Charles and Carloman—Final conquest of Aquitaine—Death of Carloman—Character and habits of Charles—State of the Frankish Empire—Charles interferes in Italy on behalf of the Pope—He subdues the Lombard monarchy—His later expeditions into Italy—First conquest of Saxony—Expedition to Spain—Rebellions of Saxony followed by its reconquest and permanent subjection.

The moment that king Pippin had been laid beneath his marble slab near the high altar of St. Denis, his two sons drew apart, and after retiring a few leagues from the place of their father’s death hastily had themselves saluted as kings by their counts and dukes, and anointed by their bishops—Charles at Noyon, Carloman at Soissons (Oct. 9th, 768).

Now for the second time it appeared likely that the greatness of the house of St. Arnulf might be wrecked by the old and evil Frankish custom which prescribed the division of the kingdom among the sons of the king. How that custom had worked under the Merovings we have already seen. At the death of Charles Martel it had already threatened to break up the power of his house, a danger which was only averted by the unexpected abdication of the elder Carloman. Untaught by the experience of his own youth Pippin the Short had committed the same mistake: old habit was too much for him. On his deathbed, as we have seen, he divided his realm between his two sons. He had, however, done his best to leave his first-born so superior in strength to his brother, that the younger king should not be able to compete with him. "Joint rule of Charles and Carloman. 768-72." Charles was left the warlike half of the kingdom, all those Frankish lands, both Austrasian and Neustrian, from the Main to the Channel, which supplied the chief fighting element in the Frankish armies. In addition he obtained the western half of the newly-conquered Aquitaine. Carloman’s share consisted of Burgundy, the Suabian lands on both sides of the upper Rhine, and the whole Mediterranean coast from the Maritime Alps to the border of Spain—the old Provincia and Septimania. Moreover, he took the eastern half of Aquitaine,—the country about Clermont, Rodez, Albi, and Toulouse. Though well-nigh as large as the share of Charles, his kingdom was not nearly so powerful, for the king who could command the swords of the Franks was the one who could give law to the whole realm.

For reasons which we know not, Charles and Carloman had never been friendly—perhaps the younger son as born after his father’s coronation may have claimed some precedence over the elder, who was the son merely of a Mayor of the Palace. We know at any rate that throughout the three years of their joint reign they were always on the edge of a quarrel. Nothing but the influence and advice of their worthy mother Bertha kept them from an open rupture. Luckily for the realm both were good sons, and listened to the maternal pleadings: still more luckily for the Franks the life of the younger king was destined to be a short one. If Carloman had been granted many days on earth, we may be sure that the history of the last quarter of the ninth century would have repeated the old fratricidal wars of the Merovings. The historians who wrote the life of the great Charles are never tired of insisting on the many provocations which his brother gave him. If Carloman had chanced to find an apologist we might perhaps have learnt that Charles also gave subjects for offence.

The commencement of the joint reign of the two kings was followed by the prompt revolt of the newly subdued Aquitaine. Duke Waifer, the leader of the Southerners in their long war with Pippin, being dead, his old father Hunold emerged from his monastery to put himself at the head of the insurrection. "Charles subdues Aquitaine 769." The country as far north as AngoulÊme—which was kept down by a Frankish garrison—at once fell away to him, for the Gascons trusted that the two jealous brothers would be too much occupied with their grievances against each other to spare time for the reconquest of the south. Charles immediately marched against the rebels, and invited Carloman to accompany him: the younger king appeared for a moment, but only to hold an angry colloquy with his senior and then to return to Burgundy. He did not, however, take the opportunity to attack Charles, and the latter was able to pursue, unaided but also unhindered, his campaign against the Aquitanians. It was completely successful: he forced his way in arms as far as Bordeaux, built a great fortified camp at Fronsac, which was destined to remain as the central stronghold of the Garonne for many generations, and so thoroughly beat Hunold that the old man fled for refuge to Lupus, duke of the Gascons. But Lupus fearing the wrath of Charles submitted to the conqueror, surrendered the fugitive, and asked and obtained peace. Charles went home in triumph, replaced Hunold in a cloister, and was henceforth undisputably king in Aquitaine. He divided the country into countships on the usual Frankish system, and placed these provinces in the hands not of natives, but of men from north of the Loire whose fidelity he could trust. For the future Aquitaine gave no trouble.

