Hungary. bishoprics, of Munster, Osnaburgh, Paderborn, and Minden, of Bremen, Verden, Hildesheim, and Halberstadt, define, on either side of the Weser, the bounds of ancient Saxony; these episcopal seats were the first schools and cities of that savage land, and the religion and humanity of the children atoned, in some degree, for the massacre of the parents. Beyond the Elbe, the Slavi, or Sclavonians, of similar manners and various denominations, overspread the modern dominions of Prussia, Poland, and Bohemia, and some transient marks of obedience have tempted the French historian to extend the empire to the Baltic and the Vistula. The conquest or conversion of those countries is of a more recent age, but the first union of Bohemia with the Germanic body may be justly ascribed to the arms of Charlemagne. V. He retaliated on the Avars, or Huns of Pannonia, the same calamities which they had inflicted on the nations. Their rings, the wooden fortifications which encircled their districts and villages, were broken down by the triple effort of a French army that was poured into their country by land and water, through the Carpathian mountains and along the plain of the Danube. After a bloody conflict of eight years, the loss of some French generals was avenged by the slaughter of the most noble Huns: the relics of the nation submitted: the royal residence of the chagan was left desolate and unknown; and the treasures, the rapine of two hundred and fifty years, enriched the victorious troops, or decorated the churches, of Italy and Gaul.111 After the reduction of Pannonia, the empire of Charlemagne was bounded only by the conflux of the Danube with the Theiss and the Save: the provinces of Istria, Liburnia, and Dalmatia were an easy though unprofitable accession; and it was an effect of his moderation that he left the maritime cities under the real or nominal sovereignty of the Greeks. But these distant possessions added more to the reputation than to the power of the Latin emperor; nor did he risk any ecclesiastical foundations to reclaim the barbarians from their vagrant life and idolatrous worship. Some canals of communication between the rivers, the Saône and the Meuse, the Rhine and the Danube, were faintly attempted. 112 Their execution would have vivified the em Quot prælia in eo gesta! quantum sanguinis effusum sit! Testatur vacua omni habitatione Pannonia, et locus in quo regia Cagani fuit ita desertus, ut ne vestigium quidem humanæ habitationis appareat. Tota in hoc bello Hunnorum nobilitas periit, tota gloria decidit, omnis pecunia et congesti ex longo tempore thesauri direpti sunt. Eginhard, c. 13. 112 The junction of the Rhine and Danube was undertaken only for the service of the Pannonian war (Gaillard, Vie de Charlemagne, tom. ii. p. 312-315). The canal, which would have been only two leagues in length, and of which some traces are still extant in Swabia, was interrupted by excessive rains, military avocations, and superstitious fears (Schæpflin, Hist. de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xviii. p. 256; Molimina fluviorum, &c., jungendorum, p. 59-62). pire; and more cost and labour were often wasted in the structure of a cathedral.a His neighbours and enemies. If we retrace the outlines of this geographical picture, it will be seen that the empire of the Franks extended, between east and west, from the Ebro to the Elbe or Vistula; between the north and south, from the duchy of Beneventum to the river Eyder, the perpetual boundary of Germany and Denmark. The personal and political importance of Charlemagne was magnified by the distress and division of the rest of Europe. The islands of Great Britain and Ireland were disputed by a crowd of princes of Saxon or Scottish origin; and, after the loss of Spain, the Christian and Gothic kingdom of Alphonso the Chaste was confined to the narrow range of the Asturian mountains. These petty sovereigns revered the power or virtue of the Carlovingian monarch, implored the honour and support of his alliance, and styled him their common parent, the sole and supreme emperor of the West.113 He maintained a more equal intercourse with the caliph Harun al Rashid,114 whose dominion stretched from Africa to India, and accepted from his ambassadors a tent, a water-clock, an elephant, and the keys of the Holy Sepulchre. It is not easy to conceive the private friendship of a Frank and an Arab, who were strangers to each other's person, and language, and religion but their public correspondence was founded on vanity, and their remote situation left no room for a competition of interest. Twothirds of the Western empire of Rome were subject to Charlemagne, and the deficiency was amply supplied by his command of the inaccessible or invincible nations of Germany. But in the choice of his enemies we may be reasonably surprised that he so often preferred the poverty of the north to the riches of the south. The three-andthirty campaigns laboriously consumed in the woods and morasses of Germany would have sufficed to assert the amplitude of his title by 113 See Eginhard, c. 16; and Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 361-385, who mentions, with a loose reference, the intercourse of Charlemagne and Egbert, the emperor's gift of his own sword, and the modest answer of his Saxon disciple. The anecdote, if genuine, would have adorned our English histories. 