Much remained unsettled—the position of the
powerful
Duchy
of Benevento, and above all the relations with the Greeks, who, pushed
aside by the events of 774, still plotted against the States of the
Church and against the kingdom of the Franks.
of Benevento, and above all the relations with the Greeks, who, pushed
aside by the events of 774, still plotted against the States of the
Church and against the kingdom of the Franks.
Cambridge Medieval History - v2 - Rise of the Saracens and Foundation of the Western Empire
The suggestion is tempting, and we remember King Alfred's
graduated candles and horn lantern; but the phrase seems to imply something
familiar, while illuminated clocks, as Alfred's invention reminds us, were a thing
as yet unknown. Bilfinger, the most careful student of the history of time-reckoning
and time-pieces, interprets as an alarm-clock the "horologium nocturnum" invented
in the ninth century by a Frankish cleric; and Professor Erben of Innsbruck has
already suggested this explanation for Pepin's night-clock.
## p. 592 (#624) ############################################
592 Pepin's Wars [759-760
imported from Rome a singing-master for his clergy; and, when the
master was called back to head the Roman training-school, sent his
monks thither to complete their musical education. Chrodegang of
Metz, ever in close touch with Rome, inaugurated the most notable
church reform of his day by organising under a discipline akin to the
monastic the clergy of his cathedral city. Among the imperial gifts
from Constantinople came an organ, the first seen in the West. A more
questionable blessing was the advent of Greek theologians: Byzantine
envoys debated with papal, before the king and his synod, as to the
Trinity and the use of images; and, though they lost the verdict, they
must have quickened thought. Nor was the new horizon bounded by
Christian lands. The lord of Barcelona and Gerona, Muslim governor of
north-eastern Spain, strengthened himself against his Moorish sovereign
by acknowledging the Frankish overlordship; and a more distant foe of
the Umayyad court of Cordova, the great Caliph Mansur, from his
new capital of Bagdad, exchanged with Pepin embassies and gifts. It
was the beginning of that connexion between the leading power of the
Christian West and the leading power of the Muslim East which has
proved so perennial, and to the powers of Christian East and Muslim
West so costly.
But all this interest in the world at large meant no sacrifice of
energy at home. It was precisely the years that fell between or
followed the Italian expeditions which saw Pepin most active as a
legislator. In four successive synods of his clergy he perfected the work
begun by Boniface, but made it clear that in the Frankish Church the
crown was still to be supreme. Every spring henceforward all the
bishops should gather to the king for synod, and every autumn at his
seat in Soissons those clad with metropolitan authority should meet
again. Inspection and stern churchly discipline should keep at home
and at religious duties priest and monk and nun. All Christians must
observe the Sunday rest and worship, and all marriage must be public
"Though at the moment our power does not suffice for everything,'" runs
an introductory clause full of significance for the king's whole character,
"yet in some points at least we wish to better what, as we perceive,
impedes the Church of God; if later God shall grant us days of peace
and leisure, we hope then to restore in all their scope the standards of
the saints. '1
Days of peace proved rare. In 759, having freshly scourged the
Saxons to tribute and submission, he "made no campaign, that he
might reform domestic affairs within his realm. " But in 760 began the
task which busied his remaining years—the subjection of Aquitaine.
The broad south-west of Gaul, cut off from Neustria by the wide stream
of the Loire, from Burgundy by the escarpment of the Cevennes, had not
since Roman days fully cast in its fortunes with the rest. When Clovis
won it from the Goths he had not sown it with his Franks; and the
## p. 593 (#625) ############################################
762-768] Conquest of Aquitaine 593
Goths, withdrawing into Spain, had left its folk less touched than any
other in the west of Europe by Germanic blood and ways. To the
chroniclers and even to the laws of Pepin's time they still are "Romans. "
The race of native dukes which under the later Merovingians had made
them almost independent acknowledged Pepin as a suzerain only; and
their boldness in harbouring fugitives from his authority and in taxing
the Aquitanian estates of Prankish churches had already caused friction
and protest when the Frank occupation of Septimania gave rise to war.
That this district, so closely knit to Aquitaine before and since, its
doorway to the Mediterranean and the highway of its commerce, should
pass into the keeping of the Frank was indeed a knell to all their hopes.
Duke Waifar had as early as 752 begun to wrest the region from the
failing grasp of the Moor, and it was perhaps only to escape his clutches
that the Goths of its eastern towns offered themselves to Pepin. This
could be borne; but when, in 759, the taking of Narbonne carried to
the Pyrenees the Frank frontier, the speedy sequel was the war with
Aquitaine.
Pepin did not underrate his foe. Year after year, from 760 to
768, he led against Waifar the whole Prankish host; and, though a
brief peace closed the first campaign, the struggle thereafter was to the
death. With thoroughness and system, wasting no time in raids, from
fortress to fortress, district to district, through Berri, Auvergne, the
Limousin, garrisoning and organising as he went, the king relentlessly
pushed on. Once desertion and famine forced him to a pause; but there
followed a fruitful year—for whose blessings the king, like some
American governor or president of modern days, ordained in the autumn
a general thanksgiving—and the war went on. By the early summer of
768 the land was wholly overrun, and the death of Waifar ended the
brave but hopeless fight. Pepin, himself worn out by the struggle,
lived only long enough to enact the statute which should govern the
new-won province. By this he fused it with the rest of his kingdom, but
left to its people their ancestral laws, guarded them against the extortion
of the royal officials, and provided for a local assembly of their magnates
which in conference with the deputies of the Crown should have final
authority as to all matters, civil and ecclesiastical.
In the palace reared by his son at Ingelheim the fresco devoted to
the memory of Pepin pictured him "granting laws to the Aquitanians. "
It was, indeed, his most lasting work. Though the whole history of
Aquitaine betrays her separateness of blood and speech, though still
"there is no Frenchman south of Loire,'" she has never ceased to form
with Neustria a single realm. All else—the absorption of Brittany, the
conquest of the Saxons, the humbling of Bavaria, whose young duke's
desertion had for a moment crippled the war on Aquitaine—Pepin left
unfinished to his sons. Between the two, after the bad old fashion of
the Franks, he now parted the kingdom. To Charles, the elder, grown
C MED. H. VOL II. CH. XVIII. 38
## p. 594 (#626) ############################################
594 Character of Pepin
a man of twenty-six, fell Australia, most of Neustria, the western half
of Aquitaine—all, that is, to north and west; to the younger, Carloman,
still in his teens, though wedded, all to south and east. Bavaria was
assigned to neither: it must first be won.
At St Denis, home of his childhood and his chosen place of sepulture,
Pepin died, not yet half through his fifties. His life, though short, was
fruitful. Modern scholars are at one in thinking his fame eclipsed
unduly by that of his successor. Nearly everything the son accomplished.
the father had begun. Vigorous, shrewd, persistent, practical, his own
general and his own prime minister, relentless but not cruel, pious but
never blindly so, able to plan but able too to wait, Pepin bequeathed to
Charles more than a kingdom and a policy. Even for his bodily strength
and presence, his power of passion and his length of life, Charlemagne
perhaps owed something to the stainless self-control as husband and as
father which was Pepin's alone of all his line. How the king looked
we have no means of knowing. The legend which caused him in later
centuries to be called "the Short" is baseless fable.
## p. 595 (#627) ############################################
595
CHAPTER XIX.
CONQUESTS AND IMPERIAL CORONATION OF
CHARLES THE GREAT.
The significance of great personalities is nowhere in all history
more evident than in the Carlovingian age. Without the work of the
great men of the eighth century it is impossible to explain the shaping
of the Middle Ages and the theocratic and imperial ideas that governed
life in every department. It was Charles the Great, above all, who for
centuries gave the direction to the historic development. It is true that
imperialism and theocracy in the State were required on general
considerations. But their particular form in the West depended very
largely on particular individuals.
Charles was born 2 April, probably in the year 742, at some place
unknown, and was the eldest son of Pepin the Mayor of the Palace (and
afterwards king), and of his wife Bertrada. Shortly before his death in
September 768, Pepin had divided the kingdom between his two sons.
Charles received Austrasia, Neustria, and half of Aquitania, while
Carloman had Burgundy, Provence, Gothia, Alsace, Alemannia, and the
other half of Aquitania. The young kings were solemnly enthroned and
anointed (9 Oct. ) in their respective halves of the kingdom.
We soon hear of disputes between them. We need not assume that
Carloman wished to supplant his brother because Charles was born before
the marriage of his parents. There is no doubt that Charles was born
in lawful wedlock. Unknown personal grounds caused the dispute.
When the Aquitanians under Hunald rose against the Prankish rule in
the first year of his reign, Carloman refused to help his brother, and
Charles reduced the rising by his own power. Bertrada acted as peace-
maker, and succeeded in reconciling the brothers. She did more. She
passed through Bavaria into Italy to win over the two opponents of the
Frankish kingdom, the Bavarian duke Tassilo and the Lombard king
Desiderius. The daughter of Desiderius was to be married to Charles,
and Gisela the sister of the Frankish kings to the son of the Lombard
king. And as Tassilo had married another daughter of Desiderius, and
as Frankish emissaries of Sturm, the abbot of Fulda, were working in
ch. xix. 38—2
## p. 596 (#628) ############################################
596 Charles and Carloman [768-771
Bavaria on behalf of peace, there seemed to be a real bond of union
between Francia, Bavaria, and Lombardy.
The old traditions of Frankish policy before the alliance with the
Curia seemed to revive. The Pope however had considerable cause for
anxiety. When he heard rumours of the proposed marriages he
addressed to the two Frankish kings a letter full of passionate hatred
against the Lombards and of consternation at a change of Frankish
policy. He warned the Franks against an alliance with the Lombards,
that stinking people, the source of leprosy, a people that were not recog-
nised amongst civilised nations; and he threatened anathemas if the Papal
warnings were disregarded. But when Charles nevertheless brought home
his Lombard bride, the Pope accommodated himself to circumstances.
He was mollified by the restoration of Patrimonies and in overflowing
words besought the blessing of heaven on Charles. Soon the Lombard
party even obtained the upper hand in Rome. Desiderius appeared in
Rome as the friend of the Pope and overthrew the party that was
opposed to the Lombards and friendly to Carloman. In a letter sent to
Francia, Stephen praised the Lombard king as his saviour, "his most
illustrious son," who at last had restored all the prerogatives of St Peter.
Even if Charles was but little offended at the Pope's opposition to
Carloman, such intimate friendship with the Lombards cannot have
seemed desirable to him. But all these circumstances were soon radi-
cally changed. After a union of one year Charles divorced his Lombard
wife. Policy had brought about the marriage, personal wishes of the king,
we may surmise, rent the union sharply asunder. Friendship for the
Lombards was followed by the bitterest enmity.
