Chapter VII: Part 7

For centuries they had been silently massing themselves around ancient Europe, whether Iberian, Celtic or Roman. Many times already during that evening of a decadent civilization, their threatening presence had seemed like a dark cloud veiling the radiant sky of the peoples established on the Mediterranean seaboard. The cruel lightning of the sword of Brennus had illumined the night, setting Rome or Delphi on fire. Sometimes the storm had burst over Gaul, and there had been need of a Marius to stem the torrent of Cimbri and Teutons, or of a Caesar to drive back the Helvetians into their mountains. On the morrow the western horizon would clear again, until some such disaster as that which befell Varus would come to mortify cruelly the pride of an Augustus. The Romans had soon abandoned hope of conquering Germany, with its fluctuating frontiers and nomadic inhabitants. For more than two centuries they had remained prudently entrenched behind the earthworks that extended from Cologne to Ratisbon (Regensburg); but the intestine feuds which prevailed among the barbarians and were fostered by Rome, the organization under bold and turbulent chiefs of the bands greedy for booty, the pressing forward on populations already settled of tribes in their rear; all this caused the Germanic invasion to filter by degrees across the frontier. It was the work of several generations and took various forms, by turns and simultaneously colonization and aggression; but from this time forward the _pax romana_ was at an end. The emperors Probus, Constantine, Julian and Valentinian, themselves foreigners, were worn out with repulsing these repeated assaults, and the general enervation of society did the rest. The barbarians gradually became part of the Roman population; they permeated the army, until after Theodosius they recruited it exclusively; they permeated civilian society as colonists and agriculturists, till the command of the army and of important public duties was given over to a Stilicho or a Crocus. Thus Rome allowed the wolves to mingle with the dogs in watching over the flock, just at a time when the civil wars of the 4th century had denuded the Rhenish frontier of troops, whose numbers had already been diminished by Constantine. Then at the beginning of the 5th century, during a furious irruption of Germans fleeing before Huns, the _limes_ was carried away (406-407); and for more than a hundred years the torrent of fugitives swept through the Empire, which retreated behind the Alps, there to breathe its last.

The Germans in Gaul.

The Franks before Clovis.

Whilst for ten years Alaric's Goths and Stilicho's Vandals were drenching Italy with blood, the Vandals and the Alani from the steppes of the Black Sea, dragging in their wake the reluctant German tribes who had been allies of Rome and who had already settled down to the cultivation of their lands, invaded the now abandoned Gaul, and having come as far as the Pyrenees, crossed over them. After the passing of this torrent the Visigoths, under their kings Ataulphus, Wallia and Theodoric, still dazzled by the splendours of this immense empire, established themselves like submissive vassals in Aquitaine, with Toulouse as their capital. About the same time the Burgundians settled even more peaceably in Rhenish Gaul, and, after 456, to the west of the Jura in the valleys of the Saône and the Rhône. The original Franks of Germany, already established in the Empire, and pressed upon by the same Huns who had already forced the Goths across the Danube, passed beyond the Rhine and occupied north-eastern Gaul; Ripuarians of the Rhine establishing themselves on the Sambre and the Meuse, and Salians in Belgium, as far as the great fortified highroad from Bavai to Cologne. Accepted as allies, and supported by Roman prestige and by the active authority of the general Aetius, all these barbarians rallied round him and the Romans of Gaul, and in 451 defeated the hordes of Attila, who had advanced as far as Orleans, at the great battle of the Catalaunian plains.

The clergy and the barbarians.

Thus at the end of the 5th century the Roman empire was nothing but a heap of ruins, and fidelity to the empire was now only maintained by the Catholic Church; she alone survived, as rich, as much honoured as ever, and more powerful, owing to the disappearance of the imperial officials for whom she had found substitutes, and the decadence of the municipal bodies into whose inheritance she had entered. Owing to her the City of God gradually replaced the Roman imperial polity and preserved its civilization; while the Church allied herself more closely with the new kingdoms than she had ever done with the Empire. In the Gothic or Burgundian states of the period the bishops, after having for a time opposed the barbarian invaders, sought and obtained from their chief the support formerly received from the emperor. Apollinaris Sidonius paid court to Euric, since 476 the independent king of the Visigoths, against whom he had defended Auvergne; and Avitus, bishop of Vienne, was graciously received by Gundibald, king of the Burgundians. But these princes were Arians, i.e. foreigners among the Catholic population; the alliance sought for by the Church could not reach her from that source, and it was from the rude and pagan Franks that she gained the material support which she still lacked. The conversion of Clovis was a master-stroke; it was fortunate both for himself and for the Franks. Unity in faith brought about unity in law.

Clovis, the Frankish chief.

Clovis as a Roman officer.

