THE FINAL DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE.

§ 1. The Reunion of the Empire.

The main point to be always borne in mind in the history, and therefore in the historical geography, of the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, is the continued existence of the Roman Empire. It was still the Roman Empire, although the seat of its dominion was no longer at the Old Rome, although for a while the Old Rome was actually separated from the Roman dominion. Gaul, Spain, Africa, Italy itself, had been lopped away. Britain had fallen away by another process. But the Roman rule went on undisturbed in the Eastern part of the Empire, and even in the West the memory of that rule had by no means wholly died out. ?Position of the Teutonic kings.? Teutonic kings ruled in all the countries of the West; but nowhere on the continent had they become national sovereigns. They were still simply the chiefs of their own people reigning in the midst of a Roman population. The Romans meanwhile everywhere looked to the CÆsar of the New Rome as their lawful sovereign, from whose rule they had been unwillingly torn away. Both in Spain and in Italy the Gothic kings had settled in the country as Imperial lieutenants with an Imperial commission. The formal aspect of the event of 476 had been the reunion of the Western Empire with the Eastern. ?Recovery of territory by the Empire.? It was perfectly natural therefore that the sole Roman Emperor reigning in the New Rome should strive, whenever he had a chance, to win back territories which he had never formally surrendered, and that the Roman inhabitants of those territories should welcome him as a deliverer from barbarian masters. The geographical limits within which, at the beginning of the sixth century, the Roman power was practically confined, the phÆnomena of race and language within those limits, might have suggested another course. But considerations of that kind are seldom felt at the time; they are the reflexions of thoughtful men long after. ?Extent of the Roman dominion at the accession of Justinian, 527.? The Roman dominion, at the accession of Justinian, was shut up within the Greek and Oriental provinces of the Empire; its enemies were already beginning to speak of its subjects as Greeks. Its truest policy would have been to have anticipated several centuries of history, to have taken up the position of a Greek state, defending its borders against the Persian, withstanding or inviting the settlement of the Slave, but leaving the now Teutonic West to develope itself undisturbed. But in such cases the known past is always more powerful than the unknown future, and it seemed the first duty of the Roman Emperor to restore the Roman Empire to its ancient extent.

It was during the reign of Justinian that this work was carried out through a large part of the Western Empire. Lost provinces were won back in two continents. The growth of independent Teutonic powers was for ever stopped in Africa, and it received no small check in Europe. The Emperor was enabled, through the weakness and internal dissensions of the Vandal and Gothic kingdoms, to win back Africa and Italy to the Empire. The work was done by the swords of Belisarius and Narses—the Slave and the Persian being now used to win back the Old Rome to the dominion of the New. ?Vandal war. 533-535.? The short Vandal war restored Africa in the Roman sense, and a large part of Mauritania, to the Empire. ?Gothic war. 537-554.? The long Gothic war won back Illyricum, Italy, and the Old Rome. Italy and Africa were still ruled from Ravenna and from Carthage; but they were now ruled not by Teutonic kings, but by Byzantine exarchs. ?Conquest of southern Spain. 550.? Meanwhile, while the war with the East-Goths was going on in Italy, a large part of southern Spain was won back from the West-Goths. Two Teutonic kingdoms were thus wiped out; a third was weakened, and the acquisition of so great a line of sea-coast, together with the great islands, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Islands, gave the Empire an undisputed supremacy by sea. In one corner only did the Imperial frontier even nominally go back, or any Teutonic power advance at its expense. ?Provence ceded to the Franks, 548.? The sea-board of Provence, which had long been practically lost to the Empire, was now formally ceded to the Franks. In this one corner the Roman Terminus withdrew.

In a geographical aspect the map of Europe has seldom been so completely changed within a single generation as it was during the reign of Justinian. At his accession his dominion was bounded to the west by the Hadriatic, and he was far from possessing the whole of the Hadriatic coast. Under his reign the power of the Roman arms and the Roman law were again extended to the Ocean. The Roman dominion was indeed no longer spread round the whole shore of the Mediterranean; the Imperial territories were no longer continuous as of old: but, if the Empire was not still, as it had once been, the only power in the Mediterranean lands, it had again become beyond all comparison the greatest power. ?Effects of Justinian’s conquests.? Moreover, by the recovery of so large an extent of Latin-speaking territory, the tendency of the Empire to change into a Greek or Oriental state was checked for several centuries. We are here concerned only with the geographical, not with the political or moral aspect of the conquests of Justinian. Some of those conquests, like those of Trajan, were hardly more than momentary. But the changes which they made for the time were some of the most remarkable on record, and the effect of those changes remained, both in history and geography, long after their immediate results were again undone.

§ 2. Settlement of the Lombards in Italy.

