“At that time Chlodoveus (Clovis), at the instigation of the devil, broke off an arm of the blessed martyr Dionysius. At that time the kingdom of the Franks fell under many pestilential disasters. But Clovis himself was given up to every kind of filthy conversation, a fornicator and a deceiver of womankind, happy in his gluttony and drunkenness. As to his death history records nothing worth repeating, for many writers speak in condemnatory language concerning his end, but not knowing exactly how his wickedness was terminated, they talk in an uncertain way, one saying one thing and another another.”

For the next quarter of a century after the death of Clovis II. the canvas is fully filled by the great figure of Ebroin, who was during many years mayor of the palace for Neustria and Burgundy, and during a short time for Austrasia also. Thus the same results, which in the next generation were secured by the ancestor of Charlemagne, seemed for a time to have been obtained by the Neustrian Ebroin. Originally raised to the dignity of mayor of the palace by something like a vote of the Frankish nobles, he used his power, when he felt himself settled in his seat, in a spirit of strenuous hostility to the aristocracy, both spiritual and temporal. That it was absolutely necessary in the interest of the kingdom that some stand should be made against the increasing pretensions of the counts and bishops there can be little doubt, but how far Ebroin acted in the interests of king and kingdom, and how far in those of his own avarice and ambition, it is now hopeless to determine. He was evidently a hard and unscrupulous man, but we have always to remember in reading the vituperative adjectives which are attached to his name that his story is written by ecclesiastics, and that he showed himself their constant opponent. Especially was he brought into collision with the astute and able Leodegarius, Bishop of Autun, who in the year 670, successfully using the name of the puppet king of Austrasia, overthrew Ebroin and his puppet, and sent the fallen major domus with tonsured head into retirement at Luxeuil. For three years Bishop Leodegarius ruled as practically, if not nominally, major domus of Burgundy; then he too fell into disgrace, became involved in an ignoble squabble with another canonized bishop, Patricius of Clermont, fled from the court, was taken captive and sent to rejoin his former rival in the monastery of Luxeuil. The assassination of Childeric, the Austrasian king (a crime which Leodegarius was afterwards accused of having prompted), led to a turn in the wheel of fortune. Leodegarius and Ebroin escaped from the monastery and succeeded in getting hold of the person of the last surviving son of Clovis II. In his name Ebroin again ruled as major domus in Neustria and Burgundy (674) but the alliance between him and his late fellow-prisoner was of short duration. Leodegarius was seized and blinded, and four years afterwards put to death. This Bishop of Autun was evidently a mere politician, like his far more famous successor, Talleyrand. He had less than Talleyrand’s luck, and it may perhaps be admitted that, if he were not really privy to the assassination of Childeric, his punishment was somewhat harder than that usually meted out even in those days to politicians who had failed. But it is not without a slight feeling of surprise that we find this turbulent bishop transformed into a saint and martyr, and discover that Leodegarius, Bishop of Autun, is none other than the St. Leger whose name, among all those of mediæval saints, is perhaps the most often heard from the lips of Englishmen.[17]

Restored to power, Ebroin kept his major-domat in Neustria and Burgundy for seven years (674–681). The same monastic biographer who pours upon his memory the names “devil,” “viper,” “cruel lion,” and “son of damnation,” confesses at the close of his career that “he had acquired such sublime glory as fell to the lot of no other Frank.” About the year 679 there was civil war between the eastern and western kingdoms, and the leaders of the Austrasian army were Pippin and Martin. The former was the nobleman who is commonly called Pippin of Heristal, the grandson of St. Arnulf and Pippin of Landen; the latter was perhaps a kinsman of the Arnulfing line. Thus after more than twenty years of obscuration the great Austrasian house was once again coming to the front. Not yet, however, did victory shine upon their banners. Ebroin and his puppet king met them in battle near Laon: “An infinite crowd of people there rushed together to the fight; but the Austrasians, being conquered, turned their backs and fled. Ebroin pursued them with most cruel slaughter and laid waste the greater part of that region.” Pippin escaped to Austrasia; Martin sought a refuge in Laon, but was tempted forth by Ebroin, who swore, apparently on the relics of the saints, that his life should be safe if he surrendered. Unfortunately for the suppliant the coffers, which were thought to contain the sacred dust, were really empty, and Ebroin put his outwitted victim to death with all his associates.