Clovis was king of the Sicambrians, one of the tribes of the Salian Franks. Having established themselves in the plains of Northern Gaul, but driven by the necessity of finding new land to cultivate, in the days of their king Childeric they had descended into the fertile valleys of the Somme and the Oise. Clovis's victory at Soissons over the last troops left in the service of Rome (486) extended their settlements as far as the Loire. By his conversion, which was due to his wife Clotilda and to Remigius, bishop of Reims, more than to the victory of Tolbiac over the Alamanni, Clovis made definitely sure of the Roman inhabitants and gave the Church an army (496). Thenceforward he devoted himself to the foundation of the Frankish monarchy by driving the exhausted and demoralized heretics out of Gaul, and by putting himself in the place of the now enfeebled emperor. In 500 he conquered Gundibald, king of the Burgundians, reduced him to a kind of vassalage, and forced him into reiterated promises of conversion to orthodoxy. In 507 he conquered and killed Alaric II., king of the Arian Visigoths, and drove the latter into Spain. Legend adorned his campaign in Aquitaine with miracles; the bishops were the declared allies of both him and his son Theuderich (Thierry) after his conquest of Auvergne. At Tours he received from the distant emperor at Constantinople the diploma and insignia of _patricius_ and Roman consul, which legalized his military conquests by putting him in possession of civil powers. From this time forward a great historic transformation was effected in the eyes of the bishops and of the Gallo-Romans; the Frankish chief took the place of the ancient emperors. Instead of blaming him for the murder of the lesser kings of the Franks, his relatives, by which he had accomplished the union of the Frankish tribes, they saw in this the hand of God rewarding a faithful soldier and a converted pagan. He became their king, their new David, as the Christian emperors had formerly been; he built churches, endowed monasteries, protected St Vaast (Vedastus, d. 540), first bishop of Arras and Cambrai, who restored Christianity in northern Gaul. Like the emperors before him Clovis, too, reigned over the Church. Of his own authority he called together a council at Orleans in 511, the year of his death. He was already the grand distributor of ecclesiastical benefices, pending the time when his successors were to confirm the episcopal elections, and his power began to take on a more and more absolute character. But though he felt the ascendant influence of Christian teaching, he was not really penetrated by its spirit; a professing Christian, and a friend to the episcopate, Clovis remained a barbarian, crafty and ruthless. The bloody tragedies which disfigured the end of his reign bear sad witness to this; they were a fit prelude to that period during the course of which, as Gregory of Tours said, "barbarism was let loose."

The sons of Clovis.

The conquest of Gaul, begun by Clovis, was finished by his sons: Theuderich, Chlodomer, Childebert and Clotaire. In three successive campaigns, from 523 to 532, they annihilated the Burgundian kingdom, which had maintained its independence, and had endured for nearly a century. Favoured by the war between Justinian, the East Roman emperor, and Theodoric's Ostrogoths, the Frankish kings divided Provence among them as they had done in the case of Burgundy. Thus the whole of Gaul was subjected to the sons of Clovis, except Septimania in the south-east, where the Visigoths still maintained their power. The Frankish armies then overflowed into the neighbouring countries and began to pillage them. Their disorderly cohorts made an attack upon Italy, which was repulsed by the Lombards, and another on Spain with the same want of success; but beyond the Rhine they embarked upon the conquest of Germany, where Clovis had already reduced to submission the country on the banks of the Maine, later known as Franconia. In 531 the Thuringians in the centre of Germany were brought into subjection by his eldest son, King Theuderich, and about the same time the Bavarians were united to the Franks, though preserving a certain autonomy. The Merovingian monarchy thus attained the utmost limits of its territorial expansion, bounded as it was by the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Rhine; it exercised influence over the whole of Germany, which it threw open to the Christian missionaries, and its conquests formed the first beginnings of German history.

Civil wars.

But to these wars of aggrandizement and pillage succeeded those fratricidal struggles which disgraced the whole of the sixth century and arrested the expansion of the Merovingian power. When Clotaire, the last surviving son of Clovis, died in 561, the kingdom was divided between his four sons like some piece of private property, as in 511, and according to the German method. The capitals of these four kings--Charibert, who died in 567, Guntram, Sigebert and Chilperic--were Paris, Orleans, Reims and Soissons--all near one another and north of the Loire, where the Germanic inhabitants predominated; but their respective boundaries were so confused that disputes were inevitable. There was no trace of a political idea in these disputes; the mutual hatred of two women aggravated jealousy to the point of causing terrible civil wars from 561 to 613, and these finally created a national conflict which resulted in the dismemberment of the Frankish empire. Recognized, in fact, already as separate provinces were Austrasia, or the eastern kingdom, Neustria, or north-west Gaul and Burgundy; Aquitaine alone was as yet undifferentiated.

Fredegond and Brunhilda.

Sigebert had married Brunhilda, the daughter of a Visigoth king; she was beautiful and well educated, having been brought up in Spain, where Roman civilization still flourished. Chilperic had married Galswintha, one of Brunhilda's sisters, for the sake of her wealth; but despite this marriage he had continued his amours with a waiting-woman named Fredegond, who pushed ambition to the point of crime, and she induced him to get rid of Galswintha. In order to avenge her sister, Brunhilda incited Sigebert to begin a war which terminated in 575 with the assassination of Sigebert by Fredegond at the very moment when, thanks to the help of the Germans, he had gained the victory, and with the imprisonment of Brunhilda at Rouen. Fredegond subsequently caused the death of Merovech (Mérovée), the son of Chilperic, who had been secretly married to Brunhilda, and that of Bishop Praetextatus, who had solemnized their union. After this, Fredegond endeavoured to restore imperial finance to a state of solvency, and to set up a more regular form of government in her Neustria, which was less romanized and less wealthy than Burgundy, where Guntram was reigning, and less turbulent than the eastern kingdom, where most of the great warlike chiefs with their large landed estates were somewhat impatient of royal authority. But the accidental death of two of her children, the assassination of her husband in 584, and the advice of the Church, induced her to make overtures to her brother-in-law Guntram. A lover of peace through sheer cowardice and as depraved in his morals as Chilperic, Guntram had played a vacillating and purely self-interested part in the family tragedy. He declared himself the protector of Fredegond, but his death in 593 delivered up Burgundy and Neustria to Brunhilda's son Childebert, king of Austrasia, in consequence of the treaty of Andelot, made in 587. An ephemeral triumph, however; for Childebert died in 596, followed a year later by Fredegond.