The conquests of Justinian hindered the growth of a national Teutonic kingdom in Italy, such as grew up in Gaul and Spain, and they practically made the cradle of the Empire, Rome herself, an outlying dependency of her great colony by the Bosporos. But the reunion of all Italy with the Empire lasted only for a moment. The conquest was only just over when a new set of Teutonic conquerors appeared in Italy. ?Pannonian kingdom of the Lombards.? These were the Lombards, who, in the great wandering, had made their way into the ancient Pannonia about the time that the East Goths passed into Italy. They were thus settled within the ancient boundaries of the Western Empire. But the Roman power had now quite passed away from those regions, and the Lombard kingdom in Pannonia was practically altogether beyond the Imperial borders; it had not even that Roman tinge which affected the Frankish and Gothic kingdoms. ?GepidÆ.? To the east of the Lombards, in the ancient Dacia, another Teutonic kingdom had arisen; that of the GepidÆ, a people seemingly closely akin to the Goths. ?Avars.? The process of wandering had brought the Turanian Avars into those parts, and their presence seriously affected all later history and geography. ?Teutonic powers on the Lower Danube.? With the GepidÆ in Dacia and the Lombards in Pannonia, there was a chance of two Teutonic states growing up on the borders of East and West. These might possibly have played the same part in the East which the Franks and Goths played in the West, and they might thus have altogether changed the later course of history. But the Lombards allied themselves with the Avars. ?The GepidÆ overthrown by the Lombards and Avars. 566.
The Lombards pass into Italy. 567.? In partnership with their barbarian allies, they overthrew the kingdom of the GepidÆ, and they themselves passed into Italy. Thus the growth of Teutonic powers in those regions was stopped. A new and far more dangerous enemy was brought into the neighbourhood of the Empire, and the way was opened for the Slavonic races to play in some degree the same part in the East which the Teutons played in the West. But while the East lost this chance of renovation, for such it would have been, the Lombard settlement in Italy was the beginning of a new Teutonic power in that country. ?Character of the Lombard kingdom.? But it was not a power which could possibly grow up into a national Teutonic kingdom of all Italy, as the dominion of the East-Goths might well have done. ?Incomplete conquest of Italy.? The Lombard conquest of Italy was at no time a complete conquest; part of the land was won by the Lombards; part was kept by the Emperors; and the Imperial and Lombard possessions intersected one another in a way which hindered the growth of any kind of national unity under either power. ?Lombard duchies.? The new settlers founded the great Lombard kingdom in the North of Italy, which has kept the Lombard name to this day, and the smaller Lombard states of Spoleto and Beneventum. But a large part of Italy still remained to the Empire. ?Imperial possessions in Italy.? Ravenna, the dwelling-place of the Exarchs, Rome itself, Naples, and the island city of Venice were all centres of districts which still acknowledged the Imperial rule. The Emperors also kept the extreme southern points of both the peninsulas of Southern Italy, and, for the present, the three great islands. The Lombard Kings were constantly threatening Rome and Ravenna. ?Ravenna taken by the Lombards. c. 753.? Rome never fell into their hands, but in the middle of the eighth century Ravenna was taken, and with it the district specially known as the Exarchate was annexed to the Lombard dominion. But this greatest extent of the Lombard power caused its overthrow: for it led to a chain of events which, as we shall presently see, ended in transferring not only the Lombard kingdom, but the Imperial crown of the West to the hands of the Franks.

§ 3. Rise of the Saracens.

But, before we give any account of the revolutions which took place among the already existing powers of Western Europe, it will be well to describe the geographical changes which were caused by the appearance of absolutely new actors on two sides of the Empire. ?Roman province in Spain recovered by the Goths. 534-572.? One point however may be noticed here, as standing apart from the general course of events, namely, that the Roman province in Spain was won gradually back by the West-Goths. ?616-624.? The inland cities, as Cordova, were hardly kept forty years, and the whole of the Imperial possessions in Spain were lost during the reign of Heraclius. Thus the great dominion which Justinian had won back in the West, important as were its historical results, was itself of very short duration; a large part of Italy was lost almost as soon as it was won, and the recovered dominion in Spain did not abide more than ninety years.

But meanwhile, in the course of the seventh century, nations which had hitherto been unknown or unimportant began to play a great part in history and greatly to change the face of the map. These new powers fall under two heads; those who appeared on the northern and those who appeared on the eastern frontier of the Empire. The nations who appeared on the North were, like the early Teutonic invaders of the Empire, ready to act, if partly as conquerors, partly also as disciples; those who appeared on the East were the champions of an utterly different system in religion and everything else. In short, the old rivalry of the East and West now takes a distinctly aggressive form on the part of the East. ?Wars between Rome and Persia.? As long as the Sassanid dynasty lasted, Rome and Persia still continued their old rivalry on nearly equal terms. The long wars between the two Empires made little difference in their boundaries. ?Wars of Chosroes and Heraclius, 603-628.? In the last stage of their warfare Chosroes took Jerusalem and Antioch, and encamped at ChalkÊdÔn. Heraclius pressed his eastern victories beyond the boundaries of the Empire under Trajan. But even these great campaigns made no lasting difference in the map, except so far as, by weakening Rome and Persia alike, they paved the way for the greatest change of all. ?Extension of the Roman power on the Euxine.? More important to geography was a change which took place at somewhat earlier time when, during the reign of Justinian, the Roman power was extended on the Eastern side of the Euxine in Colchis or Lazica. ?The Arabian vassals of Rome and Persia.? The southern borders of each Empire were to some extent protected by the dominion of dependent Arabian kings, the Ghassanides being vassals of Rome, and the Lachmites to the east of them being vassals of Persia. But a change came presently which altogether overthrew the Persian kingdom, which deprived the Roman Empire of its Eastern, Egyptian, and African provinces, and which gave both the Empire and the Teutonic kingdoms of the West an enemy of a kind altogether different from any against whom they hitherto had to strive.