There was a further cause. The opposition in Rome increased
the estrangement of the royal brothers. Other personal motives may
have co-operated. The alienation was so great that Carloman's people
urged war. But the sudden death of Carloman (4 Dec. 771) made a
complete change in the political situation. Charles seized his brother's
portion of the kingdom. There were, it is true, children of Carloman,
especially a son, Pepin, who had indisputable rights to the inheritance;
but might prevailed over right, and though the enthroning and anoint-
ing of Charles took place "with the consent of all the Franks," while the
court historians praised the Grace of God because Charles' authority was
extended over the whole kingdom without shedding of blood, his disre-
gard of right cannot be denied. Carloman's widow Gerberga had fled
with her children and found refuge with Desiderius, now Charles' mortal
enemy.
The union of the Frankish dominions under one authority was indis-
pensable for their furtherdevelopment. Nottill then did Charles'independ-
ent rule begin. The pre-eminence, and at the same time the ruthlessness,
of the great ruler had already manifested themselves, but until 771 the
softening and restraining influence of his mother had prevailed with him.
## p. 597 (#629) ############################################
752-772] Donation of Constantine 597
Now began the period of vigorous conquest. An empire was founded
that embraced all the West German races and extended over wide
Romance and Slavic regions and Avar territory—an empire that in con-
sideration and extent might be compared with the West Roman Empire.
The real motive in the advance of Carlovingian authority was certainly not
religion. It is the secular ideal and the struggle for power which dominate
men and nations. The Christian idea was but subordinate. It frequently
ennobled, frequently veiled, the desire for power. Later on it had an
essential part in the founding of the Empire that brought to a close the
development of a universal authority in the West.
The first advance accompanied by immediate success was directed
towards Italy for the subjection of the Lombard kingdom. A second
was against the Arabs of the Pyrenean Peninsula. This aimed only at an
unimportant extension of the Empire on the Spanish border and a closer
union of Southern Gaul with the Empire. A third was on the East, in
Bavaria and the territory of the Avars. A fourth was on the North and
North-east in the territory of the Saxons, the Slavs and the Danes.
The political state of Italy was far from settled in the eighth century.
After the collapse of the rule of the Eastern Goths the country had been a
province of East Rome, then conquered from the North by the Lombards,
and the part lying north-west of the Exarchate of Ravenna and Tuscany
was left in possession of the Lombards, and was opposed to the Respublica
Romana, as Lombard Italy to the Province of Italy. When the vigorous
Lombard kingdom, after the time of Liutprand (712-744), aimed at sole
rule over all Italy, winning Ravenna with the Exarchate, and the Duchies
of Spoleto and Benevento were made dependent, this was regarded as an
injury to the Respublica Romana. As holder of this political power for
the Exarchate of Ravenna and for the people of the whole province of Italy
appeared the Roman Bishop. According to law the Eastern Emperor was
still lord of the Roman province, he was still (until 772) honoured as
sovereign in the Papal documents, and so late as 752 Stephen II had turned
to him for help against the Lombards. But political and ecclesiastical
circumstances had led more and more to estrangement, and when the
Roman Duchy and Rome itself were likely to fall before the advance
of Aistulf, Stephen turned to the first Catholic power of the West, to
the Frankish king Pepin.
The donation ascribed to Constantine must have been forged in
Rome at this time, when the Curia was freeing itself politically from
East Rome and as representative of the Respublica Romana in the West
was desirous of winning what had formerly belonged to the Eastern
Empire, and when for this purpose the Curia was obliged to summon
the aid of the Franks. Thus old tendencies and views of the Roman
Curia were invested with the authority of the Great Emperor Con-
tantine. St Peter is represented as the Vicar of Christ in the world and
CH. XIX.
## p. 598 (#630) ############################################
598 The Patriciate [754-774
the Roman bishops as the representatives of the Prince of the Apostles:
therefore the Emperor is made to exalt the Chair of Peter above his own
secular throne, and in order that the Papal dignity may be honoured
with power and glory far above the secular empire, Constantine is made
to have conferred upon the Roman bishop the City of Rome and all the
provinces, places and towns of Italy and of the West, while he himself
removed his capital to the East and erected a residence in Byzantium
"because it is not right that the secular Emperor should have authority
where the Principality of Priests and the Head of the Christian Religion
were established by the Heavenly Emperor. "
In the eighth century the Curia put forward for the first time this
claim of political sovereignty for the highest office in the Church; and ■
this claim has never since been completely forgotten, though often
greatly modified. Pepin satisfied the Curia when Pope Stephen came in
person to visit him in France in 754. Pepin presented him with a
certain document and promised to procure for him the States of the
Church. He twice took the field against the Lombards and won
Lombard districts for the Pope. What he promised to bestow we do
not know, because the document has not been preserved, and subsequent
accounts are not sufficiently circumstantial; but we know that in 754
and 756 Pepin secured for the Curia the possession of the Roman Duchy
of Pentapolis and the Exarchate of Ravenna, and that he regarded his
promise as thus fulfilled. Pepin was appointed Patricius by the Pope
and declared Protector of the Church and her territory. From his
Roman Patriciate Pepin inferred a duty to protect, but not a right to
rule. His son Charles, on the contrary, managed to change the relation
and to transform the obligation of protection into a suzerainty.
After a short vacillation during the first years of the reign of Charles,
the Papal policy, >under Hadrian (774), the successor of Stephen IV,
naturally took its former course of alliance with the Franks and opposi-
tion to the Lombards. Circumstances soon became exceedingly threaten-
ing. The Pope demanded restoration of church property, but Desiderius
marched against Rome, and legates from the Pope hastened over the
Alps to implore Frankish help.
Charles acted cautiously. He sent messengers into Italy to ascertain
the exact position of affairs, and he made reasonable proposals to Desiderius
in order to avoid war. Only when these failed he summoned an Assembly
to Geneva, resolved on war and marched over Mont Cenis into Italy, while
a second division of his army led by his uncle Bernard chose the road over
the Great St Bernard. The defiles of the Italian side had been strongly
fortified by Desiderius. Later legends tell of a Lombard minstrel who
guided the Franks over the mountains into Italy by secret paths. It is
historically certain that Charles caused part of his army to take a cir-
cuitous route, while negotiations with Desiderius were renewed, and that
this caused Desiderius to give up his position in the defile and withdraw
## p. 599 (#631) ############################################
773-774] End of the Lombard Kingdom 599
to Pavia, while his son Adalgis with Carloman's widow Gerberga and
Charles' nephews sought refuge in the fortress of Verona. Probably
about the end of September 773 Charles began the siege of Pavia. An
expedition sent thence against Verona obtained the surrender of
Gerberga and her sons, of whom no more is heard. Adalgis fled to
Constantinople. But Pavia itself held out till the beginning of June
774. The town was ravaged by disease and obliged to surrender.
Desiderius with his wife and daughter were taken prisoners, the royal
treasure was confiscated, and the Lombard kingdom was at an end.
Before this, however, while the Franks were still besieging Pavia,
Charles had taken a journey to Rome. He reached the Eternal City
(2 April) and made such an entry as was usually granted to the Greek
Exarch and Patrician. The Pope awaited the king in the entrance of
St Peter's. Charles approached on foot, kissed each of the steps which
led up to the church, embraced the Pope, and entered the church on
his right. Together they descended to the grave of St Peter and took
an oath of mutual fidelity. After that came an entry into the city itself.
On the succeeding days various solemnities were celebrated, and (6 April)
the important discussion took place in St Peter's. According to the
contemporary Life of Hadrian, the Pope begged and warned Charles to
fulfil the promise that had once been given by King Pepin, Charles,
Carloman, and the Frankish nobles, on the occasion of the Papal visit
to Francia, concerning the bestowal of different towns and districts of the
province of Italy. Hereupon Charles caused the document drawn up at
Quierzy to be read. He and his nobles assented to everything that was
recorded therein and voluntarily and gladly ordered a new document to
be drawn up by his chaplain and notary Hitherius, according to the
pattern of the former one, and in it he promised to confer on St Peter
the same towns and districts within certain limits as described in the
document. The boundary begins at Luni, so that Corsica is included.
It goes on to Suriano, to Mons Bardone, Parma, Reggio, Mantua, and
Monselice. Thus according to the Papal biographer the donation was
the Exarchate of Ravenna in its ancient extent, the provinces of Venetia
and Istria, and the Duchies of Spoleto and Benevento. The document
itself, as he further reports, was attested by Charles with his own hand,
and the names of the nobles present were added. Then Charles and his
nobles laid the deed first upon the altar, then upon the sepulchre of
St Peter, and delivered it to the Pope, taking an oath that they would
fulfil all its conditions. A second copy, also written by Hitherius, the
king laid with his own hands upon the body of St Peter under the
Gospels. , A third copy, prepared by the Roman Chancery, Charles took
with him.
There can no longer be any doubt that the detailed account in the
Vita Hadriani of the events of 6 April 774 is correct in the essential
particulars. In the most solemn manner Charles then renewed his
## p. 600 (#632) ############################################
600 Charles' Donation [774-781
father's promise. But it is not likelv that the contents of the document
are always correctly quoted by the biographer of Hadrian, or that Charles
bestowed such extensive territories. We hear indeed that the Curia was
afterwards not quite satisfied with the performance of the promise of
774, but we never find the Pope asking for so much territory, though we
see his utmost hopes quite clearly in the extant Papal correspondence.
The Popes had no reason modestly to lay aside demands which in point
of law would have had such an excellent foundation as that indicated in
the Vita Hadriani. Again, the later forged donations by the Prankish
rulers in favour of the Curia know absolutely nothing of the immense
extent of the promise of the Vita Hadriani, nor is there ground for
assuming that Charles made a new treaty with the Pope somewhere
about 781 and altered the promise of the document of 774 because it
was too burdensome. The conclusion therefore seems inevitable that
Charles the Great never issued a document of such contents as the Papal
book asserts. We must suppose there has been distortion or falsification.
Whether the author made these erroneous statements consciously or only
through misunderstanding or whether the document was interpolated at
the time, is quite unknown. But it seems certain that the donation
made in the document which Charles deposited in 774 was not so com-
prehensive as we read in the Life of Pope Hadrian.
The political conditions of Italy were not finally settled by the con-
quest of Lombardy. Many difficulties had to be overcome. As early as the
end of 775, the Lombard duke Hrodgaud of Friuli rose. A conspiracy
of wide ramifications, involving Hildebrand of Spoleto, Arichis of
Benevento, and Reginbald of Chiusi, seems to have been threatening.
A Greek army under the leadership of Adalgis, the son of Desiderius,
was, as some hoped and others feared, to master Borne and restore the
ancient Lombard kingdom. But Hrodgaud remained isolated. A quick
campaign of Charles in the winter months of 775-6 crushed the rising,
and Hrodgaud fell in battle.