The fall of Brunhilda.

The whole of Gaul was now handed over to three children: Childebert's two sons, Theudebert and Theuderich (Thierry), and the son of Fredegond, Clotaire II. The latter, having vanquished the two former at Latofao in 596, was in turn beaten by them at Dormelles in 600, and a year later a fresh fratricidal struggle broke out between the two grandsons of the aged Brunhilda. Theuderich joined with Clotaire against Theodobert, and invaded his brother's kingdom, conquering first an army of Austrasians and then one composed of Saxons and Thuringians. Strife began again in 613 in consequence of Theuderich's desire to join Austrasia to Neustria, but his death delivered the kingdoms into the hands of Clotaire II. This weak king leant for support upon the nobles of Burgundy and Austrasia, impatient as they were of obedience to a woman and the representative of Rome. The ecclesiastical party also abandoned Brunhilda because of her persecution of their saints, after which Clotaire, having now got the upper hand, thanks to the defection of the Austrasian nobles, of Arnulf, bishop of Metz, with his brother Pippin, and of Warnachaire, mayor of the palace, made a terrible end of Brunhilda in 613. Her long reign had not lacked intelligence and even greatness; she alone, amid all these princes, warped by self-indulgence or weakened by discord, had behaved like a statesman, and she alone understood the obligations of the government she had inherited. She wished to abolish the fatal tradition of dividing up the kingdom, which so constantly prevented any possible unity; in opposition to the nobles she used her royal authority to maintain the Roman principles of order and regular administration. Towards the Church she held a courteous but firm policy, renewing relations between the Frankish kingdom and the pope; and she so far maintained the greatness of the Empire that tradition associated her name with the Roman roads in the north of France, entitling them "les chaussées de Brunehaut."

Clotaire II.

Like his grandfather, Clotaire II. reigned over a once more united Gaul of Franks and Gallo-Romans, and like Clovis he was not too well obeyed by the nobles; moreover, his had been a victory more for the aristocracy than for the crown, since it limited the power of the latter. Not that the permanent constitution of the 18th of October 614 was of the nature of an anti-monarchic revolution, for the royal power still remained very great, decking itself with the pompous titles of the Empire, and continuing to be the dominant institution; but the reservations which Clotaire II. had to make in conceding the demands of the bishops and great laymen show the extent and importance of the concessions these latter were already aiming at. The bishops, the real inheritors of the imperial idea of government, had become great landowners through enormous donations made to the Church, and allied as they were to the aristocracy, whence their ranks were continually recruited, they had gradually identified themselves with the interests of their class and had adopted its customs; while thanks to long minorities and civil wars the aristocracy of the high officials had taken an equally important social position. The treaty of Andelot in 587 had already decided that the benefices or lands granted to them by the kings should be held for life. In the 7th century the Merovingian kings adopted the custom of summoning them all, and not merely the officials of their _Palatium_, to discuss political affairs; they began, moreover, to choose their counts or administrators from among the great landholders. This necessity for approval and support points to yet another alteration in the nature of the royal power, absolute as it was in theory.

The mayors of the palace.

The Mayoralty of the Palace aimed a third and more serious blow at the royal authority. By degrees, the high officials of the _Palatium_, whether secular or ecclesiastical, and also the provincial counts, had rallied round the mayors of the palace as their real leaders. As under the Empire, the Palatium was both royal court and centre of government, with the same bureaucratic hierarchy and the same forms of administration; and the mayor of the palace was premier official of this itinerant court and ambulatory government. Moreover, since the palace controlled the whole of each kingdom, the mayors gradually extended their official authority so as to include functionaries and agents of every kind, instead of merely those attached immediately to the king's person. They suggested candidates for office for the royal selection, often appointed office-holders, and, by royal warrant, supported or condemned them. Mere subordinates while the royal power was strong, they had become, owing to the frequent minorities, and to civil wars which broke the tradition of obedience, the all-powerful ministers of kings nominally absolute but without any real authority. Before long they ceased to claim an even greater degree of independence than that of Warnachaire, who forced Clotaire II. to swear that he should never be deprived of his mayoralty of Burgundy; they wished to take the first place in the kingdoms they governed, and to be able to attack neighbouring kingdoms on their own account. A struggle, motived by self-interest, no doubt; but a struggle, too, of opposing principles. Since the Frankish monarchy was now in their power some of them tried to re-establish the unity of that monarchy in all its integrity, together with the superiority of the State over the Church; others, faithless to the idea of unity, saw in the disintegration of the state and the supremacy of the nobles a warrant for their own independence. These two tendencies were destined to strive against one another during an entire century (613-714), and to occasion two periods of violent conflict, which, divided by a kind of renascence of royalty, were to end at last in the triumphant substitution of the Austrasian mayors for royalty and aristocracy alike.

First struggle between monarchy and mayoralty.

The first struggle began on the accession of Clotaire II., when Austrasia, having had a king of her own ever since 561, demanded one now. In 623 Clotaire was obliged to send her his son Dagobert and even to extend his territory. But in Dagobert's name two men ruled, representing the union of the official aristocracy and the Church. One, Pippin of Landen, derived his power from his position as mayor of the palace, from great estates in Aquitaine and between the Meuse and the Rhine, and from the immense number of his supporters; the other, Arnulf, bishop of Metz, sprang from a great family, probably of Roman descent, and was besides immensely wealthy in worldly possessions. By the union of their forces Pippin and Arnulf were destined to shape the future. They had already, in 613, treated with Clotaire and betrayed the hopes of Brunhilda, being consequently rewarded with the guardianship of young Dagobert. Burgundy followed the example of Austrasia, demanded the abolition of the mayoralty, and in 627 succeeded in obtaining her independence of Neustria and Austrasia and direct relations with the king.

