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.1
'U^r
XZ?/
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR. LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS
THE COLLECTION OF
REGINALD H. E. STARR
PRESENTED IN LOVING MEMORY
BY HIS MOTHER
1927
"/ »
CYPTUS PRESENTING THE GOBLET TO EUXENES.
\l- . '
th;: history
F R A N C E
^•i^: LARLIE^T riMI::> 10 i \,^
]5Y ^^ Giiizov
A n
; ..r«AMl: 'A. ? '1 '.*. wii r
I
TKA>^LATH B\ li'. iE I BLAv'.K
voi.i v:r; i
i
JOFN ..'.. A' 1. 1 \ 'un-jSH:-.?
■^t '^^ ■*'.
'* i
: * ii"
\ ,
^■\rV4\
:• .-i^" ' . •'..«'.
: '• ,ODl i:r TG L'"X NE
^Iv,
THE HISTORY
OF
FRANCE
FROM
THE EARLIEST TIMES TO 1848
BY M. GUIZOT
T"
AND
MADAME GUIZOT DE WITT
TRANSLATED BY ROBERT BLACK
PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED
VOLUME 1
New York o:.^ . t r •. •.•
.DEN,
1884
JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER,.,
I THE NEW YORK ]
PUBLIC LIBRARY
337855A
ASTOR^ LENOX AND
TILDSN FOUNDATIONS
K 1927 , L
• • • • •
V
i. ?•-;
LETTER TO THE PUBLISHERS.
Gentlbmxn,
Ton were given to understand that for some years past I
have been doing myself the paternal pleasure of telling my
grandchildren the History of France, and you ask if I have
any intention of publishing these family studies of our country's
grand life. I had no such idea at the outset; it was of my
grandchildren, and of them alone, that I was thinking. What
I had at heart was to make them really comprehend our his-
tory, and to interest them in it by doing justice to their under-
standing and, at the same time, to their imagination, by set-
ting it before them clearly and, at the same time, to the life.
Every history, and especially that of France, is one vast, long
drama, in iv^hich events are linked together according to de-
fined laws, and in which the actors play parts not ready made
and learnt by heart, parts depending, in faot, not only upon
the accidents of their birth but also upon their own ideas and
their own will. There are, in the history of peoples, two sets of
causes essentially different ^d, at the same time, closely con-
nected; the natural causes which are set over the general
course of events, and the imrestricted causes which are inci-
dental. Men do not make the whole of history ; it has laws of
higher origin; but, in history, men are unrestricted agents
who produce for it results €md exercise over it an influence for
which they are responsible. The fated causes and the unre-
stricted causes, the defined laws of events and the spontaneous
actions of man's free agency— herein is the whole of history.
And in the faithful reproduction of these two elements consist
the truth and the moral of stories from it.
Never was I more struck with this twofold character of his*
tory than in my tales to my grandchildren. When I com-
menced these lessons with them, they, beforehand, evinced a
lively interest, and they began to listen to me with serious
good will; but when they did not well apprehend the length-
4 LETTER TO THE PUBLiaHEBB.
ening chain of events, or when historical personages did not
become, in their eyes, creatures real and free, worthy of
sympathy or reprobation, when the drama was not developed
before them with clearness and animation, I saw their atten-
tion grow fitful an4 flagging; they required light and life to*
gether; they wished to be illumined and excited, instructed
and amused.
At the same time that the difficulty of satisfsring this two-
fold desire was painfully felt by me, I discovered therein more
means and chances than I had at first foreseen of succeeding
in making my young audience comprehend the history of
France in its complication and its grandeur. When Comeille
observed,—
**• In the well-born sonl
Valor ne'er lingers till due seaeons roll,**
he spoke as truly for intelligence as for valor. When once
awakened and really attentive, young minds are more earnest
and more capable of complete comprehension than any one
would suppose. In order to explain fully to my grandchildren
the connection of events and the influence of historical person-
ages, I was sometimes led into very comprehensive consider-
ations and into pretty deep studies of character. Aud in such
cases I was nearly always not only perfectly understood but
keenly appreciated. I put it to the proof in the sketch of
Charlemagne^s reign and character; and the two great objects
of that great man, who succeeded in one and failed in the other,
received from my youthful audience the most rivetted attention
and the most clear comprehension. Youthful minds have
greater grasp than one is disposed to give them credit for, and,
perhaps, men would do well to be as earnest in their lives as
children are in their studies.
In order to attain the end I had set before me, I always took
care to connect my stories or my reflections with the great
events or the great personages of history. When we wish to
examine and describe a district scientifically, we traverse it in
all its divisions and in every direction; we visit plains as well
as mountains, villages as well as cities, the most obscure cor-
ners as well as the most famous spots; this is the way of pro-
ceeding with the geologist, the botanist, the archaeologist, the
statistician, the scholar. But when we wish particularly to
get an idea of the chief features of a country, its fixed outlines,
ita general conformation, its special aspects, its great roads,
LETTER TO TEE PUBLI8HEE8. 0
we mount the heights; we place ourselves at pomts whence
we can best take in the totahty and the physiognomy of the
landscape. And so we must proceed in history when we wish
neither to reduce it to the skeleton of an abridgment nor ex-
tend it to the huge dimensions of a learned work. Great events
and great men are the fixed points and the peaks of history;
and it is thence that we can observe it in its totality, and fol-
low it along its highways. In my tales to my grandchildren I
sometimes lingered over some i>articular anecdote which gave
me an opportunity of setting in a vivid light the dominant
spirit of an age or the characteristic manners of a people; but,
with rare exceptions, it is always on the great deeds and the
great personages of history that I have relied for making of
them in my tales what they were in reality, the centre and the
focus of the life of France.
At the outset, in giving these lessons, I took merely short
notes of dates and proper names. When I had reason given
me to believe that they might be of some service and interest
to other children than my own, and even, I was told, to others
besides children, I undertook to put them together in the form
in which I had developed them to my youthful audience. I
will send you, gentlemen, some portions of the work, and if it
really appears to you advisable to enlarge the circle for which
it was originally intended, I will most gladly entrust to you
the care of its publication.
Accept, gentlemen, the assurance of my most distinguished
sentimenta
^- ~ - GmzoT.
VaitBiohsb, December, 1809L
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
WAOSxa
PAGB.
Oyptus presentiiig the Goblet to Euzenes. Front.
The Gauls in Borne 16
The "Women Defending the Care 88
Mounted Gauls 48
Vercingetorix surrendere to Ceesar 65
Bpoiiina and Sabinus. . 72
The Last of the Druids 81
The Huns 96
*' Thus diddest thou to the Vase of Soissons.". 118
•' Thrust him away or thou diest in his stead." 128
The execution of Brunehaut 137
The Arabs had decamped silently in the night. 145
Charlemagne inflicting Baptism upon the Saxons 160
Death of Roland at Roncesvalles 177
Charlemagne presiding at the school of the Palace 182
'* He remained there a long while, and his eyes were filled with tears." 200
The Barques of the Northmen 209
Count Eudes re-entering Paris through the Besiegers 216
Ditcar the Monk recognizing the head of Morvan 2M
"Who made thee King?" 241
Gerbert 248
** Robert had a friendly feeling for the weak and poor." ^56
The "Accolade. " 278
William the Conqueror Landing in England 288
Edith discovers the body of Harold 289
"God Willed It." 804
The four leaders of the J'irst Crusade ! 321
Richard's Farewell to the Holy Land 336
The Christians of the Holy City defiling before Saladin 353
Richard Coeur de Lion having the Saracens beheaded 360
Sire de Joinville 308
The Death of St. Louis 376
Louis the Fat, on an expedition BSi
The Battle of Bouvines 401
Death of De Montfort 416
De La Marchess parting insult 433
" It i£> rather hard bread." 448
Battle of Courtrai 465
Colonna strikingthe Pope 480
The hanging of Marigny 488
THE HISTORY OF FRANCE.
CHAPTER L
GAUL.
YoTTNG France inhabits a country, long ago civilized and
Christianized, where, despite of much imperfection and much
social misery, thirty-eight millions of men Hve in security and
peace, under laws equal for all and efficiently upheld. There
is every reason to nourish great hopes of such a coimtry, and
to wish for it more and more of freedom, glory, and prosperity ;
but one must be just towards one's own times, and estimate at
their true value advantages already acquil:^Bd and progress
already accomplished, li one were suddenly carried twenty
or thirty centuries backward, into the midst of that which was
then called Guul, one would not recognize France. The same
mountains reared their heads; the same plains stretched far
and wide; the same rivers rolled on their course; there is no
alteration in the physical formation of the country; but its
aspect was very dMerent. Instead of the fields all trim with
cultivation, and all covered with various produce, one would
see inaccessible morasses and vast forests, as yet uncleared,
given up to the chances of primitive vegetation, peopled with
wolves and bears, and even the uru8, or huge wild ox, and with
elks too—a kind of beast that one finds no longer now-a-
days, save in the colder regions of north-eastern Europe, such
as Lithuania and Courland. Then wandered over the cham-
I)aign great herds of swine, as fierce almost as wolves, tamed
only so far as to know the sound of their keeper's horn. The
better sort of fruits and of vegetables were quite unknown;
they were imported into Gkiul— the greatest part from Asia, a
portion from Africa and the islands of the Mediterranean; and
others, at a later period, from the New World. Cold and
10 mSTORT OF FRANCE. [ch. i.
rough was the prevailing temperature. Nearly every winter
the rivers froze sufficiently hard for the i>assage of cars. And
three or four centuries hef ore the Christian era, on that vast
territory comprised between the ocean, the Pyrenees, the
Mediterranean, the Alps, and the Bhine, lived sls: or seven
millions of men a bestial life, enclosed in dwellings dark and
low, the best of them built of wood and clay, covered with
branches or straw, made in a single round piece, open to day-
light by the door alone, and confusedly heaped together be-
hind a rampart, not inartistically composed, of timber, earth,
and stone, which surrounded and protected what they were
pleased to call a town.
Of even such towns there were rt»rcely any as yet, save in
the most populous and least uncultivated portion of (raul; that
is to say, in the southern and eastern regions, at the foot of
the mountains of Auvergne and the O^vennes, and along the
coasts of the Mediterranean. In the north and the west were
paltry hamlets, as transferable almost as the people them-
selves ; and on some islet amidst the morasses, or in some hid-
den recess of the forest, were huge entrenchments formed of
the trees that were felled, where the population, at the first
sound of the war-cry, ran to shelter themselves, with their
flocks and all their movables. And the war-cry was often
heard: men living grossly and idly are very prone to quarrel
and fight. Gktul, moreover, was not occupied by one and the
same nation, wit^ the same traditions and the same chiefis.
Tribes, very different in origin, habits, and date of settlement^
were continually disputing the territory. In the south were
Iberians or 'Aquitanian, Phoenicians and Greeks; in the north
and north-west Kymrians or Belgians; everywhere else, Gauls
or Celts, the most numerous settlers, who had the honor of
giving their name to the country. Who were the first to
come, then? and what was the date of the first settlement?
Nobody knows. Of the Greeks alone does history mark with
any precision the arrival in southern Gaul. The Phoenicians
preceded them by several centuries; but it is impossible to fix
any exact time. The information is equally vague about the
period when the Kymrians invaded the north of Gaul. As for
the Gauls and the Iberians, there is not a word about their first
entrance into the coimtry, for they are discovered there al-
ready at the first appearance of the country itself in the domain
of history.
The Iberians, whom Roman writers caU Aquitanians, dwelt
CH.I.] GAUL. 11
at the foot of the Pyrenees, in the territory oomprised between
the mountains, the Garonne, and the ocean. They belonged
to the race which, under the same appellation, had peopled
Spain; but by what route they came into Gaul is a problem
which we cannot solve. It is much the same in tracing the
origin of every nation ; for in those barbarous times men lived
and died without leaving any enduring memorial of their deeds
and their destinies; no monuments; no writings; just a few
ixal traditions, perhaps, which are speedily lost or altered. It
is in proportion as they become enlightened and civilized, that
men feel the desire and discover the means of extending their
memorial far beyond their own lifetime. That is the begin-
ing of history, the offspring of noble and useful sentiments,
which cause the mind to dwell upon the future, and to yearn
for long continuance; sentiments which testify to the supe-
ri(»-ity of man overall other creatures living upon our earth,
which foreshadow the immortality of the soul, and which are
warrant for the progress of the human race by preserving for
the generations to come what has been done and learned by
the generations that disappear.
By whatever route and at whatever ex>och the Iberians came
into the south-west of Gaul, they abide there still in the de-
partment of the Lower Pyrenees, under the name of Basques;
a peoplet * distinct from all its neighbors in features, costume,
and especially language, which resembles none of the present
languages of Europe, contains many words which %re to be
found in the names of rivers, mountains, and towns of olden
Spain, and which presents a considerable analogy to the
idioms, andent and modem, of certain peoples of northern
Africa. The Phcenidans did not leave, as the Iberians did, in
the south of France distinct and well-authenticated descend-
ants. They had begun about 1100 B.o. to trftde there. They
w^it thither in seaoxdi of furs, and gold and diver, which were
got either from the sand of certain rivers, as for instance the
Ari^ (in Latin AurigeTa)y or from certain mines of the Alps,
the OSvennes, and the Pyrenees; they brought in exchange
stufEs dyed with purple, necklaces and rings of glass, and,
above all, arms and wine; a trade like that which is now-a-
days carried on by the civilized peoples of Eiurope with the
. savage tribes of Africa and America. For the purpose of ex-
tending and securing their commercial expeditions, the Phoeni-
* Wt. ** peaplade," from people, on the analogy of cireUt from circle.—- Tbahi.
12 BISTORT OF FRANCE. [CH. t
cians founded colonies in several parts of Gaul, and to them is
attributed the earliest origin of Nematiaua (Nimes), and of
Alesia, near Semur. But, at the end of three or four centuries,
these colonies fell into decay ; the trade of the Phoenicians was
withdrawn from Oaul, and the only important sign it pre*
served of their residence was a road which, starting from the
eastern Pyrenees, skirted the Gkdlic portion of the Mediter-
ranean, crossed the Alps by the pass of Tenda, and so united
Spain, Gaul, and Italy. After the withdrawal of the . Phoeni-
cians this road was kept up and repaired, at first by the Greeks
of Marseilles, and subsequently by the Romans.
As merchants and colonists, the Greeks were, in Gaul, the
successors of the Phoenicians, and Marseilles was one of their
first and most considerable colonies. At the time of the
Phoenicians' decay in G^ul, a Greek peoplet, the Bhodians, had
pushed their commercial enterprises to a great distance, and,
in the words of the ancient historians, held the empire of the
sea. Their ancestors had, in former times, succeeded the
Phoenicians in the island of Rhodes, and they likewise suc-
ceeded them in the south of Gaul, and founded, at the mouth
of the Rhone, a colony called Bhodanvsia or Rhoda, with the
same name as that which they had already founded on the
north-^ast coast of Spain, and which is now*a-days the town of
Rosas, in Catalonia. But the importance of the Rhodians on
the southern coast of Gaul was short-lived. It had already
sunk very low in the year 600 B.O., when Euxenes, a Greek
trader, coming from Phocea, an Ionian town of Asia Minor, to
seek his fortune, landed from |a bay eastward of the Rhone.
The Segobrigians, a tribe of the Gkdlic race, were in occupation
of the neighboring country. Nann, their chief, gave the
strangers kindly welcome, and took them home wilJi him to a
great feast which he was giving for his daughter's marriage,
who was called Gryptis, according to some, and Petta, accord-
ing to other historians. A custom, which exists still in
several cantons of the Basque country, and even at the
centre of France, in Morvan, a moimtainous district of the
department of the Ni^vre, would that the maiden should
appear only at the end of the banquet and holding in her
hand a filled wine-cup, and that the guest to whom she
should present it should become the husband of her choice. .
By accident, or quite another cause, say the ancient legends,
Gyptis stopped opposite Euxenes, and handed him the cup.
Great was the surprise, and, probably, anger amongst the
CH.L] GAUL. 18
Oauls who were present; but Na«nn, beliering he recognized a
commandment from his gods, accepted the Phocean as his son-
in-law, and gave him as dowry the bay where he had landed,
with some cantons of the territory aromid. Euzenes, in
gratitude, gave his wife the Greek name of Aristoxena (that
is, '' the best of hostesses")^ sent away his ship to Phocea for
colonists, and, whilst waiting for them, laid in the centre of the
bay, on a peninsula hollowed out harbor-wise, towards the
south, the foundations of a town, which he called Massilia—
thence Marseilles.
Scarcely a year had elapsed when Euxenes' ship arrived from
Phocea, and with it several galleys, bringing colonists full of
hope, and laden with provisions, utensils, arms, seeds, vine-
cuttings, and oHve-cuttings, and, moreover, a statue of Diana^
which the colonists had gone to fetch from the celebrated
temple of that goddess at Ephesus, and which her priestess,
Aristarche, accompanied to its new coimtry.
The activity and prosperity of Marseilles, both within and
without, were rapidly developed. She carried her commerce
wherever the Phoenicians and the Rhodians had marked out a
road; she repaired their forts; she took to herself their
establishments; and she placed on her medals, to signify
dominion, the rose, the emblem of Bhodes, beside the Uon of
Marseilles. But Nann, the Gallic chieftain, who had protected
her infancy, died; and his son, Coman, shared the jealousy
felt by the Segobrigians and the neighboring peoplets towards
the new comers. He promised and really resolved to destroy
the new city. It was the time of the flowering of the vine, a
season of great festivity amongst the Ionian Greeks, and
Marseilles thought solely of the preparations for the feast.
The houses and public places were being decorated with
branches and flowers. No guard was set; no work was done.
Coman sent into the town a number of his men, some openly,
as if to take part in the festivities; others hidden at the bot-
tom of the cars which conveyed into Marseilles the branches
and foliage from the outskirts. He himself went and lay in
ambush in a neighboring glen, with seven thousand men, they
say, but the number is probably exaggerated, and waited for
his emissaries to open the gates to bim during the night. But
once more a woman, a near relation of the Gallic chieftain,
was the guardian angel of the Greeks, and revealed the plot
to a young man of Marseilles, with whom she was in love.
The gates were immediately ^ut, and so many Segobrigians
14 mSTORT OF FRANCS. [ch. i.
B& happened to be in the town were massacred. Then, when
night came on, the inhabitants, armed, went forth to surprise
Coman in the ambush where he was awaiting the moment to
surprise them. And there he fell with all his men.
Delivered as they wete from this danger, the Masflitians
nevertheless remained in a difficult and disquieting situation.
The peoplets around, in coalition against them, attacked them
often and threatened them incessantly. But whilst they were
struggling against these embarrassments, a grand disaster,
happening in the very same spot whence they had emigrated
half a century before, was procuring them a great accession of
strength and the surest means of defence. In the year 542 B.O.,
Phocea succumbed beneath the efforts of Cyrus, King of Per-
sia, and her inhabitants, leaving to the conqueror empty
streets and deserted houses, took to their ships in a body, to
transfer their homes elsewhither. A portion of this floating
population made straight for Marseilles; others stopped at
Corsica, in the harbor of Alalia, another Phocean colony.
But at the end of five years they too, tired of piratical life
and of the incessant wars they had to sustain against the
Carthaginians, quitted Corsica, and went to rejoin their com-
patriots in Qaul.
Thenceforward Marseilles found herself in a position to &ce
her enemies. She extended her walls all roimd the bay and
her enterprises far away. She f oimded on the southern coast
of Gaul and on the eastern coast of Spain, permanent settle-
ments, which are to this day towns: eastward of the Ehone,
Hercules' harbor, M<mo&cus (Monaco), Nicasa (Nice), ArUipolia
(Antibes); westward, Heraclea Cacdbaria (SisJnt-GiUes),
Agatha (Agde), Emporioe (Ampurias in Catalonia), etc., etc.
In the valley of the Bhone, several towns of the Gauls,
Cabdlio (Cavaillon), Avenio (Avignon), Arelate (Aries), for
instance, were like Gtreek colonies, so great there was the num-
ber of travellers or established merchants who spoke Greek.
With this commercial activity Marseilles united intellectual
and scientific activity; her grammarians were among the
first to revise and annotate the poems of Homer; and bold
travellers from Marseilles, Euthymenes and Pytheas by name,
cruised, one along the western coast of Africa beyond the
Straits of Gibraltar, and the other the southern and western
coasts of Europe, from the mouth of the Tanais (Don), in the
Black Sea, to the latitudes and perhaps into the interior of the
Baltic. They lived, both of them, in the second half of the
CH.I.] OAXTL. 16
fourth century B.C., and they .wrote each a Periplus^ or tales
of their travels, which have unfortunately heen almost
entirely lost.
But whatever may have heen her intelligence and activity, a
single town situated at the extremity of Gktul and peopled
with foreigners could have but little influence over so vast a
country and its inhabitants. At first civilization is very hard
and very slow ; it requires many centuries, many great events,
and many years of toil to overcome the early habits of a
people, and cause them to exchange the pleasures, gross indeed,
but accompanied with the idleness and freedom of barbarian
life, for the toilful advantages of a regulated social condition.
By dint of foresight, perseverance, and courage, the merchants
of Marseilles and her colonies crossed by two or three main
lines the forests, morasses, and heaths through the savage
tribes of G^uls, and there effected their exchanges, but to the
right and left they i)enetrated but a short distance; even on
their main lines their traces soon disappeared ; and at the com-
mercial settlements which they established here and there
they were often far more occupied in self-defence than in
spreading their example. Beyond a strip of land of uneven
breadth, along the Mediterranean, and save the space
peopled towards the south-west by the Iberians, the country,
which received its name from the former of the two, was occu-
pied by the Gauls and the Kymrians; by the Gauls in the
centre, south-east, and east, in the highlands of modem France,
between the Alps, the Vosges, the moimtains of Auvergne
and the C^vennes; by the Kymrians in the north, north-west,
and west, in the lowlands, from the western boimdary of the
Gauls to the Ocean.
Whether the Gauls and the Kymrians were originally of the
same race, or at least of races closely connected ; whether they
were both anciently comprised under the general name of
Celts; and whether the Kymrians, if they were not of the
same race as the Gauls, belonged to that of the Gtermans, the
final conquerors of the Eoman Empire, are questions which
the learned have been a long, long while discussing without
deciding. The only facts which seem to be dear and certain
are the following.
The ancients for a long while applied without distinction
the name of Celts to the peoples who lived in the west and
north of Europe, regardless of precise limits, language, or
origin. It was a geographical title apphcable to a vast but ill-
16 EISTORT OF FBANCE. [oh. l
explored territory, rather than a real historical name of race
or nation. And so, in the earliest times, Gauls, Germans,
Bretons, and even Iherians, appear frequently confounded
under the name of Celts, peoples of Celtica.
Little by little this name is observed to become more re-
stricted and more precise. The. Iberians of Spain are the first
to be detached; then the Germans. In the century preceding
the Christian era, the Gauls, that is, the peoples inhabiting
Gaul, are alone called Celts, We begin even to recognize
amongst them diversities of race, and to distinguish the Iberians
of Gaul alius Aquitanians and the Eymrians or Belgians from
the Gauls, to whom the name of Celts is confined. Sometimes
even it is to a confederation of certain Gallic tribes that the
name specially appUes. However it be, the Gauls appear to
have been the first inhabitants of western Europe. In the
most ancient historical memorials they are found there, and
not only in Gaul, but in Great Britain, in Ireland, and in the
neighboring islets. In Gaul, after a long predominance, their
race commingled with other races to form the French nation.
But, in this commingling, numerous traces of their language,
monuments, manners, and names of persons and places, siur-
vived and still exist, especially to the east and south-east, in
local customs and vernacular dialects. In Ireland, in the
highlands of Scotland, in the Hebrides and the Isle of Man,
Gauls (Gaels) still live under their primitive name. There
we still have the GaeUc race and tongue, free, if not from any
change, at least from absorbent fusion.
From the seventh to the fourth century B.C., a new population
spread over Gaul, not at once, but by a series of invasions, of
which the two principal took place at the two extremes of that
epoch. They called themselves Kymrians or Kimrians, whence
the Bomans made the Cimbrians^ which recalls Cimmerii or
Cimmerians, the name of a people whom the Greeks placed
on the western bank of the Black Sea and in the Cimmerian pen-
insula, called to this day Crimea, During these irregular and
successively repeated movements of wandering populations, it
often happened that tribes of different races met, made terms,
united, and finished by amalgamation under one name. All
the peoples that successively invaded Europe, Gauls, Kymri-
ans, Germans, belonged at first, in Asia, whence they came,
to a common stem; the diversity of their languages, tradi-
tions, and manners, great as it already was at the time of
their appearance in the West, was the work of time and of thg
THE GAULS IN ROME.
bB^
^rt
u«^^^^
.SHO»
.,.^^'^"'>^'*"-
CH. I.] GAUL. 17
diverse drcumstances in the midst of which they had lived;
hut there always remained amongst them traces of a primitive
affinity which allowed of sudden and frequent comminglings,
amidst their tumultuous dispersion.
The Kymrians, who crossed the Rhine and flimg tiiemselves
into northern Gaul towards the middle of the fourth century
B.C., called themselves Bolg^ or Belg^ or BelgianSy a name
which indeed is given to them hy Boman writers, and which
has remained that of the country they first invaded. They
descended southwards, to the hanks of the Seine and the
Mame. There they encountered the Kymrians of former
invasions, who not only had spread over the country com-
prised hetween the Seine and the Loire, to the very heart of
the peninsula hordered hy the latter river, but had crossed the
sea, and occupied a portion of the large island opposite Gaul,
crowding back the Gkiuls, who had preceded them, upon
Ireland and the highlands of Scotland. It was from one of
these trihes and its chieftain, called Pryd or Prydairij Brit or
Britain^ that Great Britain and Brittany^ in France received
the name which they have kept.
Each of these races, far from forming a mogle people boimd
to the same destiny and under the same chieftcdns, split into
peoplets, more or lees independent, who foregathered or sepa-
rated according to the shifts of circumstances, and who pur-
sued, each on their own account and at their own pleasure,
their fortunes or their fancies. The Ibero-Aquitanians num-
bered twenty tribes; the Gauls twenty-two nations; the origi-
nal Kymrians, mingled with the Gauls between the Loire and
the Garonne, seventeen; and the Kymro-Belgians twenty-
three. These sixty-two nations were subdivided into seveial
hundreds of tribes; and these petty agglomerations were dis-
tributed amongst rival confederations or leagues, which dis-
puted one^with another the supremacy over such and such a
portion of territory. Three grand leagues existed amongst the
Gauls; that of the Arvemians, formed of peoplets established
in the country which received from them the name of
Auvergne; that of the ^duans, in Burgundy, whose centre
was Bibracte (Autim); and that of the Sequanians, in
Franche-Oomt6, whose centre was Vesontio (Besan^on).
Amongst the Kymrians of the West, the Armoric league
bound together the tribes of Brittany and lower Normandy.
From these alliances, intended to group together scattered
forces, sprang fresh passions or interests, which became '"'
^8 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. i.
many fresh causes of discord and hostility. And, in these
divers a^omerations, government was every where almost
equally irregular and powerless to maintain order or found an
enduring state. Kymrians, Q-auls, or Iberians were nearly
equally ignorant, improvident, slaves to the sbiftings of their
ideas and the sway of their passions, fond of war and idleness
and rapine and feasting, of gross and savage pleasures. All
gloried in hanging from the breast-gear of their horses, or
naihng to the doors of their houses, the heads of their enemies.
All sacrificed himian victims to their gods; all tied their
prisoners to trees, and burned or flogged them to death; all
took pleasure in wearing upon their heads or round their
arms, and depicting upon their naked bodies l^ntastic oma-
mente, which gave them a wild appearance. An unbridled
passion for wine and strong liquors was general amongst
them: the traders of Italy, and especially of Marseilles,
brought supplies into every part of Gaul; from interval to
interval there were magazines established, whither the Qauls
flocked to seU for a flask of wine their furs, their grain, their
cattle, their slaves. ^^ It was easy," says an ancient historian,
** to get the Gany;nede for the liquor." Such are the essential
characteristics of barbaric life, as they have been and as they
still are at several points of our globe, amongst people of the
same grade in the scale of civilization. They existed in nearly
an equal degree amongst the different races of ancient Gaul,
whose resemblance was rendered much stronger thereby than
their diversity in other respects by some of their customs,
traditions, or ideas.
In their case, too, there is no sign of those permanent de-
marcations, those rooted antipathies, and that impossibility of
unity which are obsei-vable amongst peoples whose original
moral condition is really very different. In Asia, Africa, and
America, the EngUsh, the Dutch, the Spanish, and the French
have been.and are still in frequent contact with the natives of
the country— Hindoos, Malays, Negroes, and Indians; and, in
spite of this contact, the races have remained widely separa-
ted one from another. In ancient Gaul not only did Gauls,
Kymrians, and Iberians Uve frequently in alliance and
almost intimacy, but they actually commingled and cohabited
without scruple on the same territory. And so we find in the
midst of the Iberians, towards the mouth of the Garonne, a
Gallic tribe, the Viviscan Biturigians, come from the neigh-
borhood of Bourges, where the bulk of the nation was settled:
CH.I.] OAUL. 10
they had been driven thither by one of the first invasions of
the Kymrians, and peabeably taken root there; Burdigala,
afterwards Bordeaux, was the chief settlement of this tribe,
and even then a trading-place between the Mediterranean and
the ocean. A little farther on, towards the south, a Eymrian
tribe, the Bdians^ lived isolated from its race, in the waste-
lands of the Iberians, extracting the resin from the pines
which grew in that territory. To the south-west, in the
country situated between the Gkuronne, the eastern Pyrenees,
the C^vennes, and the Bhone, two great tribes of Kymro-
Belgians, the Bolg^ Volg, VoVc^ or Volea^ Arecomican and
TectosagiaUy came to settle towards the end of the fourth cen-
tury B.C., in the midst of the 'Iberian and Gktllic peoplets; and
there is nothing to show that the new comers lived worse with
their neighbors than the latter had previously lived together.
It is evident that amongst all these peoplets, whatever may
have been their diversity of origin, there was sufficient simili-
tude of social condition and manners to make agreement a
matter neither very difficult nor very long to accomplish.
On the other hand, and as a natural consequence, it was
precarious and often of short duration: Iberian, Gallic, or
Kymrian as they might be, these peoplets imderwent frequent
displacements, forced or voluntary, to escape from the attacks
of a more powerful neighbor; to find new pasturage; in conse-
quence of internal dissension; or, perhaps, for the mere
pleasure of warfare and running risks, and to be delivered
from the tediousness of a monotonous life. From the earliest
times to the first century before the Christian era, Qaul
appears a prey to this incessant and disorderly movement of
the i>opulation; they change settlement and neighborhood;
disappear from one i>oint and reappear at another; cross one
another; avoid one another; absorb and are absorbed. And
the movement was not confined within Gaul; the Qa.uls of
every race went, sometimes in very numerous hordes, to seek
far away plimder and a settlement. Spain, Italy, Germany,
Greece, Asia Minor, end Africa have been in turn the theatre
of those Gkillic expeditions which entailed long wars, grand
displacements of peoples, and sometimes the formation of new
nations. Let us make a slight acquaintance with this outer
history of the Gkiuls; for it is well worth while to foUow them
a space upon their distant wanderings. We will then return
to the soil of France and concern ourselves only with what
has passed within her boundaries.
20 HISTORY OF JBRANOR [ch. n.
CHAPTER n.
THE OAUIfi OUT OF QAUL.
About three centuries b.g. numeroiis hordes of Gauls crossed
the Alps and penetrated to the centre of Etruria, which is
now-a-days Tuscany. The Etruscans, beiog then at war with
Eome, proposed to take them, armed and equipped as they
had come, into their own pay. **If you want our hands,"
answered the Gauls, *^ agaiost your enemies the Bomans, here
they are at your service— but on one condition: give us lands."
A century afterwards other Gallic hordes, descending in like
manner upon Italy, had commenced building houses and tilling
fields along the Adriatic, on the territory where afterwards
was Aquileia. The Eoman Senate decreed that their settle-
ment should be opposed, and that they should be summoned to
give up their implements and even their arms. Not being in a
position to resist, the Gauls sent representatives to Rome.
They, being introduced into the Senate, said, ''The multitude
of people in Gaul, the want of lands, and necessity forced us
to cross the Alps to seek a home. We saw plains uncultivated
and uniohabited. We settled there without doing any one
harm. . . . We ask nothing but lands. We will live i)eace-
fully on them under the laws of the republic."
Again, a century later, or thereabouts, some Gallic Kymrians^
mingled with Teutons or Germans, said also to the Roman
Senate, '' Give us a little land as pay; and do what you please
with our hands and weapons."
Want of room and means of subsistence have, in fact, been
the principal causes which have at all times thrust barbarous
people, and especially the Gauls, out of their fatherland. An
immense extent of country is required for indolent hordes who
live chiefly upon the produce of the chase and of their flocks;
and when there is no longer enough of forest or pasturage for
the families that become too numerous, there is a swarm from
the hive and a search for livelihood elsewhere. The Gauls emi-
grated in every direction. To find, as they said, rivers and
lands, they marched from north to south, and from east to
west. They crossed at one time the Rhine, at another the Alps,
CH. n.] THE QAUL8 OUT OF QAUL. 21
int another the Pyrenees. More than fifteen centuries b.o. they
had ahready thrown themselves into Spain, after many fights,
no doubt, with the Iberians established between the Pyrenees
and the Gkironne. They penetrated north-westwards to the
northern point of the Peninsula, into the province which re-
ceived from them and still bears the name of Galicia; south-
eastwards to the southern point, between the river Anas (now-
a-days Guadiana) and the ocean, where they foimded a Little
Celtica; and centrewards and southwards from Castile to An-
dalusia, where the amalgamation of two races brought about
the creation of a new people, that found a place in history as
Celtiberians. And twelve centuries after those events, about
220 B.C., we find the Qallic peoplet, which had planted itself in
the south of Portugal, energetically defending its independence
against the neighboring Carthaginian colonies. Indortius,
their chief, conquered and taken prisoner, was beaten with
rods and hung upon the cross, in the sight of his army, after
having had his eyes put out by oonmiand of Hamilcar-Barca,
the Carthaginian general; but a Gallic slave took care to
avenge him by assassinating, some years after, at a himting-
party, Hasdrubal, son-in-law of Hamilcar, who had succeeded
to the conmiand. The slave was put to the torture; but, in-
domitable in his hatred, he died insulting the Africans.
A little after the Gallic invasion of Spain, and by reason per-
haps of that very movement, in the first balf of the fourteenth
century b.c., another vast horde of Gauls, who called them-
BelvsAmhra, Ambray AmbronSj that is, ^' braves,^' crossed the
Alps, occupied northern Italy, descended even to the brink of
the Tiber, and conferred the name of Ambria or Uwbria on
the country where they founded their dominion. If ancient
accounts might be trusted, this dominion was glorious and
fiourishing, for Umbria niunbered, they say, 358 towns; but
falsehood, according to the Eastern proverb, lurks by the cra-
dle of nations. At a much later epoch, in the second century
B.C., fifteen towns of liguria contained altogether, as we learn
from livy, but 20,000 souls. It is plain, then, what must
really have been— even admitting their existence— the 358 towns
of Umbria. However, at the end of two or three centuries,
this Gallic colony succumbed beneath the superior power of
the Etruscans, another set of invaders from eastern Europe,
perhaps from the north of Greece, who founded in Italy a
mighty empire. The Umbrians or Ambrons were driven out
or subjugated. Nevertheless some of their peoplets, preserv-
22 HiaTORY OF FBANOB. [ch. n.
ing their name and manners, remained in the mountains of
Upper Italy, where they were to be subsequently diacovered by
fresh and more celebrated Gallic invasions.
Those just spoken of are of such antiquity and obscurity,
that we note their place in history without being able to say
how they came to fill it. It is only with the sixth century be-
fore our era that we light upon the really historical expeditions
of the Gauls away from Gaul, those, in fact, of which we may
follow the course and estimate the effects.
Towards the year 587 b.o., almost at the very moment when
the Phoceans had just founded Marseilles, two great GaUic
hordes got in motion at the same time and crossed, one the
Rhine, the other the Alps, making one for Germany, the other
for Italy. The former followed the course of the Danube and
settled in niyria, on the right bank of the river. It is too
much, perhaps, to say that they settled; the greater part of
them continued wandering and fighting, sometimes amalga-
mating with the peoplets they encoimtered, sometimes chasing
them and exterminating them, whilst themselves were inces-
santly pushed forward by fresh bands coming also from GauL
Thus marching and spreading, leaving here and there on their
route, along the rivers and in the valleys of the Alps, tribcB
that remained and founded peoples, the G^uls had arrived,
towards the year 340 b.o., at the confines of Macedonia, at the
time when Alexander, the son of Philip, who was already
famous, was advancing to the same point to restrain the
ravages of the neighboring tribes, perhaps of the Gauls them-
selves. From curiosity, or a desire to make terms with Alex-
ander, certain Gauls betook themselves to his camp. He
treated them well, made them sit at his table, took pleasure in
exhibiting his magnificence before them, and in the midst of
his carouse made his interpreter ask them what they were most
afraid of. **We fear naught," they answered, "unless it be
the fall of heaven; but we set above every thing the friend-
ship of a man like thee." "The Celts are proud," said Alex-
ander to his Macedonians; and he promised them his friend-
ship. On the death of Alexander the Gauls, as mercenaries,
entered, in Europe and Asia, the service of the kings who had
been his generals. Ever greedy, fierce, and passionate, they
were almost equally dangerous as auxiliaries and as neighbors.
Antigonus, King of Macedonia, was to pay the band he had
enrolled a gold piece a-head. They brought their wives and
children with them, and at the end of the campaign they
CH. n] THE GAULS OUT OF GAUL. 23
Maimed pay for their following as well asfortfaiemflelves: ''We
-were promised,'' said they, *' a gold piece a-head for each Qaxl;
and these are also Gauls. ".
Before Icmg they tired of fighting the hattles of another;
their power accumulated; fresh hordes, in great numhers, ar-
rived amongst them about the year 281 b.c. They had before
l^m Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly, Greece, rich, but distracted
and weakened by civil strife. They effected an entrance at
several points, devastating, plundering, loadingt their cars
with booty, and dividing their prisoners into two parts; one
offered in sacrifice to their gods, the other strung up to trees
land abandoned to the gais and matars, or javeliite and pikes
of the conquerors.
liike all barbarians, they, both for pleasure and on principle,
added insolence to ferocity. Their Brenn, or most famous
chieftain, whom the Latins and Greeks call Brennus, dragged
In his train Macedonian prisoners, short, mean, and with
shaven heads, and, exhibiting them beside Gallic warriors,
tall, robust, long-haired, adorned with chains of gold, said,
**This is what we are, that is what our enemies are."
Ptolemy the Thunderbolt, King of Macedonia, received with
haughtiness their first message requiring of him a ransom for
his dominions, if he wished to preserve peace. ** Tell those
who sent you," he replied to the Gallic deputation, **[to lay
down their arms and give up to me their chieftains. I will
then see what peace I can grant them." On the return of
the deputation, the Gauls were moved to laughter. ''He
shall soon see," said they, ** whether it was in his interest or
our own that we offered him peace." And, indeed, in the
first engagement, neither the famous Macedonian phalanx, nor
the elephant he rode, could save King Ptolemy; the phalanx
was broken, the elephant riddled with javelins, the king him-
self taken, killed, and his head marched about the field of bat-
tle on the top of a pike.
Macedonia was in consternation; there was a general flight
from the open coimtry, and the gates of the towns were closed.
"The people," says an historian, ** cursed the folly of King
Ptolany, and invoked the names of Philip and Alexander, the
guardian deities of their land."