The cause which wrought such abiding changes was the rise of the Saracens under Mahomet and his first followers. A new nation, that of the Arabs, now became dominant in a large part of the lands which had been part of the Roman Empire, as well as in lands far beyond its boundaries. ?Arabia united under Mahomet, 622-632.? The scattered tribes of Arabia were first gathered together into a single power by Mahomet himself, and under his successors they undertook to spread the Mahometan religion wherever their swords could carry it. And, with the Mahometan religion, they carried also the Arabic language, and what we may call Eastern civilization as opposed to Western. A strife, in short, now begins between Aryan and Semitic man. Rome and Persia, with all their differences, were both of them Aryan powers. ?Conquests of the Saracens.? The most amazing thing is the extraordinary speed with which the Saracens pressed their conquests at the expense of both Rome and Persia, forming a marked contrast to the slow advance both of Roman conquest and of Teutonic settlement. In the course of less than eighty years, the Mahometan conquerors formed a dominion greater than that of Rome, and, for a short time, the will of the Caliph of the Prophet was obeyed from the Ocean to lands beyond the Indus. ?Loss of the Eastern provinces of Rome. 632-639.? In a few campaigns the Empire lost all its possessions beyond Mount Tauros; that is, it lost one of the three great divisions of the Empire, that namely in which neither Greek nor Roman civilization had ever thoroughly taken root.

While the Roman Empire was thus dismembered, the rival power of Persia was not merely dismembered, but utterly overwhelmed. ?Saracen conquest of Persia. 632-651.? The Persian nationality was again, as in the days of the Parthians, held down under a foreign power, to revive yet again ages later. But the Saracen power was very far from merely taking the place of its Parthian and Persian predecessors. The mission of the followers of Mahomet was a mission of universal conquest, and that mission they so far carried out as altogether to overthrow the exclusive dominion of Rome in her own Mediterranean. Under Justinian, if the Imperial possession of the Mediterranean coast was not absolutely continuous, the small exceptions in Africa, Spain, and Gaul in no way interfered with the maritime supremacy of the Empire, and Gaul and Spain, even where they were not Roman, were at least Christian. ?Saracen conquest of Africa. 647-711.? But now a gradual advance of sixty-four years annexed the Roman dominions in Africa to the Mahometan dominion. ?Of Spain. 711-714.? Thence the Saracens passed into Spain, and found the West-Gothic kingdom an easier prey than the Roman provinces. Within three years after the final conquest of Africa, the whole peninsula was conquered, save where the Christian still held out in the inaccessible mountain fastnesses. ?Saracen provinces in Gaul, 713-755.? The Saracen power was even carried beyond the Pyrenees into the province of Septimania, the remnant of the Gaulish dominion of the West-Gothic kings. Narbonne, Arles, NÎmes, all became for a while Saracen cities.

In this way, of the three continents round the Mediterranean, Rome lost all her possessions in Africa, while both in Europe and Asia she had now a neighbour and an enemy of quite another kind from any which she had had before. The Teutonic conquerors, if conquerors, had been also disciples; they became part of the Latin world. The Persian, though his rivalry was religious as well as political, was still merely a rival, fighting along a single line of frontier. But every province that was conquered by the Saracens was utterly lopped away; it became the possession of men altogether alien and hostile in race, language, manners, and religion. A large part of the Roman world passed from Aryan and Christian to Semitic and Mahometan dominion. ?Different fates of the Eastern, Latin, and Greek provinces.? But the essential differences among the three main parts of the Empire now showed themselves very clearly. The Eastern provinces, where either Roman or Greek life was always an exotic, fell away at the first touch. ?647-709.? Africa, as being so greatly Romanized, held out for sixty years. The provinces of Asia Minor, now thoroughly Greek, were often ravaged, but never conquered. Spain and Septimania were far more easily conquered than Africa—a sign perhaps that the West-Gothic rule was still felt as foreign by the Roman inhabitants.

With the conquest of Spain the undivided Saracenic Empire, the dominion of the single Caliph, reached its greatest extent in the three continents. Detached conquests in Europe were made long after, but on the whole the Saracen power went back. ?750.? Forty years later they lost Sind, their furthest possession to the East. ?Separation of Spain. 755.? Five years later Spain became the seat of a rival dynasty, which after a while grew into a rival Caliphate. In the same year the Saracen dominion for the first time went back in Europe. ?Battle of Tours. 732.
Frankish conquest of Septimania. 755.? The battle of Tours answers to the repulse of Attila at ChÂlons; it did not make changes, but hindered them; but before long the one province which the Saracens held beyond the Pyrenees, that of Septimania or Gothia, was won from them by the Franks.

§ 4. Settlements of the Slavonic Nations.