In spite of Carloman’s denial of help during the war in the south, Charles was ere long persuaded by his mother to be reconciled to his brother. But he took measures to keep him in check for the future by making alliance with the neighbours of Carloman to north and south. He concluded a treaty with Tassilo, duke of Bavaria, whose dependence on the Frankish realm had of late grown very loose, and allied himself yet more closely with Desiderius, the king of the Lombards, by wedding his daughter Desiderata. This marriage was concluded in spite of the most undignified shrieks of wrath on the part of the Pope, who besought Charles ‘not to mix the famous Frankish blood with the perfidious, foul, and leprous Lombard stock—a truly diabolical coupling, which no true man could call a marriage.’ The Papacy had learnt so well how to utilise the distant monarch of the Gauls against the neighbouring lord of Pavia, that Stephen III. looked upon an alliance between Frank and Lombard as high treason against the Holy See. The marriage, however, was consummated in spite of Stephen’s threats, whereupon, with more prudence than consistency, he suddenly forgot his fundamental objections to the Lombard race, and made his peace with king Desiderius, lest he should be left unaided to feel the weight of the Lombard arm.

Within a year, however, Charles suddenly repudiated his wife, alleging that she was sickly and barren. Whether this was his real motive, or whether political causes also influenced his action, we cannot tell; but as Charles wedded immediately after his divorce a fair Suabian lady, named Hildegarde, we may suspect that his motives were possibly those which guided Henry VIII. of England in a similar circumstance. Be this as it may, he won by this divorce the unrelenting and not unjustifiable hatred of Desiderata’s father, the king of the Lombards. Trouble was soon in the air. There was again a rumour that war was about to break out between Charles and Carloman, in which Desiderius would have taken part. "Death of Carloman." Just in time to prevent such an outbreak, king Carloman died (December 771). He left an infant son, but the nobles and bishops of Burgundy and Alamannia made no attempt to set the child on his father’s throne. Wisely suppressing any particularist yearnings, they betook themselves to Charles at Corbeny-sur-Aisne, and there did homage to him as king of all the Frankish realms. Gerberga, the widow of Carloman, fled with her child and a handful of followers to Lombardy, where Desiderius was now in a state of mind which made him glad to receive any enemy of Charles’s, and more especially one who had such a plausible claim to a share in the Frankish kingdom.

Once more, then, all the lands between the mouth of the Rhine and the mouth of the Rhone, and from the Main to the Bay of Biscay, were united under a single king. "Character of Charles." And this was a king such as none of those realms had ever seen before—a heroic figure, whose like we have not met in all the three centuries with which we have had to deal. Theodoric the Ostrogoth alone deserves a mention by his side, and Theodoric had a smaller task and less success than the great Charles. For the first time since we began to tell the tale of the Dark Ages we have come upon a man whose form and mind, whose plans and method of life, have been so well recorded that we can build up for ourselves a clear and tangible image of him. Charles the Hammer, king Pippin, Leo the Isaurian, and even the good Theodoric himself, are but shadowy figures, whose outlines we can but dimly seize, but Charles stands before us firm and masterful, a living man, whom we can understand and admire.

"Charles’s person and habits." ‘He was tall and stoutly built,’ writes his chronicler, Einhard; ‘his height just seven times the length of his own foot. His head was round, his eyes large and lively, his nose somewhat above the common size, his expression bright and cheerful. Whether he stood or sat his form was full of dignity; for the good proportion and grace of his body prevented the observer from noticing that his neck was rather short and his person rather too fleshy. His tread was firm, his aspect manly; his voice was clear, but rather high-pitched for so splendid a body. His health was excellent; only for the last four years of his life he suffered from intermittent fever. To the very last he consulted his own goodwill rather than the orders of his doctors, whom he detested, because they bade him give up the roast meats that his soul loved.’

Charles was always of an active habit of body. He delighted in riding and hunting, and was skilled in swimming above other men. One of the chief reasons that induced him to make Aachen his capital was that he loved to take his sport in the great swimming-bath that was supplied by its hot springs.

He always used the Frankish costume, and loved not foreign apparel. Next his skin he wore a linen shirt and drawers, over these a woollen tunic, with a silk border, and breeches. He wrapped his calves and feet with the linen bandages that were worn ere stockings were invented, and drew high boots over them. In winter he wore a coat of the fur of otter or ermine, and over that a bright blue cloak. A sword with a golden hilt was always at his side. On great days of state he assumed a tunic and cloak embroidered with gold and clasped with gold buckles, girt his head with a jewelled crown, and carried a sword with a jewelled hilt. But for every-day wear his clothes were not more splendid than those of his courtiers.