Three years later, another and a more formidable invasion
came bursting upon Thessaly and Greece. It was, according
to the* unquestionably exaggerated account of the ancient
historians, 200,000 strong, and commanded by that famous^
34 BI8T0R7 OF FRANCS. [ch. n.
ferocious, and insolent Brennus mentioned before.. His idea
was to strike a blow which should simultaneously enrich the
Gauls and stun the Greeks. He meant to plimder the temple
at Delphi, the most venerated place in all Greece, whither
flowed from century to century all kinds of offerings, and
where, no doubt, enormous treasure was deposited. Such
was, in tiie opinion of the day, the sanctity of the place, that,
on the rumor of the projected profanation, several Greeks es-
sayed to divert the Gallic Brenn himself, by appealing to his
superstitious fears; but his answer was, ^*The gods have no
need of wealth; it is th^y who distribute it to men.'*
All Grec^ was moved. The nations of the Peloponnese
closed the isthmus of Corinth by a walL Outside the isthmus,
the Boeotians, IShocidians, Locrians, Megarians, and .^EStolians
formed a coalition under the leaders^p of the Athenians ; and,
as their ancestors had done scarcely two himdred years before
against Xerxes and the Persians, they advanced in all haste to
the pass of Thermopylae, to stop there the new barbarians.
And for several days they did stop them; and instead of
three hundred heroes, as of yore in the case of Leonidas and
his Spartans, only forty Greeks, they say, fell in the first
engagement. Amongst them was a young Athenian, Cydias
by name, whose shidd was hung in the temple of Zeus the
saviour, at Athens, with this inscription:
THIS SHIELD, DEDICATBD TO ZBUS, IS
THAT OF A VALIANT MAN,
CTDIA6. IT STILL BEWAILS ITS
TOUNa HA8TEB. FOR THE FIR8T TDiB
HE BAKE IT ON HIS L^FT ARM
WHEN TERRIBLE ARES CRUSHED
THE GAULS.
But soon, just as in the case of the Persians, traitors guided
Brennus and his G^uls across the mountain-paths; the posi-
tion of Thermopylae was turned; the Greek army owed its
safety to the Athenian galleys; and by evening of the same
day the barbarians appeared in sight of Delphi.
Brennus would have led them at once to the assault. He
showed them, to excite them, the statues, vases, cars, monu-
ments of every kind, laden with gold, which adorned the
approaches of the town and of the temple: *''Tis pure gold,
massive gold," was the news he had spread in every direction.
But the very cupidity he provoked was against his plan; for
CH. n.] THE GAULS OUT OF GAUL. 26
the Gauls fell out to plunder. He had. to put off the asaault
until to-morrow. The night was passed in irregularities and
orgies.
The Greeks, on the contrary, prepared with ardor for the
fight. Their enthusiasm was intense. Those barbarians, with
their half-nakedness, their grossness, their ferocity, their igno-
rance and their impiety, were revolting. They committed
murder and devastation like dolts. They left their dead on
the field, without biuial. They engaged in battle without con-
sulting priest or augur. It was not only their goods but their
families, their life, the honor of their country and the sanctu-
ary of their religion that the Greeks were defending, and they
might rely on t^e protection of the gods. The oracle of Apollo
had answered, ^* I and the white virgins will provide for this
matter." The people surroimded the temple, and the priests
supported and encouraged the people. During the night small
bodies of JCtolians, Amphisseans and Phocidians arrived one
after another. Four thousand men had joined within Delphi,
when the Gallic bands, in the moiiiing, began to mount the
narrow and rough incline which led up to the town. The
Greeks rained down from above a deluge of stones and other
missiles. The Gauls recoiled, but recovered themselves. The
besieged fell back on the nearest streets of the town, leaving
open the approach to the temple, upon which the barbarians
threw themselves. The pillage of the shrines had just com-
menced when the sky looked threatening ; a storm burst forth,
the thunder echoed, the rain feU, the hail rattled. Readily
taking advantage of this incident, the priests and the augurs
sallied from the temple clothed in their sacred garments, with
hair dishevelled and sparkling eyes, proclaiming the advent
of the god: '''Tis he! we saw him shoot athwart the templets
vault, which opened under his feet; and with him were two
virgins, who issued from the temples of Artemis and Athena.
We saw them with our eyes. We heard the twang of their
bows, and the clash of their ajmor." Hearing these cries and
the roar of the tempest, the Greeks dash on, the Gauls are
panic-stricken, and rush headlong down the hill. The Greeks
push on in pursuit. Bmnors of fresh apparitions are spread:
three heroes, Hyperochus, Laodocus, and Pyrrhus, son of
Achilles, have issued from their tombs hard by the temple,
and are thrusting at the Gauls with their lances. The rout
was speedy and general; the barbarians rushed to the cover
of their camp; but the camp was attacked next morning by
26 mSTOBT OF FBANGE. [ch. n.
the Greeks from the town and by reinforcements from the
comitry places. Brennns and the picked w6trriors about him
made a gallant resistance, but defeat was a foregone conclu<
sion. Brennus was wounded, and his comrades bore him off
the field. The barbarian army parsed the whole day in flight.
During the ensuing night a new access of terror seized them ;
they again took to flight, and four days after the passage of
Thermopylae some scattered bands, forming scarcely a third
of those who had marched on Delphi, rejoined the division
which had remained behind, some leagues, from the town, in
the plains watered by the Cephissus. Brennus summoned his
comrades; *^Kill all the woimded and me,'^ said he; ^'bum
your cars; make Cichor king; and away at full speed." Then
he called for wine, drank himself drunk, and stabbed himself.
Cichor did cut the throats of the wounded, and traversed, fly-
ing and fighting, ThessaJy and Macedonia; 'and on returning
whence they had set out, the Gauls dispersed, some to settle
at the foot of a neighboring mountain under the command of
a chieftain named Bathanat or Baedhannat^ ie. son of the
wild hoar; others to march back towards their- own country;
the greatest part to resume the same life of incursion and
adventure. But they changed the scene of operations. Greece,
Macedonia, and Thrace were exhausted by pillage, and made a
league to resist. About 278 b.c. the Gauls crossed the Helles-
pont and passed into Asia Minor. There, at one time in the
pay of the kings of Bithynia, Pergamos, Cappadocia, and
Syria, or of the free commercial cities which were struggling
against the kings, at another carrying on wars on their own
account, they wandered for more than thirty years, divided
into three great hordes which parcelled out the territories
among themselves, overran and plundered them during the
fine weather, entrenched themselves during winter in their
camp of cars, or in some fortified place, sold their services to
the highest bidder, changed masters according to interest or
inclination, and by their bravery became the terror of these
effeminate populations and the arbiters of these petty states.
At last both princes and people grew weary. Antiochus,
King of Syria, attacked one of the three bands—that of the
Tectosagians, conquered it, and cantoned it in a district of
Upper Phrygia. Later still, about 241 B.C., Eumenes, sover-
eign of Pergamos, and Attains, his successor, drove and shut
up the other two bands, the Tolistoboians and Trocmians,
likewise in the same region. The victories of Attains over the
CH. n.] THE 0AUL8 OUT OF QAUL, 27
Gkiuls excited veritable enthusiasm. He was celebrated as a
special envoy from Zeus. He took the title of King^ which his
predecessors had not hitherto borne. He had his battles
showily x)amted ; and that he might triumph at the same time
both in Europe and Asia, he sent one of the pictures to Athens,
where it was still to be seen three centuries afterwards, hang-
ing upon the wall of the citadel. Forced to remain stationary,
the Qullic hordes became a people— the Galatians— and the
country they occupied was called GaJatia. They Kved there
some fifty years, aloof from the indigenous i>opulation of
Greeks and Phrygians, whom they kept in an almost servile
condition, preserving their warlike and barbarous habits,
resuming sometimes their mercenary service, and becoming
once more the bulwark or the terror of neighboring states.
But at the beginning of the second century before our era, the
Romans had entered Asia, in pursuit of their great enemy,
Hannibal. They had just beaten, near Magnesia, Antiochus,
Zing of Syria. In his army they had encountered 'men of
lofty stature, with hair light or dyed red, half naked, march-
ing to the fight with loud cries, and terrible at the first onset.
They recognized the Gauls, and resolved to destroy or subdue
them. The consul. On. Manlius, had the duty and the honor.
Attacked in their strongholds on Mount Olympus and Mount
Magaba, 189 B.C., the three Gallic bands, after a short but
stout resistance, were conquered and subjugated ; and thence-
forth losing all national importance, they amalgamated littie
by little with the Asiatic populations around them. From
time to time they are still seen to reappear with their primi-
tive manners and passions. Home humored them; Mithri-
dates had them for allies in his long struggle with the Eomans.
He kept by him a Galatian guard ; and when he sought death,
and poison failed him; it wasthe captain of the guard, a Gaul
namcid Bituitus, whom he asked to run him through. That
is the last historical event with which the GaUic name is found
associated in Asia.
Nevertheless the amalgamation of the Gauls of Galatia with
the natives always remained very imperfect; for towards the
end of the fourth century of the Christian era they did not
speak Greek, as the latter did, but their national tongue, that
of the Kymro-Belgians; and St. Jerome testifies that it differed
very littie from that which was spoken in Belgica itself, in the
region of Treves.
The Romans had good ground for keeping a watchful eye,
28 EI8T0R7 OF FRANCE. [ch. n.
from the time they met them, upon the Qauls, and for dread-
ing them particularly. At the time when they determined to
pursue them into the mountains of Asia Minor, they were just
at the close of a desperate struggle, maintained against them
for 400 years, in Italy itself; **a struggle," says Sallust, **in
which it was a question not of glory, but of existence, for
Eome." It was but just now remarked that at the beginning
of the sixth century before our era, whilst, under their chief-
tain Sigovesus, the Gallic bands whose history has occupied
the last few pages were crossing the Ehine and entering Ger-
many, other bands, under the command of Bellovesus, were
traversing the Alps and swarming into Italy. From 687 to
621 B.O. five Gallic expeditions, formed of Gallic, Kymric, and
Ligurian tribes, followed the same route and invaded succes-
sively the two banks of the Vo—the bottomless river, as they
called it. The Etruscans, who had long before, it will be re-
membered, themselves wrested that country from a people of
Gallic origin, the Umbrians or Ambrons, could not make head
against the new conquerors, aided, may be, by the remains of
the old population. The well-built towns, the cultivation of
the country, the ports and canals that had been dug, nearly all
these labors of Etruscan civilization disappeared beneath the
footsteps of these barbarous hordes that knew only how to de-
stroy, and one of which gave its chieftain the name of Hurri-
cane (Mitorius, Ele-Dov). Scarcely five Etruscan towns, Mantua
and Ravenna amongst others, escaped disaster. The Gauls also
founded towns, such as Mediolanum (Milan), Brixia (Brescia),
Verona, Bononia (Bologna), Sena-Gfallica (Sinigaglia), etc.
But for a long while they were no more than entrenched
camps, fortified places, where the population shut themselves
up in case of necessity. "They, as a general rule, straggled
about the country," says Polybius, the most correct and clear-
sighted of the ancient historians, " sleeping on grass or straw,
living on nothing but meat, busying themselves about nothing
but war and a Uttle husbandry, and counting as riches nothing
but flocks and gold, the only goods that can be carried away at
pleasure and on every occasion."
During nearly thirty years the'Gkiuls thus scoured not only
Upper Italy, which they had almost to themselves, but all the
eastern coast, and up to the head of the peninsula, encounter-
ing along the Adriatic, and in the rich and effeminate cities of
Magna Graecia, Sybaris, Tarentiun, Crotona, and Locri, no
enemy capable of resisting them. But in the year 391 B.O.,
OH. n.] TEE QAXTL8 OUT OF OAUL. 29
finding thefmselves cooped up in their territory, a strong band
of G^uls crossed the Apennines, and went to demand from
the Etruscans of Clusimn the cession of a portion of their
lands. The only answer Clusium made was to close her gates.
The Gktuls formed up around the walls. Clusium asked help
from Eome, with whom, notwithstanding the rivalry between
the Etruscan and Boman nations, she had lately been on good
terms. The Homans promised first their good offices with the
Gauls, afterwards material support; and thus were brought
face to foce those two peoples, fated to continue for four cen-
turies a struggle which was to be ended only by the complete
subjection of QauL
The details of that struggle belong specially to Boman his-
tory; they have been transmitted to us only by Boman histo-
rians; and the Bomans it was who were left ultimately in
possession of the battle-field, that is, of Italy. It will suffice
here to make known the general march of events and the most
characteristic incidents.
Four distinct periods may be recognized in this history; and
each marks a different phase in the com*se of events, and, so
to speak, an act of the drama. During the first period, which
lasted forty-two years, from 391 to 349 B.C., the Gauls carried
on a war of aggression and conquest against Bome. Not that
such had been their original design; on the contrary, they
replied, when 'the Bomans offered intervention between them
and Clusium, '*We ask only for lands, of which we are in
need; and Clusium has more than she can cultivate. Of the
Bomans we know very little ; but we believe them to be a brave
people, since the Etruscans put themselves under their protec-
tion. Bemain spectators of our quarrel ; we will settle it before
your eyes, that you may report at home how far above other
men the Gauls are in valor."
But when they saw their pretensions repudiated and them-
selves treated with outrageous disdain, the Gauls left the siege
of Clusium on the spot, and set out for Bome, not stopping for
plunder, and proclaiming every where on their march, ** We
are bound for Bome ; we make war on none but Bomans ;" and
when they encoimtered the Boman army, on the 16th of July,
390 B.O., at the confluence of the Allia and the Tiber, half a day's
march from Bome, they abruptly struck up their war-chaunt,
and threw themselves upon their enemies. It is well known
how they gained the day ; how they entered Bome, and found
none but a few grey-beards, who, being unable or unwilling to
80 EISTOBT OF FRANCE. [ch. n.
leave their abode, had remained seated in the vestibule on
their chairs of ivory, with truncheons of ivory in their hands,
and decorated with the insignia of the public .offices they had
filled. All the people of Borne had fied, and were wandering
over the country or seeking a refuge amongst neighboring peo-
ples. Only the senate and a thousand warriors had shut them-
selves up in the Capitol, a citadel which commanded the city.
The Gauls kept them besieged there for seven months. The
circumstances of this celebrated siege are well known, though
they have been a little embellished by the Eoman historians.
Not that they have spoken too highly of the Romans them-
selves, who, in the day of their country's disaster, showed
admirable courage, perseverance, and hopefulness. Pontius
Cominius, who traversed the Gallic camp, swam the Tiber, and
scaled by night the heights of the Capitol, to go and carry
news to the senate; M. Manlius, who was the first, and for
some moments the only one, to hold in check, from the cita-
del's walls, the Gau]s on the point of effecting an entrance;
and M. Furius Camillus, who had been banished from Home
the preceding year, and had taken refuge in the town of Ardea,
and who instantly took the field for his country, rallied the
Roman fugitives, and incessantly harrassod the Gaul£k-are
true heroes, who have earned their meed of glory. Let no
man seek to lower them in public esteem. Noble actions are
so beautiful, and the actors often receive so little recompense,
that we are at least bound to hold sacred the honor attached
to their name. The Roman historians have done no more than
justice in extolling the saviours of Rome. But their memory
would have .suffered no loss had the whole truth been made
known; and the claims of national vanity are not of the same
weight as the duty one owes to truth. Now it is certain that
Camillus did not gain such decisive advantages over the Gauls
as the Roman accounts would lead one to believe, and that the
deliverance of Rome was much less complete. On the 13th of
February, 389 B.C., the Gauls, it is true, allowed their retreat
to be purchased by the Romans ; and they experienced, as they
retired, certain checks whereby they lost a part of their booty.
But twenty-three years afterwards they are foimd in Latium
scouring in every direction the outlying coimtry of Rome,
without the Romans daring to go out and fight them. It was
only at the end of five years, in the year 361 b.o., that, the very
city being menaced anew, the legions marched out to meet the
enemy. * * Surprised at this audacity, " says Polybius, the Gftula
CH. n.] THE GAULS OUT OF GAUL. 81
fell back, but merely a few leagues from Borne, to the environs
of Tibur; and thence, for the space of twelve years, they at-
tacked the Boman territory, renewing the campaign every
year, often reaching the very gates of the city, and being re-
pulsed indeed, but never farther than Tibur and its slopes.
Borne, however, made great efforts; every war with the Gauls
was previously proclaimed a tumtUty which involved a levy in
mass of the citizens, without any exemption, even for old men
and priests. A treasure, specially dedicated to Gallic wars,
was laid by in the Capitol, and religious denimciations of the
most awful kind hung over the head of whoever should dare
to touch it, no matter what the exigency might be. To this
epoch belonged those marvels of daring recorded in Boman
tradition, those acts of heroism tinged with fable, which are
met with amongst so many peoples, either in their earliest age
or in their days of great peril. In the year 361 b.c., Titus
Manlius, son of him who had saved the Capitol from the night
attack of the Gkiuls, and twelve years later M. Valerius, a
young mOitary tribune, were, it will be remembered, the two
Boman heroes who vanquished in single combat the two Gallic
giants who insolently defied Bome. The gratitude towards
them was general and of long duration, for two centuries after-
wards (in the year 167 B.C.) the head of the Gaul with his
tongue out still appeared at Borne, above the shop of a money-
changer, on a circular sign-board, called ^* the Kymrian shield"
(scutum Cimbricum), After seventeen years* stay in Latium,
the Gauls at last withdrew, and returned to their adopted coun-
try in those lovely valleys of the Po which already bore the name
of Cisalpine Gaul. They began to get disgusted with a wan-
dering life. Their population multiplied; their towns spread;
their fields were better cultivated; their manners became less
barbarous. For fifty years there was scarcely any trace of
hostility or even contact between them and the Bomans. But
at the beginning of the third century before our era, the coali-
tion of the Sanmites and Etruscans against Bome was near its
climax; they eagerly pressed the Gauls to join, and the latter
assented easily. Then commenced the second period of strug-
gles between the two peoples. Bome had taken breath, and
had grown much more rapidly than her rivals. Instead of
shutting herself up, as heretofore, within her walls, she forth-
with raised three armies, took the offensive against the coali-
tionists, and carried the war into their territory. The Etrus-
cans rushed to the defence of their hearths. The two consuls,
33 mSTOBT OF FRANCE, [ch. n.
Fabius and Decius, immediately attacked the Samnites and
Oauls at the foot of the Apennines, close to Sentinum (now
Sentina). ^e battle was just beginning, when a hind, pur-
sued by a wolf from the mountains, passed in flight between
the two armies and threw herself upon the side of the Oauls,
who slew her; the wolf turned towards the Bomans, who let
him go. "Comrades," cried a soldier, "flight and death are
on the side where you see stretched on the ground the hind of
Diana; the wolf belongs to Mars; he is un wounded, and re-
minds us of our father and founder ; we shall conquer even as
he." Nevertheless the battle went badly for the Eomans;
several legions were in flight, and Decius strove vainly to rally
them. The memory of his father came across his mind. There
was a belief amongst the Eomans that if in the midst of an im-
successful engagement the general devoted himself to the in-
fernal gods, "panic and flight" passed forthwith to the enemies'
ranks. "Why dally?" said Decius to the grand pontiff, whom
he had ordered to follow him and keep at his side in the flight;
" 'tis given to our race to die to avert public disasters." He
halted, placed a javelin beneath his feet, and, covering his
head with a fold of his robe and supporting his chin on his
right hand, repeated after the pontiff this sacred form of
words:
"Janus, Jupiter, our father Mars, Quirinus,Bellona, Lares. . .
ye gods in whose power are we, we and our enemies, gods
Manes, ye I adore; ye I pray, ye I adjure to give strength and
victory to the Roman people, the children of Quirinus, and to
send confusion, panic, and death amongst the enemies of the
Roman people, the children of Quirinus. And, in these words,
for the republic of the children of Quirinus, for the army, for
the legions, and for the allies of the Roman people, I devote to
the gods Manes and to the grave the legions and the allies of
the enemy and myself."
Then remounting, Decius charged into the middle of the
Gauls, where he soon fell pierced with wounds ; but the Romans
recovered courage and gained the day ; for heroism and piety
have power over the hearts of men, so that at the moment of
admiration they become capable of imitation.
During this second period Rome was more than once in dan-
ger. In the year 283 b.o. the Gauls destroyed one of her armies
near Aretium (Arezzo), and advanced to the Roman frontier,
saying, "We are bound for Rome; the Gauls know how to
take it." Seventy-two years afterwards the Cisalpine Gauls
^^THE NEW WRIT
^PUBLIC UBKARY
THE WOMEN DEFENDING THE CARS.
CH. II.] THE OAULS OUT OF QAUL, 33
swore they would not put off their haldricks till they had
mounted the Capitol, and they arrived within three days'
inarch of Rome. At every appearance of this formidahle
enemy the alarm at Borne was great. The senate raised all its
forces and summoned its aUies. The people demanded a con-
sultation of the Sihylhne books, sacred volumes sold, it was
said, to Tarquinius Prisons by the sibyl Amalthea, and contain-
ing the secret of the destinies of the Repubhc. They were
actually opened in the year 228 B.o., and it was with terror
found that the Gauls would twice take possession of the soil of
Home. On the advice of the priests, there was dug within the
city, in the middle of the cattle-market, a huge pit, in which
two Gauls, a man and a woman, were entombed alive ; for thus
they took possession of the soil of Home, the oracle was fulfilled,
and the mishap averted. Thirteen years afterwards, on occa-
sion of the disaster at Cannae, the same atrocity was again
committed, at the same place and for the same cause. And by
a strange contrast, there was at the committing of this barbar-
ous act, " which was against Homan usage," says Livy, a secret
feeling of horror, for, to appease the manes of the victims, a
sacrifice was instituted, which was celebrated every year at
the pit, in«the month of November.
In spite of sometimes urgent peril, in spite of popular alarms,
Borne, during the course of this period, from 299 to 258 b. o.,
maintained an increasing ascendency over the Gauls. She
always cleared them off her territory, several times ravaged
theirs, on the two banks of the Po, called respectively Trans-
padan and Cispadan Gaul, and gained the majority of the great
battles she had to fight. Finally in the year 283 B.C. the pro-
praetor Drusus, after having ravaged the country of the Se-
nonic Gauls, carried off the very ingots and jewels, it was said,
which had been given to their ancestors as the price of their
relareat. Solemn proclamation was' made that the ransom of
the capitol had returned within its walls; and, sixty years
afterwards, the Consul M. CI. Marcellus having defeated at
dastidium a numerous army of Gauls, and with his own hand
slaiij their general, Virdumar, had the honor of dedicating to
the temple of Jupiter the third ** grand spoils" taken since the
foundation of Bome, and of ascending the Capitol, himself con-
veying the armor of Virdumar, for he had got hewn an oaken
trunk, round which he had arranged the helmet, tunic, and
brea£rt-plate of the barbarian king.
Nor was war Bome's only weapon against her enemies. Be-
34 HISTORY OF FRANCE, [ch. ir.
sides the ability of h^r generals and the discipline of her legions,
she had the sagacity of her Senate. The Gauls were not want-
ing in intelligence or dexterity, but being too free to go quietly
under a master's hand, and too barbarous for self-government,
carried away, as they were, by the interest or passion of the
moment, they could not long act either in concert or with
sameness of purpose. Far-sightedness and the spirit of persist-
ence were, on the contrary, the familiar virtues of the Roman
Senate. So soon as they had penetrated Cisalpine Gaul, they
labored to gain there a permanent footing, either by sowing
dissension amongst the Gallic peoplets that lived there, or by
founding Roman colonies. In the year 283 b.c. several Roman
families arrived, with colors flying and under the guidance of
three triumvirs or commissioners, on a territory to the north-
east, on the borders of the Adriatic. The triumvirs had a
round hole dug, and there deposited some fruits and a handful
of earth brought from Roman soil; then yoking to a plough,
having a copper share, a white bull and -a white heifer, they
marked out by a furrow a large enclosure. The rest followed,
flinging within the line the ridges thrown up by the plough.
When the line was finished, the bull and the heifer were sacri-
ficed with due pomp. It was a Roman colony come to settle at
Sena, on the very site of the chief town of those Senonic Gauls
who had been conquered and driven out. Fifteen years after-
wards another Roman colony was foimded at Ariminum
(Rimini) on the frontier of the Boian Gauls. Fifty years later
still two others, on the two banks of the Po, Cremona and
Placentia (Plaisance). Rome had then, in the midst of hep
enemies, garrisons, magazines of arms and provisions, and
means of supervision and commimication. Thence proceeded
at one time troops, at another intrigues, to carry dismay or
disunion amongst the Gauls.
Towards the close of the third century before our era, the
triiunph of Rome in Cisalpine Gaul seemed nigh to accomplish-
ment, when news arrived that the Romans' most formidable
enemy, Hannibal, meditating a passage from Africa into Italy
by Spain and Gaul, was already at work, by his emissaries, to
ensure for his enterprise the concurrence of the Transalpine
and Cisalpine Gauls. The Senate ordered the envoys they had
just then at Carthage to traverse Gaul on returning, and seek
out allies there against Hannibal. The envoys halted amongst
the Gallo-Iberian peoplets who lived at the foot of the eastern
CH. II.] THE QAUL8 OUT OF GAUL, 86
PyreneeeL There, in the midst of the warriors assembled in
arms, they charged them in the name of the great and power-
ful Itoman people, not to suffer the Carthaginians to pass
through their territory. Tumultuous laughter arose at a re-
quest that appeared so strange. ^^ You wish us," wa§ the an-
swer, "to draw down war upon ourselves to avert it from
Italy, and to give our own fields oyer to devastation to save
yours. We have no cause to complain of the Carthaginians or
to be pleased with the Eomans, or to take up arms for the
Bomans and against the Carthaginians. We, on the contrary,
hear that the Roman people drive out from their lands, in Italy,
men of our nation, impose tribute upon them, and make them
undergo other indignities. '' So the envoys of Bome quitted
Glaul without allies.
Hannibal, on the other hand, did not meet with all the favor
and all the enthusiasm he had anticipated. Between the Pyre-
nees and the Alps several peoplets united with him; and
several showed coldness, or even hostiUty. In his passage of
the Alps the mountain tribes harassed him incessantly. In-
deed, in Cisalpine Gaul itself there was great division and hesi-
tation; for Rome had succeeded in inspiring her partisans with
confidence and her enemies with fear. Hannibal was often
obHged to resort to force even against the Gauls whose alliance
he courted, and to ravage their lands in order to drive them to
take up arms. Nay, at the conclusion of an alliance, and in the
very camp of the Carthaginians, the Gauls sometimes hesitated
still, and sometimes rose against Hannibal, accused him of
ravaging their country, and refused to obey his orders. How-
ever, th^ delights of victory and of pillage at last brought into
full play the Cisalpine Gauls' natural hatred of Rome. After
Ticinus and Trebia, Hannibal had no more zealous and devoted
troox)6. At the battle of Lake Trasimene he lost 1500 men,
nearly all Gauls ; at that of Cannae he had 30,000 of them, form-
ing two-thirds of his army; and at the moment of action they
cast away their tunics and chequered cloaks (similar to the
plaids of the Gaels or Scottish Highlanders) and fought naked
from the belt upwards, according to their custom when they
meant to conquer or die. Of .5500 men that the victory of
Cannse cost Hannibal, 4000 were Gauls. All Cisalpine Gaul
was moved; enthusiasm was at its height; new bands hurried
off to recruit the army of the Carthaginian who, by dint of pa-
tience and genius, brought Rome within an ace of destruction,
36 EI8T0RT OF FRANCE. [ch. n.
with the assistance almost entirely of the barbarians he had
come to seek at her gates, and whom he had at first fomid so
cowed and so vacillating.
When the day of reverses came, and Eome had recovered her
ascendenoy, the Gauls were faithful to Hannibal; and when at
length he was forced to return to Africa, .the Gallic bands,
whether from despair or attachment, followed him thither. In
the year 200 B.O., at the famous battle of Zama, which decided
matters between Rome and Carthage, they again formed a
third of the Carthaginian army, and showed that they were, in
the words of Livy, "inflamed by that innate hatred towards
the Romans which is peculiar to their race."
This was the third period of the struggle between the GAuls
and the Romans in Italy. Rome, well advised by this terrible
war of the danger with which she was ever menaced by the
Cisalpine Gauls, formed the resolution of no longer restraining
them, but of subduing them and conquering their territory.
She spent thirty years (from 200 to 170 B.C.) in the execution of
this design, proceeding by means of war, of founding Roman
colonies, ^.nd of sowing dissension amongst the Gallic peoplets.
In vain did the two principal, the Boians and the Insubrians,
endeavor to rouse and rally all the rest: some hesitated; some
absolutely refused, and remained neutral. The resistance was
obstinate. The Gauls, driven from their fields and their towns,
established themselves, as their ancestors had done, in the for-
ests, whence they emerged only to f aU furiously upon the Ro-
mans. And then, if the engagement were indecisive, if any
legions wavered, the Roman centurions hurled their colors into
the midst of the enemy, and the legionaries dashed on at all
risks to recover them. At Parma and Bologna, in the towns
taken from the Gauls, Roman colonies came at once and planted
themselves. Day by day did Rome advance. At length, in
the year 190 B.O., the wrecks of the 112 tribes which had formed
the nation of the Boians, unable any longer to resist, and un-
wilUng to submit, rose as one man, and departed from Italy.
The Senate, with its usual wisdom, multiplied the number of
Roman colonies in the conquered territory, treated with mod-
eration the tribes that submitted, and gave to Cisalpine Gaul
the name of the Cisalpine or Hither Gallic Province, which was
afterwards changed for that of Gallia Togata or Roman Gaul.
Then, declaring that nature herself had placed the Alps between
Gaul and Italy as an insurmountable barrier, the Senate pro-
noimced " a curse on whosoever should attempt to cross it."
CB. in.) THE EOMAifa tN GAXTL &i
CHAPTER HL
THE ROMANS IN QAUL.
It was Rome herself that soon crossed that harrier of the
Alps which she had pronounced fixed hy nature and insur-
mountahle. Scarcely was she mistress of Cisalpine Gaul when
she entered upon a quarrel with the trihes which occupied the
moimtain-passes. With an unsettled frontier, and hetween
neighbors of whom one is ambitious and the other barbarian,
pretexts and even causes are never wanting. It is likely that
the G^allic mountaineers were not careful to abstain, thfey and
their flocks, from descending upon the territory that had be-
come Roman. The Romans, in turn, penetrated into the ham-
lets, carried off flocks and people, and sold them in the public
markets at Cremona, at Placentia, and in all their colonies.
The Grauls of the Alps demanded succor of the Transalpine
Gauls, applying to a powerful chieftain, named Cincibil, whose
influence extended throughout the mountains. But the terror
of the Roman name had reached acro3S. Cincibil sent to Rome
a deputation, with his brother at their head, to set forth the
grievances of the mountaineers, and especially to complain of
the consul Cassius, who had carried off and sold several thou-
sands of Gauls. Without making any concession, the Senate
was gracious. Cassius was away; he must be waited for.
Meanwhile the Gauls were well treated; Cincibil and his
brother received as presents two golden collars, five silver
vases, two horses fully caparisoned, and Roman dresses for all
their suite. Still nothing was done.
Another, a greater and more decisive opportunity offered
itself. Marseilles was an ally of the Romans. As the rival of
Carthage, and with the Gauls for ever at her gates, she had
need of Rome by sea and land. She pretended, also, to the
most eminent and intimate friendship with Rome. Her
founder, the Phocean Euxenes, had gone to Rome, it was said,
and concluded a treaty with Tarquinius Priscus. She had
gone into mourning when Rome was burnt by the Gauls; she
had ordered a public levy to aid towards the ransom of the
capitol. Rome did not dispute these claims to remembrance.
The friendship of Marseilles was of great use to her. In the
S8 mSTORT OP PRANCE, t^tt. itt.
whole course of her struggle with Carthage, and hut lately, at
the passage of Hannihal through Gaul, Borne had met with
the hest of treatment there. Sne granted the Massilians a
place amongst her senators at the festivals of the Republic,
and exemption from all duty in her ports. * Towards the mid-
dle of the second century b.o. Marseilles was at war with cer-
tain Gallic tribes, her neighbors, whose territory she coveted.
Two of her colonies, Nice and Antibes, were threatened. She
called on Rome for help. A Roman deputation went to decide
the quarrel; but the Gauls refused to obey its summons, and
treated it with insolence. The deputation returned with an
army, succeeded in beating the refractory tribes, and gave
their land to the Massilians. The same thing occurred re-
peatedly with the same result. Within the space of thirty
years nearly all the tribes between the Rhone and the Var, in
the coimtry which was afterwards Provence, were subdued
and driven back amongst the mountains, with notice not to
approach within a mile of the coast in general, and a mile and
a half of the places of disembarkation. But the Romans did
not stop there. They did not mean to conquer for Marseilles
alone. In the year 123 b.o., at some leagues to the north of the
Greek city, near a little river, then called the Coenus and now-
a-days the Arc, the consul C. Sextius Calvinus had noticed,
dming his campaign, an abundance of thermal springs, agree-
ably situated amidst wood-covered hills. There he constructed
an enclosure, aqueducts, baths, houses, a town in fact, which
he called after himself, Aquce Sextice, the modem Aix, the
first Roman establishment in Transalpine Gaul. As in the
case of Cisalpine Gaul, with Roman colonies came Roman
intrigue and dissensions got up and fomented amongst the
Gauls. And herein Marseilles was a powerful seconder; for
she kept up commimications with all the neighboring tribes,
and fanned the spirit of faction. After his victories, the con-
sul C. Sextius, seated at his tribimal, was selling his prisoners
by auction, when one of them came up to him and said, "I
have always liked and served the Romans; and for that reason
I have often incurred outrage and danger at the hands of xny
countrymen." The consul had him set free— him and his
family — and even gave him leave to point out amongst the
captives any for whom he would like to procure the same kind-
ness. At his request nine hundred were released. The man's
name was Crato, a Greek name, which points to a connection
with Marseilles or one of her colonies. The Gauls, moreover.
ctt. in.] THE ROMANS IN GAUL. 39
ran of themselves into the Roman trap. Two of their confed-
erations, the.<£iduans, of whom mention has ah*eady been made,
and the Allobrogians, who were settled between the Alps, the
Is^re, and the Rhone, were at war. A third confederation,
the most powerful in Gaul at this time, the Arvemians, who
were rivals of the .^kLuans, gave their countenance to the Al-
lobrogians. The ^duans, with whom the Massilians had
commercial dealings, solicited through these latter the assist-
ance of Rome. A treaty was easily concluded. The JBduans
obtained from the Romans the title of friends and allies ; and
the Romans received from the -<Eduans that of brothers^ which
amongst the Gauls implied a sacred tie. The consul Domitius
forthwith commanded the Allobrogians to respect the terri-
tory of the allies of Rome. The Allobrogians rose up in arms
and claimed the aid of the Arvemians. But even amongst
them, in the very heart of Gaul, Rome was much dreaded ;
she was not to be encountered without hesitation. So Bitui-
tus, King of the Arvemians, was for trying accommodation.
He was a powerful and wealthy chieftain. His father Luem
used to give amongst the mountains magnificent entertain-
m.ents ; he had a space of twelve square furlongs enclosed, and
dispensed wine, mead, and beer from cisterns made within the
enclosure; and all the Arvemians crowded to his feasts. Bi-
tuitus displayed before the Romans his barbaric splendor. A
numerous escort, superbly clad, surrounded his ambassador;
in attendance were packs of enormous hounds ; and in front
went a bard, or poet, who sang with rotte or harp in hand, the
glory of Bituitus and of the Arvemian people. Disdainfully
the consul received and sent back the embassy. War broke
out ; the Allobrogians, with the usual confidence and hastiness
of all barbarians, attacked alone, without waiting for the Ar-
vemians, and were beaten at the confluence of the Rhone and
the Sorgue, a little above Avignon. The next year, 121 B.C.,
the Arvemians in their turn descended from the moimtains,
and crossed the Rhone with all their tribes, diversely armed
and clad, and ranged each about its own chieftain. In his
barbaric vanity, Bituitus marched to war with the same pomp
that he had in vain displayed to obtain peace. He sat upon a
car glittering with silver; he wore a plaid of striking colors;
and he brought in his train a pack of war-hounds. At the
sight oi the Roman legions, few in number, iron-clad, in ser-
ried ranks that took up little space, he contemptuously cried,
"There is not a meal for my hounds."
40 EIST0B7 OF PBANOB. [ch. m.
The Arvemians were beaten, as the Allobrogians had been.
The hounds of Bituitus were of little use to him against the
elephants which the Homans had borrowed from Asiatic usage,
and which spread consternation amongst the Gauls. The
Boman historians say that the Arvemian army was 200,000
strong, and that 120,000 were slain; but the figures are absurd,
like most of those found in ancient chronicles. We know
now-a-days, thanks to modem civilization, which shows every
thing in broad day-light and measures every thing with proper
caution, that only the most populous and powerful nations,
and that at great expenditure of trouble and time, can succeed
in moving armies of 200,000 men, and that no battle, however
murderous it may be, ever costs 120,000 lives.
Eome treated the Arvemians with consideration; but the
Allobrogians lost their existence as a nation. The Senate de-
clared them subject to the Roman i)eople; and all the country-
comprised between the Alps, the Rhone from its entry into the
Lake of Gteneva to its mouth, and the Mediterranean, was
made a Roman consular province, which means that every
year a consul must march thither with his army. In the
three following years, indeed, the consuls extended the boun-
daries of the new province, on the right bank of the Rhone, to
the frontier of the Pyrenees southward. In the year 115 b.o.
a colony of Roman citizens was conducted to Narbonne, a
town even then of importance, in spite of the objections made
by certain senators who were unwilling, say the historians, so
to expose Roman citizens ^to the waves of barbarism." This
was the second colony which went and established itself out of
Italy ; the first had been founded on the ruins of Carthage.
Having thus completed their conquest, the Senate, to render
possession safe and sure, decreed the occupation of the passes
of the Alps which opened Gaul to Italy. There was up to that
time no communication with Gaul save along the Mediterranean,
by a narrow and difficult path which has become in our time
the beautiful route called the Comiche. The mountain tribes
defended their independence with desperation; when that of
the Stsenians, who occupied the pass of the maritime Alps,
saw their inability to hold their own, they cut the throats of
their wives and children, set fire to their houses, and threw
themselves into the fiames. But the Senate pursued its course
imperturbably. All the chief defiles of the Alps fell into its
hands. The old Phoenician road, restored by the consul Do-
mitius, bore thenceforth his name {Via Domitid), and less than
CH. m.] THE ROMANS IN GAUL. 41
sixty years after Cisalpine Gaul had been reduced to a Boman
province, Borne possessed, in Transalpine G^ul, a second
province, whither she sent her armies, and where she estab-
lished her citizens without obstruction. But Providence sel-
dom allows men, even in the midst of their successes, to forget
for long how precarious they are; and when He is pleased to
remind them, it ia not by words, as the Persians reminded
their king, but by fearful events that He gives His warnings.
At the very moment when Borne believed herself set free from
GaUic invasions and on the point of avenging herself by a
course of conquest, a new invasion, more extensive and more
barbarous, came bursting upon Bome and i^pon Gaul at the
same time, and plunged them together in the same troubles
and the same perils.
In the year 113 B.o. there appeared to the north of the Adri-
atic, on the right bank of the Danube, an immense multitude
of barbarians, ravaging Noricum and threatening Italy. Two
nations predominated; the Kymrians or Cimbrians, and the
Teutons, the national name of the Germans. They came from
afar, northward, from the Cimbrian peninsula, now-a-days
Jutland, and from the coimtries bordering on the Baltic which
now-a-days form the duchies of Holstein and Schleswig. A
violent shock of earthquake, a terrible inundation, had driven
them, they said, from their homes ; and those coimtries do in-
deed show traces of such events. And Cimbrians and Teutons
had been for some time roaming over Germany.
The consul Papirius Carbo, despatched in all haste to defend
the frontier, bade them, in the name of the Boman people, to
withdraw. The barbarians modestly replied that ** they had
no intention of setthng in Noricum, and if the Bomans had
rights over the country, they would carry their arms else-
whither." The consul, who had found haughtiness succeed,
thought he might also employ perfidy against the barbarians.
He-offered guides to conduct them out of Norictun; and the
guides misled them. The consul attacked them unexpectedly
duaing the night, and was beaten.
However, the barbarians, still fearful, did not venture into
Italy. They roamed for three years along the Danube, as far
as the mountains of Macedonia and Thrace. Then retracing
their etepB^ and marching eastward, they inundated the valleys
of the Helvetic Alps, now Switzerland, having their numbers
swelled by other tribes, Gallic or G^rmcm, who preferred join-
ing in pillage to undergoing it. The Ambrons, among others,
42 HISTORY OF FRANCS, [cH. iii.
a Gallic peoplet that had taken refuge in Helvetia after the ex-
pulsion of the Umbrians by the ^Etruscans from Italy, joined
the Cimbrians and Teutons; and in the year 110 b. a all to-
gether entered Gaul, at first by way of Belgica, and then, con-
tinuing their wanderings and ravages in central Gaul, they
at last reached the Rhone, on the frontiers of the Eomaa
province.