Charles' sojourn in the winter of 780-1 simplified the situation in
Italy. Charles' second son Pepin was anointed as King of Italy by
the Pope, and at the same time Ludwig (Lewis), his four-year-old
third son, as King of Aquitania. This step by no means indicates
that Charles renounced his own share in the rule of Italy. On the
contrary, it was merely a formal concession to the special political needs
'of Italy, with a view to a stricter control and a closer approximation of
the Italian to the Frankish government. The separate kingdom of Italy
was not limited to the former Lombard kingdom, for districts were added
to it. Such were Istria, which had been conquered by the Franks before
790, and Venetia and Dalmatia, which surrendered towards the end of
805 and belonged to the Empire of Charles the Great till 810, and also
Corsica, which was repeatedly defended by the Frankish power against
the Saracens in the first twenty years of the ninth century. Outside the
## p. 601 (#633) ############################################
758-787] The Duchy of Benevento 601
Italian kingdom lay the possessions of the Roman Church, Romania as
they were officially called.
Much remained unsettled—the position of the powerful Duchy
of Benevento, and above all the relations with the Greeks, who, pushed
aside by the events of 774, still plotted against the States of the
Church and against the kingdom of the Franks. Sicily, where a Greek
Patricius was in residence, and South Italy, where their possessions
were gradually melting away, gave them a base of operations. Threat-
ened hostilities might still be avoided. The Emperor Leo IV had died
suddenly in 780, leaving the Empire to his son Constantine VI, Porphy-
rogenitus, who was a minor, and for whom the widowed Empress Irene
undertook the regency. Irene wished to restore image-worship, and thus
come nearer to the Roman Church and to western politics generally. By
her command an embassy appeared before Charles to seek the hand of
the king's daughter Rotrud for the young Emperor of the East. The
betrothal does not seem to have led to any distinct settlement in Italy:
on the contrary, the existing conditions were tacitly recognised.
But the continued uncertainty, especially as concerning Benevento, at
last made necessary a definite adjustment. Since 758 Arichis, the son-in-
law of the dethroned Desiderius, had ruled here, and continued to do so in
complete independence after the fall of the Lombard kingdom. With
his highly cultured and ambitious consort he desired to make Benevento
the centre of an advanced civilisation. He called himself Prince of
Benevento, and had himself anointed by the Bishops and set a crown
upon his own head, thus seeking to emphasise his sovereign position.
The Pope was naturally opposed to this proceeding, for the prosperity
and independence of Benevento were a continual danger to him.
Charles also, the heir of the Lombard kingdom, could not suffer the rise
of a great power in South Italy. The so-called Annates Einhardi credibly
reports that Charles on his journey to Italy, 786-7, contemplated from
the first an attack on Benevento, because he wished to gain the remainder
of the Lombard kingdom.
At the beginning of 787, while Charles was waiting in Rome,
Romuald the eldest son of Arichis appeared with presents and assurances
of peace, hoping to hinder the advance of the Franks towards the
South. But the Pope and the Frankish nobles who were present pre-
vailed upon Charles to advance as far as Capua. Arichis, who had shut
himself up in the fortress of Salerno, sent a further embassy to make
new proposals—that Arichis might be excused from appearing before
Charles in person, but that he should give hostages, among them his
second son Grimoald, send rich presents and profess his subjection.
These proposals were accepted, and Arichis as well as his eldest son
Romuald, who had been set at liberty, and the Beneventines took their
oath of allegiance before the plenipotentiaries.
This was doubtless a great success, not lessened by the rupture with
## p. 602 (#634) ############################################
602 Settlement of Italian affairs [774-788
the Greeks that followed and the breaking off of the betrothal of 781.
But difficulties arose when Arichis died (26 Aug. 787) after the death
of his eldest son and heir. Then the Beneventines asked for Grimoald
the second son-of Arichis, whom Charles held as a hostage. But the king
hesitated to comply with their wish. Pope Hadrian especially had a
share in this decision, for he had informed Charles of the plans of the
Greeks to conquer Italy and appoint the duke of Benevento as the
Greek Patricius, accusing Arichis of treachery and hinting at continued
conspiracies of the Beneventines. As a matter of fact there was a Greek
embassy at Benevento at the end of 787, trying to effect a great
alliance. At different ends of the Empire the forces of opposition were
thus arising against Charles at that time. But they did not take con-
certed action. For there is no evidence that the Beneventines entered
into alliance with Tassilo of Bavaria or even with the Avars and Saxons,
and indeed it is quite improbable, for otherwise Charles could not so
easily have overcome his difficulties.
In the spring of 788, in spite of Papal opposition, Charles at last
complied with the wish of the Beneventines and appointed Grimoald
duke, first requiring of him a solemn oath to recognise the Frankish
supremacy, to place Charles'1 name in decrees and on coins, and to forbid
the Lombards to wear beards. When a Greek army landed in Lower
Italy under the Sicilian Patricius, perhaps bringing with him Adalgis,
son of Desiderius, who had been chosen as a Byzantine vassal prince,
the Lombard dukes of Benevento and Spoleto remained faithful to the
Frankish cause, joining a small Frankish army and inflicting on the
Greeks a decisive defeat in Calabria. The Greek danger was finally
removed. No further restoration of Greek rule in Italy was attempted,
and from that time Adalgis lived peaceably in Constantinople as a
Greek Patricius. But the supremacy over Benevento could not be fully
maintained. Grimoald soon made himself independent, and later attacks
by the Franks had no lasting success.
Through the fall of the Lombard kingdom and the subjugation of Italy
by the Franks, the relations of Charles with the Pope necessarily under-
went an essential change. On his Easter visit, 774, Charles had given
the Pope the solemn assurance that he had not come with his army to Italy
to win treasures and make conquests, but to help St Peter to his rights, to
i exalt the Church of God and to make sure the position of the Pope.
But the result of the journey to Rome was that Charles himself laid
claim to the rule of the Lombard kingdom. VvTien, after~the fall of
Pavia, he assumed the title of king uf the Lombards and added it to
that of king of the Franks, he assumed also the obligations which
belonged to his new office. His policy in Italy was the same as that of
the Lombard kings before him and of all great rulers of Italy after him
—the vigorous ruler ol^ a_^art-strMng-fer-the^possession of the whole.
It was on account of this that the Lombards fell into opposition to the
## p. 603 (#635) ############################################
774-787] Charles' relations with the Pope 603
Pope. Though Charles and the Pope avoided serious conflicts and
always worked harmoniously in their endeavour to reduce the Lombard
Duchies and to drive the Greek power out of Italy, this was due to the
peculiar position of the Frankish king. Charles was not only king of
the Lombards but, as Patricius, was protector of the Church and her
possessions.
Hadrian often reminded Charles of his promise of 774 and demanded
its full performance. The Papal claims were only partially satisfied.
Thus in 781 Charles promised to see to the restoration of the Patrimonies
in the Sabina, but the Pope afterwards demanded in vain the evacuation
of the whole territory. So again in 787 a donation of Beneventine towns
was promised, also of several Tuscan towns, especially Populonia and
Rosellae, but the fulfilment did not perfectly correspond with the Pope's
wishes. For when the royal plenipotentiaries handed over to him the
episcopal buildings, the monasteries and fiscal estates, and also the keys
of the towns, but not sovereign power over the inhabitants, Hadrian
complained bitterly. Of what use to him, he asked, was the possession
of the town unless he had power over the inhabitants ? " He must rule
them by royal dispensation, and he was willing to leave them their
freedom. "
Without doubt all these acquisitions meant for the Roman Curia
more than the mere gain of profitable rights. Political rule would
secure constitutional privileges. What clearly appears as the leading
thought in the forged Donation of Constantine was aimed at by the
Popes of the eighth century on a more limited scale—an ecclesiastical
State freed from all secular interference. Hadrian and his successors
never forgot the thought that no earthly power might govern where the
spiritual Head of Christendom had received his seat from the Heavenly
Ruler.
Charles was not only king of the Franks and Lombards but he was
at the same time, as Patricius, protector of the Respublica Romana.
As successor of the Lombard kings he had to accept somewhat narrower
limits, and above all to set absolutely free the districts belonging to
the Pope. But as Patricius he was entitled to exercise a suzerainty
over those territories too. This meant for the Pope and his deputies
the enjoyment of profitable rights and immediate authority over the
subjects, but for himself the supreme political control.
This was not a process of right but of might. The relations changed
gradually. On his first visit in 774, the king asked permission to visit
the city of Rome. Later on, such a request was needless. In matters
of state, Charles felt himself supreme lord of the Pope and of all Papal
possessions. If he asked the Pope to remove abuses which came to light
in the Papal territories, or if he laid upon him a command to expel from
the Exarchate and Pentapolis the Venetians who carried on trade in men,
it was only an application of generally recognised principles. Protection
## p. 604 (#636) ############################################
604 Invasion of Spain [777-778
implies sovereignty, and the Protector of the Church became sovereign of
the protected territory.
Thus did Charles found a lordship over Italy. The different legal
titles which had created it fell more and more into the background, and
even the political prerogatives of the Pope became more like the secular
authority of other great Churches in Gaul and Italy, which received con-
firmations of privileges from the State. The Roman Church appears
endowed with rich possessions, with great revenues, with important state
prerogatives. But over them stood Charles as supreme lord, as the sole
true sovereign.
Charles' power meanwhile stretched further beyond Francia and Italy
and became more absolute. The patriciate raised the protector of the
Church to the position of lord of Christendom and absolute master of
the West. That is of course the patriciate not as the Pope bestowed
it, but as Charles made it. Later on we shall see how the Frankish
monarchy assumed universal and theocratic elements. The Christian
theocratic ideas were to justify as it were the violent conquests of Charles.
The important point was the acquirement of real power. The great
conquests were necessary, if the theocratic Frankish monarchy was to
become the Empire of the West.
It was not the relief of the oppressed Christian Spain or the support
of political allies but the spread of his power which guided Charles in
his wars against the Arabs. At the Diet at Paderborn in 777, Ibn
al Arabi, apparently governor of Barcelona and Gerona, asked help from
Charles against the Umayyad Caliph of Cordova. The Arabian governor
of Barcelona had already in 759 offered to Pepin to recognise Frankish
supremacy, and Pepin had formed alliances with the Abbasids the
enemies of the Umayyads, and in 765 he had sent ambassadors to Bagdad.
The subjugation of Aquitania and Vasconia in the last years of Pepin's
reign afforded the basis for further extension of Frankish dominion
towards the South.
In the spring of 778 an army summoned from all parts of the
Empire marched in two divisions across the Eastern and Western
Pyrenees into Spain. It is significant that Charles' first achievement
was the siege and capture of Pampeluna, which was inhabited by
Christians and belonged to the Christian kingdom of Asturias. No great
military successes were gained. Many fortified places recognised Charles'
supremacy, but the expected great movement against the Umayyad
'Abd-ar-Rahman did not take place. Among the Arab opponents of
the Caliph of Cordova there was no unanimity. Charles saw that
he had been deceived. He advanced as far as Saragossa on the Ebro,
and perhaps took temporary possession of the town. Then he turned
northwards, and Ibn al Arabi, who bore the blame of the failure of the
expedition, was taken back with the army as prisoner. The Christian
## p. 605 (#637) ############################################
778-793] Roncevalles 605
Basques of Spain were treated as enemies, and the fortifications of
Pampeluna were razed. And as the great army passed through the
defiles of the Pyrenees in long columns, unable to open out for any
military manoeuvres, the rearguard was attacked by the hosts of the
Basques and destroyed. In later legends the place is called Roncevalles.