The movements of the sixth century began to bring into notice a branch of the Aryan family of nations which was to play an important part in the affairs both of the East and of the West. ?Movements of the Slaves.? These nations were the Slaves. It is needless for our purpose to attempt to trace their earlier history; but the movements of the Avars in the sixth century seem to have had much the same effect upon the Slaves which the movements of the Huns in the fourth century had upon the Teutons. The inroads of the Avars had, as we have seen, checked the growth of Teutonic powers on the Lower Danube, and had led to the Lombard settlement in Italy. But the Avars only formed the vanguard of a number of Turanian nations, some at least of them Turkish, which were now pressing westward. ?Kingdom of the Avars.
Magyars, &c.? The Avars formed a great kingdom in the lands north of the Danube; to the east of these, along the northern coasts of the Euxine, bordering on the outlying possessions and allies of the Empire in those regions, lay Magyars, Patzinaks, and the greater dominion of the Chazars. All these play a part in Byzantine history; and the Avars were in the seventh century the most dangerous invaders and ravagers of the Roman territory. But south of the Danube they appeared mainly as ravagers; geography knows them only in their settled kingdom to the north of that river. Even that kingdom lasted no very great time; the real importance of all these migrations consists in the effect which they had on the great Aryan race which now begins to take its part in history. ?North-western and South-western Slaves.? The Slaves seem to have been driven by the Turanian incursions in two directions; to the North-west and to the South-west. The North-western division gave rise to more than one European state, and their relations with Germany form an important part of the history of the Western Empire. These North-western Slaves do not become of importance till a little later. But the South-western division plays a great part in the history of the sixth and seventh centuries. ?Analogy between Teutons and Slaves.? Their position with regard to the Eastern Empire is a kind of shadow of the position held by the Teutonic nations with regard to the Western Empire. The Slaves play in the East, though less thoroughly and less brilliantly, the same part, half conquerors, half disciples, which the Teutons played in the West. During the sixth century they appear only as ravagers; in the seventh they appear as settlers. ?Slavonic settlements under Heraclius. c. 620.? There seems no doubt that Heraclius encouraged Slavonic settlements south of the Danube, doubtless with a view to defence against the more dangerous Avars. Much like the Teutonic settlers in the West, the Slaves came in at first as colonists under Imperial authority, and presently became practically independent. A number of Slavonic states thus arose in the lands north and east of the Hadriatic, as Servia, Chrobatia or Croatia, Carinthia, of which the first two are historically connected with the Eastern, and the third with the Western Empire. Istria and Dalmatia now became Slavonic, with the exception of the maritime cities, which, among many vicissitudes, clave to the Empire. And even among them considerable revolutions took place. ?Destruction of Salona, 639.? Thus Salona was destroyed, and out of Diocletian’s palace in its neighbourhood arose the new city of Spalato. ?Origin of Spalato and Ragusa.? The Dalmatian Epidauros was also destroyed, and Ragusa took its place. In many of these inroads Slaves and Avars were mixed up together; but the lasting settlements were all Slavonic. And the state of things which thus began has been lasting; the north-eastern coast of the Hadriatic is still a Slavonic land with an Italian fringe.

In these migrations the Slaves displaced whatever remnants were left of the old Illyrian race in the lands near the Danube. They have themselves to some extent taken the Illyrian name, a change which has sometimes led to confusion. But at the time the movement went much further south than this. ?Extent of Slavonic settlement.? The Slaves pressed on into a large part of Macedonia and Greece, and, during the seventh and eighth centuries, the whole of those countries, except the fortified cities and a fringe along the coast, were practically cut off from the Empire. The name of Slavinia reached from the Danube to PeloponnÊsos, leaving to the Empire only islands and detached points of coast from Venice round to Thessalonica. Their settlements in these regions gave a new meaning to an ancient name, and the word Macedonian now began to mean Slavonic. ?Albanians.? And it must have been at this time that the Illyrians, the Skipetar or Albanians, pressed southward and formed those colonies in Greece, some of which still keep the Albanian language, while the Slavonic language has vanished from those lands for ages. ?Nature of Slavonic settlement in Greece.? The Slavonic occupation of Greece is a fact which must neither be forgotten nor exaggerated. It certainly did not amount to an extirpation of the Greek nation; but it certainly did amount to an occupation of a large part of the country, which was Hellenized afresh from those cities and districts which remained Greek or Roman. While these changes were going on in the Hadriatic and ÆgÆan lands, another immigration later in the seventh century took place in the lands south of the lower Danube, and drove back the Imperial frontier to Haimos. ?Settlement of the Bulgarians, c. 679.? This was the incursion of the Bulgarians, another Turanian people, but one whose history has been different from that of most of the Turanian immigrants. By mixture with Slavonic subjects and neighbours they became practically Slavonic, and they still remain a people speaking a Slavonic language. ?The Eastern Empire cut short in its own peninsula.? Thus the Empire, though it still kept its possessions in Italy with the great Mediterranean islands, though its hold on Western Africa lasted on into the eighth century, though it still kept outlying possessions on the northern and eastern coasts of the Euxine, was cut short in that great peninsula which seems made to be the immediate possession of the New Rome.

But, exactly as happened in the West, the loss of political dominion carried with it the growth of moral dominion. The nations which pressed into these provinces gradually accepted Christianity in its Eastern form, and they have always looked up to the New Rome with a feeling the same in kind, but less strong in degree, as that with which the West has looked up to the Old Rome. ?Extent of the Eastern Empire.? But, at the beginning of the eighth century, though the Imperial power still held posts here and there from the pillars of HÊraklÊs to the Kimmerian Bosporos, Saracens on the one side and Slaves on the other had cut short the continuous Roman dominion to a comparatively narrow space. The unbroken possessions of CÆsar were now confined to Thrace and that solid peninsula of Asia Minor which the Saracens constantly ravaged, but never conquered. Mountains had taken place of rivers as the great boundaries of the Empire: instead of the Danube and the Euphrates, the Roman Terminus had fallen back to Haimos and Tauros.

§ 5. The Transfer of the Western Empire to the Franks.

