After the conquest of Bavaria, the campaign against the Avars, a people closely allied to the Huns, was brought about by their threatening attitude on the Eastern frontier, where they showed such constant hostility to the peoples of German stock that in his military handling of the problem Charles had the ready coöperation of the Saxons themselves. After a preliminary campaign in 791, in which the Franks advanced as far as the confluence of the Danube and the Raab, the decisive struggle took place in 795, when the Frankish army, under Pippin, the son of Charles, taking advantage of dissensions among the Avars, succeeded in forcing the famous armed camp of the Khan called the Ring, and returned with an immense amount of booty stored there, the fruits of many successful raids on Christian towns and monasteries. In 809 the Avars, hard-pressed by the Slavs, were glad to place themselves under the Emperor, but their number had been so reduced by warfare that a contemporary historian speaks of their lands as being deserted, their treasures confiscated, and their nobility wiped out.
Operations against the Slavic tribes were taken up in earnest after the reduction of the Saxons, though we hear of one marauding expedition against them as early as 789. In 805 and 806 Slavic territory was overrun by Frankish armies under the command of the Emperor’s lieutenants, and two strong outposts were established for purposes of military observation of their movements. These posts, on the Saale and on the Elbe, became the nucleus for the development of the German cities of Halle and Magdeburg.
After describing the wars of Charles, Einhard, his contemporary, gives a summary of the conqueror’s achievements that deserves to be repeated: “Such are the wars,” he says, “which this most powerful king waged during forty-seven years. For as many years as these he reigned in the different parts of the earth with the greatest wisdom and the greatest success. So the kingdom of the Franks, which he had received from Pippin, his father, already vast and powerful, nobly developed as it was by him, was increased nearly twofold in extent. Before his day this kingdom included only that part of Gaul which lies between the Loire and the Rhine, the ocean and the sea of the Balearic Isles, and that portion of Germany occupied by the Franks (who are called Eastern) whose country lies between Saxony and the Danube, the Rhine and the Saale, the river which divides the Thuringians from the Swabians. Besides this, the Alemanni and the Bavarians acknowledged the overlordship of the Franks. To these possessions Charles added by his conquests first Aquitaine and Gascony, all the chain of the Pyrenees, and all the territories as far as the Elbe. Then all that part of Italy which extends from the valley of Aosta to lower Calabria, where is the frontier between the Beneventines and the Greeks, in length more than a million paces; then Saxony, which is a considerable part of Germany, as long and twice as broad, it seems, as the portion of this country inhabited by the Franks; then the two Pannonias; Dacia, situated on the other bank of the Danube; then Istria, Liburnia, and Dalmatia, with the exception of the coast cities which it pleased him to leave to the Emperor, because of the friendship and the alliance by which they were united. Finally, all the barbarous and savage nations situated between the Rhine and the Vistula, the ocean and the Danube, much alike in language, different in manners, and in their method of existence, all of whom he overcame and rendered tributary.”
V
THE RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE
In order to present a general outline of the wars of Charles, we have been compelled more than once to pass beyond the crucial and culminating event of his career, his coronation as Emperor at Rome in the year 800, thirty-two years after he had become King of the Franks. All of his conquests are closely related with this elevation to a dignity revered for its venerable traditions, and yet the conquests alone were not in themselves sufficient to secure such an elevation. The acquisition of the imperial title was the result of a revolution, a change of policy, due as much to the intangible forces that move society as to the concrete details of the career of the Conqueror. Master of Italy as he was after the downfall of Lombard powers, this territorial control simply gave Charles the position once held by another great German prince, Theodoric the Ostrogoth. But Theodoric was not an orthodox churchman as Charles was. It was, therefore, the combination of the orthodox religion, which Charles inherited as the successor of the first Frankish kings, and his sway over the Italian peninsula which prepared the way for the great event of Christmas Day, 800, when he took his place in the line of rulers marked by the names of Augustus, Constantine, and Justinian.