Even if the reverse was not in itself important, it was regarded as serious
that the attack could not be avenged. And certain heroes among Charles'
friends had fallen, the Palgrave Anselm, the Seneschal Eggihard, and
above all, Hruodland the Praefect of the Britannic March. Legend
however seized upon this event of 15 August 778, and wove around the
whole Spanish expedition of Charles, but especially this surprise of
Roncevalles, the halo of Christian glory. It exalted the defeat into a
catastrophe and made the death of Hruodland the martyrdom of the
heroic soldier of God. In the eleventh century these legends took their
poetic form in the Chanson de Roland, their final form in the pseudo-
Turpin, and in the Rolandslied of the Pfaffe Conrad of the twelfth
century, the most popular form in which they spread over Germany.
The expedition of 778 had completely failed, but the project of a
conquest in the South was by no means given up. In the first place, it was
necessary to settle the position of Aquitania, which though it was finally
conquered, yet had not become Frank. In 781 Charles raised- this land
with Septimania to a kingdom, and had his son Louis (Ludwig), who was
born during the expedition of 778, anointed king of it by the Pope. On
the border the boy was invested with arms and placed upon a horse, to
hold his solemn entry into his kingdom. Charles wished his son to be
brought up as an Aquitanian. He rejoiced later on when the seven-year-
old boy appeared at the Diet of Paderborn in the dress of Aquitania
with his little mantle and padded hose. But it was not intended that
the grave Frankish character should be obliterated or the Frankish
dominion over Aquitania in any way shaken. The regents whom Charles
appointed in 781, and later Louis himself, only had influence so far as
Charles liked. He remained the supreme head, and gave orders in all
important matters and even in unimportant matters. It was a political
system that answered perfectly. The people of Aquitania, proud of
their kingdom, willingly complied with the arrangements of the Empire,
and ever proved themselves the readiest to fight the Arabs. In 785
Gerona placed itself voluntarily under Frankish rule. The coast district
was won in addition. In 793 there was another advance on the part of
the Arabs. It was at that time that the distant enemies of the Franks
combined, and political intrigue stretched from Spain to the land of
the Saxons and to the Avars. Hisham I, Emir of Cordova, the son of
'Abd-ar-Rahman, arranged an invasion. Gerona was taken, the Pyrenees
were crossed and the Arabian army advanced as far as Narbonne and
Carcassonne. A bloody battle was fought against the Margrave William
on the river Orbieu, and the Arabs marched back laden with booty.
## p. 606 (#638) ############################################
606 The Spanish March. Bavaria [763-811
Soon however the Franks were in a position to make a victorious
advance. From Gerona westwards the territory south of the Pyrenees
was gradually won and a series of places fortified. In 795 the Spanish
March was established. Dissensions among the Muslims and private
undertakings of daring adventurers prepared the way for further conquests.
In 801 Barcelona was compelled to surrender, and Louis, the king of
Aquitania, was hurriedly summoned at the decisive moment, that he
might have the credit of taking the proud city. In 806 Pampeluna and
Novara acknowledged the Frankish dominion. Tortosa also, after a long
siege, surrendered its keys to Louis in 811, although neither here nor
at Saragossa or Huesca was Frankish dominion regularly established.
The Spanish March did not reach so far as the Ebro, but only to a line
drawn n. n. w. from Barcelona and parallel to the Pyrenees. In 799 the
Balearic Islands which in the spring had been ravaged by the Moors, put
themselves under Frankish rule, and from that time enjoyed at any
rate occasional protection by the Franks.
Bavaria was almost an independent State at the beginning of Charles1
reign. After Duke Tassilo had faithlessly deserted the Frankish army
in 763, in the middle of the war against Aquitania, the connexion of
Bavaria with the Frankish power became looser. It was not that Frank-
ish supremacy was completely renounced. Charles even appears to have
exercised influence in the appointment to Bavarian bishoprics. But
Tassilo nevertheless acted quite independently, and it is certain that
Bavaria did not regularly take part in Charles' warlike undertakings,
even if we assume the co-operation of the Bavarian army in the Pyrenean
campaign of 778, which is doubtful. When the king and the Pope in
781 demanded that the duke should return to his former allegiance and
Tassilo found himself compelled to comply with the demand, his inde-
pendence was assured, and it was not till his personal safety had been
guaranteed by hostages that he appeared at the Mayfield of Worms
in 781, to renew the oaths and promises he had formerly made to Pepin,
giving twelve nobles as hostages.
This did not bring about good relations. There was soon friction.
After 784 there were manifest differences concerning rights in the Etsch
districts, but most serious were the different conceptions of the conditions
of dependency. Charles deduced from the oath of fidelity an obligation
of obedience and services such as the provincial officials of his kingdom
were accustomed to render. Tassilo on the other hand understood the
subordination as more indefinite, and thought he was not bound to
surrender his independence. In 787 the Bavarian duke sought the
intervention of the Pope with a view to the restoration of peace with
King Charles. Negotiations were opened but came to nothing, because
views differed as to the degree of obligations involved in the oaths
of fidelity. The Pope, who was entirely the tool of the powerful king,
## p. 607 (#639) ############################################
787-794] Deposition of Tassilo 607
threatened anathemas in case Tassilo did not fulfil Charles' demands.
As these were not satisfied, the Franks invaded Bavaria from three sides
with an overwhelming force. Tassilo dared not venture a battle. He
met the king (3 Oct. ) on the plain of the Lech, acknowledged himself
vassal and placed the duchy in the hand of the king to receive it back
from Charles as a Frankish fief. The Bavarian people were obliged to
take an oath of allegiance, and Tassilo had to give as hostages twelve
nobles and his own son.
Why the end came nevertheless the next year is not rightly under-
stood. Our information is drawn entirely from Frankish sources. What
is reported in the official Annals is not conclusive without confirmation.
From them we leam that Tassilo afterwards confessed that he had
incited the Avars to make war against the Franks, that he had attempted
the lives of the king's vassals in Bavaria, that he had recommended his
own people to make secret reservations in taking the oath of allegiance
to the king, and had even said that he would rather lose ten sons if he
had them than hold to the treaties, that he would rather die than live
under them.
The decision came at the Meeting of the Empire which was held at
Ingelheim in the summer of 788. Tassilo, who had been invited like
other nobles of the Empire, had appeared. He seems to have had
no suspicion of what threatened him, and this unsuspecting appearance
certainly does not look like guilt. He was immediately arrested, while
royal messengers departed for Bavaria to seize the wife, the children, the
treasures, and the household of the duke. Then Bavarians appeared as
accusers and proved Tassilo's disloyalty. But the charges could not have
been very serious, for they had to go back to the Herisliz of 763—an
incident which must have been regarded as long previously pardoned by
the royal declarations of grace in 781 and 787. The meeting, however,
so it is reported, unanimously pronounced sentence of death on Tassilo,
and only the intervention of Charles procured a mitigation of the
sentence. Tassilo was shorn and sent into a monastery as a monk,
he and his two sons. His wife also was compelled to take the veil, and
they were all immured in different cloisters. But the ceremony of de-
position was not yet completed. Six years later, at the Synod of Frank-
fort of 794, the deposed duke was made to appear, to acknowledge his
guilt publicly in the assembly, and to renounce all rights for himself and
his successors, in order to obtain the king's pardon and to be received
back into his favour and protection. Of this event a report was made
in three copies, one for the Palace, one for Tassilo, and one for the
Court Chapel.
When we consider all the steps of Tassilo's fall, we easily recognise
that he was sacrificed to the policy of the great king of the Franks.
They were not acts of justice, they were acts of violence, which were
only in appearance connected with any definite process of law.
## p. 608 (#640) ############################################
608 Bavaria. The Avars [763-794
Suspicious is the use made of the Herisliz of 763, which legally must
have long been regarded as done with, and even more so is the
solemn renunciation before the Synod of 794. Any breach of faith by
Tassilo after his homage at the Lech cannot have been very serious.
But even if in his treatment of Tassilo Charles appears to us less as
a just judge than as a strong statesman—the part which the last inde-
pendent duke of Bavaria played in this drama remains pitiful. His
deceit and bad faith are only known to us from the official history, but
his weakness and political incapacity are shewn bv the facts themselves.
He did not understand the tasks of his age. During his long rule
he favoured and enriched the churches like any Christian prince. But while
he furthered the monasteries, he shewed but little understanding for the
episcopal organisation with which lay the future. It was precisely this
circumstance that immediately sent the leaders of the Church, the
Bavarian bishops, over to the enemy when conflict broke out with the
powerful Frank. Brave to fight for his hereditary rights and for the poli-
tical independence of his race, he did not dare, or rather he was unable,
to take a comprehensive view of the political situation, and he went
unsuspectingly to Ingelheim to be taken prisoner, to be condemned to
death, commuted for the life of a monk. Perhaps the result answered
to the man's personal wishes, for his hopes and fears were set upon the
other world.
Properly speaking, the wide district of Bavaria was not won for the
empire of the Franks till 788. After the subjection of the Saxons it
was the second great conquest of German territory—a conquest without
bloodshed or struggle. This was a fact of immense international impor-
tance. It decided that the Bavarian race should share the destinies of
the West-German peoples, just as the wars with the Saxons decided those
of the North-eastern West-Germans.
The borders of the Frankish kingdom extended over the middle
Danube district as far as the Enns, and at the same time over a district
of the Slavs already conquered by Tassilo, over Carantania (Carinthia).
Before long they were extended still further. For the subjection of the
Bavarian kingdom was naturally followed by the struggle against the
Avars and the Slavs, the Eastern neighbours of the Bavarians.
The Avars, confused by the Franks with the Huns, to whom they
were related as belonging to the Ural-altaic family, had for some
centuries come in contact with the Byzantines and Franks. About the
end of the sixth century, as we have seen1, they held a great dominion:
but by the end of the eighth century the period of their greatest power
was past. They had never risen above the level of barbarian nomads,
and the Slavs of the south-east had long thrown off their yoke, and
even their own sense of unity was gone. It was remarkable how this
uncivilised people sought to make use of the civilised labour of other
1 Chaps, ix, xiv.
## p. 609 (#641) ############################################
788-8ii] The Avars 609
peoples. Agriculture, like all other productive labour, was unknown to
them. In the plain between the Danube and the Theiss were situated
the "Rings"—the strong circular walls round extensive dwelling-places.
According to the assertion of a Frankish warrior—quoted by the Monk
of St Gall—the Rings extended as far "as from Zurich to Constance"
(therefore about 60 kilometres or nearly 38 miles) and embraced several
districts. In these Rings, of which, according to the Monk of St Gall,
there were nine, the Avars had heaped their plunder of two centuries.