Meanwhile we must go back to the West, and trace the growth of the great power which was there growing up, a power which, while the elder Empire was thus cut short in the East, was in the end to supplant it in the West by the creation of a rival Empire. For a while the Franks and the Empire had only occasional dealings with each other. Next to Britain, which had altogether ceased to be part of the Roman world, the part of the Western Empire which was least affected by the re-awakening of the Roman power in the East was the former province of Transalpine Gaul. The power of the Franks was fast spreading, both in their old home in Germany and in their new home in Gaul. ?Frankish conquest of the Alemanni, 496;? The victory of Chlodwig over the Alemanni made the Franks the leading people of Germany. The two German powers which had so long been the chief enemies of the Roman power along the Rhine were now united. Throughout the sixth century the German dominion of the Franks was growing. ?of the Thuringians, c. 530;
of Bavaria.? The Frankish supremacy was extended over Thuringia, and later in the century over Bavaria. The Bavaria of this age, it must be remembered, has a much wider extent than the name has in modern geography, reaching to the northern borders of Italy. The Bavarians seem to have been themselves but recent settlers in the land between the Alps and the Danube; but their immigration and their reduction under Frankish supremacy made the lands immediately south of the Danube thoroughly Teutonic, as the earlier Frankish conquests had done by the lands immediately west of the Rhine. Long before this time, the Franks had greatly extended their dominions in Gaul also. ?Conquest of Aquitaine [507-511] and Burgundy. 532-534.? In the later years of Chlodwig the greater part of Aquitaine was won from the West-Goths. Further conquests at their expense were afterwards made, and about the same time Burgundy came under Frankish supremacy.

The Franks now held, either in possession or dependence, the whole oceanic coast of Gaul; but they were still shut out from the Mediterranean. The West-Goths still kept the land from the Pyrenees to the Rhone, the land of Septimania or Gothia, to which the last name clave as being now the only Gothic part of Gaul. The land which was specially Provincia, the first Roman possession in Transalpine Gaul, the coast from the Rhone to the Alps, formed part of the East-Gothic dominions of Theodoric. An invasion of Italy during the long wars between the Goths and Romans failed to establish a Frankish dominion on the Italian side of the Alps. But as the Franks, by their conquest of Burgundy, were now neighbours of Italy, it led to a further enlargement of their Gaulish dominions, and to their first acquisition of a Mediterranean sea-board. ?Cession of Provence. 536.? It was now that Massalia, Arelate, and the rest of the Province were, by an Imperial grant, one of the last exercises of Imperial power in those regions, added to the kingdom of the Franks. ?Extent of the Frankish dominions.? By the time that the Roman reconquest of Italy was completed, the Frankish dominion, united for a moment under a single head, took in the whole of Gaul, except the small remaining West-Gothic territory, together with central Germany and a supremacy over the Southern German lands. To the north lay the still independent tribes of the Low-Dutch stock, Frisian and Saxon.

As the Frankish dominion plays so great a part in European history and geography, a part in truth second only to that played by the Roman dominion, it will be needful to consider the historical position of the Franks. Their dominion was that of a German people who had made themselves dominant alike in Germany and in Gaul. But it was only in a small part of the Frankish territory that the Frankish people had actually settled. ?The cession of Gaulish possessions.? It was only in northern Gaul and central Germany, in the countries to which they have permanently given their name, that the Franks can be looked on as really occupying the land. In their German territory they of course remained German; in northern Gaul their position answered to that of the other Teutonic nations which had formed settlements within the Empire. They were a dominant Teutonic race in a Roman land. Gradually they adopted the speech of the conquered, while the conquered in the end adopted the name of the conquerors. ?Slow fusion of Franks and Romans.? But the fusion of German and Roman was slower in the Frankish part of Gaul than elsewhere, doubtless because elsewhere the Teutonic settlements were cut off from their older Teutonic homes, while the Franks in Gaul had their older Teutonic home as a background. ?German and Gaulish dependencies of the Franks.? Beyond the bounds of these more strictly Frankish lands, German and Gaulish, the dominion of the Franks was at most a political supremacy, and in no sense a national settlement. In Germany Bavaria was ruled by its vassal princes; in Gaul south of the Loire the Frank was at most an external ruler. Aquitaine had to be practically conquered over and over again, and new dynasties of native princes were constantly rising up. ?Ethnology of Southern Gaul.? The Teutonic element in these lands, an element much slighter than the Teutonic element in Northern Gaul, is not Frankish, but Gothic and Burgundian. The native Romance speech of those lands is wholly different from the Romance speech of Northern Gaul. In short, there was really nothing in common between the two great parts of Gaul, the lands south and the lands north of the Loire, except their union, first under Roman and then under Frankish dominion. And in Armorica the old Celtic population, strengthened by the settlers from Britain, formed another and a yet more distinct element.

Thus there were within the Frankish dominions wide national diversities, containing the germs of future divisions. It needed a strong hand even to keep the Teutonic and the Latin Francia together, much less to keep together all the dependent lands, German and Gaulish. During the ages while the Empire was being cut short by Lombards, Goths, Slaves, and Saracens, the Frankish dominion was never in the like sort cut short by foreign settlements; but its whole history under the Merowingian dynasty is a history of divisions and reunions. The tendencies to division which were inherent in the condition of the country were strengthened by endless partitions among the members of the reigning house. ?Austria and Neustria.? Speaking roughly, it may be said that the more strictly Frankish territory showed a tendency to divide itself into two parts, the Eastern or Teutonic land, Austria or Austrasia, and Neustria, the Western or Romance land. These were severally the germs which grew into the kingdoms of Germany and France. ?Use of the name Francia.? As for the mere name of Francia, like other names of the kind, it shifted its geographical use according to the wanderings of the people from whom it was derived. After many such changes of meaning, it gradually settled down as the name for those parts of Germany and Gaul where it still abides. There are the Teutonic or Austrian Francia, part of which still keeps the name of Franken or Franconia, and the Romance or Neustrian Francia, which by various annexations has grown into modern France.