There the name of Rome again arrested their progress; they
applied to her anew for lands, with the offer of their services.
**Rome," answered M. Silanus, who commanded in the prov-
ince, **has neither lands to give you nor services to accept
from you." He attacked them in their camp, and was beaten.
Three consuls, L. Cassius, C. Servilius Csepio, and Cn. Man-
Hus, successively experienced the same fate. With the bar-
barians victory bred presumption. Their chieftains met, and
deliberated whether they should not forthwith cross into Italy,
to exterminate or enslave the Romans, and make Kymrian
spoken at Rome. Scaurus, a prisoner, was in the tent, loaded
with fetters, during the dehberation. He was questioned about
the resources of his country. "Cross not the Alps," said he;
**go not into Italy: the Romans are invincible." In a trans-
port of fury the chieftain of the Kymrians, Boiorix by name,
fell upon the Roman, and ran him through. Howbeit the ad-
vice of Scaurus was followed. The barbarians did not as yet
dare to decide upon invading Italy; but they freely scoured
the Roman province, meeting here with repulse, and there
with reinforcement from the peoplets who formed the inhabi-
tants. The Tectosagian Voles, Kymrian in origin and mal-
treated by Rome, joined them. Then, on a sudden, whilst the
Teutons and Ambrons remained in Gaul, the Kymrians passed
over to Spain, without apparent motive, and probably as an
overswollen torrent divides, and disperses its ysraters in all
directions. The commotion at Rome was extreme; never had
so many or such wild barbarians threatened the Republic;
never had so many or such large Roman armies been beaten
in succession. There was but one man, it was said, who could
avert the danger, and give Rome the ascendency. It was
Marius, low-bom, but already illustrious; esteemed by the
Senate for his genius as a commander and for his victories;
swaying at his will the people, who saw in him one of them-
selves, and admired without envying him; beloved and feared
by the army for his bravery, his rigorous discipline, and his
readiness to share their toils and dangers; stem and rugged;
cs. in.] THE ROMANS IN GAUL. 43
without education, eloquence, or riches; ill-suited for ahmmg
in public assembhes, but resolute and dexterous in action;
verily made to dominate the vigorous but unrefined multitude,
whether in camp or city, partly by participating their feelings,
partly by giving them in his own i)erson a specimen of the
deserts and sometimes of the virtues which they esteem but
do not possess.
He was consul in Africa, where he was putting an end to the
war with Jugurtha. He was elected a second time consul,
without interval and in his absence, contrary to all the laws of
the Republic. Scarcely had he returned, when, on descending
from the Capitol, where he had just received a triumph for
having conquered and captured Jugurtha, he set out for Graul.
On his arrival, instead of proceeding, as his predecessors, to
attack the barbarians at once, he confined himself to organizing
and inuring his troops, subjecting them to frequent marches,
all kinds of military exercises, and long and hard labor. To
insure supphes he made them dig, towards the mouths of the
Bhone, a large canal which formed a junction with the river a
httle above Aries, and which, at its entrance into the sea,
offered good harborage for vessels. This canal, which existed
for a long while under the name of Fossce Mariance (the dykes
of MaritLs), is filled up now-a-days; but at its southern extrem-
ity the village of Foz still preserves a remembrance of it.
Trained in this severe school, the soldiers acquired such a
reputation for sobriety and laborious assiduity, that they were
proverbially called Marius* mules.
He was as carefiil for their moral state as for their physical
fitness, and labored to exalt their imaginations as well as to
harden their bodies. In that camp, and amidst those toils in
which he kept them strictly engaged, frequent sacrifices, and
scrupulous care in consulting the oracles, kept superstition at
a white heat. A Syrian prophetess, named Martha, who had
been sent to Marius by his wife Julia, the aunt of Julius Caesar,
was ever with him, and accompanied him at the sacred cere-
monies and on the march, being treated with the greatest
respect, and having vast influence over the minds of the
soldiers.
Two years rolled on in this fashion; and yet Marius would
not move. The increasing devastation of the country, fire, and
famine, the despair and complaints of the inhabitants, did not
shake his resolution. Nor was the confidence he inspired both
in the camp and at Home a whit shaken: he was twice re-
44 mSTORT OF FRANCB. [ch. in,
elected consul, once while he was still absent, and once during
a visit he paid to Borne to give directions to bis party in person.
It was at Rome, in the year 102 b.o., that he learned how the
Kymrians, weary of Spain, had recrossed the Pyrenees, re-
joined their old comrades, and had at last resolved, in concert,
to invade Italy; the Kymrians from the north, by way of
Helvetia and Noricum, the Teutons and Ambrons from the
south, by way of the maritiine Alps. They were to form a
jimction on the banks of the Po, and thence march together on
Rome. At this news Marius returned forthwith to Gkiul, and,
without troubling-himself about the Kymrians, who had really
put themselves in motion towards the north-east, he placed
his camp so as to cover at one and the same time the two
Roman roads which crossed at Aries, and by one of which the
Ambro-Teutons must necessarily pass to enter Italy on the
south.
They soon appeared "in immense numbers," say the his-
torians, " with their hideous looks and their wild cries," draw-
ing up their chariots and planting their tents in front of the
Roman camp. They showered upon Marius and his soldiers
continual insult and defiance. The Romans, in their irritation,
would fain have rushed out of their camp, but Marius re-
strained them. ** It is no question," said he, with his simple
and convincing common sense, "of gaining triumphs and
trophies; it is a question of averting this storm of war and of
saving Italy." A Teutonic chieftain came one day up to the
very gates of the camp, and challenged him to fight. Marius
had him informed that if he were tired of life he could go and
hang himself. As the barbarian still ^persisted, Marius sent
him a. gladiator.
However, he made his soldiers, in regular succession, mount
the ramparts, to get them familiarized with the cries, looks,
arms, and movements of the barbarians. The most distin-
guished of his officers, yoimg Sertorius, who imderstood and
spoke GaUic well, penetrated, in the disguise of a Gaul, into
the camp of the Ambrons, and informed Marius of what was
going on there.
At last the barbarians, in their impatience, having vainly
attempted to storm the Roman camp, struck their own, cmd
put themselves in motion towards the Alps. For six whole
days, it is said, their bands were defiling beneath the ramparts
of the Romans, and crying, " Have you any message for your
wives ? We shall soon be with them. "
CH. m.] THE ROMANS IN OAUL. 46
Marius, too, struck his camp, and followed them. They
halted, both of them, near A it, on the borders of the Coenus,
the barbarians in the valley, Marius on a hill which com-
manded it. The ardor of the Romans was at its height; it
was warm weather; there was a want of water on the hill, and
the soldiers murmured. ** You are men," said Marius, point-
ing to the river below,. " and there is water to be bought with
blood." " Why don't you lead us against them at once, then,"
said a soldier, ** whilst we still have blood in our veins?" ** We
must first fortify our camp," answered Marius quietly.
The soldiers obeyed; but the hour of battle had come, and
well did Marius know it. It commenced on the brink of the
Coenus, between some Ambrons who were bathing and some
Boman slaves gone down to draw water. When the whole
horde of Ambrons advanced to the battle, shouting their war-
cry of Arnbra! Ambral a body of Gallic auxiliaries in the
Boman army, and in the first rank, heard them with great
amazement; for it was their own name and their own cry;
there were tribes of Ambrons in the Alps subjected to Home
as well as in the Helvetic Alps ; and AmJbral Ambral resoimded
on both sides.
The battle lasted two days, the first against the Ambrons,
the second against the Teutons. Both were beaten, in spite of
their savage bravery, and the equal bravery of their women,
who defended, with indomitable obstinacy, the cars with which
they had remained almost alone, in charge of the children and
the booty. After the women, it was necessary to exterminate
the hoimds who defended their masters' bodies. Here again
the figures of the historians are absurd, although they differ;
the most extravagant raise the niraiber of barbarians . slain to
200,000, and that of the prisoners to 80,000, the most moderate
stop at 100,000. In any case, the carnage was great, for the
battle-field, where all these corpses rested without burial, rot
ting in the sim and rain, got the name of Campi Putridly or
Fields of Putrefaction^ a name traceable even now-a-days in
that of PourrikreSy a neighboring village.
As to the booty, the Boman army with one voice made a
free gift of it to Marius; but he, remembering perhaps what
had been lately done by the barbarians after the defeat of the
consuls Manlius and Csepio, determined to have it all burned
in honor of the gods. He had a great sacrifice prepared. The
soldiers, crowned with laurel, were ranged about the pyre;
their general, holding en hi^h a blazing torch, was about tQ
46 mSTOBT OF FRANCE, [ch. in.
apply the light with his own hand, when suddenly, on the very
spot, whether hy design or accident, came from Borne the
news that Marius had just heen for the fifth time elected
consul. In the midst of acclamations from his army, and with
a fresh chaplet hound upon his brow, he applied the torch in
person, and completed the sacrifice.
Were we travelling in Provence, in the neighborhood of Aix,
we should encoimter, x>eradventure, some peasant who, whilst
pointing out to us the smnmit of a hill whereon, in all prob-
ability, Marius offered, 1940 years ago, that glorious sacrifice,
would say to us in his native dialect, '' Aqui ^s lou d^oubr^ d6
la Vittoria:" " There is the temple of victory." There, indeed,
was built, not far from a pyramid erected in honor of Marius,
a Httle temple dedicated to Victory. Thither, every year, in
the month of May, the population used to come and celebrate
a festival and light a bonfire, answered by other bonfires on
the neighboring heights. When Gaul became Christian,
neither monument nor festival perished ; a saint took the place
of the goddess, and the temple of Victory became the church of
St. Victoire. There are still ruins of it to this day; the rehg-
ious procession which succeeded the p£igan festival ceased only
at the first outburst of the Revolution; and the vague memory
of a great national event still mingles in popular tradition with
the legends of the saint.
The Ambrons and Teutons beaten, there remained the Kym-
rians, who, according to agreement, had repassed the Helvetic
Alps and entered Italy on the north-east, by way of the Adige.
Marius marched against them in July of the following year,
101 B. o. Ignorant of what had occurred in Qaul, and possessed,
as ever, with the desire of a settlement, they again sent to him
a deputation, saying, ^*Give us lands and towns for us and
our brethren. " * * What brethren ?" asked Marius. * * The Teu-
tons." The Bomans who were about Marius began to laugh.
**Let your brethren be," said Marius; **they have land, and
will always have it ; they received it from us. " The Eymrians,
perceiving the irony of his tone, burst out into threats, telling
Marius that he should suffer for it at their hands first, and after-
wards at those of the Teutons when they arrived. **They are
here, " rejoined Marius ; ^ ' you must not depart without saluting
your brethren;" and he had Teutobod, King of the Teutons,
brought out with other captive chieftains. The envoys re-
ported the sad news in their own camp, and three days after-
wards, July 30th, a great battle took place between the Eym-
CH. IV.] GAUL CONQUERED BT JULIUS C^SAR 47
rians and the Bomans in the Baudine Plains, a large tract near
VerceiL
It were unnecessary to dwell on the details of the hattle,
which resemhled that of Aiz; hesides, fought as it was in Italy
and hy none hut Bomans, it has hut Httle to do with the history
of Gaul. It has heen mentioned only to make known the issue
of that famous invasion, of which Gaul was the principal
theatre. For a moment it threatened the very existence of
the Boman Eepuhlic. The victories of Marius arrested the tor-
rent, but did not dry up its source. The great movement
which drove from Asia to Europe, and from eastern to western
Europe, masses of roving populations, followed its course,
bringing incessantly upon the Boman frontiers new comers
and new penis. A greater man than Marius, Julius Caesar in
fact, saw that to effectually resist these clouds of barbaric assail-
ants, the coimtry into which they poured must be conquered
and made Boman. The conquest of Gaul was the accomplish-
ment of that idea, and the decisive step tow^ards the transf orma-
tion of the Boman republic into a Boman empire.
CHAPTEB IV.
GAUL CONQUERED BY JULIUS O-ffllSAB.
Historians, ancient and modem, have attributed to the
Boman Senate, from the time of the establishment of the
Boman province in Gaul, a long-premeditated design of con-
quering Gaul altogether. Others have said that when Julius
Caesar, in the year of Borne 696, got himself appointed procon-
sul i^ Gaul, his single aim was to form for himself there an
an army devoted to his person, of which he might avail him-
self to satisfy his ambition and make himself master of Bome.
We should not be too ready to believe in these far-reaching and
precise plans, conceived and settled so long beforehand,
whether by a senate or a single man. Prevision and exact
calculation do not count for so much in the hves of govern-
ments and of peoples. It is imexpected events, inevitable sit-
uations, the imperious necessities of successive epochs, which
most often decide the conduct of the greatest powers and the
48 HI8T0RT OF FJ^ANCK [ch. iv.
most able politicians. It is after the fair, when the course of
facts and their consequences has received full development,
that, amidst their tranquil meditations, annalists and histori-
ans in their learned way, attribute everything to systematic
plans and personal calculations on the part of the chief actors.
There is much less of combination than of momentary inspira-
tion, derived from circumstances, in the resolutions and con-
duct of political chiefs, kings, senators, or great men. From
the time that discord and corruption had turned the Eoman
Republic into a bloody and tyrannical anarchy, the Eoman
Senate no longer meditated grand designs, and its members
were preoccupied only with the question of escaping or aveng-
ing proscriptions. When Caesar procured for himself the gov-
ernment for five years of the Gauls, the fact was, that, not de-
siring to be a sanguinary dictator like Scylla, or a gala chief-
tain Uke Pompey, he went and sought abroad, for his own
glory and fortune's sake, in a war of general Eoman interest,
the means and chances of success which were not furnished to
him in Rome itself by the dogged and nionotonous struggle of
the factions.
In spite of the victories of Marius, and the destruction or
dispersion of the Teutons and Cimbrians, the whole of Gaul re-
mained seriously disturbed and threatened. At the north-east,
in Belgica, some bands of other Teutons, who had begun to be
called Germans (men of war), had passed over the left bank of
the Rhine, and were settling or wandering there without defi-
nite purpose. In eastern and central Gaul, in the valleys of
the Jura and Auvergne, on the banks of the Saone, the AUier,
and the Doubs, the two great Gallic confederations, that of the
-^duans and that of the Arvemians, were disputing the pre-
ponderance, and making war one upon another, seeking the
aid, respectively, of the Romans and of the Germans. At the
foot of the Alps, the Httle nation of Allobrogians, having
fallen a prey to civil dissension, had given up its independence
to Rome. Even in southern and western Gaul the populations
of Aquitania were rising, vexing the Roman province, and
rendering necessary, on both sides of the Pyrenees, the inter-
vention of Roman legions. Everywhere fioods of barbaric
populations were pressing upon Gaul, were carrying dis-
quietude even where they had not themselves yet penetrated,
and causing presentiments of a general commotion. The
danger burst before long upon particular places and in con-
nection with particular names which have remained historical.
MOUNTED GAULS.
THE NEW ¥tRK
FUSLTC LIBRARY
AST OR, LENCX
CH. IV.] QAUL CONQUERED B7 JULIUS CM8AR. 49
In the war with the confederation of the ^duans, that of the
Arvemians called to their aid the Gterman Ariovistus, chieftain
of a confederation of tribes which, under the name of Suevians,
were roving over the right bank of the Ehine, ready at any
time to cross the river. Ariovistus, with 15,000 warriors at his
back, was not slow in responding to the appeal. The ^duans
were beaten; and Ariovistus settled amongst the Gauls who
had been thoughtless enough to appeal to him. Numerous
bands of Suevians came and rejoined him ; and in two or three
years after his victory he had about him, it was said, 120,000
warriors. He had appropriated to them a third of the terri-
tory of his GaUic allies, and he imperiously demanded another
third to satisfy other 26,000 of his old Gterman comrades, who
asked to share his booty and his new country. One of the
foremost ^Eduans, Divitiacus by name, went and invoked the
succor of the Eoman people, the patrons of his confederation.
He was admitted to the presence of the Senate, and invited to
be seated; but he .modestly declined, and standing, leaning
upon his shield, he set forth the sufferings and the claims of
his country. He received kindly promises, which at first re-
mained without fruit. He, however, remained at Eome, per-
sistent in his solicitations, and carrying on intercourse with
several Eomans of consideration, notably with Cicero, who
says of him, **I knew Divitiacus, the ^duan, who claimed
proficiency in that natural science which the Greeks call phys-
iology, and he predicted the future, either by augury or his
own conjecture." The Eoman Senate, with the indecision and
indolence of all declining powers, hesitated to engage, for the
^duans' sake, in a war against the invaders of a comer of
Gallic territory. At the same time that they gave a cordial
welcome to Divitiacus, they entered into negotiations with
Ariovistus himself; they gave him beautiful presents, the title
of King^ and even oi friend; the only demand they made was
that he should live peaceably in his new settlement, and not
lend his support to tbe fresh invasions of which there were
symptoms in Gaul, and which were becoming too serious for
resolutions not to be taken to repel them.
A people of Gallic race, the Helvetians, who inhabited pres-
ent Switzerland, where the old name still abides beside the
modem, found themselves, incessantly threatened, ravaged,
and invaded by the German tribes which pressed upon their
frontiers. After some years of perplexity and internal dis-
cord, the whole Helvetic nation decided upon abandoning its
50 UlSTOBT OF FRANCE, [ch. iv.
territory, and going to seek in Gaul, westward, it is said, on
the borders of the ocean, a more tranquil settlement. Being
informed of this design, the Roman Senate and Caesar, at that
time consul, resolved to protect the Boman province and their
Gallic alHes, the JSduans, against this inimdation of roving
neighbors. The Helvetians none the less persisted in their
plan; and in the spring of the year of Rome 696 (58 B.o.) they
committed to the flames, in the country they were about to
leave, twelve towns, four himdred villages, and all their
houses; loaded their cars with provisions for three months,
and agreed to meet at the southern point of the Lake of
Geneva. They found on their reimion, says Caesar, a total of
368,000 emigrants, including 92,000 men-at-arms. The Switzer-
land which they abandoned numbers now 2, 500, 000 inhabitants.
But when the Helvetians would have entered Gaul, they f oimd
there Caesar, who, after having got himself appointed pro-
consul for five years, had arrived suddenly at Geneva, pre-
pared to forbid their passage. They sent to him a deputation,
to ask leave, they said, merely to traverse the Roman prov-
ince without causing the least damage. Caesar knew as well
how to gain time as not to lose any ; he was not ready, so he
put off the Helvetians to a second conference. In the interval
he employed his legionaries, who could work as well as fight,
in erecting upon the left bank of the Rhone a wall sixteen feet
high and ten miles long, which rendered the passage of the
river very difl3.cult, and, on the return of the Helvetian en-
voys, he formally forbade them to pass by the road they had
proposed to f oUow. They attempted to take another, and to
cross not the Rhone but the Saone, and march thence towards
western Gaul. But whilst they were arranging for the execu-
tien of this movement, Caesar, who had up to that time only
four legions at his disposal, returned to Italy, brought away
five fresh legions, and arrived on the left bank of the Saone at
the moment when the rear-guard of the Helvetians was em-
barking to rejoin the main body which had already pitched its
camp on the right bank. Caesar cut to pieces this rear-guard,
crossed the river, in his turn, with his legions, pursued the
emigrants without relaxation, came in contact with them on
several occasions, at one time attacking them or repelling their
attacks, at another receiving and giving audience to their en-
voys without ever consenting to treat with them, and before
the end of the year he had so completely beaten, decimated,
dispersed and driven them back, that of 368,000 Helvetians
C3H.IV.] QAUL CONQUERED BT JULIUS CJSSAB, 61
who had entered Graul, but 110,000 escaped from the Romans,
and were enabled, by flight, to regain their country.
.£duans, Sequanians, or Arvemians, €tll the Gauls interested
in the struggle thus terminated, were eager to congratulate
Caesar upon his victory; but if they were dehvered from the
invasion of the Helvetians, another scourge f eU heavily upon
them ; Ariovistus and the Germans, who were settled upon their
territory, oppressed them cruelly, and day by day fresh bands
were continually coming to aggravate the evil and the danger.
They adjured Caesar to protect them from these swarms of
barbarians. *'In a few years,'* said they, ''all the Germans
will have crossed the Bhine, and €tll the Gauls will be driven
from Gaul, for the soil of Germany cannot compare with that
of Gaul, any more than the mode of life. If Caesar and the
Eoman people refuse to aid us, there is nothing left for us but
to abandon our lands, as the Helvetians would have done in
their case, and go seek, afor, from the Germans, another
dwelling-place." Caesar, touched by so prompt an appeal to
the power of his name and fame, gave ear to the prayer of the
Gkiuls. But he was for trying negotiation before war. He
proposed to Ariovistus an interview ''at which they might
treat in common of affairs of importance for both." Ario-
vistus rephed that " if he wanted anything of Caesar, he would
go in search of him; if Caesar had business with him, it was
for Caesar to come." Caesar thereupon conveyed to him by
messenger his express injunctions, " not to summon any more
from the borders of the Rhine fresh multitudes of men, and to
cease from vexing the JBiduans and making war on them, them
and their allies. Otherwise, Caesar would not fail to avenge
their wrongs." Ariovistus replied that "he had conquered
the JSduans. The Boman i>eople were in the habit of treating
the vanquished after their owii pleasure, and not the advice of
another; he too, himself, had the same right. Caesar said he
would avenge the wrongs of the .Jkluans ; but no one had ever
attacked him with impunity. If Caesar would Uke to try it,
let him come; he would learn what could be done by the
bravery of the Germans, who were as yet unbeaten, who were
trained to arms, who for fourteen years had not slept beneath
a roof." At the moment he received this answer Caesar had
just heard that fresh bands of Suevians were encamped on the
right bank of the Bhine, ready to cross, and that Ariovistus
with all his forces was making towards Vesontio (Besangon),
fhe chief towp pf t)ie Pequanians. Caesar forthwith put Wm-
B2 'HISTORT OF FRANCS. [ch. nr.
self in motion, occupied Vesontdo, established there a strong
garrison, and made his arrangements for issuing from it with
his legions to go and anticipate the attack of Ariovistus. Then
came to him word that no little disquietude was showing itself
among the Boman troops ; that many soldiers and even officers
appeared anxious about the struggle with the Germans, their
ferocity, the vast forests that must be traversed to reach them,
the difficult roads, and the transport of provisions; there was
an apprehension of broken courage, and perchance .of numer-
ous desertions. Csesar summoned a great council of war, to
which he called the chief officers of his legions; he complained
bitterly of their alarm, recalled to their memory their recent
success against the Helvetians, and scoffed at the rumors
spread about the Germans, and at the doubts with which there
was an attempt to inspire him about the fidelity and obedience
of his troops. ** An army," said he, " disobeys only the com-
mander who leads them badly and has no good fortune, or is
foimd guilty of cupidity and malversation. My whole life shows
my Integrity, and the war against the Helvetians my good
fortune. I shall order forthwith the departure I had intended
to put off. I shall strike the camp the very next night, at the
fourth watch; I wish to see as soon as possible whether honor
and duty or fea;r prevail in your ranks. If there be any re-
fusal to f oUow me, I shall march with only the tenth legion, of
which I have no doubt; that shall be my praetorian cohort."
The cheers of the troops, officers and men, were the answer
given to the reproaches and hopes of their general; all hesita-
tion passed away; and Caesar set out with his army. He
fetched a considerable compass, to spare them the passage of
thick forests, and, after a seven days' march, arrived at a
short distance from the camp of Ariovistus. On learning that
Cesesar was already so near, the German sent to him a mes-
senger with proposals for the interview which was but lately
demanded, and to which there was no longer any obstacle,
since Caesar had himself arrived upon the spot. And the in-
terview really took place, with mutual precautions for safety
and warlike dignity. Caesar repeated all the demands he had
made upon Ariovistus, who, in his turn, maintained his re-
fusal, asking, ''What was wanted? Why had foot been set
upon his lands? That part of Gaul was Mb province, just as
the other was the Roman province. If Caesar did not retire,
tmd withdraw his troops, he should consider him no more a
friend but an enemy. He knew that if he were to slay Caesar,
Ctt. iv.l GAUL COSqxTBBBD BY JULIUS CjSSAR fig
he would recommend himself to many noblee and chiefs
amongst the Roman people; he had learned as much from
their own envoys. But if Caesar retired and left >iiTn, Ariovis-
tusy in free possession of Graul, he would pay liberally in re-
turn, and would wage on Caesar's behalf without trouble or
danger to him, any wars he might desire." During this inter-
view it is probable that Caesar siniled more than once at the
boldness and shrewdness of the barbarian. Ultimately some
horsemen in the escort of Ariovistus began to caracole towards
the Bomans, and to hurl at them stones and darts. Caesar or-
dered his men to make no reprisals, and broke off the confer-
ence. The next day but one Ariovistus proposed a renewal;
but Caesar refused, having decided to bring the quarrel to an
issue. Several days in succession he led out his legions from
their camp, and offered battle ; but Ariovistus remained within
his lines. Caesar then took the resolution of assailing the
Grerman camp. At his approach, the Germans at length
moved out from their entrenchments, arrayed by peoplets,
and defiling in front of cars filled with their women, who im-
plored them with tears not to deliver them in slavery to the
Bomans. The struggle was obstinate, and not without mo-
ments of anxiety and partial check for the Bomans; but the
genius of Caesar and strict discipline of the legions carried the
day. The rout of the Germans was complete ; they fied towards
the Bhine, which was only a few leagues from the field of bat-
tle. Ariovistus himself was amongst the fugitives; he found
a boat by the river-side, and re-crossed into Germany, where
he died shortly afterwards, '^to the great grief of the Ger-
mans,'' says Caesar. The Suevian bands, who were awaiting
on the right baiik the result of the struggle, plunged back
. again within their own territory. And so the invasion of the
Germans was stopped as the emigration of the Helvetians had
been ; and Caesar had only to conquer Gaul.
It is uncertain whether he had from the very first deter-
mined the whole plan ; but so soon as he set seriously to work,
he felt all the difficulties. The expulsion of the Helvetian
emigrants and of the German invaders left the Bomans and
Gauls alone face to face; and from that moment the Bomans
were, in the eyes of the Gauls, foreigners, conquerors, op-
pressors. Their deeds aggravated day by day the feelings
excited by the situation; they did not ravage the country as
the Germans had done; they did not appropriate such and
such a piece of land; but every where they assumed the
54 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [CH. nr.
mastery: they laid heavy burdens upon the population; they
removed the rightful chieftains who were opposed to them,
and forcibly placed or maintained in power those only who
were subservient to them. Independently of the Eoman em-
pire, CsBsar established every where his own personal infiu*
ence; by turns gentle or severe, caressing or threatening, he
sought and created for himself partisans amongst the Gauls,
as he had amongst his army, showing favor to those only
whose devotion was assured to him. To national antipathy
towards foreigners must be added the intrigues and personal
rivalry of the conquered in their relations with the conqueror.
Conspiracies were hatched, insurrections soon broke out in
nearly every part of Gaul, in the heart even of the peoplets
most subject to Roman dominion. Every movement of the
kind was for Caasar a provocation, a temptation, almost an
obligation to conquest. He accepted them and profited by
them, with that promptitude in resolution, boldness and ad-
dress in execution, and cool indifference as to the means em-
ployed, which were characteristic of his genius. During nine
years, from a.u.o. 696 to 705, and in eight successive campaigns,
he carried his troops, bis lieutenants, himself, and, ere long,
war or negotiation, corruption, discord, or destruction in his
path, amongst the different nations and confederations of Gaul,
Celtic, Kymric, Grermanic, Iberian or Hybrid, northward and
eastward, in Belgica, between the Seine and the Bhine ; west-
ward, in Armorica, on the borders of the Ocean; south-west-
ward, in Aquitania; centre-ward, amongst the peoplets estab-
Hshed between the Seine, the Loire, and the Sa6ne. He was
nearly always victorious, and then at one time he pushed his
victory to the bitter end, at another stopped at the right mo-
ment, that it might not be compromised. When he experienced
reverses, he bore them without repining, and repaired them
with inexhaustible ability and courage. More than once, to
revive the sinking spirits of his men, he was rashly lavish of
his person ; and on one of those occasions, at the raising of the
siege of Gtergovia, he was all but taken by some- Arvemian
horsemen, and left his sword in their hands. It was found, a
while afterwards, when the war was over, in a temple in which
the Gauls had hung it. Caesar's soldiers would have torn it
down, and returned it to him; but **let it be," said he, "'tis
sanctified." In good or evil fortune, the hero of a triumph at
Eome or a prisoner in the hands of Mediterranean pirates, he
wias unrivalled in striking the imaginations of men and grow-
CH. IV.] QAUL CONQUERED BY JULIUS C^SAB. 65
ing great in their eyes. He did not confine himself to con-
quering and suhjecting the Gauls in Gaul; his ideas were ever
outstripping his deeds, and he knew how to make his power
felt even where he had made no attempt to establish it. Twice
he crossed the Rhine to hurl back the Germans beyond their
river, and to strike to the very hearts of their forests the terror
of the Boman name (a.u.c. 699, 700). He equipped two fleets,
made two descents on Great Britain (a.u.o. 699, 700), several
times defeated the Britons and their principal chieftain Cas-
wallon (Cassivellaunus), and set up, across the channel, the
first land-marks of Boman conquest. He thus became more
and more famous and terrible, both in Gaul, whence he some-
times departed for a moment, to go and look after his political
prospects in Italy, and in more distant lands, where he was
but an apparition.
But the greatest minds are far from foreseeing all the conse-
quences of their deeds, and all the perils proceeding from their
successes. Caesar was by nature neither violent nor cruel ; but
he did not trouble himself about justice or humanity, and the
success of his enterprises, no matter by what means or at what
price, was his sole law of conduct. He could show, on occa-
sion, moderation and mercy ; but when he had to put down an
obstinate resistance, or when a long and arduous effort had
irritated him, he had no hesitation in employing atrocious
severity and perfidious promises. During his first campaign
in Belgica (a.u.o. 697 and 57 B.b.), two peoplets, the Nervians
and the Aduaticans, had gallantly struggled, with brief mo-
ments of success, against the Roman legions. The Nervians
were conquered and almost annihilated. Their last remnants,
huddled for refuge in the midst of their morasses, sent a depu-
tation to Csesar, to make dubmission, saying, ** Of six hundred
senators three only are left, and of sixty thousand men that
bore arms scarce five hundred have escaped." Caesar received
them kindly, returiied to them their lands, and warned their
neighbors to do them no harm. The Aduaticans, on the con-
trary, defended themselves to the last extremity. Caesar,
having slain four thousand, had all that remained sold by
auction; and fifty-six thousand human beings, according to
his own statement, passed as slaves into the hands of their
purchasers. Some years later, another Belgian peoplet, the
Eburons, settled between the Meuse and the Rhine, rose and
inflicted great losses upon the Roman legions. Caesar put
them beyond the pale of military and human law^ and had all
66 BISTORT OF FRANCS, [cB. iv.
the neighboring peoplets and all the roving bands invited to
come and pillage and destroy ''that accursed race," promising
to whoever would join in the work the friendship of the Eoman
people. A little later still, some insurgents in the centre of
Gaul had concentrated in a place to the south-west, called
UxeUodunum (now-a-days, it is said, Puy d'Issola, in the de-
partment of the Lot, between Yayrac and Martel). After a
long resistance they were obliged to surrender, and CsBsar had
all the combatants' hands cut off, and sent them, thus muti-
lated, to live and rove throughout Gaul, as a spectacle to all
the country that was or was to be brought to submission. Nor
were the rigors of administration less than those of warfare.
CsBsar wanted a great deal of money, not only to maintarn
satisfactonly his troops in Gaul, but to defray the enormous
expenses he was at in Italy, for the purpose of enriching his
partisans, or secunng the favor of the Roman people. It was
with the produce of imposts and plunder in Gaul that he un-
dertook the reconstruction at Rome of the basilica of the Forum,
the site whereof, extending to the temple of Liberty, was valued,
it is said, at more than twenty million five hundred thousand
francs (820,000Z.). Cicero, who took the direction of the works,
wrote to his friend Atticus, ** We shall make it the most glor-
ious thing in the world." Cato was less satisfied; three years
previously despatches from Caesar had announced to the Senate
his victories over the Belgian and Gterman insurgents. The
Senators had voted a general thanksgiving, but ''Thanks-'
giving I" cried Cato, "rather expiation! Pray the gods not to
visit upon our armies the sin of a guilty general. Give up
CsBsar to the Germans, and let the foreigner know that Rome
does not enjoin perjury, and rejects with horror the fruit
thereof!"
Csesar had all the gifts, all the means of success and empire,
that can be possessed by man. He was great in politics and in
war; as active and as full of resource amidst the intrigues of
the Forum as amidst the combinations and surprises of the
battle-field; equally able to please and to terrify. He had a
double pride, which gave him double confidence in himself,
the pride of a great noble and the pride of a great man. He
was fond of saying, "My aunt Julia is, maternally, the daugh-
ter of kings; paternally, she is descended from the immortal
gods; my family unites, to the! sacred character of kings who
are the most powerful amongst men^ the awful majesty of the
gods who have even kings in their keeping." Thus, by birth
CH. IV.] GAm CONQtTERED BY JULWS Cj^SAR St
as well as nature, Caesar felt called to dominion; and, at the
same time, he was perfectly aware of the decadence of the
Eoman patriciate, and of the necessity for being popular in
order to become master. With this double instinct he under-
took the conquest of the Gauls as the surest means of achieving
conquest at Bome. But owing either to his own vices or to
the difficulties of the situation, he displayed in his conduct
and his work in Gaul so much violence and oppression, so
much iniquity and cruel indifference, that, even at that time,
in the midst of Eoman harshness, pagan corruption, and Gallic
or Grerman barbarism, so great an infliction of moraJ and ma-
terial harm could not but be followed by a formidable reaction.
Where there is strength and ability, the want of foresight, the
fears, the weaknesses, the dissensions of men, whether indi-
viduals or peoples, may be for a long while calculated upon ;
but it may be carried too far. After six years' struggling
Caesar was victor; he had successively dealt with all the
different populations of Gaul ; he had passed through and sub-
jected them all, either by his own strong arm, or thanks to
their rivalries. In the year of Eome 702 he was suddenly in-
formed in Italy, whither he had gone on his Boman business,
that most of the Gallic nations, united imder a chieftain
hitherto unknown, were rising with one common impulse, and
reconmiencing war.
The same perils and the same reverses, the same sufferings
and the same resentments, had stirred up amongst the Gauls,
without distinction of race and name, a sentiment to which
they had hitherto been almost strangers, the sentiment of
Grallic nationality and the passion for independence, not local
any longer, but national. This sentiment was first manifested
amongst the populace and under obscure chieftains; a band of
Camutian peasants (people of Chartrain) rushed upon the town
of G^nabum (Gien), roused the inhabitants, and massacred the
Italian traders and a Boman knight, C. Fusius Cita, whom
Caesar had commissioned to buy com there. In less than
twenty-four hours the signal of insurrection against Bome was
bome across the country as far as the Arvemians, amongst
whom conspiracy had long ago been waiting and paving the
way for insurrection. Amongst them lived a yoimg Gaul
whose real name has remained unknown, and whom history
has called Verdngetorix, that is, chief over a hundred heads,
chief -in-general. He cams of an ancient and powerful family
of Arvemians, and his father had been put to death in his own
58 mSTOET OF FRANCE, [oh. vr.
city for attempting to make himself king. Caesar knew him,
and had taken some pains to attach him to himself. It does
not appear that the Arvemian aristocrat had absolutely de-
clined the overtures ; but when l^he hope of national independ-
ence was aroused, Vercingetorix was its representative and
chief. He descended with his followers from the moimtain,
and seized Gergovia, the capital of his nation. Thence his
messengers spread over the centre, north-west, and west of
Gaul; the greater part of the peoplets and cities of those
regions pronoimced from the first moment for insurrection;
the same sentiment was working amongst others more com-
promised with Home, who waited only for a breath of success
to break out. Vercingetorix was immediately invested with
the chief command, and he made use of it with -all the passion
engendered by patriotism and the possession of power; he
regulated the movement, demanded hostages, fixed the con-
tingents of troops, imposed.taxes, infiicted summary punish-
ment on the traitors, the dastards, and the indifferent, and
subjected those who turned a deaf ear to the appeal of their
common covmtry to the same pains and the same mutilations
that Caesar inflicted on those who obstinately resisted the
Roman yoke.
At the news of this great movement Caesar immediately left
Italy, and returned to Gaul. He had one quality, rare even
amongst the greatest men, he remained cool amidst the very
hottest alarm; necessity never hurried him into precipi-
tation, and he prepared for the struggle as if he were always
sure of arriving on the spot in time to sustain it. He was
always quick, but never hasty ; and his activity and patience
were equally admirable and efficacious. Starting from Italy
at the beginningof 702 A.U.C., he passed two months in trav-
ersing within Gaul the Roman province and its neighborhood,
in visiting the points threatened by the insurrection, and the
openings by which he might get at it, in assembling his troops,
in confirming his wavering allies ; and it was not before the
early part of March that he moved with his whole army to
Agendicum (Sens), the very centre of revolt, and started thence
to push on the war with vigor. In less than three months he
had spread devastation throughout the insurgent country;
he had attacked and taken its principal cities, VeUaimodunmn
(Trigu^res), G^nabum (Gien), Noviodunum (Sancerre), and
Avaricmn (Bourges), delivering up every where covmtry and
city, lands and inhabitants, to the rage of the Roman soldiery.
CH. IT.] GAVL CONQUERED BY JULIUS C^SAB. 69
maddened at having again to conquer enemies so often con-
quered. To strike a decisive blow, he penetrated at last to the
heart of the country of the Arvemians, and laid siege to
Gergovia, their capital and the birthplace of Vercingetorix.
The firmness and the ability of the Qallic chieftain were not
inferior to such a struggle. He understood from the outset
that he could not cope in the open field with Caesar and the
Roman legions; he therefore exerted himself in getting to-
gether a body of cavalry numerous enough to harass the
Romans during their movements, to attack their scattered
detachments, to bear his orders swiftly to all quarters, and to
keep up the excitement amongst the different peoplets with
some hope of success. His plan of campaign, his repeated in-
structions, his passionate entreaties to the confederates were
to avoid any general action, to anticipate by their own ravages
those of the Romans, to destroy every where, at the approach
of the enemy, stores, springs, bridges, trees, and habitations:
he wanted Caesar to find in his front nothing but ruins and
clouds of warriors relentless in pursuing him without getting
within reach. Frequently he succeeded in obtaining from the
people those painful sacrifices in the interest of the common
safety ; as when the Biturigians (inhabitants of the district of
Bourges) burned jn one day twenty of their towns or villages.