At last about the year 681 private vengeance ended the career of the great Neustrian Mayor. A certain nobleman named Ermenfrid, whose property Ebroin had confiscated, waited for him at his house door one Sunday morning as he was just setting out for mass, drew his sword, struck him a mortal blow on the head, and escaped to Pippin in Austrasia. The death of Ebroin meant apparently the ascendency of the eastern family. After some revolutions which it is not necessary to describe, a certain Berchar, “a man of little stature, of base education, useless in counsel,” was chosen by the misguided nobles of Neustria as mayor of the palace. Against this Berchar and his king, Theodoric III., Pippin of Heristal marched with a mighty host of Austrasians. Battle was joined at a place called Textricium, now Testri, not far from St. Quentin. Berchar and his king fled from the field. The former was slain (“by his flatterers,” says the chronicler), and Pippin became practically lord of the whole Frankish dominion. This event, as to the details of which we know next to nothing, but which was of immense importance for the future destinies of Europe, happened in 687. About seventy years after their first appearance in history the Arnulfings have won for themselves that high place which they will now hold in defiance of all foes till they have won a yet higher, the highest in Christendom.

CHAPTER III.
PIPPIN OF HERISTAL AND CHARLES MARTEL.

Thus at last was supreme power in the Frankish kingdom concentrated in the hands of that family of statesmen who were to hold it for two centuries. I have been somewhat minute in tracing the history of the Neustrian Mayoralty, but in the Austrasian kingdom it seems to have been rather as great nobles than as Mayors of the Palace that the Arnulfings rose to eminence. When Pippin won the battle of Testri he had no Austrasian king in whose name he could fight, and he seems to have been known simply as Dux or Princeps Francorum, not as Major Domus of Austrasia. From the scanty and imperfect indications of the chroniclers and the biographers of saints, it would seem that before 688 all the Eastern portion of the Frankish kingdom was (as I have already said) in a state of disintegration, and that Pippin, if he had been so minded, might have followed the example of the chiefs of the Frisians, Thuringians, and Bavarians, by setting up for himself as a virtually independent Duke of Austrasia. What constitutes the peculiar world historical importance of this Arnulfing is that he was not satisfied with this easy solution of the problem before him, but using his great position in Austrasia as a lever made himself supreme also in Neustria and Burgundy, and then as major domus of a legitimate though utterly effete Merovingian king, compelled the unruly chiefs on the Eastern frontier to return to their old allegiance, and thus became in fact the second founder of the Frankish monarchy. That monarchy seems indeed to us who labor through its barbarous annals about as miserable a political machine as the Aryan notions have ever invented; but, however bad it may have been, it was probably the best that could then be contrived for the united government of the countries between the Bay of Biscay and the mountains of Bohemia; and for the time it was all important for Europe that these countries should still form part of one state.

For some years Pippin ruled the Western realm by means of a royal adherent, Nordbert, to whom however he did not concede the fateful title of mayor. About fourteen years after the battle of Testri we find his son Grimwald recognized as major domus for Neustria and probably his eldest son Drogo held the same office in Burgundy. Meanwhile Pippin, returning to his own Austrasian lands, was warring down the German pretenders to independence. The Frisian Ratbod was defeated in a great battle, compelled to cede West Friesland to the Franks, and to acknowledge in fact as well as in name the supremacy of the Merovingian fainéant. Though himself a heathen, Ratbod was fain to give his daughter—who was no doubt converted to Christianity—in marriage to Pippin’s son Grimwald; and the Anglo-Saxon preacher Willibrord had a clear course given him for his missionary operations among the Frisians. So too the Alamanni and the Bavarians appear to have been brought back into subjection by Pippin, though we hear less of his operations on the Danube than by the mouths of the Rhine.

For twenty-seven years this strong and statesmanlike man ruled with absolute sway the kingdom of the Franks, and then in his old age, by one act of supreme folly, went near to ruining the whole achievement of a lifetime. As it was said of old, “Let no man be called happy,” so may we add, “Let no man be called wise, till his death.” He had married in early life a lady named Plectrudis, nobly born and with a reputation for prudence and ability, by whom he had two sons, Drogo and Grimwald. Drogo had died in 708, leaving two sons who were now grown up to manhood. Grimwald, who had married, as before said, a Frisian princess, had no son by her, but was the father of an illegitimate son, a little child named Theudwald.

As for Pippin himself, like many other members of his house, though descended from the sainted Arnulf, and generally on very good terms with the Church, he seems to have been guilty of great laxity in his matrimonial relations. Assuredly the Arnulfings did not plunge into those excesses of profligacy which destroyed the vigor of the Merovingian line, yet there was a tendency in many of them to take a polygamous view of marriage, more suited to an Arabian Caliph than to a Christian nobleman. Thus we find that Pippin had another wife named Alphaida, who, though the relationship was an interlude in his married life with Plectrudis, is yet treated by the chroniclers not as a concubine, but as a lawfully wedded wife. To a son born of this marriage Pippin had given the name of Charles. According to an old Saga, when the child was born, the messenger came into the presence of the great mayor of the palace and, dismayed at seeing him sitting with Plectrudis by his side, shouted out “Long live the king. It is a Carl,” the old German word for a man. “And a very good name, too,” said Pippin. “Let him be called Carl.” This Charles, son of Alphaida, was in the year 714 a strong and vigorous man of between twenty and thirty, already married and father of an eight-year-old son.