At last, after endless divisions, reconquests, and reunions of the different parts of the Frankish territory, the whole Frankish dominion was again, in the second half of the eighth century, joined together under the Austrasian, the purely German, house of the Karlings. The Dukes and Kings of that house consolidated and extended the Frankish dominion in every direction. Under Pippin and Charles the Great, the power of the ruling race was more firmly established over the dependent states, such as Bavaria and Aquitaine. ?Pippin conquers Septimania. 752.
Conquests of Charles the Great. 768-814.? Under Pippin the conquest of the Saracen province of Septimania extended the Frankish power over the whole of Gaul; and under Charles the Great, the Frankish dominion was extended by a series of conquests in every direction. Of these, his Italian conquests were rather the winning of a new crown for the Frankish king than the extension of the Frankish kingdom. But the conquest of Saxony at the one end and of the Spanish March at the other, as well as the overthrow of the Pannonian kingdom of the Avars, were in the strictest sense extensions of the Frankish dominions. ?German character of the Frankish power.? The Frankish power which now plays so great a part in the world was a power essentially German. The Franks and their kings, the kings who reigned from the Elbe to the Ebro, were German in blood, speech, and feeling; but they bore rule over other lands, German, Latin, and Celtic, in many various degrees of incorporation and subjection.

Thus the effect of the Saracen conquests was to leave in Europe one purely European power, namely the kingdom of the Franks, one power both European and Asiatic, namely the Roman Empire with its seat at Constantinople, and one power at once Asiatic, African, and European, namely the Saracen Caliphate. Through the eighth century these three are the great powers of the world, to which the other nations of Europe and Asia form, as far as we are concerned, a mere background. ?Character of the Caliphate.? But the Caliphate, as a Semitic and Mahometan power, could be European only in a geographical sense. ?The Saracen dominion in Spain.? Even after the establishment of the independent Saracen dominion in Spain, the new power still remained an exotic. A great country of Western Europe was no longer ruled from Damascus or Bagdad; but the emirate, afterwards Caliphate, of Cordova, and the kingdoms into which it afterwards broke up, still remained only geographically European. They were portions of Asia—in after times rather of Africa—thrusting themselves into Europe, like the Spanish dominion of Carthage in earlier times. The two great Christian powers, the two great really European powers, are the Roman and the Frankish. We now come to the process which for a while caused the Roman and Frankish names to have the same meaning within a large part of Europe, and by which the two seats of Roman dominion were again parted asunder, never to be reunited.

The way by which the Roman and Frankish powers came to affect one another was through the affairs of Italy. ?The Imperial possessions in Italy.? The steps by which the Imperial power was, during the eighth century, weakened step by step in the territories which still remained to the Empire in central Italy are, either from an ecclesiastical or from a strictly historical point of view, of surpassing interest. But, as long as the authority of the Emperor was not openly thrown off, no change was made on the map. ?Lombard conquest of the Exarchate.
Overthrow of the Lombards by Charles. 774.? The events of those times which did make a change on the map were, first the conquest of the Exarchate by the Lombards, and secondly, the overthrow of the Lombard kingdom itself by the Frank king Charles the Great. The Frankish power was thus at last established on the Italian side of the Alps, but it must be remarked that the new conquest was not incorporated with the Frankish dominion. ?Lombardy a separate kingdom.? Charles held his Italian dominion as a separate dominion, and called himself King of the Franks and Lombards. He also bore the title of Patrician of the Romans; but, though the assumption of that title was of great political significance, it did not affect geography. ?Title of Patrician.? The title of Patrician of itself implied a commission from the Emperor, and, though it was bestowed by the Bishop and people of Rome without the Imperial consent, the very choice of the title showed that the Imperial authority was not formally thrown off. Charles, as Patrician, was virtually sovereign of Rome, and his acquisition of the patriciate practically extended his dominion from the Ocean to the frontiers of Beneventum. ?Nominal authority of the Empire.? But, down to his Imperial coronation in the last week of the eighth century, the Emperor who reigned in the New Rome was still the nominal sovereign of the old. The event of the year 800, with all its weighty significance, did not practically either extend the territories of Charles or increase his powers.

Still the Imperial coronation of Charles is one of the great landmarks both of history and of historical geography. The whole political system of Europe was changed when the Old Rome cast off its formal allegiance to the New, and chose the King of the Franks and Lombards to be Emperor of the Romans. Though the powers of Charles were not increased nor his dominions extended, he held everything by a new title. ?Final division of the Empire.? The Roman Empire was divided, never to be joined together again. But its Western half now took in, not only the greatest of its lost provinces, but vast regions which had never formed part of the Empire in the days of Trajan himself. Again, the distinctive character of the older Roman Empire had been the absence of nationality. The whole civilized world had become Rome, and all its free inhabitants had become Romans. ?Growing nationality of the two Empires, German and Greek.? But from this time each of the two divisions of the Empire begins to assume something like a national character. East and West alike remained Roman in name and in political traditions. The Old Rome was the nominal centre of one; the New Rome was both the nominal and the real centre of the other. But there was a sense in which both alike ceased from this time to be Roman. The Western Empire has passed to a German king, and later changes tended to make his Empire more and more German. The Eastern Empire meanwhile, by the successive loss of the Eastern provinces, of Latin Africa, and of Latin Italy, became nearly conterminous with those parts of Europe and Asia where the Greek speech and Greek civilization prevailed. From one point of view, both Empires are still Roman; from another point of view, one is fast becoming German, the other is fast becoming Greek. ?Rivalry of the two Empires.? And the two powers into which the old Roman Empire is thus split are in the strictest sense two Empires. They are no longer mere divisions of an Empire which has been found to be too great for the rule of one man. The Emperors of the East and West are no longer Imperial colleagues dividing the administration of a single Empire between them. They are now rival potentates, each claiming to be exclusively the one true Roman Emperor, the one true representative of the common predecessors of both in the days when the Empire was still undivided.