114 The correspondence is mentioned only in the French annals, and the Orientals are ignorant of the caliph's friendship for the Christian dog-a polite appellation, which Harun bestows on the emperor of the Greeks. a I should doubt this in the time of Charlemagne, even if the term "expended" were substituted for "wasted." -M. b Had he the choice? M. Guizot has eloquently described the position of Charlemagne towards the Saxons. Il y fit face par la conquête; la guerre défensive prit la forme offensive: il transporta la lutte sur le territoire des peuples qui voulaient envahir le sien: il travailla à asservir les races étrangères, et extirper les croyances ennemies. De là sa mode de gouvernement et la fondation de son empire: la guerre offensive et la conquête voulaient cette vaste et redoutable unité. Compare observations in the Quarterly Review, vol. xlviii., and James's Life of Charlemagne. -M. : the expulsion of the Greeks from Italy and the Saracens from Spain. The weakness of the Greeks would have insured an easy victory and the holy crusade against the Saracens would have been prompted by glory and revenge, and loudly justified by religion and policy. Perhaps, in his expeditions beyond the Rhine and the Elbe, he aspired to save his monarchy from the fate of the Roman empire, to disarm the enemies of civilised society, and to eradicate the seed of future emigrations. But it has been wisely observed, that, in a light of precaution, all conquest must be ineffectual, unless it could be universal, since the increasing circle must be involved in a larger sphere of hostility. The subjugation of Germany withdrew the veil which had so long concealed the continent or islands of Scandinavia from the knowledge of Europe, and awakened the torpid courage of their barbarous natives. The fiercest of the Saxon idolaters escaped from the Christian tyrant to their brethren of the North; the Ocean and Mediterranean were covered with their piratical fleets; and Charlemagne beheld with a sigh the destructive progress of the Normans, who, in less than seventy years, precipitated the fall of his race and monarchy. A.D. 814-887 911 in 987 in France. A.D. 813. Had the pope and the Romans revived the primitive constitution, the titles of emperor and Augustus were conferred on Charle- His magne for the term of his life; and his successors, on each successors, vacancy, must have ascended the throne by a formal or tacit in Italy; election. But the association of his son Lewis the Pious Germany; asserts the independent right of monarchy and conquest, and the emperor seems on this occasion to have foreseen and prevented the latent claims of the clergy. The royal youth was commanded to take the crown from the altar, and with his own hands to place it on his head, as a gift which he held from God, his father, and the nation.16 The same ceremony was repeated, though. with less energy, in the subsequent associations of Lothaire and Lewis the Second: the Carlovingian sceptre was transmitted from father to son in a lineal descent of four generations; and the ambition of the popes was reduced to the empty honour of crowning and anointing these hereditary princes, who were already invested with their power and dominions. The pious Lewis survived his brothers, Lewis the and embraced the whole empire of Charlemagne; but the Pious, A.D. 814-840. 115 Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 361-365, 471-476, 492. I have borrowed his judicious remarks on Charlemagne's plan of conquest, and the judicious distinction of his enemies of the first and the second enceinte (tom. ii. p. 184, 509, &c.). 116 Thegan, the biographer of Lewis, relates this coronation; and Baronius has honestly transcribed it (A.D. 813, No. 13, &c.; see Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 506, 507, 508), howsoever adverse to the claims of the popes. For the series of the Carlovingians, see the historians of France, Italy, and Germany; Pfeffel, Schmidt, Velly, Muratori, and even Voltaire, whose pictures are sometimes just, and always pleasing. VOL. VI. N Lothaire I. nations and the nobles, his bishops and his children, quickly discerned that this mighty mass was no longer inspired by the same soul; and the foundations were undermined to the centre, while the external surface was yet fair and entire. After a war, or battle, which consumed one hundred thousand Franks, the empire was divided by treaty between his three sons, who had violated every filial and fraternal duty. The kingdoms of Germany and A.D. 840-856. France were for ever separated; the provinces of Gaul, between the Rhone and the Alps, the Meuse and the Rhine, were assigned, with Italy, to the Imperial dignity of Lothaire. In the partition of his share, Lorraine and Arles, two recent and transitory Lewis II. kingdoms, were bestowed on the younger children; and A.D. 856-875. Lewis the Second, his eldest son, was content with the realm of Italy, the proper and sufficient patrimony of a Roman emperor. On his