He was temperate in food and drink, more, however, in drink than in food. No one ever saw him drink more than three cups at his dinner, and he hated drunkenness, and chastised it among his suite. But eating he loved in moderation, and would often say that church fasts were bad for his health. There were never more than four dishes on his table, besides a roast, which was brought him hot from the kitchen on its spit, and this was his favourite food.

At dinner he used to listen to a reciter or a reader. He loved histories and tales of the ancients, and also the works of St. Augustine, whose De Civitate Dei delighted him especially. He caused to be written out and committed to memory the ancient Frankish epics about the deeds and wars of the kings of old. He himself was well skilled in reading aloud and singing to the harp, and took much pains in instructing others in those accomplishments. All the liberal arts were dear to him, and he loved learned men, and summoned them from all quarters of the world. To study grammar he sent for the deacon Peter of Pisa. In most other arts he had as his preceptor Alcuin, the Englishman, the most learned of all men, with whom he studied rhetoric and dialectic, and spent much time in acquiring a knowledge of astronomy; for he was curious about the times and motions of the stars. He invented German names for the twelve months of the year, and the twelve winds. He tried, too, to learn the art of the scribe,^[48] and used to keep paper and notebooks under his pillow in bed, to practise his fingers at odd moments in forming the characters; but he began too late in life to get very forward in this undertaking. Moreover, he loved building, and designed the splendid cathedral of Aachen, glorious with lamps and candlesticks of gold and silver, and doors and railings of solid bronze. When he was erecting it, and could not get marble columns near at hand, he had them brought all the way from Ravenna and Rome. He was a great churchgoer, and always took care that the service in his presence should be conducted with decorum. He used to pray both in Frankish and in Latin, being equally skilled in both tongues. For he had a great power of acquiring languages, and spoke Latin excellently. Greek he learnt, but understood it better than he spoke it. He had a free and fluent power of speech, and always expressed his meaning in the clearest way.

He slept lightly, and would often rise three or four times in the night. When he was dressing for the work of the morning he would have not only his friends in his chamber, but would bid the count of the palace bring in litigants before him, and give a decision from his chair just as if he was in a court of law.

Charles had one lamentable failing—he was too careless of the teachings of Christianity about the relation of the sexes. He divorced his first wife over-lightly, and when his third wife died he took to himself three concubines at once, who bore him many bastard children. There were scandals at his court, and two of his own daughters were known to be living in open sin with two of his courtiers. Charles treated their offence lightly, and never visited them with any rebuke. Not so his son, Lewis the Pious, who regarded his sisters’ shame as so heinous that he banished them when he came to the throne. It was the shortcomings of the great king in respect of sexual morality which prevented the Church from decreeing the beatification of its protector after his death. The spirit of the times was well shown by the strange vision of the monk Wettin of Reichenau, who, falling into a trance and wandering through the other world, saw Charles in Purgatory, kept in purifying flames for a space, till this sin should be purged from his soul.

So much do the chronicles tell us concerning the person and the manner of life of Charles the Great; but there are other points which impress us more than they did the contemporary observer. Considering that he was so far in advance of his age in the cultivation of literature, art, science, and architecture, that in administration and organisation of his realm he so far surpassed all that had lived before him, and that he rose in most of his conduct to such a high conception, alike of his kingly office and of his personal responsibility for all his actions, it is disappointing, though not surprising, to find that in some matters he was not above the standard of his time. We have already alluded to his loose living, but a worse failing was his occasional liability to outbursts of inhumanity. The most savage of them was his massacre of 4500 unarmed prisoners of war at Verden, in 782. If the majority of his wars were defensive, or at least necessary, there were a few—notably the Lombard war—in which aggressive ambition was the main operating cause, but this was a small failing in the unscrupulous eighth century. On the whole we stand amazed at the magnanimity of the man, and are so much struck with his splendid qualities, that we are perhaps in danger of doing him wrong by judging him from our own moral standpoint. He rises so far above that of the Dark Ages, that it scarcely occurs to the historian to judge him by their low standard. Yet it is by remembering what was the spirit of those times that his greatness is most readily recognised.

We shall have to deal with Charles in three main aspects, as conqueror, as organiser, and as the introducer of new theories of political life into the mind of Christendom. It is difficult to keep the three lines of activity clearly separate; for all through his reign, from first to last, Charles was equally busy in each of these capacities. To make clear the logical sequence of his doings it is sometimes necessary to override their chronological order.