It is further to be noted that the same kind of change which now happened to the Christian Empire, had happened earlier in the century to the Mahometan Empire. The establishment of a rival dynasty at Cordova, even though the assumption of the actual title of Caliph did not follow at once, was exactly analogous to the establishment of a rival Empire in the Old Rome. The Mediterranean world has now four great powers, the two rival Christian Empires, and the two rival Mahometan Caliphates. Among these, it naturally follows that each is hostile to its neighbour of the opposite religion, and friendly to its neighbour’s rival. The Western Emperor is the enemy of the Western Caliph, the friend of the Eastern. ?Rivalry of the Empires and Caliphates.? The Eastern Emperor is the enemy of the Eastern Caliph, the friend of the Western. Thus the four great powers stood at the beginning of the ninth century. And it was out of the dismemberments of the two great Christian and the great Mahometan powers that the later states, Christian and Mahometan, of the Mediterranean world took their rise.

It is a point of geographical as well as of historical importance that Charles the Great, after he was crowned Emperor, caused all those who had been hitherto bound by allegiance to him as King of the Franks to swear allegiance to him afresh as Roman Emperor. This marks that all his dominions, Frankish, Lombard, and strictly Roman, are to be looked on as forming part of the Western Empire. Thus the Western Empire now took in all those German lands which the old Roman Emperors never could conquer. Germany became part of the Roman Empire, not by Rome conquering Germany, but by Rome choosing the German king as her Emperor. ?Contrast of its boundaries with those of the elder Empire.? The boundaries of the Empire thus became different from what they had ever been before. Of the old provinces of the Western Empire, Britain, Africa, and all Spain save one corner, remained foreign to the new Roman Empire of the Franks. But, on the other hand, the Empire now took in all the lands in Germany and beyond Germany over which the Frankish power now reached, but which had never formed part of the elder Empire. ?Conquest of Saxony. 772-804.? The long wars of Charles with the Saxons led to their final conquest, to the incorporation of Saxony with the Frankish kingdom, and, after the Imperial coronation of the Frankish king, to its incorporation with the Western Empire.

The conquests of Charles had thus, among their other results, welded Germany into a single whole. For though the Franks had long been the greatest power in Germany, yet Germany could not be said to form a single whole as long as the Saxons, the greatest people of Northern Germany, remained independent. The conquest of Saxony brought the Frankish power for the first time in contact with the Danes and the other people of Scandinavia. ?Boundary of the Eider.? The dominions of Charles took in what was then called Saxony beyond the Elbe, that is the modern Holstein, and the Eider was fixed as the northern boundary of the Empire. More than one Danish king did homage to Charles and to some of the Emperors after him; but Denmark was never incorporated with the Empire or even made permanently dependent. ?Slavonic allies and neighbours.? To the east, the immediate dominions of Charles stretched but a little way beyond the Elbe; but here the Western Empire came in contact, as the Eastern had done at an earlier time and by a different process, with the widely spread nations of the Slavonic race. The same movements which had driven one branch of that race to the south-west had driven another branch to the north-west, and the wars of Charles in those regions gave his Empire a fringe of Slavonic allies and dependents along both sides of the Elbe, forming a barrier between the immediate dominions of the Empire and the independent Slaves to the east. ?Overthrow of the Avar kingdom. 796.? To the south Charles overthrew the kingdom of the Avars; he thus extended his dominions on the side of south-eastern Germany, and here he came in contact with the southern branch of the Slaves, a portion of whom, in Carinthia and the neighbouring lands, became subjects of his Empire. ?The Spanish March. 778.? In Spain he acquired the north-eastern corner as far as the Ebro, forming the Spanish March, afterwards the county of Barcelona.

Thus the new Western Empire took in all Gaul, all that was then Germany, the greater part of Italy, and a small part of Spain.[7] It thus took in both Teutonic and Romance lands, and contained in it the germs of the chief nations of modern Europe. It was a step towards their formation when Charles, following the example both of earlier Roman Emperors and of earlier Frankish kings, planned several divisions of his dominions among his sons. Owing to the deaths of all his sons but one, none of these divisions took effect. And it should be noticed that as yet none of these schemes of division agreed with any great natural or national boundary. They did not as yet foreshadow the division which afterwards took place, and out of which the chief states of Western Europe grew. In two cases only was anything like a national kingdom thought of. ?Kingdom of Aquitaine.? Charles’s son Lewis reigned under him as king in Aquitaine, a kingdom which took in all Southern Gaul and the Spanish March, answering pretty nearly to the lands of the ProvenÇal tongue or tongue of Oc. ?Death of Charles. 814.? And when Charles died, and was succeeded in the Empire by Lewis, Charles’s grandson Bernard still went on reigning under his uncle as King of Italy. ?Kingdom of Italy.? The Kingdom of Italy must be understood as taking in the Italian mainland, except the lands in the south which were held by the dependent princes of Beneventum and by the rival Emperors of the East. ?Use of the name Francia.? During this period Francia commonly means the strictly Frankish kingdoms, Gaulish and German. The words Gallia and Germania are used in a strictly geographical sense.

§ 6. Northern Europe.