In 788 the Avars had advanced westward in two divisions, but had
been completely defeated near the Danube and in Friuli. In 791
Charles had taken the offensive, not only to acquire rich treasures or
to punish the invaders of 788, but to obtain a natural closed frontier
towards the East. The Franks advanced as far as the Raab without
making a permanent conquest.
graduated candles and horn lantern; but the phrase seems to imply something
familiar, while illuminated clocks, as Alfred's invention reminds us, were a thing
as yet unknown. Bilfinger, the most careful student of the history of time-reckoning
and time-pieces, interprets as an alarm-clock the "horologium nocturnum" invented
in the ninth century by a Frankish cleric; and Professor Erben of Innsbruck has
already suggested this explanation for Pepin's night-clock.
## p. 592 (#624) ############################################
592 Pepin's Wars [759-760
imported from Rome a singing-master for his clergy; and, when the
master was called back to head the Roman training-school, sent his
monks thither to complete their musical education. Chrodegang of
Metz, ever in close touch with Rome, inaugurated the most notable
church reform of his day by organising under a discipline akin to the
monastic the clergy of his cathedral city. Among the imperial gifts
from Constantinople came an organ, the first seen in the West. A more
questionable blessing was the advent of Greek theologians: Byzantine
envoys debated with papal, before the king and his synod, as to the
Trinity and the use of images; and, though they lost the verdict, they
must have quickened thought. Nor was the new horizon bounded by
Christian lands. The lord of Barcelona and Gerona, Muslim governor of
north-eastern Spain, strengthened himself against his Moorish sovereign
by acknowledging the Frankish overlordship; and a more distant foe of
the Umayyad court of Cordova, the great Caliph Mansur, from his
new capital of Bagdad, exchanged with Pepin embassies and gifts. It
was the beginning of that connexion between the leading power of the
Christian West and the leading power of the Muslim East which has
proved so perennial, and to the powers of Christian East and Muslim
West so costly.
But all this interest in the world at large meant no sacrifice of
energy at home. It was precisely the years that fell between or
followed the Italian expeditions which saw Pepin most active as a
legislator. In four successive synods of his clergy he perfected the work
begun by Boniface, but made it clear that in the Frankish Church the
crown was still to be supreme. Every spring henceforward all the
bishops should gather to the king for synod, and every autumn at his
seat in Soissons those clad with metropolitan authority should meet
again. Inspection and stern churchly discipline should keep at home
and at religious duties priest and monk and nun. All Christians must
observe the Sunday rest and worship, and all marriage must be public
"Though at the moment our power does not suffice for everything,'" runs
an introductory clause full of significance for the king's whole character,
"yet in some points at least we wish to better what, as we perceive,
impedes the Church of God; if later God shall grant us days of peace
and leisure, we hope then to restore in all their scope the standards of
the saints. '1
Days of peace proved rare. In 759, having freshly scourged the
Saxons to tribute and submission, he "made no campaign, that he
might reform domestic affairs within his realm. " But in 760 began the
task which busied his remaining years—the subjection of Aquitaine.
The broad south-west of Gaul, cut off from Neustria by the wide stream
of the Loire, from Burgundy by the escarpment of the Cevennes, had not
since Roman days fully cast in its fortunes with the rest. When Clovis
won it from the Goths he had not sown it with his Franks; and the
## p. 593 (#625) ############################################
762-768] Conquest of Aquitaine 593
Goths, withdrawing into Spain, had left its folk less touched than any
other in the west of Europe by Germanic blood and ways. To the
chroniclers and even to the laws of Pepin's time they still are "Romans. "
The race of native dukes which under the later Merovingians had made
them almost independent acknowledged Pepin as a suzerain only; and
their boldness in harbouring fugitives from his authority and in taxing
the Aquitanian estates of Prankish churches had already caused friction
and protest when the Frank occupation of Septimania gave rise to war.
That this district, so closely knit to Aquitaine before and since, its
doorway to the Mediterranean and the highway of its commerce, should
pass into the keeping of the Frank was indeed a knell to all their hopes.
Duke Waifar had as early as 752 begun to wrest the region from the
failing grasp of the Moor, and it was perhaps only to escape his clutches
that the Goths of its eastern towns offered themselves to Pepin. This
could be borne; but when, in 759, the taking of Narbonne carried to
the Pyrenees the Frank frontier, the speedy sequel was the war with
Aquitaine.
Pepin did not underrate his foe. Year after year, from 760 to
768, he led against Waifar the whole Prankish host; and, though a
brief peace closed the first campaign, the struggle thereafter was to the
death. With thoroughness and system, wasting no time in raids, from
fortress to fortress, district to district, through Berri, Auvergne, the
Limousin, garrisoning and organising as he went, the king relentlessly
pushed on. Once desertion and famine forced him to a pause; but there
followed a fruitful year—for whose blessings the king, like some
American governor or president of modern days, ordained in the autumn
a general thanksgiving—and the war went on. By the early summer of
768 the land was wholly overrun, and the death of Waifar ended the
brave but hopeless fight. Pepin, himself worn out by the struggle,
lived only long enough to enact the statute which should govern the
new-won province. By this he fused it with the rest of his kingdom, but
left to its people their ancestral laws, guarded them against the extortion
of the royal officials, and provided for a local assembly of their magnates
which in conference with the deputies of the Crown should have final
authority as to all matters, civil and ecclesiastical.
In the palace reared by his son at Ingelheim the fresco devoted to
the memory of Pepin pictured him "granting laws to the Aquitanians. "
It was, indeed, his most lasting work. Though the whole history of
Aquitaine betrays her separateness of blood and speech, though still
"there is no Frenchman south of Loire,'" she has never ceased to form
with Neustria a single realm. All else—the absorption of Brittany, the
conquest of the Saxons, the humbling of Bavaria, whose young duke's
desertion had for a moment crippled the war on Aquitaine—Pepin left
unfinished to his sons. Between the two, after the bad old fashion of
the Franks, he now parted the kingdom. To Charles, the elder, grown
C MED. H. VOL II. CH. XVIII. 38
## p. 594 (#626) ############################################
594 Character of Pepin
a man of twenty-six, fell Australia, most of Neustria, the western half
of Aquitaine—all, that is, to north and west; to the younger, Carloman,
still in his teens, though wedded, all to south and east. Bavaria was
assigned to neither: it must first be won.
At St Denis, home of his childhood and his chosen place of sepulture,
Pepin died, not yet half through his fifties. His life, though short, was
fruitful. Modern scholars are at one in thinking his fame eclipsed
unduly by that of his successor. Nearly everything the son accomplished.
the father had begun. Vigorous, shrewd, persistent, practical, his own
general and his own prime minister, relentless but not cruel, pious but
never blindly so, able to plan but able too to wait, Pepin bequeathed to
Charles more than a kingdom and a policy. Even for his bodily strength
and presence, his power of passion and his length of life, Charlemagne
perhaps owed something to the stainless self-control as husband and as
father which was Pepin's alone of all his line. How the king looked
we have no means of knowing. The legend which caused him in later
centuries to be called "the Short" is baseless fable.
## p. 595 (#627) ############################################
595
CHAPTER XIX.
CONQUESTS AND IMPERIAL CORONATION OF
CHARLES THE GREAT.
The significance of great personalities is nowhere in all history
more evident than in the Carlovingian age. Without the work of the
great men of the eighth century it is impossible to explain the shaping
of the Middle Ages and the theocratic and imperial ideas that governed
life in every department. It was Charles the Great, above all, who for
centuries gave the direction to the historic development. It is true that
imperialism and theocracy in the State were required on general
considerations. But their particular form in the West depended very
largely on particular individuals.
Charles was born 2 April, probably in the year 742, at some place
unknown, and was the eldest son of Pepin the Mayor of the Palace (and
afterwards king), and of his wife Bertrada. Shortly before his death in
September 768, Pepin had divided the kingdom between his two sons.
Charles received Austrasia, Neustria, and half of Aquitania, while
Carloman had Burgundy, Provence, Gothia, Alsace, Alemannia, and the
other half of Aquitania. The young kings were solemnly enthroned and
anointed (9 Oct. ) in their respective halves of the kingdom.
We soon hear of disputes between them. We need not assume that
Carloman wished to supplant his brother because Charles was born before
the marriage of his parents. There is no doubt that Charles was born
in lawful wedlock. Unknown personal grounds caused the dispute.
When the Aquitanians under Hunald rose against the Prankish rule in
the first year of his reign, Carloman refused to help his brother, and
Charles reduced the rising by his own power. Bertrada acted as peace-
maker, and succeeded in reconciling the brothers. She did more. She
passed through Bavaria into Italy to win over the two opponents of the
Frankish kingdom, the Bavarian duke Tassilo and the Lombard king
Desiderius. The daughter of Desiderius was to be married to Charles,
and Gisela the sister of the Frankish kings to the son of the Lombard
king. And as Tassilo had married another daughter of Desiderius, and
as Frankish emissaries of Sturm, the abbot of Fulda, were working in
ch. xix. 38—2
## p. 596 (#628) ############################################
596 Charles and Carloman [768-771
Bavaria on behalf of peace, there seemed to be a real bond of union
between Francia, Bavaria, and Lombardy.
The old traditions of Frankish policy before the alliance with the
Curia seemed to revive. The Pope however had considerable cause for
anxiety. When he heard rumours of the proposed marriages he
addressed to the two Frankish kings a letter full of passionate hatred
against the Lombards and of consternation at a change of Frankish
policy. He warned the Franks against an alliance with the Lombards,
that stinking people, the source of leprosy, a people that were not recog-
nised amongst civilised nations; and he threatened anathemas if the Papal
warnings were disregarded. But when Charles nevertheless brought home
his Lombard bride, the Pope accommodated himself to circumstances.
He was mollified by the restoration of Patrimonies and in overflowing
words besought the blessing of heaven on Charles. Soon the Lombard
party even obtained the upper hand in Rome. Desiderius appeared in
Rome as the friend of the Pope and overthrew the party that was
opposed to the Lombards and friendly to Carloman. In a letter sent to
Francia, Stephen praised the Lombard king as his saviour, "his most
illustrious son," who at last had restored all the prerogatives of St Peter.
Even if Charles was but little offended at the Pope's opposition to
Carloman, such intimate friendship with the Lombards cannot have
seemed desirable to him. But all these circumstances were soon radi-
cally changed. After a union of one year Charles divorced his Lombard
wife. Policy had brought about the marriage, personal wishes of the king,
we may surmise, rent the union sharply asunder. Friendship for the
Lombards was followed by the bitterest enmity.
There was a further cause. The opposition in Rome increased
the estrangement of the royal brothers. Other personal motives may
have co-operated. The alienation was so great that Carloman's people
urged war. But the sudden death of Carloman (4 Dec. 771) made a
complete change in the political situation. Charles seized his brother's
portion of the kingdom. There were, it is true, children of Carloman,
especially a son, Pepin, who had indisputable rights to the inheritance;
but might prevailed over right, and though the enthroning and anoint-
ing of Charles took place "with the consent of all the Franks," while the
court historians praised the Grace of God because Charles' authority was
extended over the whole kingdom without shedding of blood, his disre-
gard of right cannot be denied. Carloman's widow Gerberga had fled
with her children and found refuge with Desiderius, now Charles' mortal
enemy.
