The world's leading conquerors

by Wilson Lloyd Bevan

The following letter, addressed to Fulrad, abbot of Saint Quentin, gives the full text of one of these summonses: “Know, that we have fixed this year our meeting place in the country of the Saxons, in the Eastern part on the River Bota, at a place called Storosfurt. For this reason we direct you to be at the said place on the 15th of June accompanied by all your men, well armed and well equipped, so that you may go under arms, wherever it seems good to us to direct you to march. We expressly recommend you, in order that you may see that the rest follow our directions, to proceed to the designated place, without disturbance, by the shortest road, without taking anything from the inhabitants but the grass, wood, and water you require. Let the men of your company march constantly with the chariots and the horsemen, and let them never leave them until they reach the meeting place, in order that in the absence of their master they may not be tempted to do evil.” Late comers were punished by being deprived of rations for the time they were absent, if the period was short. They who failed to appear altogether were exposed to pay a heavy fine proportionate to their fortune. While on the march the troops, as we see by the terms of Fulrad’s letter, were to receive from the inhabitants of the country through which they passed fire, water, wood, and lodging, but nothing else. They brought with them enough provisions to last three months, and arms and clothing for six months. Each warrior was expected to have a buckler, a lance or a sword, a bow with ten cords, and twelve arrows. Those who were better off brought with them a better type of shield, while the counts and those who served as substitutes for bishops and abbots, wore a breastplate and a helmet. Some of the soldiers carried slings, and, apparently, there were mounted divisions in the army. For certain necessary parts of war-material the counts were personally responsible, such as three kinds of battle-axe, skins, battering rams, also for the transportation of these, and for all things required to keep the various weapons in good condition, and for engineering tools.

It is interesting to note how these warlike preparations were arranged for. Ownership in land was the basis selected for apportioning the expense. But as the man who had only a small estate could not bear such an outlay, inequality of fortune had to be considered, and also the distance to be traversed to the place of meeting. These points were all kept in view by the legislation of the Emperor, but there was no systematic attempt made to meet these difficulties. There were special provisions intended to govern special cases. In the first place, the call to arms was rarely made general. This was only done on exceptional occasions, as in 773, for the Lombard war; in 775, in the war against the Saxons, and in 792, in that against the Avars. In 807 account was taken of the distance. The Saxons, for example, only sent one man out of six against the Spaniards and the Avars; one out of three was demanded against the Slavs; but in case of conflict with their neighbors, the Suabi, all Saxon warriors had to take up arms. There was also an apportionment according to race: the Franks were called upon to confront the Saxons, the Lombards and Bavarians marched against the Avars; while, in case of war with the Spanish Arabs, the Aquitanians, the Southern Goths, the Provençals, and the Burgundians had to make up the imperial army. In the war against the Slavs, the Emperor called upon the Eastern Franks, the Saxons, the Alemanni, and the Thuringians.

In 807 the Emperor made the following arrangement as to military service: Every man who owned three manses had to appear under arms; of two landowners, each one of whom had two manses, one was to provide the equipment for the other, and he who could go earliest had to appear for military duty. Of three landowners, who had but one manse apiece, one must go, while the other two were to provide the equipment, and so on, the same arrangement being applied to owners of smaller parcels of ground. Another year, the duty of serving in the army began with the owners of four manses. The working of this graduated system of service was left in the hands of the “missus,” who made his arrangements in view of the prospective campaign.

It was evidently the Emperor’s purpose to make the burden as light as possible for the small landholder, and at the same time the obligation to serve was extended to those who had no landed property. So we find it declared in 806 that “if there are six landless men who own each as much as the value of six silver pennies, i.e., a pound and a half of the metal, one has to serve and be equipped by the other five.” But the freemen alone were not sufficient to fill up the ranks; for, under the strict application of this system, no one was obliged to serve who held land in dependence, or as a “beneficium” from a wealthy landowner, nor did the obligation rest on those who had surrendered their lands to the Church, or to a powerful layman, in order to receive it back again under the conditions of a “beneficium.” This class were not wholly free, nor were they actually landowners.