"Conquests of Charles." At the first glance the most extraordinary of the achievements of Charles appear to be his huge additions to the territory of the Frankish realm by the annexation of the Lombard kingdom, the Spanish march, Saxony, and the Slavonic lands of the Elbe and the Drave to the inheritance that he had been left by his father. These conquests represent a plan of operations deliberately undertaken, carried out with an unswerving hand, and brought to a successful finish. Charles had inherited from his father and grandfather the duty, which they had undertaken, of protecting Christian Europe from the Saracen, the Slav, and the heathen Saxon, the three enemies whom his ancestors had driven back, but had not crushed. Closely connected with this duty was the obligation to convert to Christianity the new subjects whom he might subdue, to deal with Saxon and Slav as Charles Martel had already dealt with Frisian and Thuringian, and so to push the outer defences of Christendom into those parts of central Europe which had hitherto been sunk in savagery and paganism. The Saracen alone it was impossible to convert. He might be expelled, but then, as now, it was found easier to exterminate the Moslem than to make him abandon Islam. To these altogether useful and salutary tasks, which Charles inherited from the great Mayors of the Palace, another was added, the less happy plan of cementing a close union with the Papacy by crushing the nation of the Lombards. Pippin had committed the Franks to this scheme, and Charles did but carry out his father’s pledges. But by his action he destroyed a healthy and vigorous Christian state, the possible base for a strong Italian nationality, and committed the Frankish kingdom to a profitless union, which was to bring forth seven centuries of discord. What was worst of all, he firmly established the temporal power of the Papacy, a curse to blast Italy for a thousand years. The gains which he received in return,—the religious sanction bestowed on his royal power by the Pope, and the imperial title, were but doubtful boons. It was to be seen, ere the ninth century had expired, that the house of St. Arnulf, like all the dynasties that succeeded it, lost more than it gained by putting itself under obligations to the Roman See, and consenting to accept from the Pope’s hands the style of emperor, and the vague commission to protect the unity of Christendom,—a commission which to the Roman pontiff meant little more than the duty of giving the Church all that she chose to crave.

"Limits of Charles’s realm." Before proceeding to relate the earlier conquests of Charles the Great, it is necessary to explain the boundaries of his realm as it stood at the moment of the death of his brother Carloman. In Germany the border to north and south was held by the two vassal peoples of Frisia and Bavaria, both now Christian, and both reduced during the last fifty years to a more strict obedience to the Franks than they had ever known before, but still possessing their own native rulers, and not completely united to the monarchy. East of Frisia lay the Saxons, the race whom the Merovings, and the great mayors who succeeded them, had alike failed to tame. After three hundred years of hard fighting the boundary of the Frank and Saxon remained where it had stood in the year 500. To the east of Saxony lay races hardly yet known to the Franks, the Slavonic tribes of the Abotrites, Wiltzes, and Sorbs.

The duchy of Bavaria had as its eastern neighbours another group of Slavonic peoples, the races who had once formed the ephemeral kingdom of Samo,^[49] Czechs and Moravians on the upper Elbe, Carentanians on the Drave. Beyond these Slavs lay the realm of the Avar Chagan, now in a state of decadence owing both to civil wars and to rebellions of its Slavonic subjects.

Between Frisia and Bavaria the frontier of the realm of Charles was held by the Thuringians, now no longer under the rule of native princes, but divided up into Frankish counties, as the adjacent Suabia had also been, and forming like Suabia an integral part of Charles’s monarchy. The neighbours of the Thuringians beyond the border were the Slavonic Sorbs.

The south-east frontier of the Frankish empire was formed by the main chain of the Alps, beyond which lay the Lombard realm of king Desiderius. Its south-western limit was the main chain of the Pyrenees, beyond which lay the Saracens of Spain, over whom at this moment Abderahman the Ommeyad had just succeeded in establishing his power, and had formed a state independent of the Abbaside caliphate (755).