Vercingetorix adjured them also to bum Avaricum (Bourges),
their capital; but they refused, and the capture of Avaricum,
though gallantly defended, justified the urgency of Ver-
cingetorix, seeing that it was an important success for Caesar
and a serious blow for the Gb.uls. Out of 40,000 combatants
within the walls, it is said, scarcely 800 escaped the slaughter
and succeeded in joining Vercingetorix, who had hovered con-
tinually in the neighborhood without being able to offer the
besieged any effectual assistance. Nor was it only against the
Romans that he had to struggle; he had to fight amongst his
own people, against rivalry, mistrust, impatience, and dis-
couragement; he was accused of desiring, beyond every
thing, the mastery; he was even suspected of keeping up, with
the view of cissuring his own future, secret relations with
Caesar; he was called ui>on to attack the enemy in front, and
so bring the war to a decisive issue. It is all very fine to be
summoned by the popular voice to accomplish a great and
arduous work; but you cannot be, with impunity, the most
far-sifted, the most able, and the most in danger, because the
most devoted. Vercingetorix was bearing the burden of his
60 msTOBY OP fRANCBl, [ca. rr.
superiority and influence, untU he should suffei" the penalty
and pay with his hf e for his patriotism and his glory. He was
approaching the happiest moment of his enterprise and his
destiny. In spite of reverses, in spite of Caesar's presence and
activity, the insurrection was gaining ground and strength; in
the north, west, and south-west, on the banks of the Ehine,
the Seine, and the Loire, the idea of Gallic nationality and the
hope of independence was spreading amongst people far
removed from the centre of the movement, and were bringing
to Vercingetorix declarations of sympathy or material rein-
forcements. An event of more importance took place in the
centre itself. The ^duans, the most ancient allies and clients
the Eomans had in Gaul, being divided amongst themselves,
and feehng, besides, the national instinct, ended, after much
hesitation, by taking part in the uprising* Csesar, for all his
care, could neither prevent nor stifle this defection, which
threatened to become contagious, and detach from Eome the
neighboring peoplets that were still faithful. Caesar, engaged
upon the siege of Gergovia, encoimtered an obstinate resist-
ance ; whilst Vercingetorix, encamped on the heights which sur-
roimded his birthplace, every where embarrassed, sometimes
attacked, and incessantly threatened the Eomans. The eighth
legion, drawn on one day to make an imprudent assault, was
repulsed, and lost forty-six of its bravest centurions. Caesar
determined to raise the siege, and to transfer the struggle to
places where the population could be more safely depended
ui)on. It was the first decisive check he had experienced in
Gaul, the first Gallic town that he had been unable to take,
the first retrograde movement he had executed in the face of
the Gallic insurgents and their chieftain. Vercingetorix could
not and would not restrain his joy; it seemed to him that
the day had dawned and an excellent chance arrived for at-
tempting a decisive blow. He had under his orders, it is said,
80,000 men, mostly his own Arvemians, and a numerous cav-
alry furnished by the different peoplets his allies. He followed
all Caesar's movements in retreat towards the Saone, and,
on arriving at Longeau not far from Langres, near a
little river called the Vingeanne, he halted, pitched his camp
about nine miles from the Eomans, and assembling the chie&t
of his cavalry, said, "Now is the hour of victory; the Eomans
are flying to their province and leaving Gaul; that is enough
for our hberty to-day, but too little for the peace and repose
of the future; for they will return with greater armies, and
OH. IV.] QAUL CONQXTBRBD BY JULIUS C^SAB. 61
the war will be without end. Attack we them amid the diffi-
culties of their march; if their foot support the cavalry, they
will not be able to pursue their route; if, as I fully trust, they
leave their baggage, to provide for their safety, they will lose
both their honor and the supplies whereof they have need.
None of the enemy's horse will dare to come forth from their
lines. To give ye courage and aid, I will order forth from the
camp and place in battle-€UTay all our troops, and they will
strike the enemy with terror." The Gallic horsemen cried out
that they must all bind themselves by the most sacred of
oaths, and swear that none of them would come again under
roof, or see again wife, or children, or parent, unless he had
twice pierced through the ranks of the enemy. And all did
take this oath, and so prepared for the attack. Vercingetorix
knew not that Caesar, with his usual foresight, had summoned
and joined to his legions, a great number of horsemen from
the German tribes roving over the banks of the Bhine, with
which he had taken care to keep up friendly relations. Not
only had he promised them pay, plimder, and lands, but, find-
ing their horses ill-trained, he had taken those of his officers,
even those of the Eom£ui knights and veterans, and distributed
them amongst his barbaric auxiliaries. The action began be-
tween the cavalry on both sides; a portion of the GkdUc had
taken up x>06ition on the road followed by the Roman army,
to bar its passage; but whilst the fighting at this i>oint was
getting more and more obstinate, the German horse in Caesar's
service gained a neighboring height, drove off the Gkdlic horse
that were in occupation, and pursued them as far as the river,
near which was Vercingetorix with his infantry. Disorder
took place amongst this infantry so unexpectedly attacked.
Caesar launched his legions at them, and there was a general
panic and rout among the Gauls. Vercingetorix had great
trouble in rallying them, and he rallied them only to order a
general retreat, for which they clamored. Hurriedly striking
his camp, he miade for Alesia (Semur in Auxois), a neighboring
town and the capital of the Mandubians, a peoplet in clientslilp
to the ^duans. Caesar immediately went in pursuit of the
Gauls; killed, he says, SOOO; made imx>ortant> prisoners; and
encamped with his legions before Alesia the day but one after
Vercingetorix, with his fugitive army, had occupied the place
as well as the neighboring hills and was hard at work in-
trenching himself, probably without any clear idea as yet of
what he should do to continue the stru^le,
62 HISTORY OF FRANCE, [ch. nr.
CsBsar at onoe took a resolution as imezpected as it was dis-
creetly bold. Here was the whole Oallic insurrection,
chieftain and soldiery, united together within or beneath the
walls of a town of moderate extent. He undertook to keep it
there and destroy it on the spot, instead of having to pursue it
every whither without ever being sure of getting at it. He^
had at his disx>osal eleven legions, about 50,000 strong, and
5000 or 6000 cavalry, of which 2000 were Germans. He placed
them round about Alesia and the G^aUic camp, caused to be
dug a circuit of deep ditches, some filled with water, others
bristling with palisades and snares, and added, from interval
to interval, twenty-three little forts, occupied or guarded night
and day by detachments. The result was a line of investment
about ten miles in extent. To the rear of the Roman camp,
and for defence against attacks from without, Caesar caused to
be dug similar intrenchments, which formed a line of circum-
vallation of about thirteen miles. The troops had provisions
and forage for thirty days. Vercingetorix made frequent
sallies to stop or destroy these works; but they were repulsed,
and only resulted in getting his army more closely cooped up
within the place. Eighty thousand Gallic insurgents were, as
it were, in prison, guarded by fifty thousand Roman soldiers.
Vercingetorix was one of those who persevere and act in the
days of distress just as in the spring-tide of their hopes.
Before the works of the Romans were finished, he assembled
his horsemen, and ordered them to saUy briskly from Alesia,
return each to his own land, and summon the whole population
to arms. He was obeyed; the Gallic horsemen made their
way, during the night, through the intervals left by the
Romans' still imperfect lines of investment, and dispersed
themselves amonst their various peoplets. Nearly every
where irritation and zeal were at their height ; an assemblage
of delegates met at Bibracte (Autim), and fixed the amount of
the contingent to be fmnished by each nation, and a point
was assigned at which all those contingents should unite for
the purpose of marching together towards Alesia, and attack-
ing the besiegers, the total of the contingents thus levied on
forty-three Gallic peoplets amoimted, according to CsBsar, to
283,000 men; and 240,000 men, it is said, did actually hurry up
to the apx>ointed place. Mistrust*of such enormous numbers
has already been expressed by one who has lived through the
greatest European wars, and has heard the ablest generals
r^duc? to their real strength the largest armies. We find in
CH. IV.] GAUL CONQUERED BY JULIUS C^SAB. 63
M. Thiers' History of the Canaublafe and Empire, that at
Austerlitz, on the 2nd of December, 1805, Napoleon had but
from 65,000 to 70,000 men, and the combined Austrians and
Russians, but 90,000. At Leipzig, the biggest of modem bat-
tles, when all the French forces on the one side, and the
Austrian, Prussian, Russian and Swedish on the other, were
face to face on the 18th of October, 1813, they made altogether
about 500,000 men. How can we believe, then, that nineteen
centuries ago, Gaul, so v^eakly popidated and so slightly or-
ganized, suddenly sent 240,000 men to the assistance of 80,000
.Gauls besieged in the little town of Alesia by 50,000 or 60,000
Romans? But whatever may be the case with the figures, it is
certain that at the very first moment the national impulse an-
swered the appeal of Vercingetorix, and that the besiegers of
AlesiA, C888ar and his legions, found that they were them-
selves all at once besieged in their intrenchments by a cloud of
Gauls hurrying up to the defence of their compatriots. The
struggle was fierciB, but short. Every time that the fresh
Gallic army attacked the besiegers, Vercingetorix and the
Gauls of Alesia sallied forth, and joined in the attack. Caesar
and his legions, on their side, at one time repulsed these double
attacks, at another themselves took the initiative, and as-
sailed at one and the same time the besieged and the auxilia-
ries Gaul had sent them. The feeling was passionate on both
» sides: Roman pride was pitted against GaUic patriotism. But
in four or five days the strong organization, the disciplined
valor of the Roman legions, and the genius of Caesar carried
the day. The Gallic reinforcements, beaten and slaughtered
without mercy, dispersed; and Vercingetorix and the be-
sieged were crowded back within their walls without hope of
escape. We have two accounts of the last moments of this
great Gkdlic insurrection and its chief; one, written by CdBsar
himself, plain, cold, and harsh as its author; the other, by two
later historians, who were neither statesmen nor warrriors,
Plutarch and Dion Cassius, has more detail and more orna-
ment, following either popular tradition or the imagination of
the writers. It maybe well to give both. "The day after the
defeat," says Caesar, ** Vercingetorix convokes the assembly;
and shows that he did not undertake the war for his own per-
sonal advantage but for the general freedom. Since submis-
sion must be made to fortune, he offers to satisfy the Romans
either by instant death or by being delivered to them alive. A
deputation there anentis sent to Caesar, who orders %h^ cu*m$
64 HISTORY OF FRANCE, [ch. iv.
to be given up and the chiefs brought to him. He seats him-
self on his tribunal, in front of his camp. The chiefs .are
brought; Vercingetorix is delivered over; the arms are cast at
Csesar^s feet. Except the j^duans and Arvemians, whom
Caesar kept for the purpose of trying to regain their people,
he had the prisonera distributed, head by head, to his army as
booty of war."
The accoimt of Dion Cassius is more varied and dramatic.
*' After the defeat," says he, ** Vercingetorix, who was neither
captured nor woimded, might have fled; but, hoping that the
friendship that had once boimd him to Caesar might gain him»
grace, he repaired to the Boman without previous demand of
peace by the voice of a herald, and appeared suddenly in his
presence, just as Caesar was seating himself upon his tribunal.
The apparition of the Gallic chieftam inspired no little terror,
for he was of lofty stature, an4 had an imposing appearance in
arms. There was a deep silence. Vercingetorix fell at Caesar's
feet, and made supplication by touch of hand without speaking
a word. The scene moved those present with pity, remember-
ing the ancient f ortimes of Vercingetorix and comparing them
with his present disaster. Caesar, on the contrary, found
proof of criminality in the very memories relied upon for salva-
tion, contrasted the late struggle with the friendship appealed
to by Vercingetorix, and so put in a more hideous light the
odiousness of his conduct. And thus, far from being moved by •
his misfortunes at the moment, he threw him in chains forth-
with, and subsequently had him put to death, after keeping
him to adorn his triumph."
Another historian, contemporary with Plutarch, Florus,
attributes to Vercingetorix, as he fell down and cast his arms
at Caesar's feet, these words: " Bravest of men, thou hast con-
quered a brave man." It is not necessary to have faith in
the rhetorical compliment : or to likewise reject the mixture
of pride and weakness attributed to Vercingetorix in the
ax^count of Dion Cassiiis. It would not be the only example
of a hero seeking yet some chance of safety in the extremity
of defeat, and abasing himself for the sake of preserving at
any price a life on which fortune might still smile. However '
it be, Vercingetorix vanquished, dragged out, after ten years'
imprisonment, to grace Caesar's triumph, and put to death
immediately afterwards, lives as a glorious patriot in the
pages of that history in which Caesar appears, on this occasion,
as a peevish conqueror who took pleasure in crushing, with
THE ^tW ffV.K :
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VERCINGETORIX SURRENDERS TO CAESAR.
CJH. v.] OA UL UNDER MOMAN DOMINION. 66
«
cruel disdaiH, the enemy he had heen at so much pains to
conquer.
Alesia taken, and Vercingetorix a prisoner, Gaul was sub-
dued. Caesar, however, had in the following year (a.u.0. 703)
a campaign to make to subjugate some peoplets who tried to
maintain their local independence. A year afterwards, again,
attempts at insurrection took place in Belgica, and towards
the mouth of the Loire ; but they were easily repressed ; they
had no national or formidable characteristics ; Caesar and his
lieutenants willingly contented themselves with an apparent
submission, and in the year 705 a.u.o. the Eoman legions,
after nine years' occupation in the conquest of Gaul, were able
to depart therefrom to Italy and the East for a plunge into
dvil war.
CHAPTER V.
GAUL UNDER ROMAN DOMINION.
From the conquest of Gaul by Caesar, to the establishment
there of the Franks imder Clovis, she remained for more than
five centuries under Roman dominion; first imder the Pagan,
afterwards under the Christian empire. In her primitive
state of index)endence she had struggled for ten years against
the best armies and the greatest man of Rome; after five cen-
turies of- Roman dominion she opposed no resistance to the
invasion of the barbarians, Germans, Groths, Alans, Burgun-
dians, and Franks, who destroyed bit by bit the Roman
empire. In this humiliation and, one might- say, annihQation
of a t)opulation so independent, so active, and so valiant at its
first appearance in history, is to be seen the characteristic of
this long epoch. It is worth while to learn and to understand
how it was.
Gfwil lived, during those five centuries, under very different
rules and rulers. They may be summed up under five names
which correspond with governments very unequal in merit
and defect, in good and evil wrought for their epoch: 1st, the
Caesars from Julius to Nero (from 49 b.o to a.d. 68) ; 2nd, the
Flavians, from Vespasian to Domitian (from a.d. 69 to 95) ;
3rd, the Antonines, from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius (from a.d.
96 to 180) ; 4th, the imperial anarchy, or the thirty-nine em-
66 EI8T0BT OF FRANCE, [ch. v.
perors and the thirty-one tyrants, from Commodus to Cariniis
and Numerian (from a.d 180 to 284) ; 5th, Diocletian (from a.d.
284 to 305). Through all these governments, and in spite of
their different results for their contemporary subjects, the
fact already pointed out as the general and definitive charac-
teristic of that long epoch, to wit, the moral and social deca-
dence of Qaul as well as of the Roman empire, never ceased to
continue and spread.
On quitting conquered Gaul to become master at Rome,
Caesar neglected nothing to assure his conquest and make it
conducive to the establishment of his empire. He formed, of
all the GaUic districts that he had subjugated, a special
province which received the name of Gallia Comata ((raul of
the long-hair), whflst the old province was Gallia Togata
(Qaul of the toga). Csesar causecT to be enrolled amongst his
troops a multitude of Gauls, Belgians, Arvemians, and Aqui-
tanians, of whose bravery he had made proof. He even
formed, almost entirely of Gauls, a special legion, called
Alauda (lark), because it bore on the helmets a lark with out-
spread wings, the symbol of wakefulness. At the same time
he gave in Gallia Comata, to the towns and families that
declared -for him, all kinds of favors, the rights of Roman
citizenship, the title of allies, cKents, and friends, even to the
extent of the Julian name, a sign of the most powerful Roman
patronage. He had, however, in the old Roman province,
formidable enemies, especially the town of Marseilles, which
declared against him and for Pompey. Caesar had the place
besieged by one of his lieutenants, got possession of it, caused
to be delivered over to him its vessels and treasure, and left
in it a garrison of two legions. He estabhshed at Narbonne,
Aries, BiterrcR (Beziers) three colonies of veteran legionaries
devoted to his cause, and near Antipolis (Antibes) a maritime
colony called Forum Julii, now-a-days Fr6jus, of which he pro-
posed to make a rival to Marseilles. Much money was neces-
sary to meet the expenses of such patronage and to satisfy the
troops, old and new, of the conqueror of Gaul and Rome. Now
there was at Rome an ancient treasure, f oimded more than four
centuries previously by the Dictator CanuUus, when he had
delivered Rome from the Gauls, a treasure reserved for the
expenses of GaUic wars, and guarded with religious respect as
sacred money. In the midst of all discords and disorders at
Rome, none had touched it. After his return from Gaul,
Caesar one day ascended the Capitol with his soldiers, and
CH. v.] QAUL UNDER ROMAN DOMINION. 67
finding, in the temple of Saturn, the door closed of the place
where the treasure was deposited, ordered it to be forced.
L. Metellus, tribune of the people, made strong opposition,
conjuring Csesar not to bring on the Republic the penalty of
such sacrilege: but ** the Republic has nothing to fear," said
Caesar; **I have released it from its oaths by subjugating
Gaul. There are no more Gauls." He caused the door to bo
forced, and the treasure was abstracted and distributed to the
troops, Gallic and Roman. Whatever Caesar may have said,
there were still Grauls, for at the same time that he was dis-
tributing to such of them as he had turned into his own
soldiers the money reserved for the expense of fighting them,
he was imposing upon Gullia Comata, imder the name of
stipendium (soldier's pay), a levy of forty milHons of sesterces
(328,000Z.), a considerable amount for a devastated country
which, according to Plutarch, did not contain at that time
more than three millions of inhabitants, and almost equal to
that of the levies paid by the rest of the Roman provinces.
After Caesar, Augustus, left sole master of the Roman
world, assumed in Gaul, as elsewhere, the part of pacificator,
repairer, conservator, and organizer, whilst taking care, with
all his moderation, to remain always the master. He divided
the provinces into imperial and senatorial, reserving to him-
self the entire government of the former, and leaving the
latter under the authority of the senate. Gaul **of the long
hair," all that Caesar had conquered, was imperial province.
Augustus divided it into three provinces, Lugdunensian
(Lyonese), Belgian, and Aquitanian. He recognized therein
sixty nations or distinct cityships which continued to have
themselves the government of their own affairs, according to
their traditions and manners, whilst conforming to the gen-
eral laws of the empire and abiding under the supervision of
imperial governors, charged with maintaining every where, in
the words of Pliny the Younger, **the majesty of Roman
peace." Ijugudnum (Lyons), which had been up to that time
of small importance and obscure, became the great town, the
favorite cityship and ordinary abiding-place of the emperors
when they visited Gaul. After having held at Narbonne
(27 B.C.) a meeting of representatives from the different Gallic
nations, Augustus went several times to Lyons, and even lived
there, as it appears, a pretty long while, to superintend! no
doubt, from thence and to get into working order the new
government of Gaul. After the departure of Augustus, his
68 EISTOBT OF FRANCE. [CH. v.
adopted son Drusus, who had just fulfilled, in Belgica and on
the Ehine, a mission at the same time militaiy and adminis-
trative, called together at Lyons delegates from the sixty
Gallic cityshipSy to take part (b.o. 12 or 10) in the inaugura-
tion of a magnificent monument raised, at the confluence of
the Ehone and Saone, in honor of Rome and Augustus as the
tutelary deities of Gaul. In the middle of a vast enclosure
was placed a huge altar of white marhle, on which were en-
graved the names of the sixty cityships "of the long hair."
A colossal statue of the Gauls and sixty statues of the Gallic
cityships occupied the enclosure. Two columns of granite,
twenty- five feet high, stood close by the altar, and were sur-
mounted by two colossal Victories, in white marble, ten feet
high. Solemn festivals, gymnastic games, and oratorical and
Uterary exercitation accompanied the inauguration; and dur-
ing the ceremony it was announced, amidst popular acclama-
tion, that a son had just been bom to Drusus at Lyons itself,
in the palace of the emperor, where the child's mother, An-
tonia, daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia (sister of
Augustus), had been staying for some months. This child
was one day to be the emperor Claudius.
The administrative energy of Augustus was not confined to
the erection of monuments and to festivals; he applied him-
self to the development in Gaul of the material elements of
civilization and social order. His most intimate and able ad-
viser, Agrippa, being settled at Lyons as governor of the Gauls,
caused to be opened four great roads, starting from a mile-
stone placed in the middle of the Lyonese forum, and going
one centrewards to Saintes and the ocean, another south
wards and to Narbonne and the Pyrenees, the third north-
westwards and towards the Channel by Amiens and Boulogne,
and the fourth north-westwards and towards the Bhine.
Agrippa founded several considerable colonies, amongst others
Cologne, which bore his name; and he admitted to GkLllic
territory bands of Grerm^ins who asked for an estabhshment
there. Thanks to public security, Bomans became proprie-
tors in the Gallic provinces and introduced to them Italian
cultivation. The Gallic chieftains, on their side, began to
cultivate lands which had become their personal property.
Towns were built or grew apace and became encircled by
ran^parts, under protection of which the populations came and
placed themselves. The most learned and attentive observer
of nature and Roman society, Pliny the Elder, attests that
CH. v.] OAXTL tJNDER ttOMAN DOMTNtON. 69
under Augustus Gallic agriculture and industry made vast
progress.
But side by side with this work in the cause of civilization
and organization, Augustus and his Roman agents were pur-
suing a work of quite a contrary tendency. They labored to
extirpate from Gaul the spirit of nationality, independence
and freedom ; they took every pains to efface every where
Gallic memories and sentiments. Gallic towns were losing
their old and receiving Roman names: Augustanemetum^
A-ugusta, and Av^gustodunum took the place of Gergovia^
Noviodununiy and Bibracte, The national Gallic religion,
which was Druidism, was attacked as well as the Gallic father-
land, with the same design and by the same means; at one
time Augustus prohibited this worship amongst the Gauls
converted into Roman citizens, as being contrary to Roman
belief; at another Roman Paganism and Gallic Druidism were
fused together in the same temples and at the same altars, as
if to fuse them in the same common indifference ; Roman and
Gallic names became applied to the same religious personifica-
tion of such and such a fact or such and such an idea; Mars
and Camul were equally the god of war ; Belen and Apollo the
god of light and healing; Diana and Arduinna the goddess of
the chase. Every where, whether it was a question of the
terrestrial fatherland or of religious faith, the old moral
machinery of the Gauls was broken up or condemned to rust,
and no new moral machinery was allowed to replace it ; it was
every where Roman and imperial authority that was substi-
tuted for the free, national action of the Gauls.
It is incredible that this hostility on the paiii of the powers
that be towards moral sentiments, and this absence of freedom
should not have gravely compromised the material interest of
the Gallic population. Public administration, however ex-
tensive its organization and energy, if it be not under the
superintendence and restraint of public freedom and morality,
soon falls into monstrous abuses, which itself is either igno-
rant of or wittingly suffers. Examples of this evil, inherent
in despotism, abound even under the intelligent and watchful
sway of Augustus. Here is a case in point. He had ap-
pointed as procurator, that is, financial commissioner, in
** long-haired" Gaul, a native who, having been originally a
slave and afterwards set free by Jidius Caesar, had taken the
Roman name of Ldcinius. This man gave himself up,* during
his administration, to a course of the most shameless extor-
70 msTonr of francs. [ch. v.
tion. The taxes were collected monthly; and so, taking ad-
vantage of the change of name which flattery had caused in
the two months of July and August, sacred to Julius Ceesar
and Augustus respectively, he made his year consist of four-
teen months, so that he might squeeze out fourteen contribu-
tions instead of twelve. *' December," said he, ** is surely, as
its name indicates, the tenth month of the year," and he added
thereto, in honor of the emperor, two others which he called
the eleventh and twelth. During one of the trips which
Augustus made into Gaul, strong complaints were made
against Licinius, and his robberies were denounced to the
emperor. Augustus dared not support him, and seemed upon
the point of deciding to bring him to justice, when Licinius
conducted him to the place where was deposited all the treas-
ure he had extorted, and, "See, my lord," said he, **what I
have laid up for thee and for the Roman people, for fear lest
the Gauls possessing so much gold should employ it against
you both; for thee I have kept it, and to thee I deliver it."
(Thierry, Histoire des Gaulois, t. iii., p. 295; Clerjon, Histoire
de Lyon, t. i., p. 178-180.) Augustus accepted the treasure,
and Licinius remained unpunished. Li the case of financial
abuses or other acts, absolute power seldom resists such
temptations.
We may hear it said, and we may read in the writings of
certain modern philosophers and scholars, that the victorious
despotism of the Roman empire was a necessaf y and salutary
step in advance, and that it brought about the unity and
enfranchisement of the human race. Beheve it not. There is
mingled good and evil in all the events and governments of
this world, and good often arises side by side with or in the
wake of evil, but it is never from the evil that the good
comes; injustice and tyranny have never produced good
fruits. Be assured that whenever they have the dominion,
whenever the moral rights and personal liberties of men are
trodden under foot by material force, be it barbaric or be it
scientific, there can result only prolonged evils and deplorable
obstacles to the return of moral right and moral force, which,
God be thanked, can never be obhterated from the nature and
the history of man. The despotic imperial administration
upheld for a long while the Roman empire, and not without
renown; but it corrupted, enervated, and impoverished the
Roman populations, and left them, after five centuries, as
incapable of defending themselves as they were of governing.
CH. v.] GAUL UNDER ROMAN DOMINION. 71
Tiberius pursued in Gaul, but with less energy and less care
for the provincial administration, the pacific and moderate
policy of Augustus. He had to extinguish in Belgica, and
even in the Lyonnese province, two insurrections kindled by
the sparks that remained of national and Druidic spirit. He
repressed them effectually, and without any violent display of
vengeance. He made a trip to Gaul, took measures, quite
insufficient however, for defending the Rhine frontier from
the incessantly repeated incursions of the Germans, and
hastened back to Italy to resume the course of suspicion,
perfidy, and cruelty which he pursued against the Republican
pride and moral dignity remaining amongst a few remnants
of the Roman senate. He was succeeded by Germanicus' un-
worthy son, Caligula. After a few days of hypocrisy on the
part of the Emperor, and credulous hope on that of the people,
they foimd a madman let loose to take the place of an un-
fathomable and gloomy tyrant. Caligula was much taken up
with Gaul, plundering it and giving free rein in it to his
frenzies, by turns disgusting or ridiculous. In a short and
fruitless campaign on the banks of the Rhine, he had made too
few prisoners for the pomp of a triumph; he therefore took
some Gauls, the tallest he could find, of triumphal size, as he
said; put them in Gterman clothes, made them learn some
Teutonic words, and sent them away to Rome to await in
prison his return and his ovation. Lyons, where he stayed
some time, was the scene of his extortions and strangest
freaks. He was playing at dice one day with some of his
courtiers, and lost ; he rose, sent for the tax-list of the prov-
ince, marked down for death and confiscation some of those
who were most highly rated, and said to the company, "You
people, you play for a few drachmas ; but as for me I have just
won by a single throw 150 millions." At the rumor of a plot-
hatched against him in Italy, by some Roman nobles, he sent
for and sold, publicly, their furniture, jewels, and slaves. As
the sale was a success, he extended it to the old furniture of
his own palaces in Italy: **I wish to fit out the Gauls," said
he ; " it is a mark of friendship I owe to the brave allies of the
Roman people." He himself, at these sales performed the part
of salesman and auctioneer, telling the history of each article
to enhance the price. ** This belonged to my father, Germani-
cus; that comes to me from Agrippa; this vase is Egyptian,
it was Antony's, Augustus took it at the battle of Actiiun."
The imperial sales were succeeded by hterary games, at which
72 mSTORT OF FRANCE, [ck. v.
the losers had to pay the expenses of the prizes and oelehrate,
in verse or prose, the praises of the winners; and if their
compositions were pronounced had, they were bound to wipe
them out with a sponge or even with their tongues, unless
they preferred to be beaten with a rod or soused in the Ehone.
One day, when Cahgula, in the character of Jupiter, was
seated at his tribunal and dehvering oracles in the middle of
the pubhc thoroughfare, a man of the people remained motion-
less in front of him, with eyes of astonishment fixed upon
him. *' What seem I to thee?" asked the Emperor, flattered,
no doubt, by this attention of the mob: **A great mon-
strosity," answered the Gaul. And that, at the end of about
four years, was the universal cry: and against a mad emperor
the only resource of the Boman world was at that time assassi-
nation. The captain .of Caligula's guards rid Rome and the
provinces of him.
He did just one sensible and useful thing during the whole
of his stay in Gaul: he had a light-house constructed to il-
lumine the passage between Gaul and Great Britain. Some
traces of it, they say, have been discovered.
His successor, Claudius, brother of the great Gfermanicus,
and married to his own niece, the second Agrippina, was, as
has been already stated, bom at Lyons, at the very moment
when his father, Drusus, was celebrating there the erection of
an altar to Augustus. During his whole reign he showed to
the city of his birth the most lively good-wiU, and the con-
stant aim as well as principal result of this good-wiU was to
render, the city of Lyons more and more Boman by effacing
all Gallic characteristics and memories. She was endowed with
Roman rights, monmnents, and names, the most important or
the most ostentatious; she became the colony super-emi-
nently, the great municipal town of the Gauls, the Claudian
town; but she lost what had remained of her old municipal
government, that is of her administrative and commercial
independence. Nor was she the pnly one in Gaul to experi-
ence the good-wiU of Claudius. This emperor, the mark of
scorn from his infancy, whom his mother, Antonia, called "a
shadow of a man, an unfinished sketch of nature's drawing,"
and of whom his grand-uncle, Augustus, used to say "we
shall be for ever in doubt, without any certainty of knowing
whether he be or be not equal to public duties." Claudius,
the most feeble indeed of the Csesars, in. body, mind, and
character, was nevertheless he who had intermittent glimpses
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CH. v.] GAJIL UNDER ttOMAN DOMINION. ^^
of the most elevated ideas and the most righteous sentiments,
and who strove the most sincerely to make them take the
form of deeds. He undertook to assure to all free men of
"long-haired" Gaul the same Roman privileges that were
enjoyed hy the inhabitants of Lyons; and amongst others,
that of entering the senate of Rome and holding the great
public offices. He made a formal proposal to that effect to
the Senate, and succeeded, not without difficulty, in getting
it adopted. The speech that he delivered on this occasion has
been to a great extent preserved to us, not only in the simi-
mary given by Tacitus, but also in an inscription on a bronze
tablet, which split into many fragments at the time of the
destruction of the building in which it was placed. The two
principal fragments were discovered at Lyons, in 1528, and
they are now deposited in the Museum of that city. They
fully confirm the most equitable and, it may be readily
allowed, the most liberal act of policy that emanated from the
earlier Roman emperors. '* Claudius had taken it into his
head," says Seneca, *' to see all Greeks, Gauls, Spaniards, and
Britons clad in the toga." But at the same time he took great
care to spread every where the Latin tongue, and to make it
take the place of the different national idioiiis. A Roman
citizen, originally of Asia Minor, and sent on a deputation to
Rome by his compatriots, could not answer in Latin the
emperor's questions. Claudius took away his privileges, say-
ing, " He is no Roman citizen who is ignorant of the language
of Rome."
Claudius, however, was neither Uberal nor himiane towards
a notable portion of the Galhc populations, to wit, the Druids.
During his stay in Gaul he proscribed them and persecuted
them without intermission; forbidding, under pain of death,
their form of worship and every exterior sign of their cere-
monies. He drove them away and pursued them even into
Great Britain, whither he conducted, a.d. 43, a military ex-
I)edition, almost the only one of his reign, save the continued
struggle of his lieutenants on the Rhine against the Germans.
It was evidently amongst the corporation of Druids and under
the influence of rehgious creeds and traditions, that there was
still pursued and harbored some of the old GalUc spirit, some
passion for -national independence and some hatred of the
Roman yoke. Li proportion as Claudius had been popular in
Gaul did his adopted son and successor, Nero, quickly become
hated. There is nothing to show that he even went thither,
74 HISTORY OF FBANGE, [ch. v.
either on the business of government or to obtain the momen-
tary access of favor always excited in the mob by the presence
and prestige of power. It was towards Greece and the East
that a tendency was shown in the tastes and trips of Nero,
imperial poet, musician, and actor. L. Verus, one of the
military commandants in Belgica, had conceived a project of
a canal to unite the Moselle to the Saone, and so the Mediter-
ranean to the ocean; but intrigues in the province and the
palace prevented its execution, and in the place of public
works useful to Gaul, Nero caused a new census to be made
of the population whom Ijie required to squeeze to pay for his
extravagance. It was in his reign, as is well known, that a
fierce fire consumed a great part of Rome and her monu-
ments. The majority of historians accuse Nero of having
himself been the cause of it ; but at any rate he looked on with
cynical indifference, as if amused at so grand a spectacle, and
taking pleasure in comparing it to the burning of Troy. He
did more: he profited by it so far as to have built for himself,
free of expense, that magnificent palace called **The palace of
gold," of which he said, when he saw it completed, ** At last I
am going to be housed as a man should be." Five years
before the bumaing of Rome, Lyons had been a prey to a
similar scourge, and Seneca wrote to his friend Lucilius:
'^ Lugdununij which was one of the show-places of Gaul, is
sought for in vain to-day : a single night sufficed for the dis-
appearance of a vast city ; it perished in less time than I take
to tell the tale." Nero gave upwards of 30,000Z. towards the
reconstruction of Lyons, a gift that gained hJTn the city's
gratitude which was manifested, it is said, when his fall
became imminent. It was, however, J. Vindex, a Gaul of
Vienne, governor of the Lyonnese province, who was the
instigator of the insurrection which was fatal to Nero, and
which put Galba in his place.
When Nero was dead there was no other Caesar, no natu-
rally indicated successor to the empire. The influence of the
name of Ccesar had spent itself in the crimes, madnesses, and
incapacity of his descendants. Then began a general search
for emperors ; and the ambition to be created spread abroad
amongst the men of note in the Roman world. During the
eighteen months that followed the death of Nero, three pre-
tenders—Galba, Otho, and Vitellius— ran this formidable risk.
Galba was a worthy old Roman senator, who frankly said, *' If
the vast body of the empire could be kept standing in equi-
CH. v.] QAUL VNDm ROMAN DOMINION, 76
librium without a head, I were worthy of the chief place in
the state." Otho and Vitellius were two epicures, both indo-
lent and debauched, the former after an elegant, and the
latter after a beastly fashion. Gralba was raised to the purple
by the Lyonnese and Narbonnese provinces, Vitellius by the
legions cantoned in the Belgic province : to such an extent did
Gaul already influence the destinies of Rome. All three met
disgrace and death within the space of eighteen months; and
the search for an emperor took a turn towards the East,
where the command was held by Vesi)asian (Titus Flavins
Yespasianus, of Rieti in the duchy of Spoleto), a general
sprung from a humble Italian family, who had won great
military distinction, and who, having been proclaimed first at
Alexandria, in Judea, and at Antioch, did not arrive until
many months afterwards at Rome, where he conunence'd the
twenty-six years' reign of the Flavian family.
Neither Vespasian nor his sons, Titus and Domitian, visited
Gaul as their predecessors had. Domitian alone put in a
short appearance. The eastern provinces of the empire and
the wars on the frontier of the Danube, towards which the
invasions of the Germans were at that time beginning to be
directed, absorbed the attention of the new emperors. Gaul
was far, however, from remaining docile and peaceful at this
epoch. At the vacancy that occurred after Nero and amid the
claims of various pretenders, the authority of the Roman name
and the pressure of the imperial power diminished rapidly ; and
the memory and desire of independence were reawakened. In
Belgica the German peoplets, who had been allowed to settle
on the left bank of the Rhine, were very imperfectly subdued,
and kept up close communication with the independent peoplets
of the right bank. The eight Roman legions cantoned in that
province were themselves much changed; many barbarians
had been enlisted amongst them and did gallant service, but
they were indifferent, and always ready for a new master and
a new country. There were not wanting symptoms, soon fol-
lowed by opportunities for action, of this change in sentiment
and fact. In the very centre of Gaul, between the Loire and
the AJlier, a peasant, who has kept in history his Gallic name
of Marie or Maricus, formed a band, and scoured the coimtry,
proclaiming national independence. He was arrested by the
local authorities and handed over to ViteUius, who had him
thrown to the beasts. But in the northern part of Belgica,
towards the mouths of the Rhine, where a Batavian peoplet
^Q msTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. v.
lived, a man of note amongst his compatriots and in the service
of the Romans, amongst whom he had received the name of
Claudius Civilis, embraced first secretly, and afterwards
openly, the cause of insurrection. He had vengeance to take
for Nero's treatment, who had caused his brother, Julius
Paulus, to be beheaded, and himself to be put in prison, whence
he had been liberated by Galba. He made a vow to let his hair
grow until he was revenged. He had but one eye and gloried
in the fact, saying that it had been so with Hannibal and with
Sertorius, and that his highest aspiration was to be like them.
He pronounced first for Vitellius against Otho, then for Ves-
pasian against VitelUus, and then for the complete independ-
ence of his nation against Vespasian. He soon had, amongst
the Grermans on the two banks of the Rhine and amongst the
Gauls themselves, secret or declared allies. He was joined by
a young Gaul from the district of Langres, Julius Sabinus, who
boasted that, during the great war with the Gauls, his great
grandmother had taken the fancy of Julius Caesar, and that he
owed his name to him. News had just reached Gaul of the
burning down, for the second time, of the Capitol during the
disturbances at Rome on the death of Nero. The Druids came
forth from the retreats where they had hidden since Claudius'
proscription, and re-appeared in the towns and country-places,
proclaiming that ^^ the Roman empire was at an end, that the
Gkillic empire was beginning, and that the day had come when
the possession of all the world should pass into the hands of the
transalpine nations." The insurgents rose in the name of the
Gfallic empire^ and Julius Sabinus assumed the title of Coesar.
War commenced. Confusion, hesitation, and actual desertion
reached the colonies and extended positively to the Roman
legions. Several towns, even Treves and Cologne, submitted
or fell into the hands of the insurgents. Several legions, yield-
ing to bribery, persuasion, or intimidation, went over to them,
some with a bad grace, others with the blood of their officers
on their hands. The gravity of the situation was not misun-
derstood at Rome. Petilius Cerealis, a commander of renown
for his campaigns on the Rhine, was sent off to Belgica with
seven fresh legions. He was as skilful in negotiation and per-
suasion as he was in battle. The struggle that ensued was
fierce, but brief; and nearly all the towns and legions that had
been guilty of defection returned to their Roman allegiance.
Civilis, though not more than half vanquished, himself asked
leave to surrender. The Batavian might, as was said at the
CH. v.] GAUL UNDER ROMAN DOMINION, TJ
time, have inundated the country, and drowned the Roman
armies. Vespasian, therefore, not being mcUned to drive men
or matters to extremity, gave Civilis leave to go into retirement
and Mve in peace amongst the marshes of his own land. The
GraUic chieftains alone, the projectors of a Gallic empire, were
rigorously pursued and chastised. There was especisdly one,
Julius Sabinus, the pretended descendant of Julius CsBsar,
whose capture was heartily desired. After the ruin of his
hopes he took refuge in some vaults connected with one of his
country houses. The way in was known only to two devoted
freedmen of his, who set fire to the buildings, and spread a re-
port that Sabinus had poisoned himself, and that his dead body
had been devoured by the flamesv He had a wife, a young
Gaul named Eponina, who was in frantic despair at the rumor ;
but he had her informed, by the mouth of one of his freedmen,
of his place of concealment, begging her at the same time to keep
up a show of widowhood and mourning, in order to confirm the
report already in circulation. " Well did she play her part,"
to use Plutarch's expression, *'in her tragedy of woe." She
went at night to visit her husband in his retreat, and departed
at break of day; and at last would not depart at all. At the
end of seven months, hearing great talk of Vespasian's clem-
ency, she set out for Eome, taking with her her husband, dis-
guised as a slave, with shaven head and a dress that made him
unrecognizable. But the friends who were in their confidence,
advised them not to risk as yet the chance of imperial clemency,
and to return to their secret asylmn. There they hved for nine
years, during which ** as a honess in her den, neither more nor
less," says Plutarch, ** Eponina gave birth to two young
whelps, and suckled them herself at her teat." At last they
were discovered and brought before Vespasian at Eome:
** Caesar," said Eponina, showing him her children, **I con-
ceived them and suckled them in a tomb that there might be
more of us to ask thy mercy." But Vespasian was merciful
only from prudence, and not by nature or from magnanimity;
and he sent Sabinus to execution. Eponina asked that she
might die with her husband, saying, * * Caesar, do me this grace ;
for I have lived more happily beneath the earth and in the
darkness than thou in the splendor of thy empire." Vespasian
fulfilled her desire by sending her also to execution; and Plu-
tarch, their contemporary, undoubtedly expressed the general
feeling, when he ended his tale with the words, " in all the
long reign of this emperor there was no deed so cruel or so
78 HISTORY OF FRANCE, [ch. v.
piteous to see; and he was afterwards punished for it, for in a
short time all his posterity was extinct."
