Shortly after, Thassilo duke of Bavaria, attempted to render himself independent of the Frank power, by the assistance of the Avars, who lived to the east. He was overpowered, and expiated his breach of faith by perpetual confinement within the walls of the cloisters of Fulda. Bavaria was hereupon incorporated with the Frank empire, and Charles established the Eastern Margraviate as a check upon the wild Avars. When Charlemagne had reduced all the lands from the Ebro and the Appenines to the Eider, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Raab and the Elbe, he repaired to Rome at the conclusion of the century. It was here that, during the festival of Christmas, he was invested with the crown of the Roman empire, in the church of St. Peter, by Leo III, whom he had defended against a mob of insurgents. It was hoped, that by this means, western Christendom might be formed into a single body, of which the Pope was to become the spiritual, and Charles the secular head. It was at this time that the long-existing variance between the Western (Roman Catholic), and the Eastern (Greek Catholic) churches, terminated in a complete separation.
The domestic policy of Charlemagne was not less fertile of results than the foreign. 1. He improved the government and the administration of justice by abolishing the office of duke, dividing the whole kingdom into provinces, and appointing counts and deputies for the conduct of the affairs of justice, and clerks of the treasury for the management of the crown lands and the collection of imposts. The laws were confirmed by the popular assemblies (maifelder), in which every freeman had a share. 2. He promoted the cultivation of the land, and the education of the people. Agriculture and the breeding of cattle were encouraged, farms and villages sprang up, and barren heaths were converted into arable fields.
He founded conventual schools and cathedrals, had the works of the ancient Roman writers transcribed, and formed a collection of old German heroic ballads. Learned men, like the British monk, Alcuin, and the historian Eginhard, from the Odenwald, had ample reason to congratulate themselves on his encouragement and support. 3. He favored the clergy and the church. It was by his means that the former obtained their tithes and vast gifts and legacies; church music was improved, missionaries supported, and churches and monasteries erected. Ingelheim on the Rhine, and Aix, were his favorite places of residence. He lies buried in the latter town.
The son of Charlemagne, Louis the Denbonnaire (the Gentle), was better fitted for the repose of a cloister than for the government of a warlike nation. A too hasty division of his kingdom among his three sons, Lothaire, Pepin, and Louis, was the occasion of much sorrow to himself, and confusion to the empire. For when, at a later period, he proposed an alteration in favor of his fourth son, Charles the Bald, the fruit of a second marriage, the elder sons took up arms against their father. Louis, faithlessly deserted by his vassals on “the field of lies,” near Strasburg, and betrayed to his own sons, was compelled by Lothaire to do penance in the church and to abdicate his throne; and was afterwards shut up for some time in a cloister. It is true that Louis procured his father’s reinstatement; but when the weak emperor, after the death of Pepin, by a new division of the kingdom, deprived Louis of Germany, in favor of his brothers, Lothaire and Charles, Louis raised his standard against him. This broke the old emperor’s heart. Full of sorrow, he ended his days on a small island of the Rhine, near Ingelheim. The hostile brothers now turned their arms against each other. A bloody civil war depopulated the country, so that at last, after a battle of three days’ duration, at Fontenaille in Burgundy, the Frank nobility refused to obey the arriere-ban, and by this means brought about the treaty of partition of Verdun. By virtue of this treaty, Lothaire received the imperial dignity, together with Italy, Burgundy, and Lorraine; Charles the Bald, western Franconia (France); and Louis the German, the lands on the right bank of the Rhine—Spire, Worms, and Mayence.
This division was followed by a time of great confusion, during which Europe was severely harassed, on the south by the Arabs; on the east, by the Slavi; and on the north and west, by the Normans. To oppose these predatory inroads, the Carlovingian monarchs, who were all men of weak and narrow minds, were obliged to restore the ducal office in the different provinces, and to sanction the hereditary authority of the Margraves, so that, in a short time, all the power fell into the hands of the nobles. By the rapid deaths of most of the posterity of Louis the Denbonnaire, nearly the whole of the empire of Charlemagne devolved upon Charles the Fat, A. D. 876, a prince weak and indolent, and simple almost to imbecility. Incapable of resisting the valiant Normans, he purchased a disgraceful peace from them. This proceeding so exasperated the German princes, that they decreed his deposition, at Tribur on the Rhine, and elected his nephew, the brave Arnulf, as his successor. Arnulf governed with vigor. He overthrew the Normans at Louvain, and called in the aid of the wild Magyars, or Hungarians, from the Ural, a people expert in horsemanship and archery, and who were now, under their valiant captain Arpad, occupying the plains on the Danube (named after them Hungary), against the Slavi and Avars. The Avars were either subjected or compelled to retreat. But the strangers (the Hungarians) soon became a more dreadful scourge to Germany than either the Slavi or the Avars. They made their predatory inroads and exacted a yearly tribute, even under Louis the Child, the youthful son of Arnulf, who died in the flower of his age, after a glorious campaign in Italy. This still continued, when, after the early death of this last of the Carlovingian race, the German nobles, among whom the dukes of Saxony, Franconia, Lorraine, Swabia, and Bavaria were preëminent for power, met together and elected Duke Conrad of Franconia, emperor. Germany thus became an elective empire.