Of all the neighbours of king Charles, it was Desiderius the Lombard who was first destined to feel the weight of the Frankish sword. He had not only received Carloman’s widow Gerberga, when she fled from Burgundy, but had shown some intention of proclaiming her son king of the Franks. Yet it was not this machination against Charles that was the actual cause of war, but the relations of the Papacy with Desiderius. Hadrian I. had just been raised to the Papal throne. He was a Roman by birth, and a great hater of the Lombards. "Quarrel of the Pope and the Lombards." He refused the friendship and alliance which Desiderius proffered, and very shortly after he was consecrated began to pick a quarrel with the unfortunate king. He demanded from him the important towns of Ferrara and Faenza, as part of the Exarchate of Ravenna. They had been promised to St. Peter, he said, in 757, while Desiderius was struggling for the crown with king Ratchis, and must be handed over at once. Desiderius, thinking that Charles would be too much occupied beyond the Alps in settling the newly-annexed dominions of his brother to allow of his appearance in Italy, replied to the Pope’s challenge by sending a host into the Pentapolis, and seizing Sinigaglia and Urbino. Shortly afterwards he raised the full force of the Lombard realm, and marched against Rome. Hadrian had expected this. He fortified and strongly garrisoned the city, and sent in haste to bid the lord of the Franks to come to the help of St. Peter, and force the unrighteous Lombards to carry out in full the treaty that king Pippin had imposed upon them. The news of the despatch of this embassy seems to have frightened Desiderius. He drew back to Viterbo, and, instead of pressing the siege of Rome, sent an embassy to Charles, to explain that the Pope’s charges were unfounded, as he was not keeping back anything that really belonged to the Exarchate (772, autumn).

Desiderius, when he first attacked Rome, was not wrong in thinking that Charles was already occupied in the affairs of his own kingdom. He had that summer commenced the great undertaking of the conquest of Saxony, a task which was to tax his energies for the next twenty years. In the summer of 772 he had entered the land, compelled the Mid-Saxons or Engrians to give him hostages, and cut down in token of triumph the Irminsul, a holy tree reverenced by all the Saxon tribes, which stood in a grove near Paderborn, and was adorned with many rich offerings. On his return to Austrasia, Charles met the ambassadors of Hadrian and Desiderius at Thionville. He did not swerve for a moment from his father’s policy of supporting the Papacy through thick and thin. He sent off ambassadors to bid Desiderius give up all the cities belonging to the Holy See that he was unlawfully occupying, and told him to do justice to St. Peter without delay. "Charles invades Lombardy, 773." The Lombard king was far too angry at this interference to grant the Frank’s demands. He swore that he would restore nothing. This drew down Charles into Italy. Marching from Geneva he crossed Mont Cenis with one division of his army, while his uncle Bernard with the rest followed the route of the Great St. Bernard. Desiderius on their approach fortified the Alpine gorges by Susa and Ivrea, and stood upon the defensive. But a chosen band of Franks turned his position at Susa by climbing over the hills, and when he saw himself outflanked, the Lombard king abandoned his lines, and fell back on Pavia, exactly as his predecessor Aistulf had done in the war with king Pippin. Charles followed in haste, and laid siege to Pavia, which held out for many months. Meanwhile Adelchis, the son of Desiderius, raised a second Lombard army, and took post in front of Verona. Leaving part of his army to maintain the blockade of Pavia, Charles marched against Adelchis, compelled him to fly, and captured Verona, and afterwards Brescia and Bergamo. The Lombard prince took to the sea, and sought Constantinople, where he endeavoured to obtain help from Constantine Copronymus, then in the midst of his Bulgarian war.

"Charles at Rome, 774." As king Desiderius held out in Pavia with the greatest obstinacy, and the siege was protracted for many months, Charles resolved to spend the spring of 774 in visiting Rome, and coming to a complete understanding with pope Hadrian. He reached the city in Holy Week, and celebrated the Easter festivities with great splendour: his communings with Hadrian ended in his confirming his father’s grant to the Papacy of the whole Exarchate of Ravenna, from Ferrara and Commachio on the north, to Osimo on the south, including all the places that had been in dispute between the Pope and the Lombard king. Later Roman writers pretended that Charles had even increased Pippin’s liberal gift by adding to it north Tuscany, Parma and Modena, Venice, and even the island of Corsica. But there is no trace of this in contemporary authorities: the Frank never made over to the Pope the sovereignty of Tuscany or Æmilia, much less of Venice—which was not his to give,—or the distant island of Corsica.

"Fall of Pavia, 774." On returning from Rome to the valley of the Po, in the early summer of 774, Charles found Pavia ready to submit: Desiderius and his men of war were wasted by famine and opened the gates on condition that their lives should be spared. The king was sent as a prisoner to Neustria, and died many years after as a monk in the abbey of Corbey. His royal treasure was divided among the Frankish army. Adelchis, the heir of the Lombard throne, had, as we have already mentioned, escaped to the Byzantine court, and died there many years afterwards as a ‘patrician.’