In fact the Caesars and the Flavians met the same fate; the
two lines began and ended ahke; the former with Augustus
and Nero, the latter with Vespasian and Domitian; first a
despot, able, cold, and as capable of cruelty as of moderation,
then a tyrant, atrocious and detested. And both were extin-
guished without a descendant. Then a rare piece of good fort-
une befell the Roman world. Domitian, two years before he
was assassinated by some of his servants whom he was about
to put to death, grew suspicious of an aged and honorable
senator, Cocceius Nerva, who had been twice consul, and whom
he had sent into exile, first to Tarentum, and then in Gaul, pre-
paratory, probably, to a worse fate. To this victim of pro-
scription application was made by the conspirators who had
just got rid of Domitian and had to get another emperor.
Nerva accepted, but not without hesitation, for he was sixty-
four years old; he had witnessed the violent death of six om-
perors, and his grandfather, a celebrated jurist, and for a long
while a friend of Tiberius, had killed himself, it is said, for
grief at the iniquitous and cruel government of his friend. The
short reign of Nerva was a wise, a just, and a humane, but a
sad one, not for the people, but for himself. He maintained
peace and order, recalled exiles, suppressed informers, re-estab-
lished respect for laws and morals, turned a deaf ear to self-in-
terested suggestions of vengeance, spoliation and injustice, pro-
ceeding at one time from those who had made him emperor, at
another from the Prsetorian soldiers and the Roman mob, who
regretted Domitian just as they had Nero. But Nerva did not
succeed in putting a stop to mob-violence or murders prompted
by cupidity or hatred. Finding his authority insulted and his
life threatened, he formed a resolution which has been de-
scribed and explained by a learned and temperate historian of
the last century, Lenain de TiUemont {Histoire des EmpereurSy
etc. J t. ii., p. 59), with so much justice and precision that it is a
pleasure to quote his own words. "Seeing," says he, "that
his age was despised, and that the empire required some one
who combined strength of mind and body, Nerva, being free
from that blindness which prevents one from discussing and
measuring one's own powers, and from that thirst for dominion
which often prevails over even those who are nearest to the
grave, resolved to take a partner in the sovereign power, and
showed his wisdom by making choice of Trajan." By this
CH.V.] GAUL UNDER ROMAN DOMINION. ^Q
choice, indeed, Nerva commenced and inaugurated the finest
period of the Roman empire, the period that contemporaries
entitled the golden age, and that history has named the age of
the Antonines. It is desirahle to hecome acquainted with the
real character of this period, for to it belong the two greatest
historical events, the dissolution of ancient pagan, and the
birth of modem Christian society.
Five notable sovereigns, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus
Pius, and Marcus Aurelius swayed the Boman empire during
this period (a.d. 96-180). What Nerva was has just been de-
scribed; and he made no mistake in adopting Trajan as his
successor. Trajan, imconnected by origin, as Nerva also had
been, with old Rome, was bom in Spain, near Seville, and by
mihtary service in the East had made his first steps towards
fortune and renown. He was essentially a soldier, a moral and
a modest soldier ; a friend to justice and the pubUc weal ; grand
in what he undertook for the empire he governed; simple and
modest on his own score ; respectful towards the civil authority
and the laws; untiring and equitable in the work of provincial
administration; without any philosophical system or preten-
sions; fuU of energy and boldness, honesty and good sense.
He stoutly defended the empire against the Germans on the
banks of the Danube, won for it the province of Dacia, and,
being more taken up with the East than the West, made many
Asiatic conquests, of which his successor, Hadrian, lost no time
in abandoning, wisely no doubt, a portion. Hadrian, adopted
by Trajan, and a Spaniard too, was intellectually superior and
morally very inferior to him. He was full of ambition, vanity,
invention and restlessness; he was sceptical in thought and
cynical in manners; and he was overflowing with political,
philosophical and literary views and pretensions. He passed
the twenty-one years of his reign chiefly in travelling about the
empire, in Asia, Africa, Greece, Spain, Gaul, and Great Britain,
opening roads, raising ramparts and monuments, founding
schools of learning and museums, and encouraging among the
provinces, as well as at Rome, the march of administration,
legislation, and intellect, more for his own pleasure and his own
glorification than in the interest of his cpuntry and of society.
At the close of this active career, when he was ill and felt that
he was dying, he did the best deed of his life. He had proved
in the discharge of high offices, the calm and clear-sighted wis-
dom of Titus Antoninus, a Gaul, whose family came originally
from Ntmies; he had seen him one day coming to the senate
80 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. v.
and respectfully supporting the tottering steps of his aged
father (or father-in-law, according to Aurelius Victor) ; and
he adopted him as his successor. Antoninus Pius, as a civilian,
was just what Trajan had been as a warrior ; moral and modest ;
just and frugal; attentive to the pubhc weal; gentle towards
individuals; full of respect for laws and rights; scrupulous in
justifying his deeds before the senate and making them known
to the populations by carefully posted edicts ; and more anxious
to do no wrong or harm to any body than to gain lustre from
briUiant or popular deeds. ^* He surpasses all men in good-
ness," said his contemporaries, and he conferred on the empire
the best of gifts, for he gave it Marcus Aurehus for its ruler.
It has been said that Marcus Aurelius was philosophy en-
throned. Without any desire to contest or detract from that
compliment, let it be added that he was conscientiousneiss en-
throned. It is his grand and. original characteristic that he
governed the Boman empire and himself with a constant moral
sohcitude, ever anxious to realize that ideal of personal virtue
and general justice which he had conceived, and to which he
aspired. His conception, indeed, of virtue and justice was in-
complete and even false in certain cases; and in more than one
instance, such as the persecution of the Christians, he com-
mitted acts quite contrary to the moral law which he intended
to put in practice towards all men; but his respect for the
moral law was prof oimd, and his intention to shape his acts
according to it, serious and sincere. Let us cull a few phrases
from that collection of his private thoughts, which he entitled
For self, and which is really the most faithful picture man ever
left of himself and the pains he took with himself. ' * * There is, "
says he, " relationship between all beings endowed with reason.
The world is like a superior city within which the other cities
are but families. ... I have conceived the idea of a govern-
ment founded on laws of general and equal application. Be-
ware lest thou Coesarize thyself, for it is what happens only
too often. Keep thyself simple, good, unaltered, worthy,
grave, a friend to justice, pious, kindly disposed, courageous
enough for any duty. . . Reverence the gods, preserve man-
kind, life is short ; the only possible good fruit of our earthly
existence is holiness of intention and deeds that tend to the
common weal. . . My soul, be thou covered with shame ! Thy
life is well-nigh gone, and thou hast not yet learned how to
live." Amongst men, who have ruled great states, it is not easy
to mention more than two, Marcus AureUus and Saint Louis,
i;iE NEW ¥Cr;lf
I'UBLIC UcKAPvY
ASTOR, Lh'i
• ^N
THE LAST OF THE DRUIDS.
CH. v.] GAUL UNDER ROMAN DOMINION. 81
who have been thus passionately concerned about the moral
condition of their souls and the moral conduct of their lives.
The mind of Marcus Aurehus was superior to that of Saint
Louis ; but Saint Louis was a Christian, and his moral ideal was
more pure, more complete, more satisfying, and more strength-
ening for the soul than the philosophical ideal of Marcus Au-
rehus. And so Saint Louis was serene and confident as to his
fate and that of the human race, whilst Marcus Aurehus was
disquieted and sad— sad for himself and also for hiunanity, for
his coimtry and for his times: **0 my soul," was his cry,
** wherefore art thou troubled, and why am I so vexed? "
We are here brought closer to the fact which has already
been foreshadowed, and which characterizes the moral and
social condition of the Eoman world at this period. It would
be a great error to take the five emperors just spoken of —
Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurehus
—as representatives of the society amidst which they hved,
and as giving, in a certain degree, the measure of its enlighten-
ment, its morality, its prosperity, its disposition and condition
in general. Tbose five princes were not only picked men,
superior in mind and character to the majority of their con-
temporaries, but they were men almost isolated in their gener-
ation: in them there was a resumption of all that had been
acquired by Greek and Boman antiquity of enhghtenment and
virtue, practical wisdom and philosophical morality: they
were the heirs and the survivors of the great minds and thfe
great politicians of Athens and Rome, of the Areopagus and the
Senate. They were not in intellectual and moral harmony
with the society they governed, and their action upon it served
hardly to preserve it partially and temporarily from the evils
to which it was committed by its own vices and to break its
fall. When they were thoughtful and modest as Marcus Aure-
hus was, they were gloomy and disposed to discouragement,
for they had a secret foreboding of the uselessness of their
efforts.
Nor was their gloom groundless: in spite of their honest
plans and of brilhant appearances, the degradation, material
as weU as moral, of Roman society went on increasing. The
wars, the luxury, the dilapidations, and the disturbances of
the empire always raised its expenses much above its receipts.
The rough miserliness of Vespasian and the wise economy of
Antoninus Pius were far from sufficient to restore the balance;
the aggravation of imposts was incessant; and the population.
82 HISTORY OF FRANCE, [ch. v.
especially the agricultual population, dwindled away more and
more, in Italy itself, the centre of the State. This evil di»-
quieted the emperors when they were neither idiots nor mad-
men; Claudius, Vespasian, Nerva, and Trajan labored to sup-
ply a remedy, and Augustus himself had set them the example.
They established in Italy colonies of veterans to whom they
assigned lands; they made gifts thereof to indigent Roman
citizens; they attracted by the title of senator rich citizens
from the provinces, and when they had once installed them as
landholders in Italy, they did not permit them to depart with-
out authorization. Trajan decreed that every candidade for
the Roman magistracies should be bound to have a third of his
fortime invested in Italian land, "in order," says Pliny the
Younger, **that those who sought the public dignities should
regard Rome and Italy not as an inn to put up at in travelling,
but as their home." And Pliny the Elder, going as a philoso-
phical observer to the very root of the evil, says in his pom-
pous manner: " In former times our generals tilled their fields
with their own hands; the earth, we may suppose, opened
graciously beneath a plough crowned with laurels and held by
triumphal hands, maybe because those great men gave to till-
age the same care that they gave to war, and that they sow^
seed with the same attention with which they pitched a camp,
or maybe, also, because every thing fructifies best in honorable
hands, because every thing is done with the most scrupulous
exactitude Now-a-days these same fields are given over
to slaves in chains, to malefactors who are condemned to penal
servitude, and on whose brow there is a brand. Earth is not
deaf to our prayers; we give her the name of mother; culture
is what we call the pains we bestow on her .... but can we
be surprised if she render not to slaves the recompense she
paid to generals ? "
What must have been the decay of population and of agri-
culture in the provinces, when even in Italy there was need of
such strong protective efforts, which were, nevertheless, so
slightly successful?
Pliny had seen what was the fatal canker of the Roman em-
pire in the country as well as in the towns: slavery or semi-
slavery.
Landed property was overwhelmed with taxes, was subject
to conditions which branded it with a sort of servitude, and
was cultivated by a servile population, in whose hands it be-
came almost barren. The large holders were thus disgusted,
CH. v.] GAUL UNDER ROMAN DOMINION 83
and the small ruined or reduced to a condition more and more
degraded. Add to this state of things in the civil department
a complete absence of freedom and vitality in the political; no
elections, no discussion, no public responsibihty, characters
weakened by indolence and silence, or destroyed by despotic
power, or corrupted by the intrigues of court or army. Take
a step farther; cast a glance over the moral department; no
religious creeds and nothing left of even Paganism but its festi-
vals and frivolous or shameful superstitions. The philosophy
of Greece and the old Roman manner of life had raised up, it
is true, in the higher ranks of society Stoics and jurists, the
former the last champions of morality and the dignity of hu-
man nature, the latter the last enlightened servants of the
civil community. But neither the doctrines of the Stoics nor
the science and able reasoning of the jurists were lights and
guides within the reach and for the use of the populace, who
remained a prey to the vices and miseries of servitude or pub-
lic disorders, oscillating between the wearisomeness of barren
ignorance and the corruptiveness of a life of adventure. All
the causes of decay were at this time spreading throiighout Ro-
man society ; not a single preservative or regenerative princi-
ple of national life was in any force or any esteem.
After the death of Marcus Aurelius the decay manifested
and developed itself, almost without interruption for the space
of a century, the outward and visible sign of it being the dis-
organization and repeated falls of the government itself. The
series of emperors given to the Roman world by heirship or
adoption, from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius, was succeeded by
what maybe termed an imperial anarchy; in the course of
one himdred and thirty-two years the sceptre passed into the
hands of thirty-nine sovereigns with the title of emperor
(Augustus) and was clutched at by thirty-one pretenders, whom
history has dubbed tyrants, without other claim than their
fiery ambition and their trials of strength, supported at one
time in such and such a province of the empire by certain
legions or some local uprising, at another, and most frequently
in Italy itself, by the Praetorian guards, who had at their dis-
posal the name of Rome and the shadow of a senate. There
were Italians, Africans, Spaniards, Gauls, Britons, Illyrians,
and Asiatics ; and amongst the number were to be met with
some cases of eminence in war and politics and some even of
rare virtue and patriotism, such as Pertinax, Septimius Severus,
Alexander Severus, Decius, Claudius Gothicus, Aurelian, Taci-
S4 BISTORT OF FRANCE. [ch. v.
tus, and Probus. They made great efforts, some to protect
the empu« against the barbarians, growing day by day more
aggressive, others to re-establish within it some sort of order,
and to restore to the laws some sort of force. All failed, and
nearly all died a violent death, after a short-lived guardian-
ship of a fabric that was crumbling to pieces in every part, but
still under the grand name of Boman empire. Gaul had her
share in this series of ephemeral emperors and tyrants; one of
the most wicked and most insane, though issue of one of the
most valorous and able, CaracaUa, son of Septimius Severus,
was bom at Lyons, four years after the death of Marcus Aure-
lius. A hundred years later Narbonne gave, in two years, to
the Eoman world three emperors. Cams and his two sons,
Carinus and Numerian. Amongst the thirty-one tyrants who
did not attain to the title of Augustus, six were Gauls; and
the last two, Amandus and iElianus, were, a.d. 285, the chiefs
of that great insurrection of peasants, slaves or half-slaves,
who, imder the name of Bagaudians (signifying, according to
Ducange, a wandering troop of insurgents from field and for-
est), spread themselves over the north of Gaul, between the
Rhine and the Loire, pillaging and ravaging in all directions,
after having themselves endured the pillaging and ravages of
the fiscal agents and soldiers of the Empire. A contemporary
witness, Lactantius, describes the causes of this jyopular out-
break in the following words :—" So enormous had the imposts
become, that the tillers' strength was exhausted; fields became
deserts and farms were changed into forests. The fiscal agents
measured the land by the clod; trees, vine-stalks, were all
counted. The cattle were marked ; the people registered. Old
age or sickness was no excuse ; the sick and the infirm were
brought up; every one's age was put down; a few years were
added on to the children's, and taken off from the old men's.
Meanwhile the cattle decreased, the people died, and there was
no deduction made for the dead."
It is said that to excite the confidence and zeal of their
bands, the two chiefs of the Bagaudians had medals struck,
and that one exhibited the head of Amandus, "Emperor,
Caesar, Augustus, pious and prosperous" with the word
" Hope" on the other side.
When public evils have reached such a pitch, and neverthe-
less the day has not yet arrived for the entire disappearance of
the system that causes them, there arises nearly always a new
power "^hich, in the name of necessity, applies some remedy
CH. v.] OAXTL UNDEB ROMAN DOMINION. 86
to an intolerable condition. A legion cantoned amongst the
Tungriana (Tongres), in Belgica, had on its muster-roll a Dal-
matian named Diocletian, not yet very high in rank, but al-
ready much looked up to by his comrades on accoimt of his
intelligence and his bravery. He lodged at a woman's, who
was, they said, a Druidess, and had the prophetic faculty.
One day when he was settling his account with her, she com-
plained of his extreme parsimony: **Thou*rt too stingy, Dio-
cletian," said she; and he answered laughing, *^ I'll be prodigal
when I'm emperor." ** Laugh not," rejoined she: ** thou'lt be
emperor when thou hast slain a wild boar" (aper). The con-
versation got about amongst Diocletian's comrades. He made
his way in the army, showing continual ability and valor, and
several times during his changes of quarters and frequent
hunting expeditions he f oimd occasion to kill wild boars ; but
he did not immediately become emperor, and several of his
contemporaries, Aurelian, Tacitus, Probus, Cams, and Nume-
rian reached the goal before him. **I kill the wild boars,"
said he to one of his friends, '* and another eats them." The
last mentioned of these ephemeral emperors, Numerian, had
for his father-in-law and inseparable comrade a Praetorian
prefect named Arrius Aper. During a campaign in Mesopo-
tamia Numerian was assassinated, and the voice of the army
pronounced Aper guilty. The legions assembled to dehberate
about Numerian's death and to choose his successor. Aper
was brought before the assembly imder a guard of soldiers.
Through the exertions of zealous f rifends the candidature of
Diocletian found great favor. At the first words pronounced
by biTn from a raised platform in the presence of the troops,
cries of ** Diocletian Augustus" were raised in every quarter.
Other voices called on him to express his feelings about Nume-
rian's murderers. Drawing his sword, Diocletian declared on
oath that he was innocent of the emperor's death, butP that he
knew who was guilty and would find means to punish him.
Descending suddenly from the platform, he made straight for
the Prsetorian prefect, and saying, ** Aper, be comforted; thou
shalt not die by vulgar hands; by the right hand of great
JSneas thoufaUest,^^ he gave him his death-wound. "I have
killed the prophetic wild boar, " said he in the evening to his
confidants; and soon afterwards, in spite of the efforts of cer-
tain rivals, he was emperor.
"Nothing is more difficult than to govern," was a remark
his conurades had often heard made by him amidst so many
86 EI8T0BY OF FRANCE. [CH. v.
imperial catastrophes. Emperor in his turn, Diocletian treas-
ured up this profound idea of the difficulty of government,
and he set to work, ably, if not successfully, to master it.
Convinced that the Empire was too vast, and that a single
man did not suffice to make head against the two evils that
were destroying it— war against barbarians on the frontiers,
and anarchy within— he divided the Eoman world into two
portions, gave the West to Maximian, one of his comrades, a
coarse but valiant soldier, and kept the East himself. To
the anarchy that reigned within he opposed a general despotic
administrative organization, a vast hierarchy of civil and mil-
itary agents, every where present, every where masters, and
dependent upon the emperor alone. By his incontestable and
admitted superiority, Diocletian remained the soul of these
two bodies. At the end of eight years he saw that the two
Empires were still too vast; and to each Augustus he added a
CsBsar— Galerius and Constantius Chlorus— who, save a nomi-
nal, rather than real, subordination to the two emperors, had,
each in his own State, the imperial power with the same ad-
ministrative system. In this partition of the Roman world,
Gaul had the best of it: she had for master, Constantius
Chlorus, a tried warrior, but just, gentle, and disposed to tem-
per the exercise of absolute power with moderation and equity.
He had a son, Constantino, at this time eighteen years of age,
whom he was educating carefully for government as well as
for war. This system of the Roman Empire, thus divided be-
tween four masters, lasted thirteen years ; still fruitful in wars
and in troubles at home, but without victories, and with some-
what less of anarchy. In spite of this appearance of success
and durability, absolute power failed to perform its task; and,
weary of his burden and disgusted with the imperfection of
his work. Diocletian abdicated, a.d. 305. No event, no solici-
tations 01 his old comrades in arms and empire, could draw
him from his retreat on his native soil of Salona, in Dalmatia.
** If you could see the vegetables planted by these hands," said
he to Maximian and Galerius, '*you would not make the at-
tempt." He had persuaded or rather dragged his first col-
league, Maximian, into abdication after him; and so Galerius
in the East, and Constantius Chlorus in the West, remained
sole emperors. After the retirement of Diocletian, ambitions,
rivalries, and intrigues were not slow to make head ; Maxim-
ian reappeared on the scene of empire, but only to speedily
disappear (a.d. 310), leaving in his place his son Mazentius.
cfl. VI.] CHRISTIANITY IN OAVL. 87
Constantius Chlorus had died a.d. 306, and his son, Constan-
tine, had immediately been proclaimed by his army Csesar
and Augustus. Galerius died a.d. 311, and Constantine re-
mained to dispute the mastery with Maxentius in the West,
and in the Bast with Maziminus and Licinius, the last col-
leagues taken by Diocletian and Galerius. On the 29th of
October, a.d. 312, after having gained several battles against
Maxentius in Italy, at Milan, Brescia, and Verona, Constan-
tine pursued and defeated him before Home, on the borders of
the Tiber, at the foot of the Milvian bridge; and the son of
Maximian, drowned in the liber, left to the son of Constantius
Chlorus the Empire of the West, to which that of the East
was destined to be in a few years added, by the defeat and
death of Licinius. Constantine, more clear-sighted and more
fortunate than any of his predecessors, had understood his
era, and opened his eyes to the new hght which was rising
upon the world. Far from persecuting the Christians, as
Diocletian and Galerius had done, he had given them protec-
tion, coimtenance, and audience; and towards him turned all
their hopes. He had even, it is said, in his last battle against
Maxentius, displayed the Christian banner, the cross, with
this inscription ; Hoc signo vincea (** with this device thou shalt
conquer"). There is no knowing what was at that time the
state of his soul, and to what extent it was penetrated by the
first rays of Christian faith; but it is certain that he was the
first amongst the masters of tlie Eoman world to perceive and
accept its influence. With him Paganism fell, and Christian-
ity mounted the throne. With him the decay of Roman
society stops, and the era of modem society conamences.
CHAPTER VI.
ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIAinTV IN GAITL.
When Christianity began to penetrate into G«.ul, it encoun-
tered there two religions very different one from the other,
and infinitely more different from the Christian religion; these
were Druidism and Paganism— hostile one to the other, but
with a hostility political only, and unconnected with those really
religious questions that Christianity was coming to raise.
Druidism^ considered as a religion, was a mass of confusion.
88 HISTORY OF FRANCE, [ch. vl
wherein the instinctive notions of the human race concerning
the origin and destiny of the world and of mankind were
mingled with the oriental dreams of metempsychosis— that
pretended transmigration, at successive periods, of immortal
souls into divers creatures. This confusion was worse con-
founded by traditions borrowed from the mythologies of the
East and the North, by shadowy remnants of a symbolical
worship paid to the material forces of nature and by barbaric
practices, such as human sacrifices, in honor of the gods or of
the dead. People who are without the scientific development
of language and the art of writing, do not attain to systematic
and productive religious creeds. There is nothing to show
that, from the first appearance of the Gauls in history to their
struggle with victorious Rome, the rehgious influence of
Druidismhad caused any notable progress to be made in Gallic
manners and civilization. A general and strong, but vague
and incoherent, belief in the immortality pf the soul was its
noblest characteristic. But with the rehgious elements, at the
same time coarse and mystical, were united two facts of
importance: the Druids formed a veritable ecclesiastical cor^
poration, which had, throughout GaUic society, fixed attributes,
special manners and customs, an existence at the same time
distinct and national; and in the wars with Rome this corpo-
ration became the most faithful representatives and the most
persistent defenders of GaUic independence and nationality.
The Druids were far more a clergy than Druidism was a
reUgion; but it was an organized and a patriotic clergy. It
was especially on this account that they exercised in Gaul an
influence which was still existent, particularly in north-western
Gaul, at the time when Christianity reached the Gfdlic
provinces of the south and centre.
The Graeco-Roman Paganism was, at this time, far more
powerful than Druidism in Gaul, and yet more lukewarm and
destitute of all rehgious vitality. It was the religion of the
conquerors and of the State, and was invested, in that quality,
with real power ; but, beyond that, it had but the power derived
from popular customs and superstitions. As a rehgious creed,
the Latin Paganism was at bottom empty, indifferent, and
inclined to tolerate all religions in the State, provided only
that they, in their turn, were indifferent at any rate towards
itself, and that they did not come troubling the State, either
by disobeying her rulers or by attacking her old deities, dead
and buried beneath their own still standing altars.
CH. vl] OHBiaTIAmTT IN GAUL. 89
Such were the two religioiiB with which in Gaul nascent
Christianity had to contend. Compared with them it was, to
an appearance, very small and very weak; but it was pro-
vided with the most efficient weapons for fighting and beating
them, for it had exactly the moral forces which they lacked.
Christianity, instead of being, like Druidism, a religion exclu-
sively national and hostile to all that was foreign, proclaimed
a universal religion, free from all local and national partiality,
addressing itself to all men in the name of the same Gk)d, and
offering to all the same salvation. It is one of the strangest
and most significant facts in history, that the rehgion most
universally human, most dissociated from every consideration
but that of the rights and well-being of the human race in its
entirety — ^that such a religion, be it repeated, should have come'
forth from the womb of the most exclusive, most rigorously
and obstinately national religion that ever appeared in the
world, that is, Judaism. Such, nevertheless, was the birth of
Christianity; and this wonderful contrast between the essence
and the earthly origin of Christianity was without. doubt one
of its most powerful attractions and most efficacious means of
success.
Against Paganism Christianity was armed with moral forces
not a whit less great. Confronting mythological traditions and
poetical or philosophical allegories, appeared a religion truly
rehgious, concerned solely with the relations of mankind to
God and with their eternal future. To the pagan indifference
of the Boman world the Christians opposed the profound con-
viction of their faith, and not only their firmness in defending
it against all powers and all dangers, but also their ardent
passion for propagating it without any motive but the yearning
to make their fellows share inlts benefits and its hopes. They
confronted, nay, they welcomed martyrdom, at one time to
maintain their own Christianity, at another to make others
Christians arom^jd them ; propagandism was for them a duty
almost as imperative as fideUty. And it was not in memory
of old and obsolete mythologies but in the name of recent deeds
and persons, in obedience to laws proceeding from God, One
and Universal, in fulfilment and continuation of a contempo-
rary and superhuman history— that of Jesus Christ, the Son
of G<m1 and Son of Man— that the Christians of the first two
centuries labored to convert to their faith the whole Boman
world. Marcus Aurelius was contemptuously astonished at
what he called the obstinacy of the Christians; he knew not
90 EI8T0RY OF FRANCE. [cH. vi.
firom what source these nameless heroes drew a strength
superior to his own, though he was at the same time emperor
and sage. It is impossihle to assign with exactness the date of
the first foot-prints and first labors of Christianity in Gaul. It
was not, however, from Italy, nor in the Latin tongue and
through Latin writers, but from the East and through the
Greeks, that it first came and began to spread. Marseilles and
the different Greek colonies, originally from Asia Minor and
settled upon the shores of the Mediterranean or along the
Rhone, mark the route and were the places whither the first
Christian missionaries carried their teaching: on this point
the letters of the Apostles and the writings of the first two
generations of their disciples are clear and abiding proof. In
the west of the Empire, especially in Italy, the Christians at
their first appearance were confounded with the Jews, and
comprehended imder the same name : * * The emperor Claudius, "
says Suetonius, ** drove from Rome (a.d. 52) the Jews who, at
the instigation of Christus, were in continual commotion."
After the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus (a.d. 71), the Jews,
Christian or not, dispersed throughout the Empire; but the
Christians were not slow to signalize themselves by their
religious fervor, and to come forward every where imder their
own true name. Lyons became the chief centre of Christian
preaching and association in Gaul. As early as the first half
of the second century there existed there a Christian con-
gregation, regularly organized as a Church, and already suffi-
ciently important to be in intimate and frequent commimica-
tion with the Christian Churches of the East and West.
There is a tradition, generally admitted, that St. Pothinus, the
first Bishop of Lyons, was sent thither from the East by
the Bishop of Smyrna, St. Polycarp, himself a disciple of St.
John. One thing is certain, that the Christian Church of
Lyons produced Gaul's first martyrs, amongst whom was the
Bishop, St. Pothinus. «
It was imder Marcus Aurelius, the most philosophical and
most conscientious of the emperors, that there was enacted for
the first time in Gaul, against nascent Christianity, that scene
oftyranny and barbarity which was to be renewed so often and
during so many centuries in the midst of Christendom itself.
In the eastern provinces of the Empire and in Italy the Chris-
tians had already been several times persecuted, now with
cold-blooded cruelty, now with some sUght hesitation and
irresolution. Nero had caused them to be burned in the
CH. VI.] CHRISTIANTTT IN GA UL, 91
streets of Rome, accusing them of the conflagration himself
had kindled, and, a few months before his fall, St. Peter and
St. Paul had undegone martyrdom at Home. Domitian had
persecuted and put to death Christians even in his own family,
and though invested with the honors of the consulate. Right-
eous Trajan, when consulted by Pliny the Younger on the con-
duct he should adopt in Bithynia towards the Christians, had
answered: "It is impossible, in this sort of matter, to estab-
lish any certain general rule; there must be no quest set on
foot against them, and no unsigned indictment must be
accepted; but if they be accused and convicted, they must be
punished." To be punished, it sufficed that they were con-
victed of being Christians; and it was Trajan himself who
condemned St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, to be brought to
Rome and thrown to the beasts, for the simple reason that he
was highly Christian. Marcus Aurelius, not only by virtue of
his philosophical conscientiousness, but by reason of an inci-
dent in his history, seemed bound to be further than any other
from persecuting the Christians. During one of his campaigns
on the Danube, a.d. 174, his army was suffering cruelly
from fatigue and thirst; and at the very moment when they
were on the i)oint of engaging in a great battle against the bar-
barians, the rain fell in abundance, refreshed the Roman
soldiers, and conduced to their victory. There was in the Ro-
man army a legion, the* twelfth, called the Melitine or the
Thundering, which bore on its roll many Christian soldiers.
They gave thanks for the rain and the victory to the one
omnipotent God who had heard their prayers, whilst the pagans
rendered like honor to Jupiter, the rain-giver and the thun-
derer. The report about these Christians got spread abroad
and gained credit in the Empire, so much so that there was
attributed to Marcus Aurehus a letter, in which by reason, no
doubt, of this incident, he forbade persecution of the Chris-
tians. Tertullian, a contemiwrary witness, speaks of this let-
ter in perfect confidence; and the Christian writers of the fol-
lowing century did not hesitate to regard it as authentic.
Now-a-days, a strict examination of its existing text does not
allow such a character to be attributed to it. At any rate the
persecutions of the Christians were not forbidden, for in the
year 177, that is only three years after the victory of Marcus
Aurelius over the Qermans, there took place, undoubtedly by
his orders, the persecution which caused at Lyons the first
Gallic martyrdom. This was the fourth, or, according to
92 EI8T0ET OF FRANCE. [cH. VL
others, the fifth great imperial persecution of the . Chris-
tians.
Most tales of the martyrs were written long after the event,
and came to be nothing more than legends laden with details
often utterly puerile or devoid of proof. The martyrs of Lyons
in the second century wrote, so to speak, their own history;
for it was their comrades, eye-witnesses of their sufferings and
their virtue, who gave an account of them in a long letter ad-
dressed to their friends in Asia Minor, and written with passion-
ate sympathy and pious prolixity, but bearing all the character-
istics of truth. It seems desirable to submit for perusal that
document, which has been preserved almost entire in the
EccUsiaatical History of Eusebius, Bishop of Csesarea in the
third century, and which will exhibit, better than any modem
representations, the state of facts and of souls in the midst of
the imperial persecutions, and the mighty faith, devotion, and
courage, with which the early Christians faced the most cruel
trials.
"The servants of Christ, dwelling atVienne and Lyons in
Gaul, to the brethren settled in Asia and Phrygia, who have
the same faith and hope of redemption that we have, i)eace,
grace, and glory from God the Father and Jesus Christ our
Lord!
** None can tell to you in speech,or fully set forth to you in
writing the weight of our misery, the madness and rage of the
Gentiles against the saints, and all that hath been suffered by
the blessed martyrs. Our enemy doth rush upon us with all
the fury of his powers, and already giyeth us a foretaste and the
firstfruits of all the hcense with which he doth intend to set
upon us. He hath omitted nothing for the training of his
agents against us, and he doth exercise them in a sort of pre-
paratory work against the servants of the Lord. Not only are
we driven from the public buildings, from the baths, and from
the forum, but it is forbidden to all our people to appear pub-
licly in any place whatsoever.
" The grace of God hath striven for us against the devil: at
the same time that it hath sustained the weak, it hath opposed
to the Evil One, as it were, pillars of strength— men strong and
valiant, ready to draw on themselves all his attacks. They have
had to bear all manner of insult ; they have deemed but a small
matter that which others find hard and terrible ; and they have
thought only of going to Christ, proving by their' example that
tbe sufferings of this world are not worthy to be put in the
CH. VL] • CHBiaTIANITT IN GAUL, 98
balance with the glory which is to be manifested in us. They
have endured, in the first place, all the outrages that could be
heaped upon them by the multitude, outcries, blows, thefts,
spoliation, stoning, imprisonment, all that the fury of the peo-
ple could devise against hated enemies. Then, dragged to the
forum by the military tribune and the magistrates of the city,
they have been questioned before the people and cast into prison
until the coming of the governor. He, from the moment our
people appeared before him, committed all manner of violence
against them. Then stood forth one of our brethren, Vettius
Epagathus, full of love towards Gk)d and his neighbor, living a
life so pure and strict that, young as he was, men held him to
be the equal of the aged Zacharias. . . He could not bear that
judgment so imjust should go forth* against us, and, moved
with indignation, he asked leave to defend his brethren, and to
prove that there was in them no kind of irreligion or impiety.
Those present at the tribunal, amongst whom he was known
and celebrated, cried out against him, and the governor him-
self, enraged at so just a demand, asked him no more than this
question, **Art thou a Christian?" Straightway with a loud
voice, he declared himself a Christian, and was placed amongst
the number of the martyrs. . . .
"Afterwards, the rest began to be examined and classed.
The first, firm and well prepared, made hearty and solemn
confession of their faith. Others, ill prepared and with little
firmness, showed that they lacked strength for such a fight.
About ten of them fell away, which caused us incredible pain
and moxuTiing* Their example broke down the the courage of
' others, who, not being yet in bonds, though they had already
had much to suffer, kept close to the martyrs, and withdrew
not out of their sight. Then were we all stricken with dread
for the issue of the trial: not that we had great fear of the
torments inflicted, but because, prophesying the result accord-
ing to the degree of courage of the accused, we feared much
falling away. They took, day by day, those of our brethren
who were worthy to replace the weak ; so that all the best of
the two Churches, those whose care and zeal had founded
them, were taken and confined. They took, likewise, some of
our slaves, for the governor had ordered that they should be all
summoned to attend in public; and they, fearing the torments
they saw the scdnts undergo, and inAigated by the soldiers,
accused us falsely of odious deeds, such as the banquet ol
Thyestes, the ipcest of CBdipus, and other crimen which must
94 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. vi.
not be named or even thought of, and which we cannot bring
ourselves to beheve that men were ever guilty of. These re-
ports having once spread amongst the people, even those per-
sons who had hitherto, by reason, perhaps, of relationship,
shown moderation towards us, burst forth into bitter indigna-
tion against our people. Thus was fulfilled that which had
been prophesied by the Lord : * The time cometh when whoso-
ever shall kill you shall think that he doeth God service.'
Since that day the holy martyrs have suffered toi-tures that no
words can express.
" The fury of the multitude, of the governor and of the sol-
diers, fell chiefly upon Sanctus, a deacon of Vienne; upon
Maturus, a neophyte still, but already a valiant champion of
Christ; upon Attains also, bom at Pergamus, but who hath
ever been one of the pillars of our Church; upon Blandina,
lastly, in whom Christ hath made it appear that persons who
seem vile and despised of men are just those whom God holds
in the highest honor by reason of the excellent love they bear
Him, which is manifested in their firm virtue and not in vain
show. All of us, and even Blandina's mistress here below,
who fought valiantly with the other martyrs, feared that this
poor slave, so weak of body, would not be in a condition to
freely confess her faith ; but she was sustained by such vigor
of soul that the executioners, who from mom till eve put h^
to all manner of tortiire, failed in their efforts, and declared
themselves beaten, not knowing what further punishment to
inflict, and marvelling that she still lived, with her body
pierced through and through, and torn piecem^l by so many
tortures, of which a single one should have sufficed to kill
her. But that blessed saint, Hke a valiant athlete, took fresh
courage and strength from the confession of her faith; all feel-
ing of pain vanished, and ease returned to her at the mere
utterance of the words, * I am a Christian, and no evil is
wrought amongst us.
" As for Sanctus, the executioners hoped that in the midst of
the tortures inflicted upon him— the most atrocious which man
could devise— they would hear him say something imseemly
or unlawful; but so firmly did he resist them, that, without
even saying his name, or that of his nation or city, or whether
he was bond or free, he only replied in the Roman tongue, to
all questions, "I am a Christian." Therein was, for him, his
name, his country, his condition, his whole being; and never
cpuld the Gtentiles wrest from him another word. The fury of
CH. VI.] CHRISTIANITY IN OAUL. 96
the governor and the executioners was redoubled against him ;
and, not knowing how to torment him further, they applied to
his most tender members bars of red-hot iron. His members
burned; but he, upright and immovable, persisted in his pro-
fession of faith, as if living waters from the bosom of Christ
flowed over him and refreshed him. . . . Some days after,
these infidels began again to torture him, believing that if they
inflicted upon his blistering woimds the same agonies, they
would triumph over him, who seemed unable to bear the mere
touch of their hands ; and they hoped, also, that the sight of this
torturing alive would terrify his comrades. But, contrary to
general expectation, the body of Sanctus, rising suddenly up,
stood erect and firm amidst these repeated torments, and re-
covered its old appearance and the use of its members, as if,
by Divine grace, this second laceration of his flesh had caused
healing rather than suffering. ...
'^ When the tyrants had thus expended and exhausted their
tortures against the firmness of the martyrs sustained by
Christ, the devil devised other contrivances. They were cast
into the darkest and most unendurable place in their prison ;
their feet were dragged out and compressed to the utmost ten-
sion of the muscles; the gaolers, as if instigated by a demon,
tried every sort of torture, insomuch that several of them, for
whom God willed such an end, died of suffocation in prison.
Others, who had been tortured in such a manner that it was
thought impossible they should long survive, deprived as they
were of every remedy and aid from men, but supported never-
theless by the grace of Gkxl, remained sound and strong in body
as in soul, and comforted and re-animated their brethren. . . .
** The blessed Pothinus, who held at that time the bishopric
of Lyons, being upwards of ninety, and so weak in body that he
could hardly breathe, was himself brought before the tribimal,
so worn with old age and sickness that he seemed nigh to ex-
tinction; but he still possessed his soul, wherewith to subserve
the triumph of Christ. Being brought by the soldiers before
the tribimal, whither he was accompanied by all the magis-
trates of the city and the whole populace, that pursued him
with hootings, he offered, as if he had been the very Christ,
the most glorious testimony. At a question from the governor,
who asked what the Gk)d of the Christians was, he answered,
** K thou be worthy, thou shalt know." He was iromediately
raised up, without any respect or humanity, and blows were
showered upon him; those who happened to be nearest to him
96 BISTORT OF FRANCE. [ch. vi.
assaiQted him grievously with foot and fist, without the
slightest regard for his age; those who were farther off cast at
him whatever was to their hand; they would all have thought
themselves guilty of the greatest default if they had not done
their best, each on his own score, to insult him brutally. They
believed they were avenging the wrongs of their gods. Pothi-
nus, still breathing, was cast again into prison, and two days
after yielded up his spirit.
" Then were manifested a singular dispensation of Gk)d and
the immeasurable compassion of Jesus Christ: an example rare
amongst brethren, but in accord with the intentions and the
justice of the Lord. All those who, at their first arrest, had
denied their faith, were themselves cast into prison and given
over to the same sufferings as the other martyrs, for their denial
did not serve them at all. Those who had made profession of
being what they really were—that is, Christians— were im-
prisoned without being accused of other crimes. The former,
on the contrary, were confined as homicides and wretches,
thus suffering double punishment. The one sort found repose
in the honorable joys of martyrdom, in the hope of promised
blessedness, in the love of Christ, and in the spirit of Gkxi the
Father; the other were a prey to the reproaches of conscience;
It was easy to distinguish the one from the other by their looks.
The one walked joyously, bearing on their faces a majesty
mingled with sweetness, and their very bonds seemed unto
them an ornament, even as the broidery that decks a bride;
. . . the other, with downcast eyes and humble and dejected
air, were an object of contempt to the Gentiles themselves,
who regarded them as cowards who had forfeited the glorious
and saving name of Christians. And so they who were present
at this double spectacle were thereby signally strengthened,
and whoever amongst them chanced to be arrested confessed
the faith without doubt or hesitation. . .