The problem of keeping up the war strength without oppressing the small landowner was solved in the following way: Charles called together, under the following conditions, those who were his own tenants. “Let every freeman,” he directed, “who owns absolutely four manses, or who holds them from another in the relation of a ‘beneficium,’ undertake to furnish his own equipment and join the army, either with his lord, if his lord is going there, or with the count.” These distributions enabled the Emperor to get recruits who otherwise would have escaped service; the other more remote result was that the “beneficium” system received legal recognition, and in this way the Emperor himself coöperated in the disintegrating tendencies by which the feudalized state finally destroyed the imperial system.

The lot of the small landowner was made hard and unendurable under the terms of the imperial military regulations, despite the compromises intended by Charles to protect him. There was every inducement to the owner of a small holding to give it up. We find, for example, an imperial order forbidding freemen without permission from the Emperor to enter the clerical profession, “for we have heard,” he says, “that certain of them are not so much actuated by devotion as by a desire to escape service in the army, and other public duties to the sovereign.” The fact, too, that rules regulating this subject were extremely complicated, led to all kinds of abuses on the part of those who were intrusted with their execution. In a report made to the Emperor, we read that “the poor people claim that, if one of them is not willing to abandon his property to the bishop or abbot, or count, or ‘master of a hundred,’ these officials find occasion to have him condemned and compel him to go to the place where the army is mobilized, so that being reduced to misery he is forced, whether he wants to or not, to give up his property or sell it.” It was added that those who had made this sacrifice were not disturbed.

The recriminations of the poor were directed against clerical and lay officers without distinction; and we hear of their grievances against bishops, abbots, and their legal representatives, as well as against the counts and other laymen. The Emperor’s efforts proved futile, and he not only could not resist the movement of his age, but he found himself promoting the evolution he criticised. He actually gave exemptions under his own seal to a certain number of religious houses. The counts, on their side, made a practice of giving exemptions and dispensations from military service. The landlord was allowed a kind of authority over the tenant in questions in which the holding of land was not involved. The rule that each landowner must be conducted to the place of mobilization by the count was broken, and the landed proprietors were allowed to appear ready for service, at the head of their tenants and dependents, a distinct anticipation of the later feudal custom.

The mass of the people did not fail to let their sentiments be known when the Emperor proceeded to extend the privilege of quartering his functionaries on private individuals. The imperial officers were assaulted and their baggage stolen. There was much complaint, too, of the incessant calls to military service. Many sacrificed, therefore, their free status, which simply meant to them the constant obligation to be under arms, and they entered the ecclesiastical profession or became dependents of those who were more powerful. Carolingian legislation permitted the freeman to “commend” himself to whomsoever he would “after the death of his lord,” and so that process began by which the central authority was robbed of its own subjects, the small, free landowners. Thus it was that the medieval régime took definite shape as a governmental hierarchy based on the possession of landed estates, great and small, worked either by serfs or by tenants, related to their overlord by various kinds of dependent tenures.

X
THE CHURCH

In his relations with the Church, Charles gave a liberal interpretation to his acknowledged powers of guidance and direction; the kind of rôle he was willing to undertake shows that he drew no hard and fast line between the secular and spiritual prerogatives of a monarch. For example, in the Adoptionist Controversy, he took the initiative himself in settling a troublesome problem of theological speculation. According to the Adoptionists, in Christ there are a divine personality and a human personality, which latter becomes by adoption the Son of God. This tenet was eagerly embraced in Spain, its two best-known adherents being Elipandus, Archbishop of Toledo, and Felix, Bishop of Urgel, the latter a city in the North of Spain under the authority of the Frankish King, who, therefore, immediately took steps to bring the subject in dispute before a council, assembled at Regensburg, “under the orders of the most glorious and orthodox King Charles.” Felix was convicted of false teaching and sent to Rome to appear before Pope Hadrian. Though Felix was deprived of his bishopric he continued to be supported by the Spanish episcopate, who collectively wrote to Charles for his restoration. At Frankfort, in 794, a council of prelates from various Frankish sees met and listened to the King, who read the letter from the Spanish bishops. The council then heard a long technical speech from their ruler on the questions at issue. The Bishop of Urgel was again condemned, but the matter was not decided until a few years later, in 799, when a long discussion, lasting over six days, took place at Aix between Felix and Alcuin, the conclusion of which was that Felix allowed that he was overcome in argument, and published a retraction.