Instead of following Pippin’s example, and allowing Lombardy to survive as a vassal state, Charles had himself proclaimed as king in Italy, and compelled all the Lombard dukes and counts to do homage to him at Pavia. Only Arichis of Benevento, the son-in-law of Desiderius, persisted in maintaining his independence. For the future Charles styled himself ‘King of the Franks and Lombards, and Roman Patrician.’ Except that he left a garrison in the capital, and handed over some of the more important Italian cities to Frankish counts instead of leaving them in the hands of their old Lombard governors, he made little change in the administration of Italy. His rights of conquest were used with such moderation, that Italy gave him very little trouble for the rest of his reign. "Later expedition to Italy." The only serious disturbance that took place was in 776, when the dukes of Friuli, Spoleto, and Benevento conspired to send for Adelchis from Constantinople, and proclaim him as king of the Lombards. Hearing of their plot, Charles descended upon Italy, slew the duke of Friuli in battle, and compelled the duke of Spoleto to do him homage. Arichis of Benevento was not subdued: he maintained his southern duchy intact, though the Franks sent more than one expedition against him. Apparently Charles regarded the homage of this distant state as too small a thing to be worth his attention till 787, when he made another descent into Italy in person, besieged Arichis in Salerno, and finally compelled him to become his vassal. But in 792, Arichis being dead, his son Grimoald shook off the Frankish yoke, and maintained a precarious semi-independence for the future, though he was several times attacked, and saw more than one of his chief towns stormed by the armies of Charles. The great king himself, however, never entered Beneventan territory again, and it was only his presence that could have sufficed to subdue the unruly duke.

But we must return to the doings of Charles after his first conquest of the Lombards in 774. During his absence the Saxons had once more taken arms, and it was now high time to recommence the campaign against them, which had been interrupted by the great expedition to Italy. The year 775 saw the first of the many subjections of Saxony which Charles was to carry out during his long reign.

The Saxons were divided into four great divisions. Nearest the Frankish frontier were the Westphalians, who dwelt on the Ems and Lippe, and about the Teutoburger Wald. Beyond them to the east, the Engrians occupied the valley of the Weser, from its mouth as far as the borders of Hesse. East of the Engrians again, lay the Eastphalians, on the Aller and Ocker and Elbe. The latter-named river separated them from the Slavonic tribes of the Abotrites, who lived in the modern Mecklemburg. "State of Saxony." The fourth division of the Saxons were the Nordalbingians, who dwelt in Holstein, beyond the Elbe, on the borders of the Danes, and were the least accessible and most savage of their race. Saxony was a land of wood, heath, and morass: only on its southern border was there a hilly tract, the spurs of the Harz mountains. The chief obstacle in the way of conquering the country was the fact that the Saxons had no towns and very few fortified posts; they took refuge in woods or swamps when the king’s army appeared, and came forth again when he was gone. The land was quite roadless, so that the pursuit of the flying tribes was very difficult. If surrounded and compelled to do homage to Charles, they gave hostages, and paid great fines in cattle, but the moment that the Franks had left their neighbourhood took arms again. Nine times did one or other section of the Saxon race rebel, and any will less strong than that of the inflexible Charles, would have yielded before their intractable obstinacy. But he persevered to the end in leading expedition after expedition against the rebels, punished their revolts by fire and sword, transplanted incorrigible tribes across the Rhine, built towns and castles all over the land, erected bishoprics, and sent forth countless missionaries, till in the last ten years of his life he had the satisfaction of seeing Saxony both submissive and Christian.

The expedition of 775 began by the invasion of Westphalia; after dispersing its inhabitants, and storming their great entrenched camp at Sigiburg, Charles passed on into Engria, defeated the Mid-Saxons and crossed the Weser. This brought him into Eastphalia, which he ravaged as far as the river Ocker. The Eastphalians, though the furthest of the Saxons from the Frankish border, were the first to submit to Charles, and their chief Hessi eagerly accepted Christianity, and did homage. Soon after the Engrians also came in to the king’s camp, and gave up hostages for their fidelity. "First conquest of Saxony. " The Westphalians held out last, and only submitted when Charles, on his return towards Austrasia, ravaged their land from end to end, and made a great slaughter of their warriors. The king left garrisons in two great camps at Sigiburg and Eresburg, to hold down the Westphalians and Engrians respectively. The hostages whom he brought back were mostly boys of noble family, whom he sent to be brought up as Christians in various Austrasian monasteries. Three-fourths of Saxony had thus done homage to Charles, but their adhesion was of the most unstable sort. They hated the Franks as ancestral enemies, and detested Christianity as a Frankish device for subduing them body and soul. It was only the presence of Charles and the fear of his return that kept them in order for a moment.