"Things having come to this pass, different kinds of death
were inflicted on the martyrs, and they offered to God a crown
of divers flowers. It was but right that the most valiant
champions, tho^ who had sustained a double assatdt and
gained a signal victory, should receive a splendid crown of im-
mortality. The neophyte Maturus and the deacon Sanctus,
Blandina and Attains, then, were led into the amphitheatre,
and thrown to the beasts, as a sight to please the inhim[iamty
of the Gentiles. . . Maturus and Sanctus there underwent all
kinds of tortures, as if they had hitherto suffered notiung; 01*,
THE HUNS.
IMS NEW feRI
FUPI.TC LIBKARY
CH.VI.] CHRmTIANlTT IN OAtTL. ^
rather, like athletes who had already been several times vic-
torious, and were contending for the crown of crowns, they
brayed the stripes with which they were beaten, the bites of
the beasts that dragged them to and fro, and all that was de-
manded by the outcries of an insensate mob, so much the more
furious, because it could by no means overcome the firmness
of the martyrs or extort from Sanctus any other speech than
that which, on the first day, he had uttered: * I. am a Chris-
tian.' After this fearful contest, as life was not extinct, their
throats were at last cut, when they alone had thus been offered
as a spectacle to the public instead of the variety displayed in
the combat of gladiators. Blandina, in her turn, tied to a
stake, was given to the beasts; she was seen hanging, as it
were, on a sort of cross, calling upon God with trustful fervor,
and the brethren present were reminded, in the person of a
sister, of Him who had been crucified for their salvation. . .
As none of the beasts would touch the body of Blandina, she
was released from the stake, taken back to prison, and re-
served for another occasion. . . Attains, whose execution,
seeing that he was a man of mark, was furiously demanded by
the i)eople, came forward ready to brave every thing, as a man
deriving confidence from the memory of his life, for he had
coiu-ageously trained himself to discipline, and had always
amongst us borne witness for the truth. He was led all round
the amphitheatre, preceded by a board bearing this inscrip-
tion in Latin: *This is Attains the Christian.' The people
pursued him with the most furious hootings ; but the governor,
having learnt that he was a Roman citizen, had him taken
back to prison with, the rest. Having subsequently written to
Caesar, he waited for his decision as to those who were thus
detained.
" This delay was neither useless nor unprofitable, for then
shone forth the boundless compassion of Christ. Those of the
brethren who had been but dead members of the Church, were
recalled to life by the pains and help of the living ; the martyrs
obtained grace for those who had fallen away; and great was
the joy in the Church, at the same time virgin and mother,
for she once more found living those whom she had given up
for dead. Thus revived and strengthened by the goodness of
God, who willeth not the death of the sinner, but rather in-
viteth him to repentance, they presented themselves before the
tribunal, to be questioned afresh by the governor. Caesar had
replied that they who confessed themselves to be Christiana
98 HiaTORT OF FRANCE. [cH. vi.
should be put to the sword, and they who denied sent away
safe and sound. When the time for the g!reat market had fully
come, there assembled a numerous multitude from every
nation and every province. The governor had the blessed
martyrs brought up before his, judgment-seat, showing them
before the people with all the pomp of a theatre. He ques-
tioned them afresh; and those who were discovered to be Ro-
man citizens were beheaded, the rest were thrown to the
beasts.
** Great glory was gained for Christ by means of those who
had at first denied their faith, and who now confessed it con-
trary to the expectation of the Gentiles. Those who, having
been privately questioned, declared themselves Christians were
added to the number of the martyrs. Those in whom appeared
no vestige of faith, and no fear of God, remained without the
Se of the Church. When they were dealing with those who
i been reunited to it, one Alexander, a Phrygian by nation,
a physician by profession, who had for many years been
dwelling in Gaul^ a man well known to all for his love of God
and open preaching of the faith, took his place in the hall of
judgment, exhorting by signs all who filled it to confess their
faith, even as if he had been called in to deliver them of it.
The multitude, enraged to see that those who had at first de-
nied turned round and proclaimed their faith, cried out against
Alexander, whom they accused of the conversion. The gov-
ernor forthwith asked him what he was, and at the answer,
*I am a Christian,' condemned him to the beasts. On the
morrow Alexander was again brought up, together with
Attains, whom the governor, to please the people, had once
more condemned to the beasts. After they had both suffered
in the amphitheatre all the torments that could be devised,
they were put to the sword. Alexander uttered not a com-
plaint, not a word ; he had the air of one who was talking in-
wardly with God. Attains, seated on an iron seat, and wait-
ing for the fire to consume his body, said, in Latin, to the
people, ' See what ye are doing; it is in truth devouring men;
as for us, we devour not men, and we do no evil at all." He
was asked what was the name of God: *Gk)d,' saidhe, *is not
like us mortals; He hath no name.'
" After all these martyrs, on the last day of the shows, Blan-
dina was again brought up, together with a young lad, named
Ponticus, about fifteen years old. They had been brought up
every day before that they might see the tortures of their
Cfl. VI.] CnmSTIANITT IN OAtlL. 99
brethren. When they were called upon to swear by the altars
of the Gtentiles, they remained firm in their faith, making no
accoimt of those pretended gods, and so great was the fury of
the multitude against them, that no pity was shown for the age
of the child or the sex of the woman. Tortiu*es were heaped
upon them; they were made to pass through every kind of
torment, but the desired end was not gained. Supported by
the exhortations of his sister, who was seen and heard by the
Gentiles, Ponticus, after having endured all magnanimously,
gave up the ghost. Blandina, last of aU— Hke a noble mother
that hath roused the courage of her sons for the fight, and sent
them forth to conquer for their king— passed once moi^e
through aU the tortures they had suffered, anxious to go and
rejoin them, and rejoicing at each step towards death. At
length, after she had undergone fire, the talons of beasts, and
agonizing aspersion, she was wrapx)e(l in a network and thrown
to a bull that tossed her in the air; she was already uncon-
scious of all that befell her, and seemed altogether taken up
with watching for the blessings that Christ had in store for
her. Even the Gentiles allowed that never a woman had
suffered so much or so long.
" StQl their fury and their cruelty towards the saints was
not appeased. They devised another way of raging against
them ; they cast to the dogs the bodies of those who had died
of suffocation in prison, and watched night and day that none
of our brethren might come and bury them. As for what re-
mained of the martyrs' half mangled or devoured corpses, they
left them exposed under a guard of soldiers, coming to look on
them with insulting eyes, and saying, * Where is now their
Gk)d? Of what use to them was this religion for which they
laid down their lives? ' We were overcome with grief that we
were not able to bury these poor corpses; nor the darkness of
night, nor gold, nor prayers could help us to succeed therein.
After being thus exposed for six days in the open air, given
over to all manner of outrage, the corpses of the martyrs were
at last burned, reduced to ashes, and cast hither and thither by
the infidels upon the waters of the Rhone, that there might be
left no trace of them on earth. They acted as if they had been
more mighty than God, and could rob our brethren of their
resurrection: *'Tisin that hope,' said they, *that these folk
bring amongst us a new and strange religion, that they set at
naught the most painful torments, and that they go joyfully
to face death: let us see if they will rise again, if their Gk)d
337S55A
100 BISTORT OF FRANCE, [ck. Vt
will come to their aid and will be able to tear them from our
hands."
It is not without a painful effort that, e-^en after so many
centuries, we can resign ourselves to be witnesses, in imagi-
nation only^ of such a spectacle. We can scarce believe that
amongst men of the same period and the same city so much
ferocity could be displayed in opposition to so much courage,
the passion for barbarity against the passion for virtue.
Neverthless, such is history; and it should be represented as it
really was: first of all, for truth's sake; then for the due ap-
preciation of virtue and all it costs of effort and sacrifice;
and, lastly, for the purpose of showing what obstacles have to
be surmounted, what struggles endured, and what sufferings
borne, when the question is the accomplishment of great moral
and social reforms. Marcus Aurelius was, without any doubt,
a virtuous ruler, and one who had it in his heart to be just and
humane; but he was an absolute ruler, that is to say, one fed
entirely on his own ideas, very ill-informed about the facts on
which he had to decide, and without a free public to warn him
of the errors of his ideas or the practical results of his decrees.
He ordered the persecution of the Christians without knowing
what the Christians were, or what the persecution would be,
and this conscientious philosopher let loose at Lyons, against
the most conscientious of subjects, the zealous servility of his
agents, and the atrocious passions of the mob.
The persecution of the Christians did not stop at Lyons, or
with Marcus Aurelius; it became, during the third century,
the common practice of the emperors in all parts of the Em-
pire: from a.d. 202 to 312, imder the reigns of Septimius
Severus, Maximinus the First, Decius, Valerian, Aurelian,
Diocletian, Maximian, and Galerius, there are reckoned six
great general persecutions, without counting others more cir-
cumscribed or less severe. THie emperors Alexander Severus,
Philip the Arabian, and Constantius Chlorus were almost the
only exceptions to this cruel system; and nearly always,
wherever it was in force, the Pagan mob, in its brutality or
fanatical superstition, added to imperial rigor its own atrocious
and cynical excesses.
But Christian zeal was superior in perseverance 6iid efficacy
to Pagan persecution. St. Pothinus the Martyr was succeeded
as bishop at Lyons by St. Irenaeus, the most learned, most
judicious, and most illustrious of the early heads of the Church
in Gaul. Originally from Asia Minor, probably from Smyrna,
CH. Yh] CHRI&TIANITT IN GAUL. IQl
he had migrated to Graul, at what particular date is not known,
and had settled as a simple priest in the diocese of Lyons, where
it was not long hef ore he exercised vast influence, as well on
the spot as also during certain missions entrusted to him, and
amongst them one, they say, to the Pope St. Eleutherius at
Bome. Whilst Bishop of Lyons, from a.d. 177 to 202, he em-
ployed the five and twenty years in propagating the Christian
faith in Gaul, and in defending, by his writings, the Christian
doctrines against the discord to which they bad already been
subjected in the East, and which was beginning to penetrate
to the West. In 202, during the persecution instituted by^Sep-
timius Severus, St. Irenseus crowned by martyrdom his active
and influential hfe. It was in his episcopate that there began
what may be called the swarm of Christian missionaries who,
towards the end of the second and during the third centuries,
spread over the whole of Gaul preaching the faith and forming
churches. Some went from Lyons at the instigation of St.
IrensBus; others from Bome, especially under the pontificate
of Pope St. Fabian, himself martyred in 249; St. Felix and St.
Fortunatus to Valence, St. Ferr^ol to Besangon, St. Marcellus
to Chalons-sur-Saone, St. Benignus to Dijon, St. Trophimus to
Aries, St. Paul to Narbonne, St. Satuminus to Toulouse, St.
Maridal to Limoges, St. Andeol and St. Privatus to the Ce-
vennes, St. Austremoine to Clermont-Ferrand, St. Gatian to
Tours, St. Denis to Paris, and so many others that their names
are scarcely known beyond the pages of erudite historians or
the very sjwts where they preached, struggled, and conquered,
often at the price of their Uves. Such were the founders of
the faith and of the Christian Church in France. At the com-
mencement of the f ouriih century their work was, if not ac-
complished, at any rate triiunphant; and when, a.d. 312, Con-
stantine declared himself a Christian, he confirmed the fact of
the conquest of the Eoman world, and of Gaul in particular, by
Christianity. No doubt the majority of the inhabitants were
not as yet Christians ; but it was clear that the Christians were
in the ascendant and had command of the f utiure. Of the two
grand elements which were to meet together, on the ruins of
Roman society, for the formation of modem society, the moral
element, the Christian rehgion, had already taken possession
of souls; the devastatea territory awaited the coming of new
peoples known to history imder the general name of Germans,
whom th^ Bomans called the barbarians.
102 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. vn.
CHAPTER vn.
THE GERMANS IN QAUL. — ^THE FRANKS AND OLOVIS.
About a.d. 241 or 242 the sixth Roman legion, commanded
by Aurelian, at that time military tribime, and thirty years
later, emperor, had just finished a campaign on the Rhine,
imdertaken for the purpose of driving the Germans from
Graul, and was preparing for Eastern service, to make war on
the Persians. The soldiers sang,—
We have slain a thousand Franks and a thousand
Sarmatians; we want a thousand, thousand,
Thousand Persians.
That was, apparently, a popular burthen at the time, for on
the days of military festivals, at Rome and in Gktul, the
children sang, as they danced, —
We have cut off the heads of a thousand, thousand, thousand.
Thousand;
One man hath cut off the heads of a thousand, thousand, thousand.
Thousand, thousand;
May he live a thousand, thousand years, he who
Hath slain a thousand, thousand I
Nobody hath so much of wine as he
Hath of blood poured out.
Aurelian, the hero of these ditties, was indeed much given to
the pouring out of blood, for at the approach of a fresh war he
wrote to the senate,—
" I marvel. Conscript Fathers, that ye have so much misgiv-
ing about oi)ening the Sibylline books, as if ye were delibera-
ting in an assembly of Christians, and not in the temple of all
the gods. . , Let inquiry be made of the sacred books, and let
celebration take place of the ceremonies that ought to be ful-
filled. Far from refusing, I offer, with zeaJ, to satisfy all ex-
penditure required, with captives of every nationality^ victims
of royal rank. It is no shame to conquer with the aid of the
gods; it is thus that our ancestors began and ended many a
war."
Human sacrifices, then, were not yet foreign to Pagan fes-
tivals, and probably the blood of more than one Frankish cap-
tive on that occasion flowed in the temple of all the gods. *
CH. vn.] THE FRANKS AND CLOVIS. 103
It is the first time the name of Franks appears in history;
and it indicated no particular, single people, but a confederation
of Germanic peoplets, settled or roving on the right bank of
the Khine, from the Mayn to the ocean. The number and the
names of the tribes united in this confederation are uncertain.
A chart of the Roman empire, prepared apparently at the end
of the fourth century, in the reign of the Emperor Honorius
(which chart, called tabula Peutingeri, was found amongst the
ancient MSS. collected by Conrad Peutinger, a learned German
philosopher, in the fifteenth century), bears, over a large ter-
titory on the right bank of the Ehine, the word Francia^ and
the following enumeration: — **The Chaucians, the Ampsuar-
ians, the Cheruscans, and the Chamavians, who are also called
Franks;" and to these tribes divers chroniclers added several
others, **the Attuarians, the Bructerians, the Cattians, and
the Sicambrians." Whatever may have been the specific
names of these peoplets, they were all of German race, called
themselves Franks, that is "freemen," and made, sometimes
separately, sometimes collectively, continued incursions into
Gaul— especially Belgica and the northern portions of Lyon-
ness — ^at one time plundering and ravaging, at another occupy-
ing forcibly, or demanding of the Roman emperors lands
whereon to settle. From the middle of the third to the begin-
ning of the fifth century the history of the Western empire
presents an almost uninterrupted series of these invasions on
the part of the Franks, together with the different relation-
ships estabUshed between them and the Imperial government.
At one time whole tribes settled on Roman soil, submitted to
the emperors, entered their service, and fought for them even
against their own Gterman compatriots. At another, isolated
individuals, such and such warriors of German race, put
themselves at the command of the emperors, and became of
^importance. At the middle of the third century, 'the Emperor
Valerian, on committing a command to Aurehan, wrote,
**Thou wilt have with thee Hartmund, Haldegast, Hildmund,
and Carioviscus." Some Frankish tribes allied themselves
more or less fleetingly with the Imperial government, at the
same time that they preserved their independence; others
pursued, throughout the Empire, their life of incursion and
adventure. From a.d. 260 to 268, under the reign of Gal-
henus, a band of Franks threw itself upon Gaul, scoured it
from north-east to south-east, plundering and devastating
on its way; then it passed from Aquitania into Spain, took
104 HISTORY OF FBANCE. [ch. vii.
• and burned Tarragona, gained] possession of certain vessels,
sailed away, and disappeared in Africa, after having wandered
about for twelve years at its own will and pleasure. There
was no lack of valiant emperors, precarious and ephemeral as
their power may have been, to defend the Empire, and
especially Qaul, against those enemies, themselves ephemeral,
but for ever recurring; Decius, Valerian, Gallienus, Claudius
Qothicus, Aurelian, and Probus gallantly withstood those
repeated attacks of Grerman hordes. Sometimes they flattered
themselves they had gained a definitive victory, and then the
old Roman pride exhibited itself in their patriotic confidence.
About A.D. 278, the Emperor Probus, after gaining several vic-
tories in Gaul over the Franks, wrote to the senate, —
"I render thanks to the immortal gods, Conscript Fathers,
for that they have confirmed your judgment as regards me.
Germany is subdued throughout its whole extent ; nine kings
of different nations have come and cast themselves at my feet,
or rather at yours, as suppUants with their foreheads in the
dust. Already all those barbarians are tilling for you, sowing
for you, and fighting for you against the most distant nations.
Order ye, therefore, according to your custom, prayers of
thanksgiving, for we have slain four thousand of the enemy ;
we have had offered to us sixteen thousand men ready
armed; and we have wrested from the enemy the seventy
most important towns. The Gauls, in fact, are completely
delivered. The crowns offered to me by aU the cities of Gaul I
have submitted, Conscript Fathers, to your grace; dedicate ye
them with your own hands to Jupiter, all-bountiful, all-i)Ower-
ful, and to the other immortal gods and goddesses. All the
booty is retaken, and, further, we have made fresh captures,*
more considerable than our first losses; the fields of Gaul are
tilled by the oxen of the barbarians, and Grerman teams bend
their necks in slavery to our husbandmen; divers nations
raise cattle for our consumption, and horses to remoimt our
cavalry ; our stores are full of the corn of the barbarians — in
one word, we have left to the vanquished naught but the soil,
all their other possessions are ours. W^ had at first thought
it necessary. Conscript Fathers, to appoint a new Governor of
Germany ; but we have put off this measure to the time when
our ambition shall be more completely satisfied, which will be,
as it seems to us, when it shall have pleased Divine Provi-
dence to increase and multiply the forces of our armies."
Probus had good reason to wish that "Divine Providence
CH. vn.] THE FRANKS AND CL0VI8. 105
might be pleased to increase the forces of the Iloman armies,"
for even after his victories, exaggerated as they probably
were, they did not suJBfice for their task, and it was not long
before the vanquished recommenced war. He had dispersed
over the territory of the Empire the majority of the prisoners
he had taken. A band of Franks, who had been transported
and estabhshed as a military colony on the European shore
of the Black Sea, could not make up their minds to remain
there. They obtained possession of some vessels, traversed
the Propontis, the Hellespont, and the Archipelago, ravaged
the coasts of Greece, Asia Minor, and Africa, plundered Syra-
cuse, scoured the whole of the Mediterranean, entered the
ocean by the Straits of Gibraltar, and, making their Way up
again along the coasts of Gaul, arrived at last at the mouths of
the Rhine, where they once more found themselves at home
amongst the vines which Probus, in his victorious progress,
had been the first to have planted, and with probably their
old taste for adventure and plunder.
After the commencement of the fifth century, from a.d. 406
to 409, it was no longer by incursions limited to certain points,
and sometimes repelled with success, that the Germans har-
assed the Roman provinces: a veritable deluge of divers
nations, forced one upon another, from Asia into Europe, by
wars and migration in mass, inimdated the Empire and gave
the decisive signal for its fall. St. Jerome did not exaggerate
when he wrote to Ageruchia, ** Nations, countless in niunber
and exceeding fierce, have occupied all the Gauls; Quadians,
Vandals, Sarmatians, Alans, G^pidians, Heruhans, Saxons, Bur-
gundians, Allemannians, Pannonians, and even Assyrians
have laid waste all that there is between the Alps and the
Pyrenees, the ocean and the Rhine. Sad destiny of the com-
monwealth ! Mayence, once a noble city, hath been taken and
destroyed ; thousands of men were slaughtered in the church.
Worms hath fallen after a long siege. The inhabitants of
Rheims, a powerful city,* and those of Amiens, Arras,
Terouanne, at the extremity of Gaul, Tournay, Spires, and
Strasburg have been carried away to Grermany. All hath been
ravaged in Aquitania (Novempopulania), Lyonness, and Nar-
bonness; the towns, save a few, are dispeopled; the sword
pursueth them abroad and famine at home. I cannot speak
without tears of Toulouse; if she be not reduced to equal ruin,
it is to the merits of her holy Bishop Exuperus, that she oweth
it,"
106 HISTORY OF FRANCE, [ch. vii.
Then took place throughout the Roman empire, m the East
as well as in the West, in Asia and Africa as well as in
Europe, the last grand struggle between the Roman armies and
barbaric nations. Armie8\a the proper term; for, to tell the
truth, there was no longer a Roman nation, and very seldom a
Roman emperor with some little capacity for government or
war. The long continuence of despotism and slavery had
enervated equally the ruling power and the people; every
thing depended on the soldiers and their generals. It was in
Gaul that the struggle was most obstinate and most promptly
brought to a decisive issue, and the confusion there was as
great as the obstinacy. Barbaric peoplets served in the ranks
and barbaric leaders held the command of the Roman armies :
Stilicho was a Goth ; Arbogastes and Mellobaudes were Franks ;
Ricimer was a Suevian. The Roman generals, Bonifacius,
Aetius, -^gidius, Syagrius, at one time fought the barbarians,
at another negotiated with such and such of them, either to
entice them to take service against other barbarians, or to.pro-
mote the objects of personal ambition, for the Roman generals
also, under the titles of patrician, consul, or proconsul, aspired
to and attained a sort of political independence, and contributed
to the dismemberment of the empire in the very act of defend-
ing it. No later than a.d, 413, two German nations, the Visi-
goths and the Burgundians, took their stand definitively in
Gaul, and founded there two new kingdoms: the Visigoths,
under their kings Ataujph and Wallia, in Aquitania and
Narbonness ; the Burgundians, under their kings Gundichaire
and Gundioch, in Lyonness, from the southern point of Alsatia
right into Provence, along the two banks of the Saone and the
left bank of the Rhone, and also in Switzerland. In 451 the
arrival in Gaul of the Huns and their king Attila — already
famous, both king and nation, for their wild habits, their
fierce valor, and their successes against the Eastern empire —
gravely complicated the situation.. The common interest of
resistance against the most barbarous of barbarians, and the
renown and energy of Aetius, united, for the moment, the old
and new masters of Gaul; Romans, Gauls, Visigoths, Bur-
gundians, Franks, Alans, Saxons, and Britons, formed the
army led by Aetius against that of Attila, who . also had in his
ranks Goths, Burgundians, G^pidians, Alans, and beyond-
Rhine Franks, gathered together and enlisted on his road. It
was a chaos and a conflict of barbarians, of every name and
race, disputing one with another, pell-mell, the remnants of the
cavn.] THE FRANKS AND CL0VI8. 107
Boman empire torn asunder and in dissolution. Attila had
already arrived before Orleans, and was laying siege to it.
The bishop, St. Anianus, sustained awhile the courage of the
besieged by promising them aid from Aetius and his allies.
The aid was slow to come; and the bishop sent to Aetius a
message: " If thou be not here this very day, my son, it will
be too late." Still Aetius came not. The people of Orleans
determined to surrender; the gates flew open; the Huns
entered; the plundering began without much disorder; ** wag-
gons were stationed to receive the booty as it was taken from
the houses, and the captives, arranged in groui)s, were divided
by lot between the victorious chieftains." Suddenly a shout
re-echoed through the streets: it was Aetius, Theodoric, and
Thorismund, his son, who were coming with the eagles of the
Roman legions and with the banners of the Visigoths. A
fight took place between them and the Huns, at first on the
banks of the Loire, and then in the streets of the city. The
people of Orleans joined their liberators ; the danger w;as great
for the Hims, and Attila ordered a retreat. It was the 14th of
Jime, 451, and that day was for a long while celebrated in the
church of Orleans as the date of a signal deliverance. The
Hims retired towards Champagne, which they had already
crossed at their coming into Gaul; and when they were before
Troyes, the bishop, St. Lupus, repaired to Attila's camp, and
besought him to Spare a defenceless city, which had neither
walls nor garrison. "So be itl " answered Attila; " but thou
Shalt come with me and see the Rhine ; I promise then to send
thee back again." With mingled prudence and superstition,
the barbarian meant to keep the holy man as a hostage. The
Huns arrived at the plains hard by Ch§lons-siu'-Mame ; Aetius
and all his allies had followed them ; and Attila, perceiving that
a battle was inevitable, halted in a position for delivering it.
The Gothic historian Jornand^s says that he consulted his
priests, who answered that the Huns would be beaten, but that
the general of the enemy would fall in the fight. In this
prophecy Attila saw predicted the death of Aetius, his most for-
midable enemy ; and the struggle commenced. There is no pre*
cise information about the date ; but " it was," says Jomand^,
** a battle which for atrocity, multitude, horror, and stubborn-
ness has not the like in the records of antiquity." Historians
vary in their exaggerations of the numbers engaged and
killed: according to some, three hundred thousand, according
to others, one hundred and sixty-two thousand were left on
108 HISTORY OF FBANiJBL [ch. vn.
the field of battle. Hieodoric, King of the Visigoths, was
killed. Some chroniclers name Meroveus as King of the
Franks, settled in Belgica, near Tongres, who formed part of
the army of Aetius. They even attribute to him a brilliant
attack made on the eve of the battle upon the Gepidians, aJhes
of the Hims, when ninety thousand men fell, according to
some, and only fifteen thousand according to others. The
numbers are purely imaginary, and even the fsu^ is doubtful.
However, the battle of Chalons drove the Huns out of Gaul,
and was the last victory in Gaul, gained still in the name of
the Eoman empire, but in reality for the advantage of the
German nations which had already conquered it. Twenty-
four years afterwards the very name of Eoman empire disap-
X)eared with Augustulus, the last of the emperors of the West.
Thirty years after the battle of Chstlons, the Franks settled
in Gaul were not yet united as one nation ; several tribes with
this name, independent one of another, were planted between
the Rhine and the Somme ; there were some in the environs of
Cologne, Calais, Cambrai, even beyond the Seine and as far as
Le Mans, on the confines of the Britons. This is one of the
reasons of the confusion that prevails in the ancient chronicles
about the chieftains or kings of these tribes, their names and
dates, and the extent and site of their possessions. Pharamond,
Clodion, Meroveus, and Childeric cannot be considered as
Kings of France, and placed at the beginning of her history.
K they are met with in connection with historical facts, fabu-
lous legends or fanciful traditions are mingled with them:
Priam appears as a predecessor of Pharamond ; Clodion, who
passes for having been the first to bear and transmit to the
Frankish kings the title of *4ong-haired," is represented as the
son, at one time of Pharamond, at another, of another chieftain
named Theodemer; romantic adventures, spoilt by geograph-
ical mistakes, adorn the life of Childeric. All that can be dis-
tinctly affirmed is, that, from a. d. 450 to 480, the two princi-
pal Frankish tribes were those of the Salian Franks and the
Bipuarian Franks, settled, the latter in the east of Belgica, on
the banks of the Moselle and the Ehine ; the former, towards
the west, between the Mouse, the ocean, and the Somme. Mer-
oveus, whose name was perpetuated in his Une, was one of the
principal chieftains of the Salian Franks ; and his son Childeric,
who resiijed at Toumay, where his tomb was discovered in
1655, was the father of Clovis, who succeeded him in 481, and
with whom really commenced the kingdom and history of
France,
CH.vn.] THE FRANKS AND CL0VI8. 109
dovis was fifteen or sixteen years old when he became King
of the Salian Franks of Toumay. Five years afterwards his
ruling passion, ambition, exhibited itself, together with that
mixture of boldness and craft which was to characterize his
whole life. He had two neighbors: one, hostile to the Franks,
the Eoman patrician Syagrius, who was left master at Sois-
ons after the death of his father ^gidius, and whom Gregory
of Tours calls "Zing of the Romans;" the other, a Salian-
Frankish chieftain, just as Clovis was, and related to him,
Bagnacaire, who was settled at Cambrai. Clovis induced
Ragnacaire to join him in a campaign against Syagrius. They
fought, and Syagrius was driven to take refuge in Southern
Gaul, with Alaric, king of the Visigoths. Clovis, not content
with taking possession of Soissons, and anxious to prevent any
toublesome return, demanded of Alaric to send Syagrius back
to him, threatening war if the request were refused. The
Goth, less bellicose than the Frank, delivered up Syagrius to
the envoys of Clovis, who immediately had him secretly put to
death, settled himself at Soissons, and from thence set on foot,
in the country between the Aisne and the Loire, plundering
and subjugating expeditions which speedily increased his do-
mains and his wealth, and extended far and wide his fame as
well as his ambition. The Franks who accompanied him were
not long before they also felt the growth of his power; like
bim they were pagans, and the treasures of the Christian
churches counted for a great deal in the booty they had to
divide. On one of their expeditions they had tctken in the
church of 'Rheims, amongst other things, a vase " of marvellous
size and beauty." The Bishop of Rheims, St. Remi, was not
quite a stranger to Clovis. Some years before, when he had
heard that the son of Child^ric had become king of the Franks
of Toumai, he had written to congratulate him: ** We are in-
formed," said he, **that thou hast imdertaken the conduct of
aflfeirs; it is no marvel that thou beginnest to be what thy
fathers ever were;" and, whilst taking care to put himself on
good terms with the young pagan chieftain, the bishop added
to his felicitations some pious Christian counsel, without let-
ting any attempt at conversion be mixed up with his moral
exhortations. The bishop, informed of the removal of the
vase, sent to Clovis a messenger begging the return, if not of
all his church's ornaments, at any rate of that. "Follow us
as far as Soissons," said Clovis to the messenger; "it is there
the partition is to take place of what we have captured; when
110 titSTOtit OF fBANCS!, [CH. vn.
the lots shall have given me the vase, I will do what the bishop
dexoands." When Soissons was reached, and aU the booty had
been placed in the midst of the host, the king saLd, ^'Valiant
warriors, I pray you not to refuse me, over and above my
share, this vase here." At these words of the king, those who
were of sound mind amongst the assembly answered: ** Glori-
ous king, every thing we see here is thine, and we ourselves
are submissive to thy conmiands. Do thou as seemeth good to
thee, for there is none that can resist thy power." When they
had thus spoken a certain Frank, light-minded, jealous, and
vain, cried out aloud as he struck the vase with his battle-axe,
**Thou shalt have naught of all this save what the lots shall
truly give thee." At these words all were astounded; but the
king bore the insult with sweet patience, and, accepting the
vase, he gave it to the messenger, hiding his wound in the re-
cesses of his heart. At the end of a year he ordered all his
host to assemble fully equipped at the March parade, to have
their arms inspected. After having passed in review all the
other warriors, he came to him who had struck the vase.
"None," said he, **hath brought hither arms so ill kept as
thine ; nor lance, nor sword, nor battle-axe are in condition for
service." And wresting from him his axe he flung it on the
ground. The man stooped down a little to pick it up, and
forthwith the king, raising with both hands his own battle-axe,
drove it into his skull, saying, ** Thus diddest thou to the vase
of Soissons I" On the death of this fellow he bade the rest be-
gone ; and by this act made himself greatly feared.
A bold and unexpected deed has always a great effect on
men; with his Frankish warriors, as well as with his Eoman
and Gothic foes, Clovis had at command the instincts of pa-
tience and brutality in turn ; he could bear a mortification and
take vengeance in due season. Whilst prosecuting his course
of plunder and war in Eastern Belgica, on the banks of the
Meuse, Clovis was inspired with a wish to get married. He
had heard tell of a young girl, like himself of the Germanic
royal line, dotilde, niece of Gondebaud, at that time king of
the Burgundians. She was dubbed beautiful, wise, and well-
informed; but her situation was melancholy and perilous.
Ambition and fraternal hatred had devastated her family.
Her father, Chilperic, and her two brothers, had been put to
death by her imcle Gondebaud, who had caused her mother
Agrippina to be thrown into the Ehone, with a stone round her
neck, and drowned. Two sisters alone had survived this
CH. vn.] THE FRANKS AND CLOVIS, HI
slaughter; the elder, Chrona, had taken rehgious vows, the
other, Clotilde, was living almost in exile at Geneva, absorbed
in works of piety and charity. The principal historian of this
epoch, Gregory of Tours, an almost contemporary authority,
for he was elected bishop sixty-two years after the death of
Clovis, says simply: **Clovis at once sent a deputation to
Gondebaud to ask Clotilde in marriage. Gondebaud, not dar-
ing to refuse, put her into the hands of the envoys, who took
her promptly to the king. Clovis at sight of her was trans-'
ported with joy, and married her." But to this short account
other chroniclers, amongst them Fr6d6gaire, who wrote a com-
mentary upon and a continuation of Gregory of Tours' work,
added details which deserve reproduction, first as a picture of
manners, next for the better understanding of history. "As
he was not allowed to see Clotilde," says FrM^gaire, "Clovis
charged a certain Roman, named Aurelian, to use all his wit to
come nigh her. Aurelian repaired alone to the spot, clothed in
rags and with his wallet upon his back, like a mendicant. To
ensure confidence in himself he took with him the ring of
Clovis. On his arrival at Geneva, Clotilde received him as a
pilgrim charitably, and whilst she was washing his feet, Aure-
lian, bending towards her, said imder his breath, *Lady, I*
have great matters to announce to thee if thou deign to permit
me secret revelation.' She, consenting, replied, *Say on.'
* Clovis, king of the Franks,' said he, *hath sent me to thee:
if it be the will of God, he would fain raise thee to his high
rank by marriage; and that thou mayest be certified thereof,
he sendeth thee this ring.' She accepted the ring with great
joy, and, said to Aurelian, *Take for recompense of thy
pains these hundred sous in gold and this ring of mine. Re-
turn promptly to thy lord; if he would fain unite me to him
by marriage, let him send without delay messengers to de-
mand me of my imcle Gondebaud, and let the messengers who
shall come take me away in haste, so soon as they shall have
obtained permission; if they haste not, I fear lest a certain
sage, one Aridius, may return from Constantinople, and if he
arrive beforehand, all this matter will by his counsel come to
naught.' Aurelian returned in the same disguise under which
he had come. On approaching the territory of Orleans, and at
no great distance from his house, he had taken as travelling com-
panion a certain poor mendicant, by whom he, having foUen
asleep from sheer fatigue, and thinking himself safe, was rob-
•bed of his wallet and the hundred sous in gold that it con-
112 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. vn.
tained. On awakening, Aurelian was sorely vexed, ran swiftly
home and sent his servants in all directions in search of the
mendicant who had stolen his wallet. He was fomid and
brought to Aurehan, who, after drubbing him soundly for three
days, let him go his way. He afterwards told Clovis all that
had passed and what Clotilde suggested. Clovis, pleased with
his success and with Clotilde's notion, at once sent a deputa-
tion to Gondebaud to demand his niece in marriage. Qonde-
baud, not daring to refuse, and flattered at the idea of making
a friend of Clovis, promised to give her to him. Then the
deputation, having offered the denier and the sou, according
to the custom of the Franks, espoused Clotilde in the name of
Clovis, and demanded that she be given up to them to be mar-
ried. Without any delay the council was assembled at ChS,-
lons, and preparations made for the nuptials. The Franks,
having arrived with all si)eed, received her from the hands of
Gondebaud, put her into a covered carriage, and escorted her
to Clovis, together with much treasure. She, however, having
already learned that Aridius was on his way back, said to the
Frankish lords, * If ye would take me into the presence of your
lord, let me descend from this carriage, mount me on horse-
' back, and get you hence as fast as ye may; for never in this
carriage shall I reach the presence of your lord.'
"Aridius, in fact, returned very speedily from Marseilles,
and Gondebaud, on seeing him, said to him, *Thou knowest
that we have made friends with the Franks, and that I have
given my niece to Clovis to wife.' *This,' answered Arid:
* is no bond of friendship, but the beginning of perpetual stru.
thou shouldst have remembered, my lord, that thou didst sla/
^lotilde's father, thy brother Chilp^ric, that thou didst drowi
her mother, and that thou didst cut off her brothers' heads
and cast their bodies into a well. If Clotilde become powerful
she will avenge the wrongs of her relatives. Send thou forth-
with a troop in chase, and have her brought back to thee. It
will be easier for thee to bear the wrath of one person, than to
be perpetually at strife, thyself and thine, with all the Franks.'
And Gondebaud did send forthwith a troop in chase to fetch
back Clotilde with the carriage and all the treasure ; but she,
on approaching Villers, where Clovis was waiting for her, in
the territory of Troyes, and before passing the Burgundian
frontier, urged them who escorted her to disperse right and
left over a space of twelve leagues in the country whence she
was departing, to plunder and burn; and that having been
I
THUS DIDDEST THOU TO THE VASE OF SOISSONS.
en. vn.] THE FRANKS AND CLOVIS. 113
done with the permiseion of Clovis, she cried aloud, * I thank
thee, Gk)d omnipotent, for that I see the commencement of
vengeance for my parents and my hrethren !"
The majority of the learned have regarded this account of
Fr^d^gaire as a romantic fable, and have declined to give it a
place in history. M. Fauriel, one of the most learned asso-
ciates of the Academy of Inscriptions, has given much the
same opinion, but he nevertheless adds, "Whatever may be
their authorship, the fables in question are historic in the
sense that they relate to real facts of which they are a poetical
expression, a romantic development, conceived with the idea
o^ popularizing the Frankish kings amongst the Gallo-Homan
subjects." It cannot, however, be admitted that a desire to
popularize the Frankish kings is a sufficient and truth-like
explanation of these tales of the Gallo-Roman chroniclers, or
that they are no more than ** a poetical expression, a roman-
tic development" of the real facts briefly noted by Gregory
of Tours; the tales have a graver origin and contain more
truth than would be presmned from some of the anecdotes
and sayings mixed up with them. In the condition of minds
and parties in Gaul at the end of the fifth century the mar-
riage of Clovis and dotilde was, for the public of the period,
for the barbarians and for the Gallo-Eomans, a great mat-
ter. Clovis and the Franks were still pagans; Gondebaud
and the Burgundians were Christians, but Arians; Clotilde
was a Catholic Christian. To which of the two, CathoUcs or
Arians, would Clovis ally himself ? To whom, Arian, pagan, or
Catholic, would Clotilde be married? Assuredly the bishops,
priests and all the Gallo-Roman clergy, for the most part
Catholics, desired to see Clovis, that young and audacious
Frankish chieftain, take to wife a Catholic rather than an
Arian or a pagan, and hoi)ed to convert the pagan Clovis to
Christianity much more than an Arian to orthodoxy. The
question between Catholic orthodoxy and Arianism was, at
that time, a vital question for Christianity in its entirety, and
St. Athanasius was not wrong in attributing to it supreme im-
portance. It may be presumed that the Catholic clergy, the
bishop of Rheims, or the bishop of Langres, were no strangers
to the repeated praises which turned the thoughts of the
Frankish king towards the Burgundian princess, and the idea
of their marriage once set afloat, the Catholics, priesthood or
laity, labored undoubtedly to push it forward, whilst the Bur-
gundian Arians exerted themselves to prevent it. Thus there
114 BISTORT OF FRANGE, [oH. Vli.
took place, between opposing influences, religious and national,
a most animated struggle. No astonishment can be felt, then,
at the obstacles the marriage encountered, at the complica-
tions mingled with it, and at the indirect means employed on
both sides to cause its success or failure. The account of
Fr6d4gaire is but a pictiu^ of this struggle and its incidents, a
little amplified or altered by imagination or the credulity of
the period ; but the essential features of the picture, the dis-
guise of Aurelian, the hurry of Clotilde, the prudent recollec-
tion of Aridius, Gondebaud's alternations of fear and violence,
and Clotilde's vindictive passion when she is once out of dan-
ger, there is nothing in all this out of keeping with the man-
ners of the time or the position of the actors. Let it be added
that Aurelian and Aridius are real personages who are met
with elsewhere in history, and whose parts as played on the
occasion of Clotilde's marriage are in harmony with the other
traces that remain of their lives.