The union of the Frankish dominions under one authority was indis-
pensable for their furtherdevelopment. Nottill then did Charles'independ-
ent rule begin. The pre-eminence, and at the same time the ruthlessness,
of the great ruler had already manifested themselves, but until 771 the
softening and restraining influence of his mother had prevailed with him.
## p. 597 (#629) ############################################
752-772] Donation of Constantine 597
Now began the period of vigorous conquest. An empire was founded
that embraced all the West German races and extended over wide
Romance and Slavic regions and Avar territory—an empire that in con-
sideration and extent might be compared with the West Roman Empire.
The real motive in the advance of Carlovingian authority was certainly not
religion. It is the secular ideal and the struggle for power which dominate
men and nations. The Christian idea was but subordinate. It frequently
ennobled, frequently veiled, the desire for power. Later on it had an
essential part in the founding of the Empire that brought to a close the
development of a universal authority in the West.
The first advance accompanied by immediate success was directed
towards Italy for the subjection of the Lombard kingdom. A second
was against the Arabs of the Pyrenean Peninsula. This aimed only at an
unimportant extension of the Empire on the Spanish border and a closer
union of Southern Gaul with the Empire. A third was on the East, in
Bavaria and the territory of the Avars. A fourth was on the North and
North-east in the territory of the Saxons, the Slavs and the Danes.
The political state of Italy was far from settled in the eighth century.
After the collapse of the rule of the Eastern Goths the country had been a
province of East Rome, then conquered from the North by the Lombards,
and the part lying north-west of the Exarchate of Ravenna and Tuscany
was left in possession of the Lombards, and was opposed to the Respublica
Romana, as Lombard Italy to the Province of Italy. When the vigorous
Lombard kingdom, after the time of Liutprand (712-744), aimed at sole
rule over all Italy, winning Ravenna with the Exarchate, and the Duchies
of Spoleto and Benevento were made dependent, this was regarded as an
injury to the Respublica Romana. As holder of this political power for
the Exarchate of Ravenna and for the people of the whole province of Italy
appeared the Roman Bishop. According to law the Eastern Emperor was
still lord of the Roman province, he was still (until 772) honoured as
sovereign in the Papal documents, and so late as 752 Stephen II had turned
to him for help against the Lombards. But political and ecclesiastical
circumstances had led more and more to estrangement, and when the
Roman Duchy and Rome itself were likely to fall before the advance
of Aistulf, Stephen turned to the first Catholic power of the West, to
the Frankish king Pepin.
The donation ascribed to Constantine must have been forged in
Rome at this time, when the Curia was freeing itself politically from
East Rome and as representative of the Respublica Romana in the West
was desirous of winning what had formerly belonged to the Eastern
Empire, and when for this purpose the Curia was obliged to summon
the aid of the Franks. Thus old tendencies and views of the Roman
Curia were invested with the authority of the Great Emperor Con-
tantine. St Peter is represented as the Vicar of Christ in the world and
CH. XIX.
## p. 598 (#630) ############################################
598 The Patriciate [754-774
the Roman bishops as the representatives of the Prince of the Apostles:
therefore the Emperor is made to exalt the Chair of Peter above his own
secular throne, and in order that the Papal dignity may be honoured
with power and glory far above the secular empire, Constantine is made
to have conferred upon the Roman bishop the City of Rome and all the
provinces, places and towns of Italy and of the West, while he himself
removed his capital to the East and erected a residence in Byzantium
"because it is not right that the secular Emperor should have authority
where the Principality of Priests and the Head of the Christian Religion
were established by the Heavenly Emperor. "
In the eighth century the Curia put forward for the first time this
claim of political sovereignty for the highest office in the Church; and ■
this claim has never since been completely forgotten, though often
greatly modified. Pepin satisfied the Curia when Pope Stephen came in
person to visit him in France in 754. Pepin presented him with a
certain document and promised to procure for him the States of the
Church. He twice took the field against the Lombards and won
Lombard districts for the Pope. What he promised to bestow we do
not know, because the document has not been preserved, and subsequent
accounts are not sufficiently circumstantial; but we know that in 754
and 756 Pepin secured for the Curia the possession of the Roman Duchy
of Pentapolis and the Exarchate of Ravenna, and that he regarded his
promise as thus fulfilled. Pepin was appointed Patricius by the Pope
and declared Protector of the Church and her territory. From his
Roman Patriciate Pepin inferred a duty to protect, but not a right to
rule. His son Charles, on the contrary, managed to change the relation
and to transform the obligation of protection into a suzerainty.
After a short vacillation during the first years of the reign of Charles,
the Papal policy, >under Hadrian (774), the successor of Stephen IV,
naturally took its former course of alliance with the Franks and opposi-
tion to the Lombards. Circumstances soon became exceedingly threaten-
ing. The Pope demanded restoration of church property, but Desiderius
marched against Rome, and legates from the Pope hastened over the
Alps to implore Frankish help.
Charles acted cautiously. He sent messengers into Italy to ascertain
the exact position of affairs, and he made reasonable proposals to Desiderius
in order to avoid war. Only when these failed he summoned an Assembly
to Geneva, resolved on war and marched over Mont Cenis into Italy, while
a second division of his army led by his uncle Bernard chose the road over
the Great St Bernard. The defiles of the Italian side had been strongly
fortified by Desiderius. Later legends tell of a Lombard minstrel who
guided the Franks over the mountains into Italy by secret paths. It is
historically certain that Charles caused part of his army to take a cir-
cuitous route, while negotiations with Desiderius were renewed, and that
this caused Desiderius to give up his position in the defile and withdraw
## p. 599 (#631) ############################################
773-774] End of the Lombard Kingdom 599
to Pavia, while his son Adalgis with Carloman's widow Gerberga and
Charles' nephews sought refuge in the fortress of Verona. Probably
about the end of September 773 Charles began the siege of Pavia. An
expedition sent thence against Verona obtained the surrender of
Gerberga and her sons, of whom no more is heard. Adalgis fled to
Constantinople. But Pavia itself held out till the beginning of June
774. The town was ravaged by disease and obliged to surrender.
Desiderius with his wife and daughter were taken prisoners, the royal
treasure was confiscated, and the Lombard kingdom was at an end.
Before this, however, while the Franks were still besieging Pavia,
Charles had taken a journey to Rome. He reached the Eternal City
(2 April) and made such an entry as was usually granted to the Greek
Exarch and Patrician. The Pope awaited the king in the entrance of
St Peter's. Charles approached on foot, kissed each of the steps which
led up to the church, embraced the Pope, and entered the church on
his right. Together they descended to the grave of St Peter and took
an oath of mutual fidelity. After that came an entry into the city itself.
On the succeeding days various solemnities were celebrated, and (6 April)
the important discussion took place in St Peter's. According to the
contemporary Life of Hadrian, the Pope begged and warned Charles to
fulfil the promise that had once been given by King Pepin, Charles,
Carloman, and the Frankish nobles, on the occasion of the Papal visit
to Francia, concerning the bestowal of different towns and districts of the
province of Italy. Hereupon Charles caused the document drawn up at
Quierzy to be read. He and his nobles assented to everything that was
recorded therein and voluntarily and gladly ordered a new document to
be drawn up by his chaplain and notary Hitherius, according to the
pattern of the former one, and in it he promised to confer on St Peter
the same towns and districts within certain limits as described in the
document. The boundary begins at Luni, so that Corsica is included.
It goes on to Suriano, to Mons Bardone, Parma, Reggio, Mantua, and
Monselice. Thus according to the Papal biographer the donation was
the Exarchate of Ravenna in its ancient extent, the provinces of Venetia
and Istria, and the Duchies of Spoleto and Benevento. The document
itself, as he further reports, was attested by Charles with his own hand,
and the names of the nobles present were added. Then Charles and his
nobles laid the deed first upon the altar, then upon the sepulchre of
St Peter, and delivered it to the Pope, taking an oath that they would
fulfil all its conditions. A second copy, also written by Hitherius, the
king laid with his own hands upon the body of St Peter under the
Gospels. , A third copy, prepared by the Roman Chancery, Charles took
with him.
There can no longer be any doubt that the detailed account in the
Vita Hadriani of the events of 6 April 774 is correct in the essential
particulars. In the most solemn manner Charles then renewed his
## p. 600 (#632) ############################################
600 Charles' Donation [774-781
father's promise. But it is not likelv that the contents of the document
are always correctly quoted by the biographer of Hadrian, or that Charles
bestowed such extensive territories. We hear indeed that the Curia was
afterwards not quite satisfied with the performance of the promise of
774, but we never find the Pope asking for so much territory, though we
see his utmost hopes quite clearly in the extant Papal correspondence.
The Popes had no reason modestly to lay aside demands which in point
of law would have had such an excellent foundation as that indicated in
the Vita Hadriani. Again, the later forged donations by the Prankish
rulers in favour of the Curia know absolutely nothing of the immense
extent of the promise of the Vita Hadriani, nor is there ground for
assuming that Charles made a new treaty with the Pope somewhere
about 781 and altered the promise of the document of 774 because it
was too burdensome. The conclusion therefore seems inevitable that
Charles the Great never issued a document of such contents as the Papal
book asserts. We must suppose there has been distortion or falsification.
Whether the author made these erroneous statements consciously or only
through misunderstanding or whether the document was interpolated at
the time, is quite unknown. But it seems certain that the donation
made in the document which Charles deposited in 774 was not so com-
prehensive as we read in the Life of Pope Hadrian.
The political conditions of Italy were not finally settled by the con-
quest of Lombardy. Many difficulties had to be overcome. As early as the
end of 775, the Lombard duke Hrodgaud of Friuli rose. A conspiracy
of wide ramifications, involving Hildebrand of Spoleto, Arichis of
Benevento, and Reginbald of Chiusi, seems to have been threatening.
A Greek army under the leadership of Adalgis, the son of Desiderius,
was, as some hoped and others feared, to master Borne and restore the
ancient Lombard kingdom. But Hrodgaud remained isolated. A quick
campaign of Charles in the winter months of 775-6 crushed the rising,
and Hrodgaud fell in battle.
Charles' sojourn in the winter of 780-1 simplified the situation in
Italy. Charles' second son Pepin was anointed as King of Italy by
the Pope, and at the same time Ludwig (Lewis), his four-year-old
third son, as King of Aquitania. This step by no means indicates
that Charles renounced his own share in the rule of Italy. On the
contrary, it was merely a formal concession to the special political needs
'of Italy, with a view to a stricter control and a closer approximation of
the Italian to the Frankish government. The separate kingdom of Italy
was not limited to the former Lombard kingdom, for districts were added
to it. Such were Istria, which had been conquered by the Franks before
790, and Venetia and Dalmatia, which surrendered towards the end of
805 and belonged to the Empire of Charles the Great till 810, and also
Corsica, which was repeatedly defended by the Frankish power against
the Saracens in the first twenty years of the ninth century. Outside the
## p. 601 (#633) ############################################
758-787] The Duchy of Benevento 601
Italian kingdom lay the possessions of the Roman Church, Romania as
they were officially called.