No sooner had Charles started in the next year for his second invasion of Italy, to put down the dukes of Friuli and Benevento, than the Westphalians and Engrians at once took arms. They stormed the Frankish camp at Eresburg, and slaughtered the garrison, but failed in a similar attempt at Sigiburg. The moment that Charles heard of this rebellion, he hastened back from Italy with such speed that he was already on the Lippe before the Saxons suspected that he had crossed the Alps. So great was their fear of him that the whole race at once asked for peace, and sent their local chiefs to do him homage, ‘promising that they would all be baptized, and hold their land as true vassals of the king.’ "Second conquest of Saxony, 776." Only one chief, named Witikind, refused to submit, and fled northward, to take refuge with the Danes (776). Charles replaced his garrison in the fort of Eresburg, and built another entrenched camp at Karlstadt. That winter he remained in Austrasia, close to the Saxon border, in order to watch these untrustworthy subjects. In the next spring he summoned the great national council of the whole Frankish realm to meet at Paderborn, in the heart of Engria, in order to mark the fact that Saxony had now become an integral part of his dominions (777). ‘Then were a great multitude of the Saxons baptized, and following their national custom, they swore that they would forfeit their freedom and their lands if ever they revolted again, according to their old habit, and unless they kept their Christianity and their loyalty to king Charles and his heirs.’

To this great diet at Paderborn came some ambassadors from Spain, bearing an unexpected offer of homage to the king. Abderahman, the Ommeyad, had finally succeeded in conquering well-nigh the whole of the Spanish peninsula from those of the Saracens who refused to accept him as king. The last survivors of his opponents, in desperate straits, sent to offer to become the vassals of Charles if he would preserve them from the conqueror. These chiefs were Soliman Ibn-al-Arabi and Kasmin Ibn-Yussuf, who were holding the towns of Barcelona, Gerona, and Huesca, in the extreme north-east of Spain, on the Frankish border. Charles determined to accept their offer, and so to thrust forward his frontier beyond the Pyrenees, as to protect Septimania from Saracen raids by interposing a new line of fortresses between it and the dominion of the ruler of Cordova. He believed that Saxony was fully subdued, and might be safely left alone to settle down into loyalty and Christian ways.

"Charles invades Spain, 778." Accordingly, in 778, Charles led his first great expedition into Spain. He himself crossed the Western Pyrenees with the host of Neustria, while the levy of Austrasia, Burgundy, and Lombardy, passed the Eastern Pyrenees. The two armies met in front of Saragossa, and Charles there received the homage of the rebel Saracen chiefs of Barcelona and Gerona. Saragossa, however, did not fall, in spite of the great army that had been concentrated against it, and Charles then wheeled about, and returned to Aquitaine by the same way that he had come. His expedition had not proved a great success. The Saracen rebels were untrustworthy vassals, nor was the only other result of the campaign, the homage paid to Charles by the Spanish Basques and Navarrese, after he had stormed their town of Pampeluna, a more solid gain. Indeed, while the Frankish army was returning through the passes of the Pyrenees, the Basques fell upon the king’s rearguard and waggon-train, in the famous defile of Roncesvalles. They captured much booty, and slew three great officials—Eggihard, the seneschal; Anselm, the count of the palace; and Hruotland (Roland), the warden of the Breton marches. The last-named, of whom history knows nothing save his untimely fall at Roncesvalles, must have been a great man among the Franks, for within a short time after his death he had become the hero of many legends, which ultimately took shape in the famous Chanson de Roland, wherein the Breton Margrave appears as second only to Charles the Great among the hosts of Christendom (778).

