[1]Ingelheim is a small town in Hesse, eight miles west of Mainz.
[2]Johannisberg is a village near Wiesbaden, famous for its wine.
[3]The Rheingau is a district on the right bank of the Rhine, also famous for its vineyards.
[4]Aachen is the German name of Aix-la-Chapelle, famous for its baths and the Cathedral founded by Charlemagne, where his marble throne is preserved.
[5]A canton of Switzerland, which was once subject to the monastery of Saint Gall.
[6]The Alemanni were a German race which occupied the region from the Main to the Danube.
[7]The Burgundians were also a German race which invaded Gaul and founded the Kingdom of Burgundy.
[8]The West Goths are usually called Visigoths.
[9]Clovis, founder of the Merovingian line, was born about 465 and was the son of Childeric. He married the Christian princess Clotilde in 493 and, after victories over the Alemanni and Burgundians, established his court in Paris in 507. He died in 511.
[10]The word “family,” as used in this translation, signifies “tribe.”
[11]Toul is on the Moselle River in France. It is an important fortress and strategic point. It was annexed to France in 1648 and is one of the towns besieged by the Germans in the war of 1870.
[12]Theodoric the Great invaded Italy in 493, became sole ruler there, and founded the East-Gothic power.
[13]The mayor of the palace was an official having great authority in the court. He was elected by the chiefs and acted almost independently of his master.
[14]The origin of the temporal power of the Pope.
[15]Charlemagne.
[16]Austrasia corresponds to the western part of Germany.
[17]Neustria corresponds to Northern France and Flanders.
[18]Desiderius, who reigned from 756 to 774, was the last of the Lombard kings. At this time he had invaded the Papal possessions.
[19]Bertha was designated as “Bertha with the large foot,” because one of her feet was larger than the other. All kinds of romances have been woven about her. She died at Choisy in 783 at a very advanced age.
[20]Gisela had already declined an offer of marriage from Leo the Fourth, King of Greece.
[21]A town in Alsace-Lorraine on the Moselle River, near Metz.
[22]The capital of the province of Pavia, on the Ticino River. It has been the scene of war and siege for centuries.
[23]Charlemagne was made a patrician in the time of Pepin.
[24]An old Benedictine Abbey on the Weser.
[25]Paulus Diaconus was born about 720 and died before 800. He was the great historian of his time, his principal work being a “History of the Lombards.”
[26]A range, of mountains in Brunswick, Anhalt, Hanover, and Saxony.
[27]A river in Central Germany, emptying into the Saale at Naumburg.
[28]Nordalbingia included the country now known as Holstein.
[29]Saint Boniface was an English missionary called “The Apostle of Germany.”
[30]Arminius, who achieved German independence, was the Saxon hero, and they called this idol “Irminsul,” another form of “Hermann SÄule” (“Hermann’s Pillar”).
[31]Benevento, a Lombard duchy in Southern Italy.
[32]The chief tributary of the Rhine in Prussia.
[33]Wittekind was the Saxon leader against Charlemagne and conducted the war until 785, when he submitted.
[34]Field of May.
[35]A town in the province of Hanover, near Bremen.
[36]A small town in Ardennes, France.
[37]The Avars were a savage robber people inhabiting what is now Hungary.
