Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

PERIOD II. FROM THE CARLOVINGIAN LINE OF FRANK KINGS TO THE ROMANO-GERMANIC EMPIRE. (A.D. 751-962.)

CHAPTER I. THE CARLOVINGIAN EMPIRE TO THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE (A.D. 814).

PIPIN THE SHORT.—The great event of the eighth century was the organization and spread of the dominion of the Franks, and the transfer to them of the Roman Empire of the West. Three Frank princes—Charles Martel, Pipin the Short, and Charlemagne, or Karl the Great—were the main instruments in bringing in this new epoch in European history. They followed a similar course, as regards the wars which they undertook, and their general policy. Charles Martel, the conqueror of the Saracens at Poitiers, rendered great services to the Church; but he provoked the lasting displeasure of the ecclesiastics by his seizures of church property. He rewarded his soldiers with archbishoprics. Pipin, however, was earnestly supported by the clergy. He had the confidence and favor of the Franks, and in 751, with the concurrence of Pope Zacharias, deposed Childeric III., and assumed the title of king. The long hair of Childeric, the badge of the Frank kings, was shorn, and he was placed in a monastery. In 752 Pipin was anointed and crowned at Soissons by Boniface, the bishop of Mentz, who exerted himself to restore order and discipline in the Frank Church, which had fallen into disorder in the times of Charles Martel.

PIPIN IN ITALY.—The controversy with the Greeks about the use of images had alienated the popes from the Eastern Empire. The encroachments of the Lombards threatened Rome itself, and were a constant menace to the independence of its bishops. Pope Stephen III. resorted to Pipin for help against these aggressive neighbors; and, in 754, Stephen solemnly repeated, in the cathedral of St. Denis, the ceremony of his coronation. The Carlovingian usurpation was thus hallowed in the eyes of the people by the sanction of the Church. The alliance between the Papacy and the Franks, so essential to both, was cemented. Pipin crossed the Alps in 754, and humbled Aistulf, the Lombard king; but, as Aistulf still kept up his hostility to the Pope, Pipin once more led his forces into Italy, and compelled him to become tributary to the Frank kingdom, and to cede to him the territory which he had won from the Greek Empire,—the exarchate of Ravenna and the Pentapolis, or the lands and cities between the Apennines and the Adriatic, from Ferrara to Ancona. This territory the Frank king formally presented to St. Peter. Thus there was founded the temporal kingdom of the popes in Italy. Pipin was called Patricius of Rome, which made him its virtual sovereign, although the office and title implied the continued supremacy of the Eastern Empire. He united under him all the conquests which had been made by Clovis and his successors. His sway extended over Aquitaine and as far as the Pyrenees. It was the rule of the Teutonic North over the more Latin South, which had no liking for the Frank sovereignty.

CHARLEMAGNE: THE SAXONS AND SARACENS.—Pipin died in 768. By the death of his younger son, Carloman, his older son, Charles, in 771 became the sole king of the Franks. Charlemagne is more properly designated Karl the Great, for he was a German in blood and speech, and in all his ways. He stands in the foremost rank of conquerors and rulers. His prodigious energy and activity as a warrior may be judged by the number of his campaigns, in which he was uniformly successful. The eastern frontier of his dominions was threatened by the Saxons, the Danes, the Slaves, the Bavarians, the Avars. He made eighteen expeditions against the Saxons, three against the Danes, one against the Bavarians, four against the Slaves, four against the Avars. Adding to these his campaigns against the Saracens, Lombards, and other peoples, the number of his military expeditions is not less than fifty-three. In all but two of his marches against the Saxons, however, he accomplished his purpose without a battle. That he was ambitious of conquest and of fame, is evident. That he had the rough ways of his German ancestors, and was unsparing in war, is equally certain. Yet he was not less eminent in wisdom than in vigor; and his reign, on the whole, was righteous as well as glorious. The two most formidable enemies of Charlemagne were the Saxons and the Saracens. The Saxon war "was checkered by grave disasters, and pursued with undismayed and unrelenting determination, in which he spared neither himself nor others. It lasted continuously—with its stubborn and ever-recurring resistance, its cruel devastations, its winter campaigns, its merciless acts of vengeance—as the effort which called forth all Charles's energy for thirty-two years" (772-804). The Saxons were heathen. The conquest of them was the more difficult because it involved the forced introduction of Christianity in the room of their old religion. More than once, when they seemed to be subdued, they broke out in passionate and united revolt. Their fiercest leader in insurrection was Witikind. A last and terrible uprising, in consequence of the slaughter of forty-five hundred Saxons on the Aller as a punishment for breach of treaty, was put down in 785, when Witikind submitted, and consented to receive Christian baptism. During the progress of the Saxon war, at the call of the Arab governor of Saragossa for aid against the caliph Abderrahman, Charles marched into Spain, and conquered Saragossa and the whole land as far as the Ebro. On his return, in the valley of Ronceveaux, the Frank rear guard was surprised and destroyed by the Basques. There fell the Frank hero Roland, whose gallant deeds were a favorite subject of mediæval romances. The duchy of Bavaria was abolished after a second revolt of its duke, Tassilo (788). One of the most brilliant of Charlemagne's wars was that against the Hunnic Avars (791). Their land between the Ems and Raab he annexed to his empire. Bavarian colonists were planted in it. Enormous treasures which they had gathered, in their incursions, from all Europe, were captured, with their "Ring," or palace-camp. The Slavonic tribes were kept in awe. Brittany was subjugated in 811. In the closing years of Charles's reign, the Danes became more and more aggressive and formidable. He visited the northern coasts, made Boulogne and Ghent his harbors and arsenals, and built fleets for defense against the audacious invaders.

