“No one could stay his progress on his way to the royal bed-chamber; he passed through seven doors and at last stood before it and so frightened the ladies in attendance upon the queen that they shut it in his face; they tried to stifle their laughter at his appearance with their dresses [sic.] But the king had heard the noise and asked what it meant. They said that a half-clad, scraped, silly, and raving scamp demanded to see the king, and made an unmannerly noise. Charles sent for him and made him tell all he knew. ‘Before the third hour of the day,’ writes the Monk, ‘all the chief conspirators, not expecting anything of the kind, were either on the way to exile or punishment. The dwarfish, hunch-backed Pippin received a good beating, was shaved, and sent for a little while to the monastery of St. Gall to do penance.’”—Mombert, p. 219.
[47] Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot (1753–1823) served as minister of war for nearly three years during the French revolution. His success as a strategist won for him the popular title of “organizer of victory.”
[48] The Koreish is the most influential tribe of the Arabs. Their prominence is due to the fact that, early in the 5th century, they obtained and became the masters and guardians of the Kaabeh, in Mecca, which was a sacred shrine long before the days of Mohammed. Having once obtained the temple keys, they have succeeded in holding them against every effort to capture them. “Their possession of the temple-keys not only gave the tribe of Koreysh a semi-religious pre-eminence over all the other clans of Arabia, but also placed at their disposal the treasures of gold, silver, jewels, and other offerings accumulated by the pagan piety of ages in the temple of Mecca.”—Encyc. Brit.
The Abbasides, who were descended from Mohammed’s uncle Abbas, became a powerful tribe and were caliphs of Bagdad for five centuries, from 750 to 1258.
[49] “The Normans had crossed the English fosse, and were now at the foot of the hill, with the palisades and the axes right before them. The trumpet sounded, and a flight of arrows from the archers in all the three divisions of William’s army was the prelude to the onslaught of the heavy-armed foot. But before the two armies met hand to hand, a juggler or minstrel, known as Taillefer, the Cleaver of Iron, rode forth from the Norman ranks as if to defy the whole force of England in his single person. He craved and obtained the duke’s leave to strike the first blow; he rode forth, singing songs of Roland and of Charlemagne—so soon had the name and exploits of the great German become the spoil of the enemy. He threw his sword into the air and caught it again; but he presently showed that he could use warlike weapons for other purposes than for jugglers’ tricks of this kind; he pierced one Englishman with his lance, he struck down another with his sword, and then himself fell beneath the blows of their comrades. A bravado of this kind might serve as an omen, it might stir up the spirits of the men on either side; but it could in no other way affect the fate of the battle.”—Freeman, Norman Conquest, iii. 319.
[50] After Charlemagne had delivered France and Germany from external enemies, he turned his arms against the Saracens of Spain. “This was the great mistake of his life.... In seeking to invade Spain, Charlemagne warred against a race from whom Europe had nothing more to fear. His grandfather, Charles Martel, had arrested the conquests of the Saracens; and they were quiet in their settlements in Spain, and had made considerable attainments in science and literature. Their schools of medicine and their arts were in advance of the rest of Europe. They were the translators of Aristotle, who reigned in the rising universities during the middle ages. As this war was unnecessary, Providence seemed to rebuke Charlemagne. His defeat at Roncesvalles was one of the most memorable events in his military history.... The Frankish forces were signally defeated amid the passes of the Pyrenees; and it was not until after several centuries that the Gothic princes of Spain shook off the yoke of their Saracenic conquerors, and drove them from Europe.”—John Lord, Beacon Lights of History.
[53] Rhine?
[54] The solidus was a Byzantine coin worth about $5.12 of United States money.