Much remained unsettled—the position of the powerful Duchy
of Benevento, and above all the relations with the Greeks, who, pushed
aside by the events of 774, still plotted against the States of the
Church and against the kingdom of the Franks. Sicily, where a Greek
Patricius was in residence, and South Italy, where their possessions
were gradually melting away, gave them a base of operations. Threat-
ened hostilities might still be avoided. The Emperor Leo IV had died
suddenly in 780, leaving the Empire to his son Constantine VI, Porphy-
rogenitus, who was a minor, and for whom the widowed Empress Irene
undertook the regency. Irene wished to restore image-worship, and thus
come nearer to the Roman Church and to western politics generally. By
her command an embassy appeared before Charles to seek the hand of
the king's daughter Rotrud for the young Emperor of the East. The
betrothal does not seem to have led to any distinct settlement in Italy:
on the contrary, the existing conditions were tacitly recognised.
But the continued uncertainty, especially as concerning Benevento, at
last made necessary a definite adjustment. Since 758 Arichis, the son-in-
law of the dethroned Desiderius, had ruled here, and continued to do so in
complete independence after the fall of the Lombard kingdom. With
his highly cultured and ambitious consort he desired to make Benevento
the centre of an advanced civilisation. He called himself Prince of
Benevento, and had himself anointed by the Bishops and set a crown
upon his own head, thus seeking to emphasise his sovereign position.
The Pope was naturally opposed to this proceeding, for the prosperity
and independence of Benevento were a continual danger to him.
Charles also, the heir of the Lombard kingdom, could not suffer the rise
of a great power in South Italy. The so-called Annates Einhardi credibly
reports that Charles on his journey to Italy, 786-7, contemplated from
the first an attack on Benevento, because he wished to gain the remainder
of the Lombard kingdom.
At the beginning of 787, while Charles was waiting in Rome,
Romuald the eldest son of Arichis appeared with presents and assurances
of peace, hoping to hinder the advance of the Franks towards the
South. But the Pope and the Frankish nobles who were present pre-
vailed upon Charles to advance as far as Capua. Arichis, who had shut
himself up in the fortress of Salerno, sent a further embassy to make
new proposals—that Arichis might be excused from appearing before
Charles in person, but that he should give hostages, among them his
second son Grimoald, send rich presents and profess his subjection.
These proposals were accepted, and Arichis as well as his eldest son
Romuald, who had been set at liberty, and the Beneventines took their
oath of allegiance before the plenipotentiaries.
This was doubtless a great success, not lessened by the rupture with
## p. 602 (#634) ############################################
602 Settlement of Italian affairs [774-788
the Greeks that followed and the breaking off of the betrothal of 781.
But difficulties arose when Arichis died (26 Aug. 787) after the death
of his eldest son and heir. Then the Beneventines asked for Grimoald
the second son-of Arichis, whom Charles held as a hostage. But the king
hesitated to comply with their wish. Pope Hadrian especially had a
share in this decision, for he had informed Charles of the plans of the
Greeks to conquer Italy and appoint the duke of Benevento as the
Greek Patricius, accusing Arichis of treachery and hinting at continued
conspiracies of the Beneventines. As a matter of fact there was a Greek
embassy at Benevento at the end of 787, trying to effect a great
alliance. At different ends of the Empire the forces of opposition were
thus arising against Charles at that time. But they did not take con-
certed action. For there is no evidence that the Beneventines entered
into alliance with Tassilo of Bavaria or even with the Avars and Saxons,
and indeed it is quite improbable, for otherwise Charles could not so
easily have overcome his difficulties.
In the spring of 788, in spite of Papal opposition, Charles at last
complied with the wish of the Beneventines and appointed Grimoald
duke, first requiring of him a solemn oath to recognise the Frankish
supremacy, to place Charles'1 name in decrees and on coins, and to forbid
the Lombards to wear beards. When a Greek army landed in Lower
Italy under the Sicilian Patricius, perhaps bringing with him Adalgis,
son of Desiderius, who had been chosen as a Byzantine vassal prince,
the Lombard dukes of Benevento and Spoleto remained faithful to the
Frankish cause, joining a small Frankish army and inflicting on the
Greeks a decisive defeat in Calabria. The Greek danger was finally
removed. No further restoration of Greek rule in Italy was attempted,
and from that time Adalgis lived peaceably in Constantinople as a
Greek Patricius. But the supremacy over Benevento could not be fully
maintained. Grimoald soon made himself independent, and later attacks
by the Franks had no lasting success.
Through the fall of the Lombard kingdom and the subjugation of Italy
by the Franks, the relations of Charles with the Pope necessarily under-
went an essential change. On his Easter visit, 774, Charles had given
the Pope the solemn assurance that he had not come with his army to Italy
to win treasures and make conquests, but to help St Peter to his rights, to
i exalt the Church of God and to make sure the position of the Pope.
But the result of the journey to Rome was that Charles himself laid
claim to the rule of the Lombard kingdom. VvTien, after~the fall of
Pavia, he assumed the title of king uf the Lombards and added it to
that of king of the Franks, he assumed also the obligations which
belonged to his new office. His policy in Italy was the same as that of
the Lombard kings before him and of all great rulers of Italy after him
—the vigorous ruler ol^ a_^art-strMng-fer-the^possession of the whole.
It was on account of this that the Lombards fell into opposition to the
## p. 603 (#635) ############################################
774-787] Charles' relations with the Pope 603
Pope. Though Charles and the Pope avoided serious conflicts and
always worked harmoniously in their endeavour to reduce the Lombard
Duchies and to drive the Greek power out of Italy, this was due to the
peculiar position of the Frankish king. Charles was not only king of
the Lombards but, as Patricius, was protector of the Church and her
possessions.
Hadrian often reminded Charles of his promise of 774 and demanded
its full performance. The Papal claims were only partially satisfied.
Thus in 781 Charles promised to see to the restoration of the Patrimonies
in the Sabina, but the Pope afterwards demanded in vain the evacuation
of the whole territory. So again in 787 a donation of Beneventine towns
was promised, also of several Tuscan towns, especially Populonia and
Rosellae, but the fulfilment did not perfectly correspond with the Pope's
wishes. For when the royal plenipotentiaries handed over to him the
episcopal buildings, the monasteries and fiscal estates, and also the keys
of the towns, but not sovereign power over the inhabitants, Hadrian
complained bitterly. Of what use to him, he asked, was the possession
of the town unless he had power over the inhabitants ? " He must rule
them by royal dispensation, and he was willing to leave them their
freedom. "
Without doubt all these acquisitions meant for the Roman Curia
more than the mere gain of profitable rights. Political rule would
secure constitutional privileges. What clearly appears as the leading
thought in the forged Donation of Constantine was aimed at by the
Popes of the eighth century on a more limited scale—an ecclesiastical
State freed from all secular interference. Hadrian and his successors
never forgot the thought that no earthly power might govern where the
spiritual Head of Christendom had received his seat from the Heavenly
Ruler.
Charles was not only king of the Franks and Lombards but he was
at the same time, as Patricius, protector of the Respublica Romana.
As successor of the Lombard kings he had to accept somewhat narrower
limits, and above all to set absolutely free the districts belonging to
the Pope. But as Patricius he was entitled to exercise a suzerainty
over those territories too. This meant for the Pope and his deputies
the enjoyment of profitable rights and immediate authority over the
subjects, but for himself the supreme political control.
This was not a process of right but of might. The relations changed
gradually. On his first visit in 774, the king asked permission to visit
the city of Rome. Later on, such a request was needless. In matters
of state, Charles felt himself supreme lord of the Pope and of all Papal
possessions. If he asked the Pope to remove abuses which came to light
in the Papal territories, or if he laid upon him a command to expel from
the Exarchate and Pentapolis the Venetians who carried on trade in men,
it was only an application of generally recognised principles. Protection
## p. 604 (#636) ############################################
604 Invasion of Spain [777-778
implies sovereignty, and the Protector of the Church became sovereign of
the protected territory.
Thus did Charles found a lordship over Italy. The different legal
titles which had created it fell more and more into the background, and
even the political prerogatives of the Pope became more like the secular
authority of other great Churches in Gaul and Italy, which received con-
firmations of privileges from the State. The Roman Church appears
endowed with rich possessions, with great revenues, with important state
prerogatives. But over them stood Charles as supreme lord, as the sole
true sovereign.
Charles' power meanwhile stretched further beyond Francia and Italy
and became more absolute. The patriciate raised the protector of the
Church to the position of lord of Christendom and absolute master of
the West. That is of course the patriciate not as the Pope bestowed
it, but as Charles made it. Later on we shall see how the Frankish
monarchy assumed universal and theocratic elements. The Christian
theocratic ideas were to justify as it were the violent conquests of Charles.
The important point was the acquirement of real power. The great
conquests were necessary, if the theocratic Frankish monarchy was to
become the Empire of the West.
It was not the relief of the oppressed Christian Spain or the support
of political allies but the spread of his power which guided Charles in
his wars against the Arabs. At the Diet at Paderborn in 777, Ibn
al Arabi, apparently governor of Barcelona and Gerona, asked help from
Charles against the Umayyad Caliph of Cordova. The Arabian governor
of Barcelona had already in 759 offered to Pepin to recognise Frankish
supremacy, and Pepin had formed alliances with the Abbasids the
enemies of the Umayyads, and in 765 he had sent ambassadors to Bagdad.
The subjugation of Aquitania and Vasconia in the last years of Pepin's
reign afforded the basis for further extension of Frankish dominion
towards the South.
In the spring of 778 an army summoned from all parts of the
Empire marched in two divisions across the Eastern and Western
Pyrenees into Spain. It is significant that Charles' first achievement
was the siege and capture of Pampeluna, which was inhabited by
Christians and belonged to the Christian kingdom of Asturias. No great
military successes were gained. Many fortified places recognised Charles'
supremacy, but the expected great movement against the Umayyad
'Abd-ar-Rahman did not take place. Among the Arab opponents of
the Caliph of Cordova there was no unanimity. Charles saw that
he had been deceived. He advanced as far as Saragossa on the Ebro,
and perhaps took temporary possession of the town. Then he turned
northwards, and Ibn al Arabi, who bore the blame of the failure of the
expedition, was taken back with the army as prisoner. The Christian
## p. 605 (#637) ############################################
778-793] Roncevalles 605
Basques of Spain were treated as enemies, and the fortifications of
Pampeluna were razed. And as the great army passed through the
defiles of the Pyrenees in long columns, unable to open out for any
military manoeuvres, the rearguard was attacked by the hosts of the
Basques and destroyed. In later legends the place is called Roncevalles.