The rule of the Carlovingians survived longest in France, but it possessed neither strength nor dignity. Under Charles the Simple, who had ascended the French throne after the deposition and subsequent death of Charles the Fat, the dukes and counts rendered themselves entirely independent, and one of the most powerful among them, Hugh of Paris, kept the imbecile king in strict confinement. France, on the other hand, was delivered from the devastating forays of the Normans, by Charles admitting duke Rollo into the province named after them Normandy, on condition that he and his followers would suffer themselves to be baptized, and recognize the king as their suzerain (feudal sovereign). The Normans, a people readily susceptible of civilization, soon acquired the language, manners, and customs of the Franks. Charles the Simple was followed by two other kings of the Carlovingian race; but their power was at last so limited that they possessed nothing but the town of Laon, with the surrounding country; every thing else had fallen into the hands of the insolent nobility. After the death of the Childless Louis V, Hugh Capet, son and heir of Hugh of Paris, assumed the title of king, and put to death in prison Louis’ uncle Charles of Lorraine, who attempted to assert his right to the throne by force of arms.
The first successors of Hugh Capet possessed but little power and a narrow territory. The dukes and counts of the different provinces looked upon the king, who, properly, was only lord of France, as their equal, and only allowed him the first rank among themselves, in so far as they were obliged to recognize him as their feudal superior. The nobles dared not weaken the rights that appertained to him in this capacity, lest they should afford an example of breach of faith to their own subjects, and encourage them to similar behavior towards themselves. For the rest, the possessions of the great vassals were independent counties and principalities, which had no closer connection with the French throne than the western territories on the Seine, Loire, and Garonne, which belonged to the king of England; or the eastern (Burgundian) lands on the Rhone and the Jura, which were portions of the German empire.
But in the attempt to increase the kingly power, the house of Capet were not less aided by their good fortune than by their wisdom. It was fortunate, that, owing to the lengthened lives of most of their kings, the throne was seldom vacant, that there was almost always a son of age to succeed his father, and that, consequently, there was never an interregnum. But it was wisdom in the first kings to have their eldest sons crowned during their lives, and to make them their partners in the government, so that, on the death of the father, little or no change was suffered. The most important kings after Hugh Capet were Louis VII, who undertook the second crusade, and during his absence intrusted the government in France to the politic Abbot Suger of St. Denis; Philip Augustus II, who wrested Normandy and the other territories in the west from the English king, John Lackland; and Louis VIII, who enlarged his dominions on the south by the war against the Albigenses. But the reigns which had the greatest influence upon the history of France were those of St. Louis and Philip the Fair. The former improved the laws, and caused the royal courts of justice to be looked upon as the highest in the land, and the disputes of the nobles among themselves, or with their vassals to be brought before them for decision: the latter, on the other hand, increased the consequence of the towns by granting various privileges and liberties to the citizens, and by being the first who summoned the representatives of the towns to the diet during his contest with the pope. After the death of Philip’s three sons, who reigned one after the other, but left no male heirs, the French throne passed to the house of Valois, A. D. 1328.
Philip VI of Valois, brother’s son of Philip the Fair, inherited the French throne. But Edward III of England also asserted his claims, as son of a daughter of Philip the Fair. Without regard to the Salic law, which prohibited the succession of females, he assumed the title of king of France, and made war upon Philip. After a bloody contest of a few years, the battle of Crecy was fought, in which the English were the victors, and the flower of the French chivalry, together with John, the blind king of Bohemia, fell on the field. The possession of the important town of Calais was the fruit of the victory. Philip died in the following year, and his son, John the Good, succeeded to the contested crown. Eager to obliterate the memory of Crecy, he attacked the English army, which was under the command of Edward III’s heroic son, the Black Prince, but suffered a decisive defeat at Poictiers, and was obliged to proceed as a captive to the capital of England. Whilst he was absent, the kingdom was governed by the crown prince (Dauphin). During his rule, an insurrection broke out in Paris and over the whole land, which was attended with great devastations and outrages, until the imperfectly-armed citizens and peasants were subdued by the French knights, and visited with severe punishment. Shortly after this, a peace was established between France and England, by which Calais and the south-west of France was surrendered to the English, and a heavy ransom promised for John, whilst Edward, on the other hand, renounced his pretensions to the French throne. But when the collection of the ransom money was delayed, John voluntarily returned into captivity, and died in London.
John’s son, Charles V (the Wise), healed the wounds of his country. He quieted men’s minds by his moderate government, and by prudence and valor recovered the lands that had been lost on the Loire and the Garonne; so that when the Black Prince fell a victim to wasting disease, and Edward III shortly followed him into the grave, nothing remained to the English of all their conquests but Calais. But under his successor, Charles VI, who became insane shortly after coming of age, France again fell into a state of confusion and lawlessness. Two powerful court parties, headed by the uncle of the king (the duke of Burgundy), and the king’s brother (the duke of Orleans), contended for the government; whilst the burghers rebelled against the heavy imposts, and demanded an increase of their privileges. About the same time in which the towns were waging war against the knights in Germany, the Swiss peasants were contending against the nobility, and a dangerous popular insurrection, under Wat Tyler and others, was making rapid progress in England, the citizen and peasant class rose against the court and the nobility in Flanders and France also. But want of union among the insurgents gave the latter the victory, and the outbreak was followed by a diminution of the privileges of the people. The Burgundian party favored the citizens, the Orleans party the nobility.