Renascence of monarchy under Dagobert, 629-639.

The death of Clotaire (629) was the signal for a revival of the royal power. Dagobert deprived Pippin of Landen of his authority and forced him to fly to Aquitaine; but still he had to give the Austrasians his son Sigebert III. for their king (634). He made administrative progresses through Neustria and Burgundy to recall the nobles to their allegiance, but again he was forced to designate his second son Clovis as king of Neustria. He did subdue Aquitaine completely, thanks to his brother Charibert, with whom he had avoided dividing the kingdom, and he tried to restore his own demesne, which had been despoiled by the granting of benefices or by the pious frauds of the Church. In short, this reign was one of great conquests, impossible except under a strong government. Dagobert's victories over Samo, king of the Slavs along the Elbe, and his subjugation of the Bretons and the Basques, maintained the prestige of the Frankish empire; while the luxury of his court, his taste for the fine arts (ministered to by his treasurer Eloi[28]), his numerous achievements in architecture--especially the abbey of St Denis, burial-place of the kings of France--the brilliance and the power of the churchmen who surrounded him and his revision of the Salic law, ensured for his reign, in spite of the failure of his plans for unity, a fame celebrated in folksong and ballad.

The "Rois fainéants" (do-nothing kings).

But for barbarous nations old-age comes early, and after Dagobert's death (639), the monarchy went swiftly to its doom. The mayors of the palace again became supreme, and the kings not only ceased to appoint them, but might not even remove them from office. Such mayors were Aega and Erchinoald, in Neustria, Pippin and Otto in Austrasia, and Flaochat in Burgundy. One of them, Grimoald, son of Pippin, actually dared to take the title of king in Austrasia (640). This was a premature attempt and barren of result, yet it was significant; and not less so is the fact that the palace in which these mayors bore rule was a huge association of great personages, laymen and ecclesiastics who seem to have had much more independence than in the 6th century. We find the dukes actually raising troops without the royal sanction, and even against the king. In 641 the mayor Flaochat was forced to swear that they should hold their offices for life; and though these offices were not yet hereditary, official dynasties, as it were, began to be established permanently within the palace. The crown lands, the governorships, the different offices, were looked upon as common property to be shared between themselves. Organized into a compact body they surrounded the king and were far more powerful than he. In the general assembly of its members this body of officials decided the selection of the mayor; it presented Flaochat to the choice of Queen Nanthilda, Dagobert's widow; after long discussion it appointed Ebroïn as mayor; it submitted requests that were in reality commands to the Assembly of Bonneuil in 616 and later to Childeric in 670. Moreover, the countries formerly subdued by the Franks availed themselves of this opportunity to loosen the yoke; Thuringia was lost by Sigebert in 641, and the revolt of Alamannia in 643 set back the frontier of the kingdom from the Elbe to Austrasia. Aquitaine, hitherto the common prey of all the Frankish kings, having in vain tried to profit by the struggles between Fredegond and Brunhilda, and set up an independent king, Gondibald, now finally burst her bonds in 670. Then came a time when the kings were mere children, honoured with but the semblance of respect, under the tutelage of a single mayor, Erbroïn of Neustria.

Struggle between Ebroïn and Léger.

Battle of Tertry.

This representative of royalty, chief minister for four-and-twenty years (656-681), attempted the impossible, endeavouring to re-establish unity in the midst of general dissolution and to maintain intact a royal authority usurped everywhere, by the hereditary power of the great palatine families. He soon stirred up against himself all the dissatisfied nobles, led by Léger (Leodegarius), bishop of Autun and his brother Gerinus. Clotaire III.'s death gave the signal for war. Ebroïn's enemies set up Childeric II. in opposition to Theuderich, the king whom he had chosen without summoning the great provincial officials. Despite a temporary triumph, when Childeric was forced to recognize the principle of hereditary succession in public offices, and when the mayoralties of Neustria and Burgundy were alternated to the profit of both, Léger soon fell into disgrace and was exiled to that very monastery of Luxeuil to which Ebroïn had been relegated. Childeric having regained the mastery restored the mayor's office, which was immediately disputed by the two rivals; Ebroïn was successful and established himself as mayor of the palace in the room of Leudesius, a partisan of Léger (675), following this up by a distribution of offices and dignities right and left among his adherents. Léger was put to death in 678, and the Austrasians, commanded by the Carolingian Pippin II., with whom many of the chief Neustrians had taken refuge, were dispersed near Laon (680). But Ebroïn was assassinated next year in the midst of his triumph, having like Fredegond been unable to do more than postpone for a quarter of a century the victory of the nobles and of Austrasia; for his successor, Berthar, was unfitted to carry on his work, having neither his gifts and energy nor the powerful personality of Pippin. Berthar met his death at the battle of Tertry (687), which gave the king into the hands of Pippin, as also the royal treasure and the mayoralty, and by thus enabling him to reward his followers made him supreme over the Merovingian dynasty. Thenceforward the degenerate descendants of Clovis offered no further resistance to his claims, though it was not until 752 that their line became extinct.

