[19]The river Hasa is near Osnabrück.
[20]This is the famous defeat of Roncesvalles, where later legends affirmed that “Charlemagne with all his peerage [pg 164] fell at Fontarabia,” and where Roland wound his horn, whose sound is still heard in the verse of Milton. By a strange chance this incident becomes one of the most famous in the cycle of mediæval Charlemagne legends; and Roland, evermore transfigured from the historical warden of the Breton march, becomes, after long wanderings, the Orlando of the “Orlando Furioso” of Ariosto. But the historical Roland seems mentioned here, and here only.
[21]The Duchy of Beneventum embraced a large part of the Italian peninsula south of Rome. It had been for a long time connected, in loose feudal dependence, with the Lombard monarchy of North Italy, and, since that had been overwhelmed and annexed by Charles, was now regarded as a dependency of the Carolingian monarchy.
[22]Tassilo, Duke of Bavaria, had offended Charles by claiming independent sovereignty and refusing to recognise Charles in any way as his overlord. From the beginning of Charles’s reign there had been friction between them, but for some time a hollow truce had existed. War came in 787, in spite of the efforts of the Papacy at mediation, and ended swiftly, as described in the text, owing to the overwhelming strength of the armies brought against Tassilo by Charles. But the past of Bavaria was too great to allow its Duke to accept the position of inferiority, and in the next year Tassilo was deposed, tonsured, and imprisoned in a monastery.
[23]It was part of Charles’s general policy to displace the dukes of his realm, with their undefined and dangerous powers, and to administer his dominions by a large number of counts, who were to begin with quite dependent officials executing the orders of the King over a limited area. “Count” was not yet the great title of nobility which it became later.
[24]The Wiltzes lived on the shores of the Baltic between the Elbe and the Oder.
[25]This “gulf” of Eginhard’s presents geographical difficulties. The direction indicated and the approximate measurements suggested make it impossible to apply his [pg 165] words to the whole of the Baltic Gulf. The south-eastern part of the Baltic will correspond fairly well to the description.
[26]The war against the Avars was due to the alliance which had existed between them and Tassilo, Duke of Bavaria. The Avars, though allied in race to the ancient Huns and the modern Magyars, were, nevertheless, a distinct people. Charles’s war entirely broke their power, and removed a great danger from western Europe.
[27]“The Monk of St Gall” (II. i.) gives an interesting description of the vast concentric earthworks by which the power of the Kagan was defended, and his account rests on better authority than much of his strange chronicle. See also Dr Hodgkin’s “Life of Charles the Great,” p. 155.
[28]The vast treasure of the Avars had an important influence on the course of Charles’s career. This great influx of the precious metals into Germany depreciated the value of the coinage and raised the price of commodities.