death, without any male issue, the vacant throne was disputed by his uncles and cousins, and the popes most dexterously seized the occasion of judging the claims and merits of the candidates, and of bestowing on the most obsequious, or most liberal, the Imperial office of advocate of the Roman church. The dregs of the Carlovingian race no longer exhibited any symptoms of virtue or power, and the ridiculous epithets of the bald, the stammerer, the fat, and the simple, distinguished the tame and uniform features of a crowd of kings alike deserving of oblivion. By the failure of the collateral branches the whole inheritance devolved to Charles the Fat, the last emperor of his family his insanity authorised the desertion of Germany, Italy, and France: he was deposed in a diet, and solicited his the empire, daily bread from the rebels by whose contempt his life and liberty had been spared. According to the measure of their force, the governors, the bishops, and the lords usurped the fragments of the falling empire; and some preference was shown to the female or illegitimate blood of Charlemagne. Of the greater part, the title and possession were alike doubtful, and the merit was adequate to the contracted scale of their dominions. Those who could appear with an army at the gates of Rome were crowned emperors in the Vatican; but their modesty was more frequently satisfied with the appellation of kings of Italy: and the whole term of seventy-four years may be deemed a vacancy, from the abdication of Charles the Fat to the establishment of Otho the First. Division of A.D. 888. 117 Otho was of the noble race of the dukes of Saxony; and if he 117 He was the son of Otho, the son of Ludolph, in whose favour the duchy of Saxony had been instituted, A.D. 858. Ruotgerus, the biographer of a St. Bruno (Biblioth. Bunavianæ Catalog. tom. iii. vol. ii. p. 679), gives a splendid character of his family. Atavorum atavi usque ad hominum memoriam omnes nobilissimi; nullus in eorum stirpe ignotus, nullus degener facile reperitur (apud Struvium, Corp. Hist. German. restores and the Western A.D. 962. truly descended from Witikind, the adversary and proselyte of Charlemagne, the posterity of a vanquished people was exalted Otho king to reign over their conquerors. His father, Henry the of Germany Fowler, was elected, by the suffrage of the nation, to save appropriates and institute the kingdom of Germany. Its limits 118 were empire, enlarged on every side by his son, the first and greatest of the Othos. A portion of Gaul, to the west of the Rhine, along the banks of the Meuse and the Moselle, was assigned to the Germans, by whose blood and language it has been tinged since the time of Cæsar and Tacitus. Between the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Alps, the successors of Otho acquired a vain supremacy over the broken kingdoms of Burgundy and Arles. In the North, Christianity was propagated by the sword of Otho, the conqueror and apostle of the Slavic nations of the Elbe and Oder: the marches of Brandenburg and Sleswick were fortified with German colonies; and the king of Denmark, the dukes of Poland and Bohemia, confessed themselves his tributary vassals. At the head of a victorious army he passed the Alps, subdued the kingdom of Italy, delivered the pope, and for ever fixed the Imperial crown in the name and nation of Germany. From that memorable æra two maxims of public jurisprudence were introduced by force and ratified by time. I. That the prince, who was elected in the German diet, acquired from that instant the subject kingdoms of Italy and Rome. II. But that he might not legally assume the titles of emperor and Augustus, till he had received the crown from the hands of the Roman pontiff. 119 Western The imperial dignity of Charlemagne was announced to the East by the alteration of his style; and instead of saluting his Transactions fathers, the Greek emperors, he presumed to adopt the of the more equal and familiar appellation of brother.120 Perhaps Perhaps and Eastern in his connection with Irene he aspired to the name of husband his embassy to Constantinople spoke the language of peace and friendship, and might conceal a treaty of marriage with that : empires. p. 216). Yet Gundling (in Henrico Aucupe) is not satisfied of his descent from Witikind. 118 See the treatise of Conringius (de Finibus Imperii Germanici, Francofurt. 1680, in 4to.): he rejects the extravagant and improper scale of the Roman and Carlovingian empires, and discusses with moderation the rights of Germany, her vassals, and her neighbours. The power of custom forces me to number Conrad I. and Henry I., the Fowler, in the list of emperors, a title which was never assumed by those kings of Germany. The Italians, Muratori for instance, are more scrupulous and correct, and only reckon the princes who have been crowned at Rome. 120 Invidiam tamen suscepti nominis (C. P. imperatoribus super hoc indignantibus) magnâ tulit patientiâ, vicitque eorum contumaciam. . . mittendo ad eos crebras legationes, et in epistolis fratres eos appellando. Eginhard, c. 28, p. 128. Perhaps it was on their account that, like Augustus, he affected some reluctance to receive the empire. |