In that year the Merovingian dynasty gave place to the rule of Pippin II. of Heristal, who founded a Carolingian empire fated to be as ephemeral as that of the Merovingians. This political victory of the aristocracy was merely the consummation of a slow subterranean revolution which by innumerable reiterated blows had sapped the structure of the body politic, and was about to transfer the people of Gaul from the Roman monarchical and administrative government to the sway of the feudal system.

Causes of the fall of the Merovingians.

The Merovingian kings, mere war-chiefs before the advent of Clovis, had after the conquest of Gaul become absolute hereditary monarchs, thanks to the disappearance of the popular assemblies and to the perpetual state of warfare. They concentrated in their own hands all the powers of the empire, judicial, fiscal and military; and even the so-called "rois fainéants" enjoyed this unlimited power, in spite of the general disorder and the civil wars. To make their authority felt in the provinces they had an army of officials at their disposal--a legacy, this, from imperial Rome--who represented them in the eyes of their various peoples. They had therefore only to keep up this established government, but they could not manage even this much; they allowed the idea of the common interests of kings and their subjects gradually to die out, and forgetting that national taxes are a necessary impost, a charge for service rendered by the state, they had treated these as though they were illicit and unjustifiable spoils. The taxpayers, with the clergy at their head, adopted the same idea, and every day contrived fresh methods of evasion. Merovingian justice was on the same footing as Merovingian finance: it was arbitrary, violent and self-seeking. The Church, too, never failed to oppose it--at first not so much on account of her own ambitions as in a more Christian spirit--and proceeded to weaken the royal jurisdiction by repeated interventions on behalf of those under sentence, afterwards depriving it of authority over the clergy, and then setting up ecclesiastical tribunals in opposition to those held by the dukes and counts. At last, just as the kingdom had become the personal property of the king, so the officials--dukes, counts, royal vicars, tribunes, _centenarii_--who had for the most part bought their unpaid offices by means of presents to the monarch, came to look upon the public service rather as a mine of official wealth than as an administrative organization for furthering the interests, material or moral, of the whole nation. They became petty local tyrants, all the more despotic because they had nothing to fear save the distant authority of the king's _missi_, and the more rapacious because they had no salary save the fines they inflicted and the fees that they contrived to multiply. Gregory of Tours tells us that they were robbers, not protectors of the people, and that justice and the whole administrative apparatus were merely engines of insatiable greed. It was the abuses thus committed by the kings and their agents, who did not understand the art of gloving the iron hand, aided by the absolutely unfettered licence of conduct and the absence of any popular liberty, that occasioned the gradual increase of charters of immunity.

Immunity.

Immunity was the direct and personal privilege which forbade any royal official or his agents to decide cases, to levy taxes, or to exercise any administrative control on the domains of a bishop, an abbot, or one of the great secular nobles. On thousands of estates the royal government gradually allowed the law of the land to be superseded by local law, and public taxation to change into special contributions; so that the duties of the lower classes towards the state were transferred to the great landlords, who thus became loyal adherents of the king but absolute masters on their own territory. The Merovingians had no idea that they were abdicating the least part of their authority, nevertheless the deprivations acquiesced in by the feebler kings led of necessity to the diminution of their authority and their judicial powers, and to the abandonment of public taxation. They thought that by granting immunity they would strengthen their direct control; in reality they established the local independence of the great landowners, by allowing royal rights to pass into their hands. Then came confusion between the rights of the sovereign and the rights of property. The administrative machinery of the state still existed, but it worked in empty air: its taxpayers disappeared, those who were amenable to its legal jurisdiction slipped from its grasp, and the number of those whose affairs it should have directed dwindled away. Thus the Merovingians had shown themselves incapable of rising above the barbarous notion that royalty is a personal asset to the idea that royalty is of the state, a power belonging to the nation and instituted for the benefit of all. They represented in society nothing more than a force which grew feebler and feebler as other forces grew strong; they never stood for a national magistracy.

Disruption of the social framework.

Society no less than the state was falling asunder by a gradual process of decay. Under the Merovingians it was a hierarchy wherein grades were marked by the varied scale of the _wergild_, a man being worth anything from thirty to six hundred gold pieces. The different degrees were those of slave, freedman, tenant-farmer and great landowner. As in every social scheme where the government is without real power, the weakest sought protection of the strongest; and the system of patron, client and journeyman, which had existed among the Romans, the Gauls and the Germans, spread rapidly in the 6th and 7th centuries, owing to public disorder and the inadequate protection afforded by the government. The Church's patronage provided some with a refuge from violence; others ingratiated themselves with the rich for the sake of shelter and security; others again sought place and honour from men of power; while women, churchmen and warriors alike claimed the king's direct and personal protection.

The beneficium.

This hierarchy of persons, these private relations of man to man, were recognized by custom in default of the law, and were soon strengthened by another and territorial hierarchy. The large estate, especially if it belonged to the Church, very soon absorbed the few fields of the freeman. In order to farm these, the Church and the rich landowners granted back the holdings on the temporary and conditional terms of tenancy-at-will or of the _beneficium_, thus multiplying endlessly the land subject to their overlordship and the men who were dependent upon them as tenants. The kings, like private individuals and ecclesiastical establishments, made use of the _beneficium_ to reward their servants; till finally their demesne was so reduced by these perpetual grants that they took to distributing among their champions land owning the overlordship of the Church, or granted their own lands for single lives only. These various "benefactions" were, as a rule, merely the indirect methods which the great landowners employed in order to absorb the small proprietor. And so well did they succeed, that in the 6th and 7th centuries the provincial hierarchy consisted of the cultivator, the holder of the _beneficium_ and the owner; while this dependence of one man upon another affected the personal liberty of a large section of the community, as well as the condition of the land. The great landowner tended to become not only lord over his tenants, but also himself a vassal of the king.