The consequences of the marriage justified before long the
importance which had on all sides been attached to it. Clo-
tilde had a son; she was anxious to have him baptized, and
urged her husband to consent. ** The gods you worship," said .
she, " are naught, and can do naught for themselves or others;
they are of wood or stone or metal." Clovis resisted, saying,
** It is by the command of our gods that all things are created
and brought forth. It is plain that your God hath no power;
there is no proof even that He is of the race of the gods." But
Clotilde prevailed; and she had her son baptized solemnly,
hoping that the striking nature of the ceremony might win to
the faith the father whom her words and prayers had been
powerless to touch. The child soon died, and Clovis bitterly
reproached the queen, saying, ** Had the child been dedicated
to my gods he would be aUve ; he was baptized in the name of
your God, and he could not live." Clotilde defended her God
and prayed. She had a second son who was also baptized,
and fell sick. **It cannot be otherwise with him than with
his brother," said Clovis; ** baptized in the name of your
Christ, he is going to die." But the child was cured, and lived;
and Clovis was pacified and less incredulous of Christ. An
event then came to pass which affected him still more than
the sickness or cure of his children. In 496 the Allemannians,
a Grermanic confederation like the Franks, who also had been,
for some time past, assailing the Roman empire on the banks
of the Rhine or the frontiers of Switzerland, crossed the river.
CH. vn.] THE FBAl^KS AND CLOVTS, HB
and invaded the settlements of the Franks on the left bank.
Clovis went to the aid of his confederation and attacked the
Allemannians at Tolbiac, near Cologne. He had with him
Aurelian, who had been his messenger to Ciotilde, whom he
had made Duke of Melim, and who commanded the forces of
Sens. The battle was going ill; the Franks were wavering
and Clovis was anxious. Before setting out ho had, according
to Fredegaire, promised his wife that if he were victorious he
would turn Christian. Other chroniclers say that Aurelian,
seeing the battle in danger of being lost, said to Clovis, ** My
lord king, believe only on the Lord of heaven whom the queen,
my mistress, preacheth." Clovis cried out with emotion,
*' Christ Jesus, Thou whom my queen Ciotilde calleth the Son
of the living God, I have invoked my own gods, and they have
withdrawn from me; I believe that they have no power since
they aid not those who call upon them. Thee, very God and
Lord, I invoke; if Thou give me victory over these foes, if I
find in Thee the power that the people proclaim of Thee, I
will believe on Thee, and will be baptized in Thy name." The
tide of battle turned : the Franks recovered confidence and
courage ; and the Allemannians, beaten and seeing their king
slain, surrendered themselves to Clovis, saying, ** Cease, of
thy grace,' to cause any more of our people to perish; for we
are thine."
On the return of Clovis, Ciotilde, fearing he should forget
his victory and his promise, *' secretly sent," says Gregory of
Tours, **to St. Eemi, bishop of Rheims, and prayed him to
penetrate the king's heart with the words of salvation." St.
Eemi was a fervent Christian and able bishop; and **I will
listen to thee, most holy father," said Clovis, *' willingly; but
there is a difficulty. The people that follow me will not give
up their gods. But I am about to assemble them, and will
sp^ak to them according to thy word." The king found the
people more docile or better prepared than he had represented
to the bishop. Even before he opened his mouth the greater
part of those present cried out, ** We abjure the mortal gods;
we are ready to follow the immortal God whom Eemi preach-
eth." About three thousand Frankish warriors, however,
persisted in their intention of remaining pagans, and deserting
Clovis betook themselves to Eagnacaire, the Frankish king of
Cambrai, who was destined ere long to pay dearly for this
acquisition. So soon as St. Eemi was informed of this good
disposition on the part of king and people, he fixed Christmas
116 HISTORY OF FRANCE, [ch. vn.
Day of this year, 496, for the ceremony of the baptism of these
grand neophytes. The description of it is borrowed from the
historian of the Church of Eheims, Frod^rd by name, bom
at the close of the ninth century. He gathered together the
essential points of it from the Life of Saint Remi, written,
shortly before that period, by the saint's celebrated successor
at Rheims, Archbishop Hincmar. **The bishop," says he,
** went in search of the king at early mom in his bed-chamber,
in order that, taking him at the moment of freedom from
secular cares, he might more freely communicate to him the
mysteries of the holy word. The king's chamber-people re-
ceive him with great respect, and the king himself runs for-
ward to meet him. Thereupon they pass together into an
oratory dedicated to St. Peter, chief of the apostles, and ad-
joining the king's apartment. When the bishop, the king,
and the queen had taken their places on the seats prepaid for
them, and admission had been given to some clerics and also
some friends and household servants of the king, the vener-
able bishop began his instructions on the subject of salvation.
.... Meanwhile preparations are being made along the road
from the palace to the baptistery; curtains and valuable stuffs
are hung up ; the houses on either side of the street are dressed
out ; the baptistery is sprinkled with balm and all manner of
I)erfume. The procession moves from the palace ; the clergy
lead the way with the holy gospels, the cross, and standards,
singing hymns and spiritual songs; then comes the bishop,
leading the king by the hand ; after him the queen, lastly the
people. On the road, it is said that the king asked the bishop
if that were the kingdom promised him; * No,' answered the
prelate, 'but it is the entrance to the road that leads to it.'
.... At the moment when the king bent his head over the
fountain of life, * Lower thy head with humility, Sicambrian,'
cried the eloquent bishop; 'adore what thou hast burned:
bum what thou hast adored.' The king's two sisters, Albo-
fl^de and Lant^hilde, likewise received baptism; and so at
the same time did three thousand of the Frankish army, be-
sides a large number of women and children."
When it was known that Clovis had been baptized by St.
Remi, and with what striking circumstance, great was the
satisfaction amongst the Catholics. The chief Biirgundian
prelate, Avitus, bishop of Vienne, wrote to the Frankish king:
— ** Yoiir faith is our victory; in choosing for you and yours,
you have pronounced for all; divine providence hath given
CH. viL] THE FRANKS AND CL0VI8. 117
you as arbiter to our age. Greece can boast of having a sov-
ereign of our persuasion; but she is no longer alone in posses-
sion of this precious gift; the rest of the world doth share her
light." Pope Anastasius hasted to express his joy to Clovis:
" The Church, our common mother," he wrote, ** rejoiceth to
have bom imto Gtod so great a king. Continue, glorious and
illustrious son, to cheer the heart of this tender mother; be a
column of iron to support her, and she in her turn will give
thee victory over all thine enemies."
Clovis was not a man to omit turning his Catholic popularity
to the account of his ambition. At the very time when he was
receiving these testimonies of good will from the heads of the
Church, he learned that Gondebaud, disquieted, no doubt, at
the conversion of his powerful neighbor, had just made a vain
attempt, at a conference held at Lyons, to reconcile in his
kingdom the Catholics and the Arians. Clovis considered the
moment favorable to his projects of aggrandizement at the
expense of the Burgundian king ; he fomented the dissensions
which already prevailed between Gondebaud and his brother
Grodegisile, assured to himself the latter's comphcity, and sud-
denly entered Burgundy with his army. Gondebaud, betrayed
and beaten at the first encounter at Dijon, fled to the south of
his kingdom, and went and shut himself up in Avignon. Clo-
vis pursued, and besieged him there. Gondebaud in great
alarm asked counsel of his Roman confidant Aridius, who had
but lately foretold to him what the marriage of his niece
Clotilde would bring upon him. ** On every side," said the
king, " I am enconfpassed by perils, and I know not what to
do ; lo ! here be these barbarians conie upon us to slay us and
destroy the land." ** To escape death," answered Aridius,
** thou must appease the ferocity of this man. Now, if it
please thee, I will feign to fly from thee and gp over to him.
So soon as I shall be with him, I wiU so do that he ruin neither
thee nor the land. Only have thou care to perform whatso-
ever I shall ask of thee, until the Lord in His goodness deign
to make thy cause triumph." ** All that thou shalt bid wiU I
do," said Gondebaud. So Aridius left Gondebaud and went
his way to Clovis, and said, ** Most pious king, I am thy hum-
ble servant; I give up this wretched Gondebaud and come
unto thy mightiness. If thy goodness deign to cast a glance
upon me, thou and thy descendants will flnd in me a servant
of integrity and fidelity." Clovis received him very kindly
and kept him by him, for Aridius was agreeable in conversa-
118 HISTORY OF FRANCE, [ch. vn.
tion, wise in counsel, just in judgment and faithful in what-
ever was committed to his care. As the siege continued,
Aridius said to Clovis, ** O king, if the glory of thy greatness
would suffer thee to listen to the words of my feebleness,
though thou needest not counsel, I would submit them to thee
in all fidehty, and they might be of use to tiiee, whether for
thyself or for the towns by the which thou dost propose to
pass. Wherefore keepest thou here thine army whilst thine
enemy doth hide himself in' a well-fortified place? Thou rav-
agest the fields, thou pillagest the com, thou cuttest down the
vines, thou fellest the oHve-trees, thou destroyest all the pro-
duce of the land, and yet thou succeedest not in destroying
thine adversary. Rather send thou unto him deputies, and
lay on him a tribute to be paid to thee every year. Thus the
land will be preserved, and thou wilt be lord for ever over
him who owes thee tribute. If he refuse, thou shalt then do
what pleaseth thee." Clovis found the coimsel good, ordered
his army to return home, sent deputies to Gk^ndebaud, and
called upon him to undertake the payment every year of a
fixed tribute. Gondebaud paid for the time, and promised to
pay punctually for the future. And peace appeared made be-
tween the two barbarians.
Pleased with his campaign against thQ Burgundians, Clovis
kept on good terms with Grondebaud, who was to be hence-
forth a simple tributary, and transferred to the Visigoths of
Aquitania, and their king, Alaric II., his views of conquest.
He had there the same pretexts for attack and the same means
of success. Alaric and his Visigoths were Arians, and be-
tween them and the bishops of Southern Gaul, nearly all
orthodox Catholics, there were permanent ill-will and distrust.
Alaric attempted to conciliate their good- will: in 506 a Council
met at Agde; the thirty-four bishops of Aquitania attended
in person or by delegate ; the king protested that he had no
design of persecuting the Catholics; the bishops, at the open-
ing of the Council, offered prayers for the king; but Alaric
did not forget that immediately, after the conversion of Clovis,
Volusian, bishop of Tours, had conspired in favor of the
Frankish king, and the bishops of Aquitania regarded Volusian,
as a martyr, for he had been deposed, without trial, from his
see, and taken as a prisoner first to Toulouse, and afterwards
into Spain, where in a short time he. had been put to death.
In vain did the glorious chief of the race of Goths, Theodoric
the Great, king of Italy, father-in-law of Alaric, and brother-
CH. vii.] TUE FRANKS AND CL0VI8, 119
in-law of Clovis, exert himself to prevent any outbreak be-
tween the two kings. In 498, Alaric, no doubt at his father-
in-law's soUcitation, wrote to Clovis, *'If my brother consent
thereto, I would, following my desires and by the grace of
Qodj have an interview with him." The interview took place
at a small island in the Loire, called the Island d'Or or de
St. Jean, near Amboise. **The two kings," says Gregory of
Tours, ** conversed, ate and drank together, and separated
with mutual promises of friendship." The positions and
passions of each soon made the promises of no effect. In 505
Clovis was seriously ill; the bishops of Aquitania testified
warm interest in him; and one of them, Quintian, bishop of
Bodez, being on this account persecuted by the Visigoths, had
to seek refuge at Clermont, in Auvergne. Clovis no longer
concealed his designs. In 507 he assembled his principal chief-
tains; and "It displeaseth me greatly," said he, **that these
Arians should possess a portion of the Gauls; march we forth
with the help of Grod, drive we them from that land, for it is
very goodly, and bring we it under our own power." The
Franks applauded their king; and the army set out on the
march in the direction of Poitiers, where Alaric happened at
that time to be. ** As a portion of the troops was crossing the
territory of Tours," says Gregory, who was shortly after-
wards its bishop, ** Clovis forbade, out of resi)ect for St.
Martin, any thing to be taken, save grass and water. One of
the army, however, having found some hay belonging to a
poor man, said, *Tbis is grass; we do not break the king's
commands by taking it;' and, in spite of the poor man's resist-
ance, he robbed him of his hay. Clovis, informed of the fact,
slew the soldier on the spot with one sweep of his sword, say-
ing, ' What will become of our hopes of victory, if we offend
St. Martin?'" Alaric had prepared for the struggle; and the
two armies met in the plain of Vouille, on the banks of the
little river Clain, a few leagues from Poitiers.' The battle was
very severe. **The Goths,'' says Gregory of Tours, ** fought
with missiles; the Franks sword in hand. Clovis met and
with his own hand slew Alaric in the fray ; at the moment of
striking his blow, two Goths fell suddenly upon Clovis, and
attacked him with their pikes on either side, but he escaped
death, thanks to his cuirass and the agility of his horse."
Beaten and kingless, the Goths retreated in great disorder;
and Clovis, pursuing his march, arrived without opposition at
Bordeaux, where he settled down with his Franks for the
120 HISTORY OF FRANCE, \ck. vn.
winter. When the war-season returned, he marched on
Toulouse, the capital of the Visigoths, which he likewise
occupied without resistance, and where he seized a portion of
the treasure of the Visigothic kings. He quitted it to lay
siege to Carcassonne, which had heen made by the Bomans
into the stronghold of Septimania.
There his course of conquest was destined to end. After the
battle of VouiUe he had sent his eldest son Theodoric in com-
mand of a division, with orders to cross Central Gaul from
west to east, to go and join the Burgundians of Grondebaud,
who had promised his assistance, and in conjunction with them
to attack the Visigoths on the banks of the Rhone and in Nar-
bonness. The young Frank boldly executed his father's
orders, but the intervention of Theodoric the Great, king of
Italy, prevented the success of the operation. He sent an
army into Gaul to the aid of his son-in-law Alaric; and the
united Franks and Burgundians failed in their attacks upon
the Visigoths of the Eastern Provinces. Clovis had no idea of
compromising by his obstinacy the conquests already accom-
plished ; he therefore raised the seige of Carcassonne, returned
first to Toulouse, and then to Bordeaux, took Angoul^me, the
only town of importance he did not possess in Aquitania ; and
feeling reasonably sure that the Visigoths, who, even with the
aid that had come from Italy, had great difficulty in defend-
ing what remained to them of Southern Gaul, would not come
and dispute with him what he had alreaxiy conquered, he
halted at Tours, and stayed there some time, to enjoy on the
very spot the fruits of his victory and to establish his power
in his new possessions.
It appears that even the Britons of Armorica tendered to
him at that time, through the interposition of Melanius, bishop
of Rennes, if not their actual submission, at any rate their sub-
ordination and homage.
Clovis at the same time had his self-respect flattered in a
manner to which barbaric conquerors always attach great
importance. Anastasius, Emperor of the East, with whom he
had already had some communication, sent to him at Tours a
solemn embassy, bringing him the titles and insignia of
Patrician and Consul. '* Clovis,'' says Gregory of Tours,
" put on the tunic of purple and the chlamys and the diadem;
then mounting his horse, he scattered with his own hand and
with much bounty gold and silver amongst the people, on the
road which lies between the gate of the court belonging to the
CH. vn.] TEE FRANKS AND CLOVIS. 121
basilica of St. Martin and the church of the city. From that
day he was called Consul and Augustus. On leaving the city
of Tours be repaired to Paris, where he fixed the seat of his
government."
Paris was certainly the political centre of his dominions, the
intermediate point between the early settlements of his race
and himself in Gaul and his new GaUic conquests; but he
lacked some of the possessions nearest to him and most
naturally, in his own opinion, his. To the east, north, and
southwest of Paris were settled some independent Frankish
tribes, governed by chieftains with the name of kings. So
soon as he had settled at Paris, it was the one fixed idea of
Clovis to reduce them all to subjection. He had conquered
the Burgundians and the Visigoths; it remained for him to
conquer and unite together all the Franks. The barbarian
showed himself in his true colors, during this new enterprise,
with his violence, his craft, his cruelty, and his perfidy. He
began with the most powerful of the tribes, the Ripuarian
Franks. He sent secretly to Cloderic, son of Sigebert, their
king, saying, "Thy father hath become old, and his wound
maketh him to hmp o' one foot ; if he should die, his kingdom
wiU come to thee of right, together with our friendship."
Cloderic had his father assassinated whilst asleep in his tent,
and sent messengers to Clovis, saying, *' My father is dead,
and I have in my power his kingdom and his treasm*es. Send
thou unto me certain of thy people, and I will gladly give into
their hands whatsoever amongst these treasures shall seem
like to please thee." The envoys of Clovis came, and, as they
were examining in detail the treasures of Sigebert, Cloderic
said to them, " This is the coffer wherein my father was wont,
to pile up his gold pieces." ** Plunge," said they, **thy hand
right to the bottom that none escape thee." Cloderic bent for-
ward, and one of the envoys lifted his battle-axe and cleft his
skuU. Clovis went to Cologne and convoked the Franks of
the canton. "Learn," said he, "that which hath happened.
As I was sailing on the river Scheldt, Cloderic, son ot my
relative, did vex his father, saying I was minded to slay him;
and as Sigebert was flying across the forest of Buchaw, his
son himself sent bandits, who fell upon him and slew him.
Cloderic also is dead, smitten I know not by whom as he was
opening his father's treasures. I am altogether imconcemed
in it all, and I could not shed the blood of my relatives, for it
is a crime. But since it hath so happened, I give imto you
122 BISTORT OF FRANCE. [ch. vii.
counsel, which ye shall follow if it seem to you good; turn ye
towards me, and live under my protection." And they who
were present hoisted him on a huge buckler, and hailed hiTn
king.
After Sigebert and the Eipuarian Franks, came the Franks
of Wrouanne, and Chararic their king. He had refused, twenty
years before, to march with Clovis against the Roman,
Syagrius. Clovis, who had not forgotten it, attacked him,
took him and his son prisoners, and had them both shorn,
ordering that Chararic should be ordained priest and his son
deacon. Chararic was much grieved. Then said his son to
him, "Here be branches which were cut from a green tree,
and are not yet wholly dried up: soon they will sprout forth
again. May it please Gkxl that he who hath wrought aU this
shall die as quickly 1" Clovis considered these words as a
menace, had both father and son beheaded, and took posses-
sion of their dominions. Bagnacaire, king of the Franks of
Cambrai, was the third to be attacked. He had served Clovis
against Syagrius, but Clovis took no account of that. Bagna-
caire, being beaten, was preparing for flight, when he was
seized by his own soldiers, who tied his hands behind his
back, and took him to Clovis along with his brother Riquier.
** Wherefore hast thou dishonored our race," said Clovis, " by
letting thyself wear bonds? 'Twere better to have died;" and
cleft his skull with one stroke of his battle-axe. Then turning
to Riquier, *'Hadst thou succoured thy brother," said he,
"he had assuredly not been bound;" and felled himUkewise
at his feet. Rignomer, king of the Franks of Le Mans, met the
same fate, but not at the hands, only by the order, of Clovis.
So Clovis remained sole king of the Franks, for all the inde-
pendent chieftains had disappeared.
It is said that one day, after all these murders, Clovis, sur-
rounded by his trusted servants, cried, ** Woe is me! who am
left as a traveller amongst strangers, and who have no longer
relatives to lend me support in the day of adversity 1" Thus
do the most shameless take pleasure in exhibiting sham sorrow
after crimes they cannot disavow.
It cannot be known whether Clovis ever felt in his soul any
scruple or regret for his many acts of ferocity and perfidy, or
if he looked as sufficient expiation, upon the favor he had be-
stowed on the churches and their bishops, upon the gifts he
lavished on them, and upon the absolutions he demanded of
them. In times of mingled barbarism and faith there are
strange cases of credulity in the way of bargains made with
CH. vn.] THE FRANKS AND CLOVIS. 123
divine justice. We read in the life of St. Eleutherus, bishop
of Tonmai, the native land of Clovis, that at one of those
periods when the conscience of the. Fratikish king must have
been most heavily laden, he presented himself one day at the
church. *'My lord king," said the bishop, **I know where-
fore thou art come to me." "I have nothing special to say
unto thee," rejoined Clovis. "Say not so, O king," replied the
bishop, "thou hast sinned, and darest not avow it." The
king was moved, and ended by confessing that he had deeply
sinned and had need of large pardon. St. Eleutherus betook
himself to prayer; the king came back the next day, and the
bishop gave him a paper on which was written by a divine
hand, he said, "the pardon granted to royal offences which
might not be revealed." Clovis accepted this absolution, and
loaded the church of Toumai with his gifts. In 511, the very
year of his death, his last act in life was the convocation at
Orleans of a Council, which was attended by thirty bishops
from the different parts of his kingdom, and at which were
adopted thirty-one canons that, whilst granting to the Church
great privileges and means of influence, in many cases favor-
able to humanity and respect for the rights of individuals,
bound the Church closely to the State, and gave to royalty,
even in ecclesiastical matters, great power. The bishops, on
breaking up, sent these canons to Clovis, praying him to give
them the sanction of his adhesion, which he did. A. few
months afterwards, on the 27th of November, 511, Clovis died
at Paris, and was buried in the church of St. Peter and St.
Paul, now-a-days St. G^n^vifeve, built by his wife Queen
dotilde, who survived him.
It was but right to make the reader intimately acquainted
with that great barbarian who, with all his vices and all his
crimes, brought about or rather began, two great matters
which have already endured through fourteen centuries and
still endure ; for he founded the French monarchy and Chris-
tian France. Such men and such facts have a right to be
closely studied and set in a clear light by history; Nothing
similar will be seen for two centuries, under the descendants
of Clovis, the Merovingians; amongst them will be en-
countered none but those personages whom death reduces to
insignificance, whatever may have been their rank in the
world, and of whom Virgil thus speaks to Dante:
" Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda e passa."
** Waste we no words on them: one glance and pass thou on."
Jnfemot Canto UI,
124 EISTOBT OF FRANCE. [ch. vin.
CHAPTER VIIL
THE MBROVINQIANS.
In its beginning and in its end the line of the Merovingians
is mediocre and obscure. Its' earliest ancestors, Meroveus,
from whom it got its name, and Clodion, the first, it is said, of
the long-haired kings, a characteristic title of the Frankish
kings, are scarcely historical personages ; and it is under the
qualification of sluggard kings that the last Merovingians have
a place in history. Clovis alone, amidst his vices and his
crimes, was sufficiently great and did sufficiently great deeds
to live for ever in the course of ages; the greatest i)art of his
successors belong only to genealogy or chronology. In a mo-
ment of self-abandonment and weariness, the great Napoleon
once said, ** What trouble to take for half a page in universal
history !" Histories far more limited and modest than a uni-
versal history, not only have a right, but are bound to shed
their light only upon those men who have deserved it by the
eminence of their talents or the important results of their pass^
age through life; rarity only can claim to escape oblivion.
And save two or three, a little less insignificant or less hateful
than the rest, the Merovingian kings deserve only to be for-
gotten. From A.D. 511 to a.d. 752, that is, from the death of
Clovis to the accession of the Carlovingians, is two hundred
and forty-one years, which was the duration of the dynasty of
the Merovingians. During this time there reigned twenty-
eight Merovingian kings, which reduces to eight years and
seven months the average reign of each, a short duration com-
pared with that of most of the royal dynasties. Five of these
kings, Clotaire I., Clotaire II., Dagobert L, Thierry IV., and
Childeric III. alone, at different intervals, united under their
power all the dominions possessed by Clovis or his successors.
The other kings of this line reigned only over special kingdonas,
formed by virtue of divers partitions at the death of their general
possessor. From a.d. 511 to 638 five such partitions took place.
In 511, after the death of Clovis, his dominions were divided
amongst his four sons; Theodoric, or Thierry I., was king of
Metz; Clodomir, of Orl^ns; Childebert, of Paris; Clotaire I.,
of Soissons. To each of these capitals fixed boundaries were
CH. vm.] THE MEROVINGIANS. 125
attached. In 558, in consequence of divers incidents brought
about naturally or by violence, Clotaire I. ended by possessing
alone, during three years, all the dominions of his fathers. At
his death, in 561, they were partitioned afresh amongst his
four sons; Charibert was king of Paris; Gontran, of Orl^ns
and Burgundy; Sigebert I., of Metz; andChilp^ric of Soissons.
In 567, Charibert, king of Paris, died without children, and
a new partition left only three kingdoms, Austrasia, Neustria,
and Burgundy. Austrasia, in the East, extended over the two
banks of the Rhine, and comprised, side by side with Eoman
towns and districts, populations that had remained Germanic.
Neustria, in the West, was essentially Gallo-Roman, though it
comprised in the north the old territory of the Salian Franks,
on the borders of the Scheldt. Burgundy was the old kingdom
of the Burgundians, enlarged in the north by some few coun-
ties. Paris, the residence of Clovis, was reserved and un-
divided amongst the three kings, kept as a sort of neutral city
into which they could not enter without the common consent
of all. In 613, new incidents connected with family-matters
placed Clotaire 11., son of Chilp^ric, and heretofore king of
Soissons, in possession of the three kingdoms. He kept them
united up to 628, and left them so to his son Dagobert I., who
remained in possession of them up to 638. At his death a new
division of the Frankish dominions took place, no longer into
three but two kingdoms, Austrasia being one, and Neustria
and Burgundy the other. This was the definitive dismember-
ment of the great Frankish dominion to the time of its last two
Merovingian kings, Thierry IV., and Child^ric III., who were
kings in name only, dragged from the cloister as ghosts from
the tomb to play a motionless part in the drama. For a long
time past the real power had been in the hands of that valiant
Austrasian family which was to furnish the dominions of Clovis
with a new dynasty and a greater king than Clovis.
Southern Gaul, that is to say, Aquitania, Vasconia, Nar-
bonness, called Septimania, and the two banks of the Rhone
near its mouths, were not comprised in these partitions of the
Frankish dominions. Each of the co-partitioners assigned to
themselves, to the south of the Garonne and on the coasts of
the Mediterranean, in that beautiful region of old Roman Gaul,
such and such a district or such and such a town, just as heirs-
at-law keep to themselves severally such and such a piece of
furniture or such and such a valuable jewel out of a rich prop-
erty to which they succeed, and which they divide amongst
126 ni8T0RT OF FRANCE, [ch. vra.
them. The peculiar situation of those provinces at their dis-
tance from the Franks' own settlements contributed much tow-
ards the independence which Southern Gaul, and especially
Aquitania, was constantly striving and partly managed to re-
cover, amidst the extension and tempestuous fortunes of the
Frankish monarchy. It is easy to comprehend how these re-
peated partitions of a mighty inheritance with so many suc-
cessors, these domiiiions continually changing both their limits
and their masters, must have tended to increase the already
profound anarchy of the Roman and the barbaric worlds thrown
pell>mell one upon the other, and fallen a prey, the Roman to
the disorganization of a lingering death, the barbaric to the
fermentation of a new existence striving for development
under social conditions quite different from those of its primi-
tive Hfe. Some historians have said that, in spite of these per-
petual dismemberments of the great Frankish dominion, a
real unity had always existed in the Frankish monarchy, and
regulated the destinies of its constituent peoples. They who
say so show themselves singularly easy to please in the matter
of political unity and international harmony. Amongst those
various States, springing from a common base and subdivided
between the different members of one and the same family,
rivalries, enmities, hostile machinations, deeds of violence and
atrocity, struggles, and wars soon became as frequent, as
bloody, and as obstinate as they have ever been amongst states
and sovereigns as unconnected as possible one with another.
It will suffice to quote one case which was not long in coming.
In 524, scarcely thirteen years after the death of Clovis and the
partition of his dominions amongst his four sons, the second of
them, Clodomir, king of Orl^ns, was killed in a war against
the Burgundians, leaving three sons, direct heirs of his king-
dom, subject to equal partition between them. Their grand-
mother, Olotilde, kept them with her at Paris; and "their
uncle Childebert (king of Paris), seeing that his mother be-
stowed all her affection upon the sons of Clodomir, grew jeal-
ous-; so, fearing that by her favor they would get a share in
the kingdom, he sent secretly to his brother Clotaire (king of
Soissons), saying, * Our mother keepeth by her the sons of our
brother, and willeth to give them the kingdom of their father.
Thou must needs, therefore, come speedily to Paris, and we
must take counsel together as to what shall be done with them ;
whether they shall be shorn and reduced to the condition of
commoners, or slain and leave their kingdom to be shared
OH. vra.] THE MEROVINGIANS. 127
equally between us.' Clotaire, overcome with joy at these
words, came to Paris. Childebert had already spread abroad
amongst the people that the two kings were to join in raising
the young children to the throne. The two kings then sent a
message to the queen who at that time dwelt in the same city,
saying, * Send thou the children to us, that we may place them
on the throne.' Clotilde, full of joy and unwitting of their
craft, set meat and drink before the children, and then sent
them away, saying, * I shall seem not to have lost my son if I
see ye succeed him in his kingdom.' The young princes were
immediately seized, and parted from their servants and gov-
ernors; and the servants and the children were kept in sepa-
rate places. Th^ Childeibert and Clotaire sent to the queen
their confidant Arcadius (one of the Arvemian senators), with
a pair of shears and a naked sword. When he came to Clo-
tilde, he showed her what he bare with him, and said to her,
* Most glorious queen, thy sons, our masters, desire to know
thy wiU touching these children: wilt thou that they hve with
shorn hair or that they be put to death? ' Clotilde, astounded
at this address, and overcome with indignation, answered at
hazard amidst the grief that overwhelmed her, and not know-
ing what she would say, * If they be not set upon the throne
I would rather know that they were dead than shorn.' But
Arcadius, caring little for her despair or for what she might
decide after more reflection, returned in haste to the two kings,
and said, * Finish ye your work, for the queen favoring your
plans, willeth that ye accomplish them.' Forthwith Clotaire
taketh the eldest by the arm, dasheth him upon the ground,
and slayeth him without mercy with the thrust of a hunting-
knife beneath the arm-pit. At the cries raised by the child, his
brother casteth himself at the feet of Childebert, and clinging
to his knees, saith amidst his sobs, ' Aid me, good father, that
I die not like my brother.' Childebert, his visage bathed in
tears, saith to Clotaire, * Dear brother, I crave thy mercy for
his life; I will give thee whatsoever thou wilt as the price of
his* soul; I pray thee, slay him not.' Then Clotaire, with
menacing and furious mien, crieth out aloud, * Thrust him
away, or thou diest in his stead: thou, the instigator of all this
work, art thou, then, so quick to be faithless? ' At these words
Childebert thrust away the child towards Clotaire, who seized
him, pliuiged a himting-knife in his side, as he had in his
brother's and slew him. They then put to death the slaves and
governors of the children. After these murders Clotaire
128 HISTORY OF FRANCE, . [cH. vm.
mounted his horse and departed, taking little heed of his
nephew's death ; and Childebert withdrew into the outskirts of
the city. Queen Clotilde had the corpses of the two children
placed in a coffin, and followed them, with a great parade of
chanting, and immense mourning, to the hasilica of St. Pierre
(now St. Gen^vi^ve), where they were buried together. One
was ten years old and the other seven. ' The third, named
Clodoald (who died about the year 560, after having f oimded,
near Paris, a monastery called after him St, Clovd)^ could
not be caught, and was saved by some gallant men. He, dis-
daining a terrestrial kingdom, dedicated himself to the Lord,
was shorn by his own hand, and became a churchman; he de-
voted himself wholly to good works, and died a priest. And
the two kings divided equally between them the kingdom of
Clodomir" (Gregory of Tours, Histories des Francs, in. xviii).
The history of the most barbarous peoples and times assur-
edly offers no example, in one and the same family, of an
usurpation more perfidiously and atrociously consummated.
King Clodomir, the father of the two young princes thus de-
throned and murdered by their imcles, had, during his reign,
shown almost equal indifference and cruelty. In 523, during a
war which, in concert with his brothers Childebert and Clo-
taire, he had waged against Sigismund, king of Burgundy, he
had made prisoners of that king, his wife, and their sons, and
kept them shut up at Orleans. The year after, the war was
renewed with the Burgundians. "Clodomir resolved," says
Gregory of Tours, **to put Sigismimd to death. The l3lessed
Avitus, abbot of St. Mesmin de Micy (an abbey about two
leagues from Orl^ns), a famous priest in those days, said to
him on this occasion, * If, turning thy thoughts towards God,
thou change thy plan, and suffer not these folk to be slain, God
will be with thee, and thou wilt gain the victory; but if thou
slay them, thou thyself wilt be delivered into the hands of
thine enemies, and thou wilt undergo their fate; to thee and
thy wife and thy sons will happen that which thou wilt have
done to Sigismund and his wife and his sons.' But Clodomir,
taking no heed of this counsel, said, * It were great folly to •
leave one enemy at home when T march out against another;
one attacking me behind and another in front, I should find
myself between two armies: victory will be surer and easier if
I separate one from the other; when the first is once dead, it
will be less difficult to get rid of the other aJso.* Accordingly
he put Sigismimd to death, together with his wife and his sons,
THRUST HIM AWAY. OR THOU DIEST IN HIS STEAD.
THE NEW fCRK
PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX
Tll-DEN J-cL-NDATiOK
CH. vm.] .THE MEROVINGIANS. 129
ordered them to be thrown into a well in the village of Coul-
mier, belonging to the territory of Orl^ns, and set out for Bur-
gundy. After his first success Clodomir fell into an ambush
and into the hands of his enemies, who cut off his head, stuck
it on the end of a pike and held it up aloft. Victory, neverthe-
less, remained with the Franks ; but scarcely had a year elapsed
when Queen Guntheuque, Clodomir's widow, became the wife
of his brother Olotaire, and his two elder sons, Theobald and
Gronthaire, fell beneath their xmcle's hunting knife."
Even in the coarsest and harshest ages the soul of man does
not completely lose its instincts of justice and hmnanity. The
bishops and priests were not alone in crying out against such
atrocities ; the barbarians themselves did not always remain
indifferent spectators of them, Ijut sometimes took advantage
of them to rouse the wrath and warlike ardor of their com-
rades. "About the year 528, Theodoric, King of Metz, the
eldest son of'Clovis, purposed to undertake a grand campaign
on the right bank of the Rhine against his neighbors the Thur-
ingians, and summoned the Franks to a meeting. 'Bethink
you,' said he, * that of old time the Thuringians fell violently
upon our ancestors, and did them much harm. Our fathers,
ye know, gave them hostages to obtain peace; but the Thurin-
gians put to death those hostages in divers ways, and once
more f aUing upon our relatives, took from them all they pos-
sessed. After haying hung children up, by the sinews of their
thighs, on the branches of trees, they put to a most cruel death
more than two hundred young girls, tying them by the legs to
the necks of horses, which, driven by pointed goads in different
directions, tore the poor souls in pieces ; they laid others along
the ruts of* the roads, fixed them in the earth with stakes,
drove over them Jaden cars, and so left them, with their bones
all broken, as a meal for the birds and dogs. To this very day
doth Hermannfroi fail in his promise, and absolutely refuse to
fulfil his engagements: light is on our side; march we against
them with the help of God.' Then the Franks, indignant at
such atrocities, demanded with one voice to be led into Thur-
ingia. . . . Victory made them masters of it, and they reduced
the coimtry under their dominion. . . . Whilst the Frankish
kings were stiU there, Theodoric would have slain his brother
Clotaire. Having put armed men in waiting, he had him
fetched to treat secretly of a certain matter. Then, having
arranged, in a portion of his house, a curtain from wall to wall,
he posted his armed men behind it ; but, as the curtain was too
130 BISTORT OF FRANCE. [ctt. vm.
short, it left their feet exposed. Clotaire, having heen warned
of the snare, entered the house armed and with a goodly com-
pany. Theodoric then perceived that he was discovered, in-
vented some story, and talked of this, that, and the other. At
last, not knowing how to get his treachery forgotten, he made
Clotaire a present of a large silvern dish. Clotaire wished him
good-bye, thanked him, and returned home. But Theodoric
immediately complained to his own folks that he had sacrificed
his silvern dish to no purpose, and said to his son Theodebert,
* Go, find thy uncle, and pray him to give thee the present I
made him.' Theodebert went, and got what he asked. In such
tricks did Theodoric excel " (Gregory of Tours, III. vii.).
These Merovingian kings were as greedy and licentious as
they were cruel. Not only was pillage, in their estimation, the
end and object of war, but they pillaged even in the midst of
peace and in their own dominions; sometimes af^er the Boman
practice, by aggravation of taxes and fiscal manoeuvres, at
others after the barbaric fashion, by sudden attacks on places
and persons they knew to be rich. It often happened that they
pillaged a church, of which the bishop had vexed them by his
protests, either to swell their own personal treasury, or to
make, soon afterwards, offerings to another church of which
they sought the favor. When some great family event was at
hand, they deUghted in a coarse magnificence, for which they
provided at the expense of the populations of their domains, or
of the great officers of their courts, who did not fail to idem-
nify themselves, thanks to public disorder, for the sacrifices
imposed upon them. At the end of the sixth century, Chilp^-
ric, king of Neustria, had promised his daughter Rigonthe in
marriage to Prince Recared, son of LeuvigUd, king of the Visi-
goths of Spain. ** A grand deputation of Goths came to Paris
to fetch the Frankish princess. King Chilp^ric ordered several
families in the fiscal domains to be seized and placed in cars*.
As a great number of them wept and were not willing to go,
he had them kept in prison that he might more easily force
them to go away with his daughter. It is said that several, in
their despair, hung themselves, fearing to be taken from their
parents. Sons were separated from fathers, daughters from
mothers ; and all departed with deep groans and maledictions,
and in Paris there reigned a desolation like that of Egypt. Not
a few, of superior birth, being forced to go away, even made
wills whereby they left their possessions to the churches, and
demanded that, so soon as the yoxmg girl should have entered
CH. vm.] TBE MEROVlNGtAm, ISl
Spain, their wills should be opened just as if they were already
in their graves. . . . When King Chilperic gave up his daugh-
ter to the ambassadors of the Groths, he presented them with
vast treasures. Her mother (Queen FrM^gonde) added thereto
so great a quantity of gold and silver and valuable vestments,
that, at the sight thereof, the king thought he must have
naught remaining. The queen, perceiving his emotion, turned
to the Franks, and said to them, * Think not, warriors, that
there is here aught of the treasures of former kings. All that
ye see is taken from mine own possessions, for my most
glorious king hath made me many gifts. Thereto have I
added of the fruits of mine own toil, and a great part pro-
ceedeth from the revenues I have drawn, either in kind or in
money, from the houses that have been ceded imto me. Ye
y6iu'selves have given me riches, and ye see here a portion
thereof; but there is here naught of the pubUc treasure.' And
the king was deceived into believing her words. Such was
the multitude of golden and silvern articles and other precious
things that it took fifty wagons to hold them. The Franks, on
their part, made many offerings ; some gave gold, others silver,
sundry gave horses, but most of them vestments. At last the
young girl, with many tears and kisses, said farewell. As she
was passing through the gate an axle of her carriage broke,
and all cried out aUxck! which was interpreted by some as a
presage. She departed from Paris, and at eight miles' distance
from the city she had her tents pitched. During the night
fifty, men arose, and, having taken a hundred of the best horses
and as many golden bits and bridles, and two large silvern
dishes, fied away, and took refuge with King Childebert.
During the whole journey whoever could escape fied away
with all that he could lay hands on. It was required also
of all the towns that were traversed on the way, that they
shotild make great preparations to defray expenses, for the
king forbade any contribution . from the treasury: all "the
charges were met by extraordinary taxes levied on the poor"
(Gregory of Tours, VI. xlv.).
Close upon this tyrannical magnificence came unexpected
sorrows, and close upon these outrages remorse. The youngest
son of King Chilperic, Dagobert by name, feU iU. ** He was a
li^e better, when his elder brother Chlodebert was attacked
with the same symptoms. His mother FrM^gonde, seeing him
in danger of death, and touched by tardy repentance, said to
the king, 'Long hath divine mercy borne with o\xj: misdeeds;
132 BISTORT OF FRANCE, [cf. vm.
ft hath warned us by fevers and other maladies, and we have
not' mended our ways, and now we are losing our sons ; now
the tears of the poor, the lamentations of widows, and the
sighs of orphans are causing them to perish, and leaving us no
hope of laying by for any one. We heap up riches and know
not for whom. Our treasures, all laden with plunder and
curses, are hke to remain without possessors. Our cellars
are they not bursting with wine, and our granaries with
com? Our coffers were they not full to the brim with gold
and silver and precious stones and necklaces and other im-
perial ornaments? And yet that which was our most beautiful
possession we are losing I Come then, if thou wilt, and let us
bvim all these wicked lists ; let our treasury be content with
what was suflBcient for thy father Clotaire.' Having thus
spoken, and beating her breast, the queen had brought to her
the rolls, which Mark had consigned to her of each of the
cities that belonged to her, and cast them into the fire. Then,
turning again to the king, * What I' she cried, * dost thou hesi-
tate? Do thou even as I; if we lose our dear children, at least
escape we everlasting punishment.' Then the king, moved
with compunction, threw into the fire all the lists, and, when
they were burned, sent people to stay the levy of those im-
posts. And afterward their youngest child died, worn out
with lingering illness. Overwhelmed with grief, they bare
him from their house at Braine to Paris, and had him buried
in the basilica of St. Denis. As for Chlodebert, they placed
him on a litter, carried him to the basHica of St. M6dard
at Soissons, and, laying him before the tomb of the saint,
offered vows for his recovery; but in the middle of the night,
enfeebled and exhausted, he gave up the ghost. They buried
him in the basilica of the holy martyrs Crispin and Crispinian.
