The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 07

by Unknown

[751-771 A.D.]

Haying made up my mind to set down in writing the life, the public career, and in some sort the great exploits of my dear lord and benefactor Charles, a king pre-eminent and of most just and glorious fame, I have encompassed the matter with all the brevity at my command. I have taken care that of all that might come to my notice nothing should be omitted, also that I might not offend the most delicate minds by narrating at too great a length each new particular; if indeed it may in any way be contrived that a new and recent essay should not offend those who sniff even at ancient chronicles compiled by authors the most learned and the most lucid. Men there are, I doubt not, in great numbers, servants of ease and disciples of letters, who are of opinion that the state of the present age should not be held of such trifling account that everything which is now happening should be condemned entirely to silence and oblivion as if unworthy of commemoration. Such men wrapt in the love of immortality had rather insert the shining deeds of others in any sort of writing, than rob posterity of the fame of their own name by writing nothing. Yet have I not thought well to refrain from writing of this category, since I was aware that no one could set down more veraciously than myself the things in which I myself took part, and which I knew to be true with the knowledge of an eye-witness as they call it, nor could I clearly know whether or no they would be recorded by another. Therefore I judged it better to transmit in common to posterity records the same as other written works, rather than suffer the most glorious life of a king pre-eminent and the greatest of his age to perish in the shades of oblivion together with victories most splendid and hard to be repeated by men of modern times.

Another course (no light one, I fancy), sufficient in itself to urge me to this composition, lurked in my mind. This was the tender care lavished upon me, and my uninterrupted friendship with himself and his children after I began to pass my life in his palace; for by this he bound me to him with the closest ties, and made me a debtor to him alive or dead. So that I might justly appear and be judged to be ungrateful if, unmindful of all the benefits heaped upon me, I were to pass over in silence the clear and brilliant deeds of one who deserved so well of me, if I were to suffer his life as though he had never lived to remain without the written praise that is its due, the writing and unfolding whereof needs not my poor little wit, which is thin and slender—nay, which is all but the merest nothing—but rather the eloquence of a Tully to the last drop. Here, reader, you have the book containing a memorial of the most eminent and the greatest man, wherein you shall see nothing but the deeds wrought by this man to marvel at, unless it were that I, a foreigner[132] very little versed in the Latin speech, should think myself able to write properly and neatly in Latin, and should have fallen headlong into such immodesty as to imagine that saying of Cicero may be despised wherein, talking of Latin writers in the second book of the Tusculans, he is reported to have said: “For one to commit his meditations to writing who can neither place them orderly or illustrate them clearly, nor entice the reader by any delightful device, is the office of a man who recklessly abuseth both his free time and the profession of letters.”

This opinion of the noble orator had availed to deter me from my work, had I not a prejudice in my mind in favour of rather suffering the judgment of critics and making venture of my own small wit in writing, than sparing myself and passing over the memory of so great a man.

The family of the Merovingians from which the Franks had been wont to choose their king is said to have ended with the king Childeric, who was dethroned by the command of Stephen the Roman pontiff; his hair was cut off and he was thrust into a monastery. With him the line may seem to have closed, yet for a long while it had lacked all vigour nor had any member shown distinction in himself outside the empty title of king; for the wealth and power of the kingdom had passed into the control of the prefects of the palace who were known as “mayors of the household,” and to whom belonged the supreme initiative; nor was anything left to the king but to enjoy the royal title, the long hair, the drooping beard, to sit back in a chair of state and simulate the air of a supreme ruler, give audience to the ambassadors hailing from all parts of the earth and on their departure to retail to them as if from the depths of his own majesty the answers which he had been taught or told to make.

So that, except for the useless name of king and an uncertain subsidy for living which the prefect of the palace would dole out to him as the mood took him, he possessed no morsel to call his own unless it were one farm and that of extremely slender profit. Here he would keep his house and servants to minister to him the necessaries of life and to display the respectful deference of a thin multitude of retainers.

Wherever he had to go, he travelled in a wagon drawn by a yoke of oxen and with an oxherd for a charioteer in true country fashion. In this way he would ride to his palace, to the public assembly of his people which met every year to further the advantages of the kingdom, in this way he would ride home again. The administration of the kingdom and all domestic and foreign business were conducted by the mayor of the palace.

This was the office filled by Pepin, the father of King Charles, at the time of Childeric’s deposition. It had already in some sort become hereditary. For Pepin’s father Charles had also held it with distinction and it had come down to him from his father Pepin. This Charles had put down throughout all Frankland those tyrants who claimed for themselves an independent sovereignty; also he had beaten the Saracens who aimed at the occupation of Gaul, in two mighty battles, one in Aquitania not far from the city of Poitiers, the other near Narbonne hard by the river Birra—a sore defeat so that he compelled them to return into Spain. Thus the office of mayor was an honour wont to be bestowed by the people on none but those eminent in the nobility of their birth and in the magnitude of their wealth.

When Pepin, the father of King Charles, had held for some years this office which had come down to him and his brother Carloman from sire to grandsire, the two having reigned jointly in most perfect harmony, Carloman, I know not why, yet most likely because he was fired with a passion for a life of contemplation, left the laborious administration of a temporal kingdom and withdrew himself to the peace of Rome, where he changed his habit, became a monk, built a monastery on Mount Soracte touching the church of St. Silvester, and in company with the brothers who had accompanied him thither drew a long and joyous draught of the repose that he had coveted for some years. But as many companies of Frankish noblemen were wont to make pilgrimage to Rome to fulfil their vows and would not leave unvisited one who was their former sovereign, they broke into that retirement which was his chief delight by their frequent salutation and compelled him to change his domicile. For when he saw that company of this sort stood in the light of his fixed intent, he left the mountain, withdrew to the province of Samnium to the holy Benedictine monastery on Mount Cassino, and there completed all that remained of his worldly life in religious exercises.

But Pepin from being the mayor of the palace was made king through the sanction of the Roman pontiff and governed the Franks alone for fifteen years or more. Men were nearing the close of the Aquitanian War which he had begun and continued to wage against Waifar, the duke of Aquitaine, through nine long years, when he died of a dropsy at Paris, leaving two sons, Charles and Carloman, who by the will of God succeeded to the kingdom. The Franks solemnly convened a general assembly and appointed them both kings with this preliminary condition, that they should divide equally the whole realm and Charles was to take over for government that part which had belonged to their father Pepin, and Carloman that part which had been presided over by their uncle Carloman. The terms were accepted on both sides, and a portion of the divided kingdom was received by each in the measure that was his due. So this system was peaceably preserved, although with grave difficulty, for many of the adherents of Carloman strove hard to break up the bond of union, so much so that there were certain people whose design was to plunge the brothers in war. But the issue of events bore witness that there was more mistrust than veritable danger in the matter, for when Carloman died his wife and children together with some of the first nobility showed contempt for the brother of her husband without any cause at all and fled to Italy to place herself and her children under the protection of Desiderius, king of the Lombards. The kingdom had been under joint administration for two years, when Carloman succumbed to disease. On the death of his brother, Charles was made king with the consent of all the Franks (771).