Pippin of Heristal.

Thus by means of immunities, of the _beneficium_ and of patronage, society gradually organized itself independently of the state, since it required further security. Such extra security was first provided by the conqueror of Tertry; for Pippin II. represented the two great families of Pippin and of Arnulf, and consequently the two interests then paramount, i.e. land and religion, while he had at his back a great company of followers and vast landed estates. For forty years (615-655) the office of mayor of Austrasia had gone down in his family almost continuously in direct descent from father to son. The death of Grimoald had caused the loss of this post, yet Ansegisus (Ansegisel), Arnulf's son and Pippin's son-in-law, had continued to hold high office in the Austrasian palace; and about 680 his son, Pippin II., became master of Austrasia, although he had held no previous office in the palace. His dynasty was destined to supplant that of the Merovingian house.

Pippin of Heristal was a pioneer; he it was who began all that his descendants were afterwards to carry through. Thus he gathered the nobles about him not by virtue of his position, but because of his own personal prowess, and because he could assure them of justice and protection; instead of being merely the head of the royal palace he was the absolute lord of his own followers. Moreover, he no longer bore the title of mayor, but that of duke or prince of the Franks; and the mayoralty, like the royal power now reduced to a shadow, became an hereditary possession which Pippin could bestow upon his sons. The reigns of Theuderich III., Clovis III. or Childebert III. are of no significance except as serving to date charters and diplomas. Pippin it was who administered justice in Austrasia, appointed officials and distributed dukedoms; and it was Pippin, the military leader, who defended the frontiers threatened by Frisians, Alamanni and Bavarians. Descended as he was from Arnulf, bishop of Metz, he was before all things a churchman, and behind his armies marched the missionaries to whom the Carolingian dynasty, of which he was the founder, were to subject all Christendom. Pippin it was, in short, who governed, who set in order the social confusions of Neustria, who, after long wars, put a stop to the malpractices of the dukes and counts, and summoned councils of bishops to make good regulations. But at his death in 714 the child-king Dagobert III. found himself subordinated to Pippin's two grandsons, who, being minors, were under the wardship of their grandmother Plectrude.

Charles Martel (715-741).

Pippin's work was almost undone--a party among the Neustrians under Raginfrid, mayor of the palace, revolted against Pippin II.'s adherents, and Radbod, duke of the Frisians, joined them. But the Austrasians appealed to an illegitimate son of Pippin, Charles Martel, who had escaped from the prison to which Plectrude, alarmed at his prowess, had consigned him, and took him for their leader. With Charles Martel begins the great period of Austrasian history. Faithful to the traditions of the Austrasian mayors, he chose kings for himself--Clotaire IV., then Chilperic II. and lastly Theuderich IV. After Theuderich's death (737) he left the throne vacant until 742, but he himself was king in all but name; he presided over the royal tribunals, appointed the royal officers, issued edicts, disposed of the funds of the treasury and the churches, conferred immunities upon adherents, who were no longer the king's nobles but his own, and even appointed the bishops, though there was nothing of the ecclesiastic about himself. He decided questions of war and peace, and re-established unity in Gaul by defeating the Neustrians and the Aquitanian followers of Duke Odo (Eudes) at Vincy in 717. When Odo, brought to bay, appealed for help to the Arab troops of Abd-ar-Rahman, who after conquering Spain had crossed the Pyrenees, Charles, like a second Clovis, saved Catholic Christendom in its peril by crushing the Arabs at Tours (732). The retreat of the Arabs, who were further weakened by religious disputes, enabled him to restore Frankish rule in Aquitaine in spite of Hunald, son of Odo. But Charles's longest expeditions were made into Germany, and in these he sought the support of the Church, then the greatest of all powers since it was the depositary of the Roman imperial tradition.

Charles Martel and the Church.

No less unconscious of his mission than Clovis had been, Charles Martel also was a soldier of Christ. He protected the missionaries who paved the way for his militant invasions. Without him the apostle of Germany, the English monk Boniface, would never have succeeded in preserving the purity of the faith and keeping the bishops submissive to the Holy See. The help given by Charles had two very far-reaching results. Boniface was the instrument of the union of Rome and Germany, of which union the Holy Roman Empire in Germany was in the 10th century to become the most perfect expression, continuing up to the time of Luther. And Boniface also helped on the alliance between the papacy and the Carolingian dynasty, which, more momentous even than that between Clovis and the bishops of Gaul, was to sanctify might by right.

Charles Martel and Gregory III.

This union was imperative for the bishops of Rome if they wished to establish their supremacy, and their care for orthodoxy by no means excluded all desire of domination. Mere religious authority did not secure to them the obedience of either the faithful or the clergy; moreover, they had to consider the great secular powers, and in this respect their temporal position in Italy was growing unbearable. Their relations with the East Roman emperor (sole lord of the world after the Roman Senate had sent the imperial insignia to Constantinople in 476) were confined to receiving insults from him or suspecting him of heresy. Even in northern Italy there was no longer any opposition to the progress of the Lombards, the last great nation to be established towards the end of the 6th century within the ancient Roman empire--their king Liudprand clearly intended to seize Italy and even Rome itself. Meanwhile from the south attacks were being made by the rebel dukes of Spoleto and Beneventum. Pope Gregory III. cherished dreams of an alliance with the powerful duke of the Franks, as St Remigius before him had thought of uniting with Clovis against the Goths. Charles Martel had protected Boniface on his German missions: he would perhaps lend Gregory the support of his armies. But the warrior, like Clovis aforetime, hesitated to put himself at the disposal of the priest. When it was a question of winning followers or keeping them, he had not scrupled to lay hands on ecclesiastical property, nor to fill the Church with his friends and kinsfolk, and this alliance might embarrass him. So if he loaded the Roman ambassadors with gifts in 739, he none the less remembered that the Lombards had just helped him to drive the Saracens from Provence. However, he died soon after this, on the 22nd of October 741, and Gregory III. followed him almost immediately.