Meanwhile other nations were beginning to show themselves in those parts of Europe which lay beyond the Empire. In north-western Europe two branches of the Teutonic race were fast growing into importance; the one in lands which had never formed part of the Empire, the other in a land which had been part of it, but which had been so utterly severed from it as to be all one as if it had never belonged to it. These were the Scandinavian nations in the two great peninsulas of Northern Europe, and the English in the Isle of Britain. The history of these two races is closely connected, and it has an important bearing on the history of Europe in general.

In Britain itself the progress of the English arms had been gradual. Sometimes conquests from the Britons were made with great speed: sometimes the English advance was checked by successes on the British side, by mere inaction, or by wars between the different English kingdoms. The fluctuations of victory, and consequently of boundaries, between the English kingdoms were quite as marked as the warfare between the English and the Britons. ?The English kingdoms.? Among the many Teutonic settlements in Britain, small and great, seven kingdoms stand out as of special importance, and three of these, Wessex, Mercia, and Northumberland, again stand out as candidates for a general supremacy over the whole English name. ?Britain at the end of the eighth century.? At the end of the eighth century a large part of Britain remained, as it still remains, in the hands of the elder Celtic inhabitants; but the parts which they still kept were now cut off from each other. ?Celtic states.? Cornwall or West-Wales, North-Wales (answering nearly to the modern principality), and Strathclyde or Cumberland (a much larger district than the modern county so called) were all the seats of separate, though fluctuating, British states. Beyond the Forth lay the independent kingdoms of the Picts and Scots, which, in the course of the ninth century, became one.

It was the West-Saxon kingdom to which the supremacy over all the kingdoms of Britain, Teutonic and Celtic, came in the end. Ecgberht, its king, had been a friend and guest of Charles the Great, and he had most likely been stirred up by his example to do in his own island what Charles had done on the mainland. In the course of his reign, West-Wales was completely conquered; the other English kingdoms, together with North-Wales, were brought into a greater or less degree of dependence. But both in North-Wales and also in Mercia, Northumberland, and East-Anglia, the local kings went on reigning under the supremacy of the King of the West-Saxons, who now began sometimes to call himself King of the English. In the north both Scotland and Strathclyde remained quite independent.

That part also of the Teutonic race which lay altogether beyond the bounds of the Empire now begins to be of importance. ?The Danes.? The Danes are heard of as early as the days of Justinian; but neither they nor the other Scandinavian nations play any great part in history before the time of Charles the Great. A great number of small states gradually settled down into three great kingdoms, which remain still, though their boundaries have greatly changed. The boundary between Denmark and the Empire was, as we have seen, fixed at the Eider. ?Extent of Denmark and Norway.? Besides the peninsula of Jutland and the islands which still belong to it, Denmark took in Scania and other lands in the south of the great peninsula that now forms Sweden and Norway. Norway, on the other hand, ran much further inland, and came down much further south than it does now. These points are of importance, because they show the causes of the later history of the three Scandinavian states. ?Sweden.? Both Denmark and Norway had a great front to the Ocean, while Swithiod and Gauthiod, the districts which formed the beginning of the kingdom of Sweden, had no opening that way, but were altogether turned towards the Baltic. It thus came about that for some centuries both Denmark and Norway played a much greater part in the general affairs of Europe than Sweden did. ?Danish and Norwegian settlements.? Denmark was an immediate neighbour of the Empire, and from both Denmark and Norway men went out to conquer and settle in various parts of Britain, Ireland and Gaul, besides colonizing the more distant and uninhabited lands of Iceland and Greenland. ?Pressure of Swedes to the East.? Meanwhile, the Swedes pressed eastward on the Finnish and Slavonic people beyond the Baltic. In this last way they had a great effect on the history of the Eastern Empire; but in Western history Sweden counts for very little till a much later time.

During the period which has been dealt with in this chapter, taking in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, we thus see, first of all the reunion of the greater part of the Roman Empire under Justinian—then the lopping away of the Eastern and African provinces by the conquests of the Saracens—then the gradual separation of all Italy except the south, ending in the re-establishment of a separate Western Empire under Charles the Great. We thus get two great Christian powers, the Eastern and Western Empires, balanced by two great Mahometan powers, the Eastern and Western Caliphates. All the older Teutonic kingdoms have either vanished or have grown into something wholly different. The Vandal kingdom of Africa and the East-Gothic kingdom have wholly vanished. The West-Gothic kingdom, cut short by Franks on one side and Saracens on the other, survives only in the form of the small Christian principalities which still held their ground in Northern Spain. The Frankish kingdom, by swallowing up the Gothic and Burgundian dominions in Gaul, the independent nations of Germany, the Lombard kingdom, and the more part of the possessions of the Empire in Italy, has grown into a new Western Empire. The two Empires, both still politically Roman, are fast becoming, one German and the other Greek. Meanwhile, nations beyond the bounds of the Empire are growing into importance. The process has begun by which the many small Teutonic settlements in Britain grew in the end into the one kingdom of England. The three Scandinavian nations, Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians or Northmen, now begin to grow into importance. In a religious point of view, if Syria, Egypt, Africa, and the more part of Spain were lost to Christendom, the loss was in some degree made up by the conversion to Christianity of the Angles and Saxons in Britain, of the Old-Saxons in Germany, and of the other German tribes which at the beginning of the sixth century had still been heathen. At no time in the world’s history did the map undergo greater changes. This period is the time of real transition from the older state of things represented by the undivided Roman Empire to the newer state of things in which Europe is made up of a great number of independent states. The modern kingdoms outside the Empire, in Britain and Scandinavia, were already forming. The great continental nations of Western Europe had as yet hardly begun to form. They were to grow out of the break-up of the Carolingian Empire, the Roman Empire of the Franks.[8]