Great men do great things which would not get done without them; they set their mark plainly upon history, which realizes a portion of their ideas and wishes; but they are far from doing all they meditate, and they know not all they do. They are at one and the same time instruments and free agents in a general design which is infinitely above their ken, and which, even if a glimpse of it be caught, remains inscrutable to them— the design of God towards mankind. When great men understand that such is their position and accept it, they show sense, and they work to some purpose. When they do not recognize the limits of their free agency, and the veil which hides from their eyes the future they are laboring for, they become the dupes, and frequently the victims, of a blind pride, which events, in the long run, always end by exposing and punishing.
Amongst men of his rank, Charlemagne has had this singular good fortune, that his error, his misguided attempt at imperialism, perished with him, whilst his salutary achievement, the territorial security of Christian Europe, has been durable, to the great honor, as well as great profit, of European civilization.
CHAPTER XII.
DECAY AND FALL OF THE CARLOVINGIANS.
From the death of Charlemagne to the accession of Hugh Capet,—that is, from 814 to 987,—thirteen kings sat upon the throne of France. What then became, under their reign and in the course of those hundred and seventy-three years, of the two great facts which swayed the mind and occupied the life of Charlemagne? What became, that is, of the solid territorial foundation of the kingdom of Christian France, through efficient repression of foreign invasion, and of the unity of that vast empire wherein Charlemagne had attempted and hoped to resuscitate the Roman empire?
The fate of those two facts is the very history of France under the Carlovingian dynasty; it is the only portion of the events of that epoch which still deserves attention nowadays, for it is the only one which has exercised any great and lasting influence on the general history of France.
Attempts at foreign invasion of France were renewed very often, and in many parts of Gallo-Frankish territory, during the whole duration of the Carlovingian dynasty, and, even though they failed, they caused the population of the kingdom to suffer from cruel ravages. Charlemagne, even after his successes against the different barbaric invaders, had foreseen the evils which would be inflicted on France by the most formidable and most determined of them, the Northmen, coming by sea, and landing on the coast. The most closely contemporaneous and most given to detail of his chroniclers, the monk of St. Gall, tells in prolix and pompous, but evidently heartfelt and sincere terms, the tale of the great emperor’s far-sightedness. “Charles, who was ever astir,” says he, “arrived by mere hap and unexpectedly, in a certain town of Narbonnese Gaul. Whilst he was at dinner, and was as yet unrecognized of any, some corsairs of the Northmen came to ply their piracies in the very port. When their vessels were descried, they were supposed to be Jewish traders according to some, African according to others, and British in the opinion of others; but the gifted monarch, perceiving, by the build and lightness of the craft, that they bare not merchandise, but foes, said to his own folk, ‘These vessels be not laden with merchandise, but manned with cruel foes.’ At these words all the Franks, in rivalry one with another, run to their ships, but uselessly: for the Northmen, indeed, hearing that yonder was he whom it was still their wont to call Charles the Hammer, feared lest all their fleet should be taken or destroyed in the port, and they avoided, by a flight of inconceivable rapidity, not only the glaives, but even the eyes of those who were pursuing then.
“Pious Charles, however, a prey to well-grounded fear, rose up from table, stationed himself at a window looking eastward, and there remained a long while, and his eyes were filled with tears. As none durst question him, this warlike prince explained to the grandees who were about his person the cause of his movement and of his tears: ‘Know ye, my lieges, wherefore I weep so bitterly? Of a surety I fear not lest these fellows should succeed in injuring me by their miserable piracies; but it grieveth me deeply that, whilst I live, they should have been nigh to touching at this shore, and I am a prey to violent sorrow when I foresee what evils they will heap upon my descendants and their people.’”