The Carolingian dynasty.

Pippin the Short, 752-768.

Feeling his end near, Charles, before an assembly of nobles, had divided his power between his two sons, Carloman and Pippin III. The royal line seemed to have been forgotten for six years, but in 742 Pippin brought a son of Chilperic II. out of a monastery and made him king. This Childeric III. was but a shadow--and knew it. He made a phantom appearance once every spring at the opening of the great annual national convention known as the Campus Martius (Champ de Mars): a dumb idol, his chariot drawn in leisurely fashion by oxen, he disappeared again into his palace or monastery. An unexpected event re-established unity in the Carolingian family. Pippin's brother, the pious Carloman, became a monk in 747, and Pippin, now sole ruler of the kingdom, ordered Childeric also to cut off his royal locks; after which, being king in all but name, he adopted that title in 752. Thus ended the revolution which had been going on for two centuries. The disappearance of Grippo, Pippin's illegitimate brother, who, with the help of all the enemies of the Franks--Alamanni, Aquitanians and Bavarians--had disputed his power, now completed the work of centralization, and Pippin had only to maintain it. For this the support of the Church was indispensable, and Pippin understood the advantages of such an alliance better than Charles Martel. A son of the Church, a protector of bishops, a president of councils, a collector of relics, devoted to Boniface (whom he invited, as papal legate, to reform the clergy of Austrasia), he astutely accepted the new claims of the vicar of St Peter to the headship of the Church, perceiving the value of an alliance with this rising power.

Sacred character of the new monarchy.

Prudent enough to fear resistance if he usurped the Merovingian crown, Pippin the Short made careful preparations for his accession, and discussed the question of the dynasty with Pope Zacharias. Receiving a favourable opinion, he had himself anointed and crowned by Boniface in the name of the bishops, and was then proclaimed king in an assembly of nobles, counts and bishops at Soissons in November 751. Still, certain disturbances made him see that aristocratic approval of his kingship might be strengthened if it could claim a divine sanction which no Merovingian had ever received. Two years later, therefore, he demanded a consecration of his usurpation from the pope, and in St Denis on the 28th of July 754 Stephen II. crowned and anointed not only Pippin, but his wife and his two sons as well.

Pippin and the Papacy.

The political results of this custom of coronation were all-important for the Carolingians, and later for the first of the Capets. Pippin was hereby invested with new dignity, and when Boniface's anointing had been confirmed by that of the pope, he became the head of the Frankish Church, the equal of the pope. Moreover, he astutely contrived to extend his priestly prestige to his whole family; his royalty was no longer merely a military command or a civil office, but became a Christian priesthood. This sacred character was not, however, conferred gratuitously. On the very day of his coronation Pippin allowed himself to be proclaimed patrician of the Romans by the pope, just as Clovis had been made consul. This title of the imperial court was purely honorary, but it attached him still more closely to Rome, though without lessening his independence. He had besides given a written promise to defend the Church of Rome, and that not against the Lombards only. Qualified by letters of the papal chancery as "liberator and defender of the Church," his armies twice (754-756) crossed the Alps, despite the opposition of the Frankish aristocracy, and forced Aistulf, king of the Lombards, to cede to him the exarchate of Ravenna and the Pentapolis. Pippin gave them back to Pope Stephen II., and by this famous donation founded that temporal power of the popes which was to endure until 1870. He also dragged the Western clergy into the pope's quarrel with the emperor at Constantinople, by summoning the council of Gentilly, at which the iconoclastic heresy was condemned (767). Matters being thus settled with Rome, Pippin again took up his wars against the Saxons, against the Arabs (whom he drove from Narbonne in 758), and above all against Waïfer, duke of Aquitaine, and his ally, duke Tassilo of Bavaria. This last war was carried on systematically from 760 to 768, and ended in the death of Waïfer and the definite establishment of the Frankish hold on Aquitaine. When Pippin died, aged fifty-four, on the 24th of September 768, the whole of Gaul had submitted to his authority.

Charlemagne.