Even if the reverse was not in itself important, it was regarded as serious
that the attack could not be avenged. And certain heroes among Charles'
friends had fallen, the Palgrave Anselm, the Seneschal Eggihard, and
above all, Hruodland the Praefect of the Britannic March. Legend
however seized upon this event of 15 August 778, and wove around the
whole Spanish expedition of Charles, but especially this surprise of
Roncevalles, the halo of Christian glory. It exalted the defeat into a
catastrophe and made the death of Hruodland the martyrdom of the
heroic soldier of God. In the eleventh century these legends took their
poetic form in the Chanson de Roland, their final form in the pseudo-
Turpin, and in the Rolandslied of the Pfaffe Conrad of the twelfth
century, the most popular form in which they spread over Germany.
The expedition of 778 had completely failed, but the project of a
conquest in the South was by no means given up. In the first place, it was
necessary to settle the position of Aquitania, which though it was finally
conquered, yet had not become Frank. In 781 Charles raised- this land
with Septimania to a kingdom, and had his son Louis (Ludwig), who was
born during the expedition of 778, anointed king of it by the Pope. On
the border the boy was invested with arms and placed upon a horse, to
hold his solemn entry into his kingdom. Charles wished his son to be
brought up as an Aquitanian. He rejoiced later on when the seven-year-
old boy appeared at the Diet of Paderborn in the dress of Aquitania
with his little mantle and padded hose. But it was not intended that
the grave Frankish character should be obliterated or the Frankish
dominion over Aquitania in any way shaken. The regents whom Charles
appointed in 781, and later Louis himself, only had influence so far as
Charles liked. He remained the supreme head, and gave orders in all
important matters and even in unimportant matters. It was a political
system that answered perfectly. The people of Aquitania, proud of
their kingdom, willingly complied with the arrangements of the Empire,
and ever proved themselves the readiest to fight the Arabs. In 785
Gerona placed itself voluntarily under Frankish rule. The coast district
was won in addition. In 793 there was another advance on the part of
the Arabs. It was at that time that the distant enemies of the Franks
combined, and political intrigue stretched from Spain to the land of
the Saxons and to the Avars. Hisham I, Emir of Cordova, the son of
'Abd-ar-Rahman, arranged an invasion. Gerona was taken, the Pyrenees
were crossed and the Arabian army advanced as far as Narbonne and
Carcassonne. A bloody battle was fought against the Margrave William
on the river Orbieu, and the Arabs marched back laden with booty.
## p. 606 (#638) ############################################
606 The Spanish March. Bavaria [763-811
Soon however the Franks were in a position to make a victorious
advance. From Gerona westwards the territory south of the Pyrenees
was gradually won and a series of places fortified. In 795 the Spanish
March was established. Dissensions among the Muslims and private
undertakings of daring adventurers prepared the way for further conquests.
In 801 Barcelona was compelled to surrender, and Louis, the king of
Aquitania, was hurriedly summoned at the decisive moment, that he
might have the credit of taking the proud city. In 806 Pampeluna and
Novara acknowledged the Frankish dominion. Tortosa also, after a long
siege, surrendered its keys to Louis in 811, although neither here nor
at Saragossa or Huesca was Frankish dominion regularly established.
The Spanish March did not reach so far as the Ebro, but only to a line
drawn n. n. w. from Barcelona and parallel to the Pyrenees. In 799 the
Balearic Islands which in the spring had been ravaged by the Moors, put
themselves under Frankish rule, and from that time enjoyed at any
rate occasional protection by the Franks.
Bavaria was almost an independent State at the beginning of Charles1
reign. After Duke Tassilo had faithlessly deserted the Frankish army
in 763, in the middle of the war against Aquitania, the connexion of
Bavaria with the Frankish power became looser. It was not that Frank-
ish supremacy was completely renounced. Charles even appears to have
exercised influence in the appointment to Bavarian bishoprics. But
Tassilo nevertheless acted quite independently, and it is certain that
Bavaria did not regularly take part in Charles' warlike undertakings,
even if we assume the co-operation of the Bavarian army in the Pyrenean
campaign of 778, which is doubtful. When the king and the Pope in
781 demanded that the duke should return to his former allegiance and
Tassilo found himself compelled to comply with the demand, his inde-
pendence was assured, and it was not till his personal safety had been
guaranteed by hostages that he appeared at the Mayfield of Worms
in 781, to renew the oaths and promises he had formerly made to Pepin,
giving twelve nobles as hostages.
This did not bring about good relations. There was soon friction.
After 784 there were manifest differences concerning rights in the Etsch
districts, but most serious were the different conceptions of the conditions
of dependency. Charles deduced from the oath of fidelity an obligation
of obedience and services such as the provincial officials of his kingdom
were accustomed to render. Tassilo on the other hand understood the
subordination as more indefinite, and thought he was not bound to
surrender his independence. In 787 the Bavarian duke sought the
intervention of the Pope with a view to the restoration of peace with
King Charles. Negotiations were opened but came to nothing, because
views differed as to the degree of obligations involved in the oaths
of fidelity. The Pope, who was entirely the tool of the powerful king,
## p. 607 (#639) ############################################
787-794] Deposition of Tassilo 607
threatened anathemas in case Tassilo did not fulfil Charles' demands.
As these were not satisfied, the Franks invaded Bavaria from three sides
with an overwhelming force. Tassilo dared not venture a battle. He
met the king (3 Oct. ) on the plain of the Lech, acknowledged himself
vassal and placed the duchy in the hand of the king to receive it back
from Charles as a Frankish fief. The Bavarian people were obliged to
take an oath of allegiance, and Tassilo had to give as hostages twelve
nobles and his own son.
Why the end came nevertheless the next year is not rightly under-
stood. Our information is drawn entirely from Frankish sources. What
is reported in the official Annals is not conclusive without confirmation.
From them we leam that Tassilo afterwards confessed that he had
incited the Avars to make war against the Franks, that he had attempted
the lives of the king's vassals in Bavaria, that he had recommended his
own people to make secret reservations in taking the oath of allegiance
to the king, and had even said that he would rather lose ten sons if he
had them than hold to the treaties, that he would rather die than live
under them.
The decision came at the Meeting of the Empire which was held at
Ingelheim in the summer of 788. Tassilo, who had been invited like
other nobles of the Empire, had appeared. He seems to have had
no suspicion of what threatened him, and this unsuspecting appearance
certainly does not look like guilt. He was immediately arrested, while
royal messengers departed for Bavaria to seize the wife, the children, the
treasures, and the household of the duke. Then Bavarians appeared as
accusers and proved Tassilo's disloyalty. But the charges could not have
been very serious, for they had to go back to the Herisliz of 763—an
incident which must have been regarded as long previously pardoned by
the royal declarations of grace in 781 and 787. The meeting, however,
so it is reported, unanimously pronounced sentence of death on Tassilo,
and only the intervention of Charles procured a mitigation of the
sentence. Tassilo was shorn and sent into a monastery as a monk,
he and his two sons. His wife also was compelled to take the veil, and
they were all immured in different cloisters. But the ceremony of de-
position was not yet completed. Six years later, at the Synod of Frank-
fort of 794, the deposed duke was made to appear, to acknowledge his
guilt publicly in the assembly, and to renounce all rights for himself and
his successors, in order to obtain the king's pardon and to be received
back into his favour and protection. Of this event a report was made
in three copies, one for the Palace, one for Tassilo, and one for the
Court Chapel.
When we consider all the steps of Tassilo's fall, we easily recognise
that he was sacrificed to the policy of the great king of the Franks.
They were not acts of justice, they were acts of violence, which were
only in appearance connected with any definite process of law.
## p. 608 (#640) ############################################
608 Bavaria. The Avars [763-794
Suspicious is the use made of the Herisliz of 763, which legally must
have long been regarded as done with, and even more so is the
solemn renunciation before the Synod of 794. Any breach of faith by
Tassilo after his homage at the Lech cannot have been very serious.
But even if in his treatment of Tassilo Charles appears to us less as
a just judge than as a strong statesman—the part which the last inde-
pendent duke of Bavaria played in this drama remains pitiful. His
deceit and bad faith are only known to us from the official history, but
his weakness and political incapacity are shewn bv the facts themselves.
He did not understand the tasks of his age. During his long rule
he favoured and enriched the churches like any Christian prince. But while
he furthered the monasteries, he shewed but little understanding for the
episcopal organisation with which lay the future. It was precisely this
circumstance that immediately sent the leaders of the Church, the
Bavarian bishops, over to the enemy when conflict broke out with the
powerful Frank. Brave to fight for his hereditary rights and for the poli-
tical independence of his race, he did not dare, or rather he was unable,
to take a comprehensive view of the political situation, and he went
unsuspectingly to Ingelheim to be taken prisoner, to be condemned to
death, commuted for the life of a monk. Perhaps the result answered
to the man's personal wishes, for his hopes and fears were set upon the
other world.
Properly speaking, the wide district of Bavaria was not won for the
empire of the Franks till 788. After the subjection of the Saxons it
was the second great conquest of German territory—a conquest without
bloodshed or struggle. This was a fact of immense international impor-
tance. It decided that the Bavarian race should share the destinies of
the West-German peoples, just as the wars with the Saxons decided those
of the North-eastern West-Germans.
The borders of the Frankish kingdom extended over the middle
Danube district as far as the Enns, and at the same time over a district
of the Slavs already conquered by Tassilo, over Carantania (Carinthia).
Before long they were extended still further. For the subjection of the
Bavarian kingdom was naturally followed by the struggle against the
Avars and the Slavs, the Eastern neighbours of the Bavarians.
The Avars, confused by the Franks with the Huns, to whom they
were related as belonging to the Ural-altaic family, had for some
centuries come in contact with the Byzantines and Franks. About the
end of the sixth century, as we have seen1, they held a great dominion:
but by the end of the eighth century the period of their greatest power
was past. They had never risen above the level of barbarian nomads,
and the Slavs of the south-east had long thrown off their yoke, and
even their own sense of unity was gone. It was remarkable how this
uncivilised people sought to make use of the civilised labour of other
1 Chaps, ix, xiv.
## p. 609 (#641) ############################################
788-8ii] The Avars 609
peoples. Agriculture, like all other productive labour, was unknown to
them. In the plain between the Danube and the Theiss were situated
the "Rings"—the strong circular walls round extensive dwelling-places.
According to the assertion of a Frankish warrior—quoted by the Monk
of St Gall—the Rings extended as far "as from Zurich to Constance"
(therefore about 60 kilometres or nearly 38 miles) and embraced several
districts. In these Rings, of which, according to the Monk of St Gall,
there were nine, the Avars had heaped their plunder of two centuries.
In 788 the Avars had advanced westward in two divisions, but had
been completely defeated near the Danube and in Friuli. In 791
Charles had taken the offensive, not only to acquire rich treasures or
to punish the invaders of 788, but to obtain a natural closed frontier
towards the East. The Franks advanced as far as the Raab without
making a permanent conquest.
