismondl concur with Gibbon. See Middle Ages, iii. 330, Histoire de Francais, tom. ii. p. 318. The sensible observations of the latter are quoted in the Quarterly Review, vol. xlviii. p. 451. Fleury, I may add, quotes from Mabillon a remarkable evidence that Charlemagne “had a mark to himself like an honest, plain-dealing man.” Ibid.—M.]
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[ See Gaillard, tom. iii. p. 138-176, and Schmidt, tom. ii. p. 121-129.]
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[ M. Gaillard (tom. iii. p. 372) fixes the true stature of Charlemagne (see a Dissertation of Marquard Freher ad calcem Eginhart, p. 220, &c.) at five feet nine inches of French, about six feet one inch and a fourth English, measure. The romance writers have increased it to eight feet, and the giant was endowed with matchless strength and appetite: at a single stroke of his good sword Joyeuse, he cut asunder a horseman and his horse; at a single repast, he devoured a goose, two fowls, a quarter of mutton, &c.]
That empire was not unworthy of its title; [105] and some of the fairest kingdoms of Europe were the patrimony or conquest of a prince, who reigned at the same time in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Hungary. [106] I. The Roman province of Gaul had been transformed into the name and monarchy of France; but, in the decay of the Merovingian line, its limits were contracted by the independence of the Britons and the revolt of Aquitain. Charlemagne pursued, and confined, the Britons on the shores of the ocean; and that ferocious tribe, whose origin and language are so different from the French, was chastised by the imposition of tribute, hostages, and peace. After a long and evasive contest, the rebellion of the dukes of Aquitain was punished by the forfeiture of their province, their liberty, and their lives.
Harsh and rigorous would have been such treatment of ambitious governors, who had too faithfully copied the mayors of the palace. But a recent discovery [107] has proved that these unhappy princes were the last and lawful heirs of the blood and sceptre of Clovis, and younger branch, from the brother of Dagobert, of the Merovingian house. Their ancient kingdom was reduced to the duchy of Gascogne, to the counties of Fesenzac and Armagnac, at the foot of the Pyrenees: their race was propagated till the beginning of the sixteenth century; and after surviving their Carlovingian tyrants, they were reserved to feel the injustice, or the favors, of a third dynasty. By the reunion of Aquitain, France was enlarged to its present boundaries, with the additions of the Netherlands and Spain, as far as the Rhine. II.