Pippin left two sons, and before he died he had, with the consent of the dignitaries of the realm, divided his kingdom between them, making the elder, Charles (Charlemagne), king of Austrasia, and giving the younger, Carloman, Burgundy, Provence, Septimania, Alsace and Alamannia, and half of Aquitaine to each. On the 9th of October 768 Charles was enthroned at Noyon in solemn assembly, and Carloman at Soissons. The Carolingian sovereignty was thus neither hereditary nor elective, but was handed down by the will of the reigning king, and by a solemn acceptance of the future king on the part of the nobles. In 771 Carloman, with whom Charles had had disputes, died, leaving sons; but bishops, abbots and counts all declared for Charles, save a few who took refuge in Italy with Desiderius, king of the Lombards. Desiderius, whose daughter Bertha or Desiderata Charles, despite the pope, had married at the instance of his mother Bertrade, supported the rights of Carloman's sons, and threatened Pope Adrian in Rome itself after he had despoiled him of Pippin's territorial gift. At the pope's appeal Charles crossed the Alps, took Verona and Pavia after a long siege, assumed the iron crown of the Lombard kings (June 774), and made a triumphal entry into Rome, which had not formed part of the pope's desires. Pippin's donation was restored, but the protectorate was no longer so distant, respectful and intermittent as the pope liked. After the departure of the imperious conqueror, a fresh revolt of the Lombards of Beneventum under Arichis, Desiderius's son-in-law, supported by a Greek fleet, obliged Pope Adrian to write fresh entreaties to Charlemagne; and in two campaigns (776-777) the latter conquered the whole Lombard kingdom. But another of Desiderius's daughters, married to the powerful duke Tassilo of Bavaria, urged her husband to avenge her father, now imprisoned in the monastery of Corbie. After endless intrigues, however, the duke, hemmed in by three different armies, had in his turn to submit (788), and all Italy was now subject to Charlemagne. These wars in Italy, even the fall of the Lombard kingdom and the recapture of the duchy of Bavaria, were merely episodes: Charlemagne's great war was against the Saxons and lasted thirty years (772-804).

Organization of the conquests.

The work of organizing the three great Carolingian conquests--Aquitaine, Italy and Saxony--had yet to be done. Charlemagne approached it with a moderation equal to the vigour which he had shown in the war. But by multiplying its advance-posts, the Frankish kingdom came into contact with new peoples, and each new neighbour meant a new enemy. Aquitaine, bordered upon Mussulman Spain; the Avars of Hungary threatened Bavaria with their tireless horsemen; beyond the Elbe and the Saal the Slavs were perpetually at war with the Saxons, and to the north of the Eider were the Danes. All were pagans; all enemies of Charlemagne, defender of Christ's Church, and hence the appointed conqueror of the world.

Wars with the Arabs, Slavs and Danes.

Various causes--the weakening of the Arabs by the struggle between the Omayyads and the Abbasids just after the battle of Tours; the alliance of the petty Christian kings of the Spanish peninsula; an appeal from the northern amirs who had revolted against the new caliphate of Cordova (755)--made Charlemagne resolve to cross the Pyrenees. He penetrated as far as the Ebro, but was defeated before Saragossa; and in their retreat the Franks were attacked by Vascons, losing many men as they came through the passes. This defeat of the rear-guard, famous for the death of the great Roland and the treachery of Ganelo, induced the Arabs to take the offensive once more and to conquer Septimania. Charlemagne had created the kingdom of Aquitaine especially to defend Septimania, and William, duke of Toulouse, from 790 to 806, succeeded in restoring Frankish authority down to the Ebro, thus founding the Spanish March with Barcelona as its capital. For two centuries and a half the Avars, a remnant of the Huns entrenched in the Hungarian Mesopotamia, had made descents alternately upon the Germans and upon the Greeks of the Eastern empire. They had overrun Bavaria in the very year of its subjugation by Charlemagne (788), and it took an eight-years' struggle to destroy the robber stronghold. The empire thus pushed its frontier-line on from the Elbe to the Oder, ever as it grew menaced by increasing dangers. The sea came to the help of the depopulated land, and Danish pirates, Widukind's old allies, came in their leathern boats to harry the coasts of the North Sea and the Channel. Permanent armies and walls across isthmuses were alike useless; Charlemagne had to build fleets to repulse his elusive foes (808-810), and even after forty years of war the danger was only postponed.

Charlemagne's empire.

Meanwhile Pippin's Frankish kingdom, vast and powerful as it had been, was doubled. All nations from the Oder to the Elbe and from the Danube to the Atlantic were subject or tributary, and Charlemagne's power even crossed these frontiers. At his summons Christian princes and Mussulman amirs flocked to his palaces. The kings of Northumbria and Sussex, the kings of the Basques and of Galicia, Arab amirs of Spain and Fez, and even the caliph of Bagdad came to visit him in person or sent gifts by the hands of ambassadors. A great warrior and an upright ruler, his conquests recalled those of the great Christian emperors, and the Church completed the parallel by training him in her lore. This still barely civilized German literally went to school to the English Alcuin and to Peter of Pisa, who, between two campaigns, taught him history, writing, grammar and astronomy, satisfying also his interest in sacred music, literature (religious literature especially), and the traditions of Rome and Constantinople. Why should he not be the heir of their Caesars? And so, little by little, this man of insatiable energy was possessed by the ambition of restoring the Empire of the West in his own favour.

Charlemagne emperor (800).

There were, however, two serious obstacles in the way: first, the supremacy of the emperor of the East, which though nominal rather than real was upheld by peoples, princes, and even by popes; secondly, the rivalry of the bishops of Rome, who since the early years of Adrian's pontificate had claimed the famous "Donation of Constantine" (q.v.). According to that apocryphal document, the emperor after his baptism had ceded to the sovereign pontiff his imperial power and honours, the purple chlamys, the golden crown, "the town of Rome, the districts and cities of Italy and of all the West." But in 797 the empress of Constantinople had just deposed her son Constantine VI. after putting out his eyes, and the throne might be considered vacant; while on the other hand, Pope Leo III., who had been driven from Rome by a revolt in 799, and had only been restored by a Frankish army, counted for little beside the Frankish monarch, and could not but submit to the wishes of the Carolingian court. So when next year the king of the Franks went to Rome in person, on Christmas Eve of the year 800 and in the basilica of St Peter the pope placed on his head the imperial crown and did him reverence "after the established custom of the time of the ancient emperors." The Roman ideal, handed down in tradition through the centuries, was here first revived.