Although close relations subsisted between the Papal territories in Italy and the Frankish overlord across the Alps, there was, nevertheless, in Rome a considerable degree of autonomy. Charles had no thought of exercising the rights of a sovereign on the basis of the title of Patrician, which he had inherited from his father, and on which he had acted when it came to a question of putting an end finally to Lombard autonomy. But it was only at such crises that the need of intervention was felt, and, as we have seen in the case of Pope Stephen, it was the policy of the Holy See to make use of the Frankish King when questions involving the dignity of the Pope could be settled in no other way. This policy was maintained by Stephen’s successors, but it was not easy to induce Charles to undertake to handle thorny problems which involved the position of the Pope in his own city. There was no Frankish occupation of Rome, foreshadowing the condition of affairs there when another Emperor of the Franks protected the Pope from being overthrown by his unwilling subjects through the use of French bayonets. Rome, like other Italian cities, was often in a state of turbulence owing to factional divisions among its citizens. There was already a beginning of that rivalry among Roman families to secure the Papal throne to one of its members that so often brought degradation to the Papacy during the course of the Middle Ages. Upon the death of Pope Hadrian in 795, after a long pontificate of twenty-three years, Leo III became his successor, but it seems that the succession was not altogether satisfactory to the kinsmen of the dead Pope, for they soon proceeded to extreme measures against his successor, seizing his person and trying to blind him. Leo, completely terrorized, seems to have lacked supporters in Rome to defend him, and he sought refuge with the great King at his camp near Paderborn, in Saxony, which was being used as a center for the operations against the recalcitrant Saxon tribes. The matter in dispute between the Pope and his enemies at home turned out to be a complicated one. Charles, in his capacity as Patrician, listened to the charges and countercharges brought by one side against the other. It was evident that justice could not be done at such long range, and, therefore, the King, after sending Leo home under the protection of Frankish ambassadors, moved slowly down into Italy in the year 800.
Charles showed no haste to take up the obligation of settling the differences between the Pope and his discontented subjects. An expedition into Italy was always costly and troublesome. The situation, too, on the Eastern frontier needed his attention, because of the death of Count Gerold and of Erich of Friuli, on whom he depended for warding off the attacks of the Avars and the Slavs. There were matters also in the Western part of his dominions which required his personal supervision. His lieutenants had just won victories over the Bretons and in the Spanish peninsula. New schemes of expansion had to be worked out, and provision made for protecting the sea coast. Besides, he was interested in securing for Eastern Christians dwelling in the dominions of the Saracens, advantages which they were unable to attain through the intervention of the rulers at Constantinople. A way had been opened by the arrival at his court of a monk from Jerusalem, with presents from the Patriarch and relics from the Holy Places. There are hints also of his receiving representatives from the Byzantine province of Sicily, and of direct suggestions from influential quarters in the East, where the rule of a woman, the Empress Irene, was resented, that the great Frankish King should assume the imperial title. He turned his steps towards Rome only when he had made himself familiar with the special needs of the situation brought about by Leo’s policy. Many of his intimate advisers, Alcuin, Engelbert, Am of Salzburg, and Paulinus of Aquileia, had evidently discarded for some time all thought of the possibility of the Frankish ruler assuming the honors and rights which the imperial position, to the minds of that age, could alone bestow. Now everything was changed; the Empire was the one political idea which was common to the German and to the Italian, and it was kept alive by the influence of churchmen, to whom the existence of the Empire was the necessary complement to a Catholic Church. Charles was already acting with a recognized power fully equivalent to that of an emperor. His rule was not local like that of other barbarian kings; the title was needed to complete the political evolution, just as really as it was necessary for his father, Pippin, to give up the rôle of Mayor of the Palace and become “de jure” King of the Franks. This point was made perfectly clear when the general assembly of Charles’ dominions was held at Mainz in August, 800, and the Italian expedition was announced.
In Ravenna a stay of eight days was made by the invading army, and a detachment was sent off to pacify the Lombard Duchy of Benevento. Not far from Rome the King was greeted by the Pope, who then returned to Rome to prepare for the official reception of the ruler, which took place, on November 24th, with the customary ceremonies appropriate to the patrician rank of the visitor. Eight days afterwards, Charles having previously visited the Basilica of St. Peter’s, explained publicly and officially the purpose of his coming to the city, viz.: to investigate the charges against the Pope.
This was an informal and personal process, for, according to the ecclesiastical canons, no one could officially judge a cause in which the Pope was concerned. But Charles’ conception of his duties as Patrician meant no mere perfunctory examination. For three weeks there was a public hearing, like an extra-judicial examination before a referee, of the rumors and charges against Leo’s conduct, a chance being given to each side to ventilate its grievances. It is significant that the Frankish King was won over to the view of his leading ecclesiastics, including Alcuin, that the charges against Leo were without foundation, and were only the product of personal enmity.
The difficulty was to give the decision such a form that, by avoiding a judicial character, it would not infringe upon the Papal prerogative, according to which the Bishop of Rome was not responsible to any earthly tribunal. The bishops themselves explicitly adopted this position by refusing to pass sentence on the head of the Church. After this principle had been accepted, the Pope could declare himself free from guilt. In so doing he was following a precedent set by his predecessors in like circumstances, Marcellinus, Symmachus, and Pelagius I.