The king had not long reached Aquitaine when the unwelcome news arrived that the Saxons had broken their oaths, and were once more up in arms. The exile Witikind had returned from Denmark, and called the turbulent youth of Saxony into the field. The greater number of the tribes had risen at his call, and a great Saxon host had stormed the new fort of Karlstadt, and harried Hesse and the right bank of the Rhine, as far as Deutz and the mouth of the Moselle, burning churches, and slaying the peasantry of the country-side in revenge for the destruction of the Irminsul and the ravages of Charles in 775-76. On receiving this disturbing news the king made his way to Austrasia, sent out some troops to clear the Rhine-bank of the Saxon plunderers, but put off the general muster of the hosts of the Franks for a third conquest of Saxony till next year. In the summer of 779, however, he again started on his endless task, and marched through Westphalia with fire and sword. The Westphalians once more surrendered, after a defeat in the open field; the Engrians and Eastphalians yielded without fighting. "Fourth conquest of Saxony." In the next spring he returned again, held a great diet at the headwaters of the Lippe, and divided all Saxony into missionary districts, each to be worked by a colony of monks from Austrasia, the first step towards the partition of the land into the later bishoprics. This activity was rewarded by the conversion and baptism of many thousand pagans. Charles assisted in person on more than one occasion, when whole thousands of Saxons were simultaneously passed through the waters of the Ocker and the Elbe (780).

He then turned off towards Italy. For the first time his departure was not followed by an immediate outbreak of rebellion. The land remained quiet for more than two years (780-82), and when he next passed that way Charles thought it had advanced so far in the paths of peace that he divided it up into countships, after the model of the rest of his empire, and gave the charge of many of them to native Saxon chiefs, whom he honoured with the title of count; the rest were placed under officers of Frankish blood. He also published a code of laws for Saxony, in which the harshest punishments were denounced against all those who still clung to paganism. Such offences as sacrificing to Woden, burning instead of burying the dead, openly deriding church ceremonies, or robbing a church, were to be punished with instant death. Even those who obstinately refused baptism, or who after baptism refused to fast in Lent, and conform to church discipline, were threatened with capital punishment.

It was perhaps in consequence of the issue of this cruel code that the Saxons once more flew to arms in the autumn of 782. The rebel Witikind returned from Denmark to put himself at their head, and most of the northern tribes rose at his call. The news quickly brought Charles back into the country. Once more he came in overwhelming force, and many of the Saxons at once laid down their arms and submitted. But now for the first time the king showed signs of violent wrath against the unruly race. He could not pardon them for slaying priests, burning churches, and washing off in mockery their marks of baptism. He bade each tribe send to him in bonds those men who had been most prominent in casting off Christianity and fomenting the last rising. "Massacre of Verden." Four thousand five hundred captives were brought before him by their submissive countrymen in his camp at Verden, on the Aller. Yielding to an impulse of revenge, Charles had the whole of this great body of helpless prisoners beheaded. But, instead of cowing the Saxons, this cruel execution only roused them to wild wrath. Every man in the nation had lost some friend or relative in the great massacre, and even the tribes which had hitherto been most submissive flew to arms. There followed more than two years of unbroken fighting (783-85). Charles marched twice through the land, burning and slaughtering over the face of every Saxon gau, from the Ems to the Elbe, but the infuriated rebels closed in behind him after he had passed, and still held out in the woods and marshes. But the king only hardened his heart. He refused to quit the land, and wintered, with all his army, near Minden, in the heart of Saxony. At last, in the spring of 785, the perseverance of the rebels began to quail; it was impossible to drive off the inflexible king of the Franks, and they once more bethought them of submission. "Fifth conquest of Saxony, 785." The rebel chief Witikind obtained a promise of his life if he would surrender and be baptized, and, when he, with his chosen warriors, submitted, the great rising was at last at an end. Once more the counts received charge of their old districts, the missionaries returned to rebuild their ruined churches, and the surviving Saxons submitted in despair to the yoke of the Frankish warrior and the Frankish priest.

It was seven years before any further trouble arose in Saxony, though there were to be four more partial risings between 792 and 804. But none of these threatened seriously to shake Charles’s domination; they were merely the last throes of Saxon despair, and cannot be compared to the great struggle of 783-85, in which the fate of Saxon independence and Saxon heathendom was really settled.

"Annexation of Bavaria." It was shortly after the final annexation of the Germans of the Elbe and Weser that Charles fully incorporated the Germans of the upper Danube with his empire. His vassal, Tassilo, duke of Bavaria, had been a somewhat unruly and disobedient subject. He was pardoned for more than one outburst of disloyalty, but when he was treated with kindness and consideration he behaved no better than before. At last, in 788, he was deprived of his duchy, which was cut up into countships and put under Frankish governors, while he himself was sent to end his days in the Neustrian monastery of JumiÉges.