CHARLEMAGNE IN ITALY.—Some of the most memorable incidents in Charlemagne's career are connected with Italy. While he was busy in the Saxon war, he had been summoned to protect Pope Hadrian I. (772-795) from the attack of the Lombards. To please his mother, Charles had married, but he had afterwards divorced, the daughter of the Lombard king Desiderius. She was the first in the series of Charlemagne's wives, who, it is said, were nine in number. By the divorce he incurred the resentment of Desiderius, who required the Pope to anoint the sons of Carloman as kings of the Franks. In 772 Charlemagne crossed the Alps by the Mont Cenis and the St. Bernard, captured Pavia, and shut up Desiderius in a Frank monastery. The king of the Franks became king of the Lombards, and lord of all Italy, except the Venetian Islands and the southern extremity of Calabria, which remained subject to the Greeks. The German king and the Pope were now, in point of fact, dominant in the West. A woman, Irene, who had put out the eyes of her son that she herself might reign, sat on the throne at Constantinople. This was a fair pretext for throwing off the Byzantine rule, which afforded no protection to Italians. Once more Charles visited Italy, to restore to the papal chair Leo III., who had been expelled by an adverse party, and, at Charles's camp at Paderborn, had implored his assistance. On Christmas Day in the year 800, during the celebration of mass in the old Basilica of St. Peter, Leo III. advanced to Charlemagne, and placed a crown on his head, saluting him, amid the acclamations of the people, as Roman emperor.

MEANING OF CHARLES'S CORONATION.—The coronation of Charlemagne made him the successor of Augustus and of Constantine. It was not imagined that the empire had ever ceased to be. The Byzantine emperors had been acknowledged in form as the rulers of the West: not even now was it conceived that the empire was divided. In the imagination and feeling of men, the creation of the Caesars remained an indivisible unity. The new emperor in the West could therefore only be regarded as a rival and usurper by the Byzantine rulers; but Charlemagne professed a friendly feeling, and addressed them as his brothers,—as if they and he were exercising a joint sovereignty. In point of fact, there had come to be a new center of wide-spread dominion in Western Europe. The diversity in beliefs and rites between Roman Christianity and that of the Greeks had been growing. The popes and Charlemagne were united by mutual sympathy and common interests. The assumption by him of the imperial title at their instance, and by the call of the Roman people, was the natural issue of all the circumstances.

CHARLES'S SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT.—Charlemagne showed himself a statesman bent on organization and social improvement. There was a system of local officers. The border districts of the kingdom were made into Marks, under Margraves or Marquesses, for defense against the outlying tribes. One of them, to the east of Bavaria, was afterwards called Austria. Dukes governed provinces, some of which afterwards became kingdoms. Their power the emperor tried to reduce. The empire was divided into districts, in each of which a Count (Graf) ruled, with inferior officers, either territorial or in cities. Bishops had large domains, and great privileges and immunities. The officers held their places at the king's pleasure: they became possessed of landed estates, and the tendency was, for the offices to become hereditary.

The old German word Graf is of uncertain derivation, but means the same as count (from the Latin comes). Mark is a word found in all the Teutonic languages. From the signification of boundary, it came to be applied, like its synonym march, to a frontier district. A margrave (Mark-Graf) was a mark-count, or an officer ruling for the king in such a district. A viscount (vicecomes) was an officer subordinate to a count. Pfalz, meaning originally palace (from the Latin palatium), was the term for any one of the king's estates. The palsgrave (Pfalz-Graf) was first his representative in charge of one of these domains. The stallgrave (Stall-Graf) corresponded to the constable (comes stabuli) in English and French. It signifies the officer in charge of the king's stables, the groom. He had a military command. A later designation of the same office is marshal (from two old German words, one of which means a horse, as seen in our word mare, having the same etymology, and the other means a servant).

Imperial deputies, or missi, lay and ecclesiastical together, visited all parts of the kingdom to examine and report as to their condition, to hold courts, and to redress wrongs. There were appeals from them to the imperial tribunal, over which the Palsgrave presided. Twice in the year great Assemblies were held of the chiefs and people, to give advice as to the framing of laws. The enactments of these assemblies are collected in the Capitularies of the Frank kings. In the Church, Charlemagne tried to secure order, which had sadly fallen away, and had given place to confusion and worldliness. He himself exercised high ecclesiastical prerogatives, especially after he became emperor.