Then King Chilp^ric showed great largess to the churches
and the monasteries and the poor" (Gregory of Tours, V.
XXXV.).
It is doubtful whether the maternal grief of Fred^gonde were
quite so pious and so strictly in accordance with morality as it
has been represented by Gregory of Tours; but she was, with-
out doubt, passionately sincere. Bash actions and violent
passions are the characteristics of barbaric natures; the in-
terest or impression of the moment holds sway over them, and
causes f orgetfulness of every moral law as well as of every
wise calculation. These two characteristics show themselves
in the extreme license displayed in the private life of the Mere-
CH. vni.] THE MER0VINQIAN8. 133
vingian kings: on becoming Christians, not only did they not
impose upon themselves any of the Christian rules in respect
of conjugal relations, but the greater number of them did not
renounce polygamy, and more than one holy bishop, at the
very time that he reprobated it, was obliged to tolerate it.
**King Clotaire I. had to wife Ingonde, and her only did he
love, when she made to him the following request: *My lord,'
said she, *hath made of his handmaid what seemed to him
good; and now, to crown his favors, let my lord deign to hear
what his handmaid demandeth. I pray you be graciously
pleased to find for my sister Ar^gonde, your slave, a man both
callable and rich, so that I be rather exalted than abased
thereby, and be enabled to serve you still more faithfully.
At these words Clotaire, who was but too voluptuously dis-
posed by nature, conceived a fancy for Ar^gonde, betook him-
self to the country-house where she dwelt, and united her to
him in marriage. When the union had taken place he re-
turned to Ingonde, and said to her, * I have labored to prociu^e
for thee the favor thou didst so sweetly demand, and, on look-
ing for a man of wealth and capability worthy to be united to
thy sister, I could find none better than myself; know, there-
fore, that I have taken her to wife, and I trow that it will not
displease thee.' * What seemeth good in my master's eyes, that
let him do,' replied Ingonde: 'only let thy servant abide' still
in the king's grace.' "
Clotaire I. had, as has been already remarked, four sons:
the eldest, Charibert, king of Paris, had to wife Ingoberge,
'* who had in her service two young persons, daughters of a
poor workman; one of them, named Marcovi^ve, had donned
the religious dress, the other was called MeroflMe, and the
king loved both of them exceedingly. They were daughters,
as has been said, of a worker in wool. Ingoberge, jealous of
the affection borne to them by the king, had their father put
to work inside the palace, hoping that the king, on seeing him
in such condition, would conceive a distaste for his daughters;
and, whilst the man was at his work, she sent for the king.
** Charibert, thinking he was going to see some novelty, saw
only the workman afar off at work on his wool. He forsook
Ingoberge, and took to wife M^roflMe. He had also (to wife)
another young girl named Theudechilde, whose father was a
shepherd, a mere tender of sheep, and had by her, it is said, a
son who, on issuing from his mother's womb, was carried
straightway to the grave." Charibert afterwards espoused
134 mSTORT OF FRANCE. [en. viii.
Marco vi^ve, sister of M^roflMe ; and for that cause both were
excommunicated by St. Grermain, bishop of Paris.
Chilperic, fourth son of Clotaire I. and king of Soissons,
** though he had already several wives, asked the hand of Gal-
suinthe, eldest daughter of Athanagild, king of Spain. She
arrived at Soissons and was united to him in marriage ; and she
received strong evidences of love, for she had brought with her
vast treasures. But his love for Fred^onde, one of the princi-
pal women about Chilperic, occasioned fierce disputes between
them. As Gralsuinthe had to complain to the king of continual
insult and of not sharing with him the dignity of his rank, she
asked him in return for the treasures which she had brought,
and which she was ready to give up to him, to send her back
free to her own country. Chilperic, artfully dissimulating,
appeased her with soothing words; and then had her strangled
by a slave, and she was found dead in her bed. When he had
mourned for her death, he espoused FrM^gonde after an inter-
val of a few days" (Gregory of Tours, IV. xxvi., xxviii.).
Amidst such passions and such morals, treason, murder and
' poisoning were the familiar processes of ambition, covetousness,
hatred, vengeance, and fear. Eight kings or royal heirs of the
Merovingian line died of brutal murder or secret assassination,
to say nothing of innumerable crimes of the same kind com-
mitted in their circle, and left unpunished, save by similar
crimes. Nevertheless, justice is due to the very worst times
and the very worst governments ; and it must be recorded that,
whilst sharing in many of the vices of their age and race,
especially their extreme licence of morals, three of Clevis's
successors, Theodebert, king .of Austrasia (from 534 to 548),
Gtontran, king of Burgundy (from 561 to 593), and Dagobert I.,
who xmited under his own sway the whole Frankish monarchy
(from 622 to 638), were less violent, less cruel, less iniquitous,
and less grossly ignorant or blind than the majority of the
Merovingians.
"Theodebert," says Gregory of Tours, '*when confirmed in
his kingdom, showed himself full of greatness and goodness;
he ruled with justice, honoring the bishops, doing good to the
churches, helping the poor, and distributing in many directions
numerous benefits with a very charitable and very Uberal hand.
He generously remitted to the churches of Auvergne all the
tribute they were wont to pay into his treasury" (III. xxv.).
Gontran, king of Burgundy, in spite of many shocking and
unprincipled deeds, at one time of violence, at another of weak-
CH. vra.] THE MEROVINOIANS, 135
ness, displayed, during his reign of thirty-three years, an in-
clination towards moderation and peace, in striking contrast
with the measureless pretensions and outrageous conduct of the
other Frankdsh kings his contemporaries, especially King Chil-
p^ric, his hrother. The treaty concluded hy Grontran, on the
28th of November, 587, at Andelot, near Langres, with his
young nephew Childebert, king of Metz, and Queen Brunehaut,
his mother, contains dispositions, or, more correctly speaking,
words, which- breathe a sincere but timid desire to render jus-
tice to all, to put an end to the vindictive or retrospective
quarrels and spoliations which were incessantly harassing the
Gallo-Frankish community, and to build up peace between the
two kings on the foundation of mutual respect for the rights of
their lieges. " It is established," says this treaty, " that what-
soever the kings have given to the churches or to their lieges,
or with Grod's help shall hereafter will to give to them lawfully,
shall be irrevocably acquired ; as also that none of the Ueges, in
one kingdom or the other, shall have to suffer damage in re-
spect of whatsoever belongeth to him, either by law or by vir-
tue of a decree, but shall be permitted to recover and possess
things due to him And as the aforesaid kings have
allied themselves, in the name of God, by a pure and sincere
affection, it hath been agreed that at no time shall passage
through one kingdom be refused to the Leudes (Keges— great
vassals) of the other kingdom who shall desire to traverse them
on pubUc or private affairs. It is likewise agreed that neither
of the two kings shall solicit the Leudes of the other or receive
them if they offer themselves; and if, peradventure, any of
these Leudes shall think it necessary, in consequence of some
fault, to take refuge with the other king, he shall be absolved
according to the nature of his fault and given back. It hath
seemed good also to add to the present treaty that whichever,
if either, of the parties happen to violate it, under any pretext
and at any time whatsoever, it shall lose all advantages, present
or prospective, therefrom; and they shall be for the profit of
that party which shall have faithfully observed the aforesaid
conventions, and which shall be relieved in all points from the
obligations of its oath" (Gregory of Tours, IX. xx.).
It may be doubted whether between Gontran and Childebert
the promises in the treaty were always scrupulously fulfilled ;
but they have a stamp of serious and sincere intention foreign
to the habitual relations between the other Merovingian kings.
Mention was but just now made of two women— two queens—
136 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. viii.
IWdegonde and Brunehaut, who, at the Merovingian epoch,
played important parts in the history of the country. They
were of very different origin and condition; and, after fortunes
which were for a long while analogous, they ended very differ-
ently. Fredegonde was the daughter of poor peasants in the
neighborhood of Montdidier in Picardy, and at aii early age
joined the train of Queen Audovere, the first wife of King Chil-
p4ric. She was beautiful, dexterous, ambitious, and bold; and
she attracted the attention, and before long awakened the pas-
sion of the king. She pursued with ardor and without scruple
her unexpected fortune. Queen Audovere was her first obsta-
cle and her first victim ; and on the pretext of a spirtual rela-
tionship which rendered her marriage with Chilp6ric illegal,
was repudiated and banished to a convent. But Fredegonde's
hour had not yet come; for CMlp^ric espoused Galsuinthe,
daughter of the Visigothic king, Athanagild, whose youngest
daughter, Brunehaut, had just married Chilperic's brother,
Sigebert, king of Austrasia. It has already been said that be-
fore long Galsuinthe was found strangled in her bed, and that
Chilperic espoused Fredegonde. An undying hatred from that
time arose between her and Brunehaut, who had to avenge her
sister. A war, incessantly renewed, between the Kings of
Austrasia and Neustria followed. Sigebert succeeded in beat-
ing Chilperic, but, in 575, in the midst of his victory, he was
suddenly assassinated in his tent by two emissaries of Fr6d6-
gonde. His army disbanded; and his widow, Brunehaut, fell
into the hands of Chilperic. The right of asylum belonging to
the cathedral of Paris saved her life, but she was sent away to
Bouen. There, at this very time, on a mission from his father,
happened to be Merov^, son of Chilperic, and the repudiated
Queen Audovere; he saw Brunehaut in her beauty, her attrac-
tiveness, and her trouble ; he was smitten with her and married
her privately, and Praetextatus, bishop of Rouen, had the im-
prudent courage to seal their union. FrM^onde seized with
avidity upon this occasion for persecuting her rival and de-
stroying her stepson, heir to the throne of Chilperic. The
Austrasians, who had preserved the child Childebert, son of
their mm'dered king, demanded back with threats their queen
Brunehaut. She was surrendered to them; but Fr^d^gonde
did not let go her other prey, Merov^. First imprisoned, then
shorn and shut up in a monastery, afterwards a fugitive and
secretly urged on to attempt a rising against his father, he was
so affrighted at his perils, that he got a faithful servant to
IHB NEW ftHK
[PUBLIC UgHARvi
THE EXECUTION OF BRUNEHAUT.
CH.vni.] THE MER0VINQIAN8, 137
strike him dead, that he might not fall into the hands of his
hostile stepmother. Chilp^ric had remaining another son,
dovis, issue, as M^rovee was, of Queen Audov^re. He was
accused of having caused hy his sorceries the death of the three
children lost about this time by Fr^degonde ; and was, in his
turn, imprisoned and before long poignarded. His mother
Audov^re was strangled in her convent. Fredegonde sought
in these deaths, advantageous for her own children, some sort
of horrible consolation for her sorrows as a mother. But the
sum of crimes was not yet complete. In 584 King Chilp^ric,
on returning from the chase and in the act of dismounting, was
struck two mortal blows by a man who took to rapid flight,
and a cry was raised all around of, " Treason! 'tis the hand of
the Austrasian Childebert against our lord the king !" The care
taken to have the cry raised was proof of its falsity ; it was the
hand of Fredegonde herself, anxious lest Chilp^ric should dis-
cover the guilty connexion existing between her and an oflScer
of her household, Landry, who became subsequently mayor of
the palace of Neustria. Chilp^ric left a son, a few months old,
named Clotaire, of whom his mother Fredegonde became the
sovereign guardian. She employed, at one time in defending
him against his enemies, at another in endangering him by her
plots, her hatreds and her assaults, the last thirteen years of
her life. She was a true type of the strong-willed, artful, and
perverse woman in barbarous times ; she started low down in
the scale and rose very high without a corresponding elevation
of soul ; she was audacious and perfidious, as perfect in decep-
tion as in effrontery, proceeding to atrocities either from cool
calculation or a spirit of revenge, abandoned to all kinds of
passion, and, for gratification of them, shrinking from no sort
of crime. However, she died quietly at Paris, in 597 or 598,
powerful and dreaded, and leaving on the throne of Neustria
her son Clotaire II., who, fifteen years later, was to become sole
king of all the Frankish dominions.
Brunehaut had no occasion for crimes to become a queen;
and, in spite of those she committed, and in spite of her out-
bursts and the moral irregularities of her long life, she bore,
amidst her passion and her power, a stamp of courageous
frankness and intellectual greatness which places her far above
the savage who was her rival. Fr6d6gonde was an upstart, of
barbaric race and habits, a stranger to every idea and every
design not connected with her own personal interest and suc-
cesses ; and she was as brutally selfish in the case of her natural
138 mSTOBT OF FRANCE. [CH. vin.
passions as in the exercise of a power acquired and maintained
by a mixture of artifice and violence. Brunehaut was a prin-
cess of that race of Gothic kings who, in Southern Gaul and in
Spain, had understood and admired the Eoman civilizatipn and
had striven to transfer the remains of it to the newly-formed
fabric of their own dominions. She, transplanted to a home
amongst the Franks of Austrasia, the least Eoman of all the
barbarians, preserved there the ideas and tastes of the Visigoths*
of Spain, who had become almost Gallo-Eomans ; she clung
stoutly to the efficacious exercise of the royal authority; she
took a practical interest in the public works, highways,
bridges, monuments, and the progress of material civilization;
the Roman roads in a short time received and for a long while
kept in Austrasia the name of Brunehaufs catiseuxiys ; there
used to be shown, in a forest near Bourges, Brunehaut's castle,
Brunehaut^s tower at Etampes, Brunehaut's stone near Tour-
nay, and Brunehaut's fort near Cahors. In the royal domains
and wheresoever she went she showed abundant charity to the
poor, and many ages after her death the people of those dis-
tricts stiU spoke of Brunehaufs alms. She liked and protected
men of letters, rare and mediocre indeed at that time, but the
only beings, such as they were, with a notion of seeking and
giving any kind of intellectual enjoyment ; and they in turn
took pleasure in celebrating her name and her deserts. The
most renowned of all during that age, Fortunatus, bishop of
Poitiers, dedicated nearly all his little poems to two queens;
one, Brunehaut, plunging amidst aU the struggles and pleasures
of the world, the other St. Radegonde, sometime wife of Clo-
taire I., who had fled in all haste from a throne, to bury her-
self at Poitiers, in the convent she had founded there. To
compensate, Brunehaut was detested by the majority of the
Austrasian chiefs, those Leudes, landowners and warriors,
whose sturdy and turbulent independence she was continually
fighting against. She supported against them, with indomita-
ble courage, the royal officers, the servants of the palace, her
a^nts, and frequently her favorites. One of these, Lupus, a
Roman by origin, and Duke of Champagne, " was being con-
stantly insulted and plundered by his enemies, especially by
Ursion Bertfried. At last, they having agreed to slay him,
marched against him with an army. At the sight, Brunehaut,
compassionating the evil case of one of her lieges unjustly per-
secuted, assumed quite a manly courage, and threw herself
amongst the hostile battalions, crying, *Stay, warriors; ro^
CH. vra.] THE MEROVINGIANS. 139
frarn &om this wicked deed; x>ersecute not the innocent; en-
gage not, for a smgle man's sake, in a battle which will deso-
late the country ! ' * Back, woman,' said Ursion to her, * let it
sufice thee to have ruled under thy husband's sway ; now 'tis
thy son who reigns, and his kingdom is imder our protection,
not thine. Back ! if thou wouldst not that the hoofs of our
horses trample thee under as the dust of the ground ! ' After
the dispute had lasted some time in this strain, the queen, by
her address, at last prevented the battle from taking place"
(Gregory of Tours, VI. iv.). It was but a momentary success
for Brunehaut ; and the last words of Ursion contained a sad
presage of the death awaiting her. Intoxicated with power,
pride, hate, and revenge, she entered more violently every day
into strife not only with the Austrasian laic chieftains, but with
some of the principal bishops of Austrasia and Burgundy,
among the rest with St. Didier, bishop of Vienne, who, at her
instigation, was brutally murdered, and with the great Irish
missionary St. Columba, who would not sanction by his bless-
ing the fruits of the royal irregularities. In 614, after thirty-
nine years of wars, plots, murders, and political and personal
vicissitudes, from the death of her husband Sigebert I., and
under the reigns of her son Th^odebert, and her grandsons Th^-
debert II. and Thierry II,, Queen Brunehaut, at the age of
eighty years, fell into the hands of her mortal enemy, CHotaire
n., son of FrM^gonde, now sole l|ing of the Franks. After
having grossly insulted her, he had her paraded, seated on a
Camel, in front of his whole army, and then ordered her to be
tied by the hair, one foot, and one arm to the tail of an un-
broken horse, that carried her away, and dashed her in pieces
as he galloped and kicked, beneath the eyes of the ferocious
spectators.
After the execution of Brunehaut and the death of Qotaire
n., the history of the Franks becomes a little less dark and
less bloody. Not that murders and great irregularities, in the
court and amonjgst the people, disappear altogether. Dagobert
I., for instance, the successor of Clotaire II., and grandson of
Chilp^ric and Fr^d^gonde, had no scruple, under the pressure
of self-interest, in committing an iniquitous and barbarous
act. After having consented to leave to his younger brother
Charibert the kingdom of Aquitania, he retook it by force in
631, at the death of Charibert, seizing at the same time his
treasures, and causing or permitting to be murdered his young
nephew Chilp^ric, rightful heir of bis father, A^gut tb^ same
140 UlSTORT OF FRANCE, [en. vin.
time Dagobert had assigned amongst the Bavarians, subjects
of his beyond the Ehine, an asylum to nine thousand Bulga-
rians who had been driven with their wives and children
from Pannonia. Not knowing, afterwards, where to put or
how to feed these refugees, he ordered them all to be massa-
cred in one night; and scarcfely seven hundred of them suc-
ceeded in escaping by flight. The private morals of Dagobert
were not more scrupulous than his public acts. *^ A slave to
incontinence as King Solomon was," says his biographer
Fr^d^aire, **he had three queens and a host of concubines."
Qiven up to extravagance and po^ip, it pleased him to imitate
the magnificence of the imperial court at Constantinople, and
at one time he laid hands, for that purpose, upon the posses-
sions of certain of his **leudes" or of certain churches, at
another he gave to his favorite church, the Abbey of St.
Denis, **so many precious stones, articles of value, and
domains in various places, that all the world," says Fr6d4-
gaire, **was stricken with admiration." But, despite of these
excesses and scandals, Dagobert was the most wisely ener-
getic, the least cruel in feeling, the most prudent in enterprise,
and the most capable of governing with some little regularity
and effectiveness, of all the kings furnished, since Clovis, by
the Merovingian race. He had, on ascending the throne, this
immense advantage that the three Frankish dominions,
Austrasia, Neustria and B^gundy were re-united under his
sway; and at the death of his brother Charibert, he added
thereto Aquitania. The unity of the vast Frankish monarchy
was thus re-established, and Dagobert retained it by his
moderation at home and abroad. He was brave, and he made
war on occasion; but he did not permit himself to be dragged
into it either by his own passions or by the unlimited taste of
his lieges for adventure and plimder. He found, on this
point, salutary warnings in the history of his predecessors.
It was very often the Franks themselves, the royal " leudes,"
who plunged their kings into civil or foreign wars. " In 630,
two sons of Clovis, Childebert and Clotaire, arranged to
attack Bm-gundy and its king Godomar. They asked aid of
their brother Th6odoric, who refused to join them. How-
ever, the Franks who formed his party said, "If thou refuse
to march into Burgundy with thy brethren, we give thee up,
and prefer to follow them." But Th^odoric, considering that
the Arvemians had been faithless to him, said to the Franks,
** Follow me, apd I will lead you into a country where ye
CH. vm.] THtt MtmoVINGIAm. 141
shall seize of gold and silver as much as ye can desire, and
whence ye shall take away flockis and slaves and vestments in
abundance !" The Franks, overcome by the^ words, promised
to do whatsoever he should desire. So Th^odoric entered
Auvergne with his army, and wrought devastation and ruin
in the province.
In 555, Clotaire I. had made an expedition against the
Saxons, who demanded peace; but the Frankish warriors
would not hear of it. ** * Cease, I pray you,' said Clotaire to
them, ^to be evil-minded against these men; they speak us
fair; let us not go and attack them, for fear we bring down
upon us the anger of God.' But the Franks would not listen
to him. The Saxons again came with offenngs of vestments,
flocks, even all their possessions, saying, ^Take all this,
together with half our country; leave us but our wives and
little children; only let there J3e no war between us.' But the
Franks again refused all terms. * Hold, I adjure you,' said
Clotaire again to them, * we have not right on our side ; if ye be
thoroughly minded to enter upon a war in which ye may find
your loss, as for me, I will not follow ye.' Then the Franks,
enraged against Clotaire, threw themselves upon him, tore his
tent to pieces as they heaped reproaches upon him, and bore
him away by force, determined to kill him if he hesitated to
march with them. So Clotaire; in spite of himself, departed
with them. But, when they joined battle they were cut to
pieces by their adversaries, and on both sides so many fell
that it was impossible to estimate or count the number of the
dead. Then Clotaire with shame demanded peace of the
Saxons, saying that it was not of his own will that he had
attacked them; and, having obtained it, returned to his own
dominions" (Gregory of Tours, III. xi., xii. ; IV. xiv.).
King Dagobert was not thus under the yoke of his *4eudes."
Either by his own energy, or by surrounding himself with
wise and influential counsellors, such as Pepin of Landen,
mayor of the palace of Austrasia, St. Amoul, bishop of Metz,
St. Migius, bishop of Noyon, and St. Audoenus, bishop of
Rouen, he applied himself to and succeeeed in assuring to him-
self, in the exercise of his power, a pretty large measure of
independence and popularity. At the beginning of his reign
he held, in Austrasia and Burgundy, a sort of administrative
and judicial inspection, halting at the principal towns, listen-
ing to complaints, and checking, sometimes with a rigor
arbitrary indeed, but approved of by the people, the violence
142 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. vin.
and irregularities of the grandees. At Langres, Dijon, St.
Jean-de-Losne, ChSIons-sur-Sa6ne, Auxerre, Autnn, and Sens,
**he rendered justice," says FrM^gaire, "to rich and poor
alike, without any charges, and without any respect of per-
sons, taking little sleep and little food, caring only so to act
that all should withdraw from his presence full of joy and
admiration." Nor did he confine himself to this unceremo-
nious exercise of the royal authority. Some of his prede-
cessors, and amongst them Childebert I., Clotaire I., and
Clotaire EC., had caused to he drawn up, in Latin and by
scholars, digests more or less complete of the laws and
customs handed down by tradition, amongst certain of the
Gtermanic peoples established on Roman soil, notably the laws
of the Salian Franks and Ripuarian Franks; and Dagobert
ordered a continuation of these first legislative labors amongst
the new-bom nations. It was, apparently, in his reign that a
digest was made of the laws of the Allemannians and Bava-
rians. He had also some taste for the arts, and the pious
talents displayed by Saints Moi and Ouen in goldsmith's work
and sculpture, appUed to the service of religion or the decora-
tion of churches, received from him the support of the royal
favor and munificence. Dagobert was neither a great warrior
nor a great legislator, and there is nothing to make him recog-
nized as a great mind or a great character. His private life,
too, was scandalous; and extortions were a sad feature of its
close. Nevertheless, his authority was maintained in his
dominions, his reputation spread far and wide, and the name
of great King Dagobert was his abiding title in the memory of
the people. Taken all in all, he was, next to Clovis, the most
distinguished of Frankish kings, and the last really king in
the line of the Merovingians. After him, from 638 to 752,
twelve princes of this line, one named Sigebert, two Clovis,
two Child^ric, one Clotairci, two Dagobert, one Childebert, one
Chilp^ric, and two Th^odoric or Thierry, bore in Neustria,
Austrasia, and Burgundy, or in the three kingdoms united,
the title of king, without deserving in history more than room
for their names. There was already heard the rumbling of
great events to come around the Frankish dominion; and in
the very womb of this dominion was being formed a new race
of kings more able to bear, in accordance with the spirit and
wants of their times, the burden of power.
Cfl. CL] TEE PEPINS and TEE NEW DTNASTr. 143
CHAPTER IX.
THE MAYORS OF THE PALACE.
THE PEPINS AND THE CHANGE OF DYNASTY.
There is a certain amount of sound sense, of intelligent
activity and practical efficiency, which even the least civilized
and least exacting communities absolutely must look for in
their governing body. . When this necessary share of ability
and influence of a political kind are decidedly wanting in the
men who have the titles and the official posts of, power,
communities seek elsewhere the qualities (and their conse-
quences) which they cannot do without. The sluggard Mero-
vingians drove the Franks, Neustrians, and Austrasians to
this imperative necessity. The last of the kings sprung from
Clovis acquitted themselves too ill or not at all of their task ;
and the mayors of the palace were naturally summoned to
supply their deficiencies, and to give the populations assur-
ance of more intelligence and energy in the exercise of
power. The origin and primitive character of these supple-
ments of royalty were different according to circumstances;
at one time, conformably with their title, the mayors of the
palace really came into existence in the palace of the Frankish
kings, amongst the ** leudes'' charged, under the style of
antrustions (lieges in the confidence of the king: in truste
regia), with the internal management of the royal affairs and
household, or amongst the superior chiefs of the army; at
another, on the contrary, it was to resist the violence and
usurpation of the kings that the "leudes," landholders or
warriors, themselves chose a chief able to defend their inter-
ests and their rights against the royal tyranny or incapacity.
Thus we meet, at this tune, with mayors of the palace of very
different political origin and intention, some appointed by the
kings to support royalty against the "leudes," others chosen
by the " leudes" against the kings. It was especially between
the Neustrian and Austrasian mayors of the palace that this
difference became striking. G^aUo-Roman feeling was more
prevalent in Neustria, Grermanic in Austrasia. The majority
of the Neustrian mayors supported the interests of royalty,
the Austriasian those of the aristocracy of landholders and
144 mSTORT OF FBANPBI. [ch. IX.
warriors. The last years of the Merovingian line were full of
their struggles ; but a cause far more general and more power-
ful than these differences and conflicts in the very heart of
the Frankish dominions determined the definitive fall of that
line and the accession of another dynasty. When in 687 the
battle fought at Testry, on the banks of the Somme, left
Pepin of H^ristal, duke and mayor of the palace of Austrasia,
victorious over Bertaire, mayor of the palace of Neustria, it
was a question of something very different from merely
rivalry between the two Frankish dominions and their cheifs.
At their entrance and settlement upon the left bank of the
Rhine and in Gaul, the Franks had not abandoned the right
bank and Germany; there also they remained settled and
incessently at strife with their neighbors of Germanic race,
Thuringians, Bavarians, the* confederation of Allemannians,
Frisons, and Saxons, people frequently vanquished and sub-
dued to all appearance, but always ready to rise either for the
recovery of their independence, or, again, under the pressure
of that grand movement which, in toe third century, had
determined the general invasion by the barbarians of the
Roman empire. After the defeat of the Huns, at Chalons, and
the founding of the Visigothic, Burgundian, and Frankish
kingdoms in Gaul, that movement had been, if not arrested,
at any rate modified, and for the moment suspended. In the
sixth century it received a fresh impulse; new nations, Avars,
Tartars, Bulgarians, Slavons, and Lombards thrust one
another with mutual pressure from Asia into Europe, from
Eastern Europe into Western ; from the North to the South,
into Italy and into Gaul. Driven by the Ouigour Tartars
from Pannonia and Noricum (now-a-days Austria), the Lom-
bards threw themselves first upon Italy, crossed before long
the Alps, and penetrated into Burgundy and Provence, to the
very gates of Avignon. On the Rhine and along the Jura the
Franks had to struggle on their own account against the new
comers; and they were, further, summoned into Italy by the
Emperors of the East who wanted their aid against the Lom-
bards. Every where resistance to the invasion of barbarians
became the national attitude of the Franks, and they proudly
proclaimed themselves the defenders of that West of which
they had but lately been the conquerors.
When the Merovingians were indisputably nothing but slug-
gard kings, and when Ebroin, the last great mayor of the pal-
ace of Neustria, bad been assassinated (in 681), and the army
, ^'KE NEW ¥tRr
l^i^SUC LIBRARY I
THK ARABS HAD DECAMPED SILENTLY IN THE NIGHT;
CH. K.] THE PEPINa AND THE NEW DYNASTY, 146
of the Neustrians destroyed at the battle of Testry (in 687),
the ascendancy in the heart of the whole of Frankish Gaul
passed to the Franks of Anstrasia, already bound by their
geographical position to the defence of their nation in its new
settlement. There had risen up amongst them a family,
powerful from its vast domains, from its military and political
services, and already also from the prestige belonging to the
hereditary transmission of name and power. Its first chief
known in history had been Pepin of Landen, called The Ancient^
one of the foes of Queen Bnmehaut, who was so hateful to the
Austrasians, and afterwards one of the piivy councillors and
mayor of the palace of Austrasia under Dagobert I. and his
son Sigebert 11. He died in 639, leaving to his family an influ-
ence already extensive. His son Grimoald succeeded him as
mayor of the palace ingloriously ; but his grandson, by »his
daughter Bega, Pepin of Heristal, was for twenty-seven years
not only virtually, as mayor of the palace, but ostensibly €uid
with the title of duke, the real sovereign of Austrasia and all
the Frankish dominion. He did not, however, take the name
of king; and four descendants of Clovis, Thierry III., Clovis
III.,Childebert III. and Dagobert III., continued to bear that
title in Neustria and Burgundy, under the preponderating in-
fluence of Pepin of Heristal. He did, during his long sway,
three things of importance. He struggled without cessation to
keep or bring back under the rule of the Franks the Germanic
nations on the right bank of the Rhine, Frisons, Saxons,
Thuringians, Bavarians, and Allemannians ; and thus to make
the Frankish dominion a bulwark against the new flood of bar-
barians who were pressing one ahother westwards.
He rekindled in Austrasia the national spirit and some poUti-
cal life by beginning again the old March parades of the Franks,
which had fallen into desuetude under the last Merovingians.
Lastly, and this was, perhaps, his most original merit, he
imderstood of what importance, for the Frankish kingdom,
was the conversion to Christianity of the Germanic peoples
over the Rhine, and he abetted with all his might the zeal of
the poi)es and missionaries, Irish, Anglo-Saxon, and Gallo-
Roman, devoted to this great work. The two apostles of Fries-
land, St. Willfried and St Willibrod, especially the latter, had
intimate relations with Pepin of Heristal, and received from
him effectual support. More than twenty bishoprics, amongst
others those of Utrecht, Mayence, Ratisbonne, Worms, and
Spire were founded at this epoch ; and one of those ardent
146 JIISTOJiT OF FBANCW. [cH. tt.
pioneers of Christian civillzatioxi, the Irish hishop, St. Lievin,
martyred in 656 near Ghent, of which he has remained the
patron saint, wrote in verse to his friend Florbert, a little be-
fore his martyrdom, ^*I have seen a sun without rays, days
without light, and nights without repose. Around me rageth
a people impious and clamorous for my blood. O people, what
harm have I done thee? ' Tis piece that I bring thee; where-
fore declare war against me? But thy barbarism will bring
my trimnph and give me the palm of martyrdom. I know in
whom I trust, and my hope shall not be confounded. Whilst I
am pouring forth these verses, there cometh unto me the tired
driver of the ass that beareth me the usual provisions; he
bringeth that which maketh the delights of the country, even
milk and butter and eggs; the cheeses stretch the wicker-work
of the far too narrow panniers. Why tarriest thou, good car-
rier? Quicken thy step; collect thy riches, thou that this
morning art so poor. As for me I am no longer what I was,
and have lost the gift of joyous verse. How could it be other-
wise when I am witness of such cruelties?"
If were difficult to describe with more pious, graceful, and
melancholy feeling a holier and a simpler life.
After so many firm and glorious acts of authority abroad
Pepin of H^ristaJ, at his death, December 16, 714, did a deed of
weakness at home. He had two wives, Plectrude and Alpai'de ;
he had repudiated the former to espouse the latter, and the
Church, considering the second marriage unlawful, had con-
stantly urged him to take back Plectrude. He had by her a
son, Grimoald, who was assassinated on his way to join his
father lying ill at Li^ge. ThiS son left a child, Th^odoald, only
six years old. This child it was whom Pepin, either from a
grandfather's blind fondness, or through the influence of his wife
Plectrude, appointed to succeed him to the detriment of his two
sons by Alpaide, Charles and Childebrand. Charles, at that time
twenty-five years of age, had already a name for capacity and
valor. On the death of Pepin, his widow Plectrude lost no
time in arresting and imprisoning at Cologne this son of her ri-
val Alpaide; but some months afterwards, in 715, the Austra-
sians, having risen against Plectrude, took Charles out of prison
and set him at their head, proclaiming him Duke of Austrasia.
He was destined to become Charles Martel.
He first of all took care to extend and secure his own
authority over all the Franks. At the death of PejSin of H^ns-
tal, the Neustrians, vexed at the long domination of the
CH. IX.] THE PEPtm AlifD TUtd NEW DTNABTT. 147
Austraaians, had taken one of themselves, Ragenf ried, as mayor
of the palace, and had placed at his side a Merovingian slug-
gard king, Chilp^ric II., whom they had dragged from a
monastery. Charles, at the head of the Austrasians, twice
succeeded in heating, first near Camhrai and then near Soissons,
the Neustrian king and mayor of the palace, pursued them to
Paris, returned to Cologne, got himself accepted hy his old
enemy, Queen Plectrude, and remaining temperate amidst the
triumph of his amhition, he, too, took from amongst the sur-
viving Merovingians, a sluggard king, whom he installed under
the name of Clotaire IV., himself becoming, with the simple
title of Duke of Austrasia, master of the Frankish dominion.
Being in tranquility on the left bank of the Rhine, Charles
directed towards the right bank, towards the Frisons and the
Saxons, his attention and his efforts. After having experienced,
in a first encounter, a somewhat severe check, he took, from
715 to 718, ample revenge upon them, repressed their attempts at
invasion of Frankish territory, and pursued them on their own,
imposed tribute upon them, and commenced with vigor, against
the Saxons in particular, that struggle, at first defensive and
afterwards aggressive, which was to hold so prominent a place
in the life and glorious but blood-stained annals of his grand-
son Charlemagne.
In the war against the Neustrians, at the battle of Soissons
in 719, Charles had encountered in their ranks Eudes or Eudon,
Duke of Aquitania and Nasconia, that beautiful portion of
Southern Gaul situated between the Pyrenees, the Ocean, the
Garonne and the Rhone, who had been for a long time trying
to shake off the dominion of the barbarians, Visigoths or
Franks. At the death of Pepin of Heristal, the Neustrians had
drawn into alHance with them, for their war against the
Austrasians, this Duke Eudes, to whom they gave, as it ap-
pears, the title of king. After their common defeat at Soissons,
the Aquitanian prince withdrew precipitately into his own
country, taking with him the sluggard king of the Neustrians,
Chilperic II. Charles pursued him to the Loire, and sent word
to him, a few months afterwards, that he would enter into
friendship with him if he would deliver up Chilp6ric and his
treasures; otherwise he would invade and ravage Aquitania.
Eudes delivered up Chilperic and his treasures ; and Charles,
satisfied with having in his power this Merovingian phantom,
treated hiih generously, kept up his royal rank, and at his
death, which happened soon afterwards, replaced him by an-
148 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. ix.
other phantom of the same line, Th^odoric or Thierry IV. ;
whom he dragged from the ahhey of Chelles, founded hy
Queen St. Bathilde, wife of Clovis II., and who for seventeen
years hore the title of king, whilst Charles Martel was
ruling gloriously, and was, perhaps, the savior of the Frank-
ish dominions. When he contracted his alliance with the
Duke of Aquitania, Charles Martel did not know against what
enemies and perils he would soon have ta struggle.
In the earlier years of the eighth century, less than a hun-
dred years from the death of Mahomet, the Mussulman Arahs,
after having conquered Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and
Northern Africa, had passed into Europe, invaded Spain,
overthrown the kingdom of the Visigoths, driven hack the
remnants of the nation and their chief, Pelagius, to the north
of the Peninsula, into the Asturias and Galicia, and pushed
even beyond the Pyrenees, into old Narhonness, then called
Septimania, their limitless incursions. These fiery conquerors
did not amount at that time, according to the most probable
estimates, to more than fifty thousand ; but they were under
the influence of religious and warlike enthusiasm at one and
the same time; they were fanatics in the cause of Deism and
of glory. "The Arab warrior during campaigns was not
excused from any one of the essential duties of Islamism; he
was bound to pray at least once a day, on rising in the morn-
ing, at the blush of dawn. The general of the army was its
priest; he it was who, at the head of the ranks, gave the signal
for prayer, uttered the words, reminded the troops of the pre-
cepts of the Koran, and enjoined upon them f orgetfulness of
personal quarrels." One day, on the point of engaging in a
decisive battle, Moussa-ben-No^sair, first governor of Mussul-
man Africa, was praying, according to usaoje, at the head of
the troops ; and he omitted the invocation of the name of the
Khalif , a respectful formality indispensable on the occasion.
One of his oflBlcers, persuaded that it was a mere slip on
Moussa's part, made a point of admonishing him. **Know
thou, " said Moussa, * ' that we are in such a position and at such
hour that no other name must be invoked save that of the most
high God." Moussa was, apparently, the first Arab chief to
cross the Pyrenees and march plundering as he went into
Narhonness. The Arabs had but very confused ideas of Gkiul;
they called it FraiidjaSy and gave to all its inhabitants without
distinction the name of Frandj, The Khalif Abdelmelek, hav-
ing recalled Moussa, questioned him about the different peoples
CH. IX.] TEE PEPINS AND TUB NEW DYNASTY. 149
with which he had been concerned. ** And of these Franc^,^^
said he, "what hast thou to tell me?" "They are a people,"an-
swered Moussa, "very many in number and abundantly pro-
vided with every thing, brave and impetuous in attack, but
spiritless and timid under reverses." "And how went the
war betwixt them and thee?" added Abdelmelek: "was it
favorable to thee or the contrary?" " The contrary I Nay, by
Allah and the Prophet ; never was my army vanquished ; never
was a battalion beaten; and never did the Mussulmans hesitate
to follow me when I led them forty against fourscore " (Fauriel,
Htstoire de la Gaule, cfcc, t. XXL, p. 48, 67.)
In 719, under El-Ham*-ben-Abdel-Rhaman, a valiant and able
leader, say the Arab writers, but greedy, harsh, and cruel, the
Arabs pursued their incursions into Southern Gaul, took Nar-
bonne, dispersed the inhabitants, spread themselves abroad in
search of plunder as far as the holders of the Garonne, and
went and laid siege to Toulouse. Eudes, Duke of Aquitania,
happened to be at Bordeaux, and he hastily simamoned all the
forces of his towns and all the populations from the Pyrenees
to the Iioire, and hurried to the reHef of his capital. The
Arabs, commanded by a new chieftain, El-Samah, more popu-
lar amongst them than El-Haur, awaited him beneath the
walls of the city determined to give him battle. " Have ye no
fear of this multitude," said El-Samah to his warriors; "if
God be with us, who shall be against us?" Eudes had taken
equally great pains to kindle the pious courage of the Aquita-
nians; he spread amongst his troops a rumor that he had but
lately received as a present from Pope Gregory IX. three
sponges that had served to wipe down the table at which the
sovereign pontiffs were accustomed to celebrate the commu-
nion; he had them cut into little strips which he had dis-
tributed to all those of the combatants who wished for them,
and thereupon gave the word to soimd the charge. The vic-
tory of the Aquitanians was complete ; the Arab army was cut
in pieces; El-Samah was slain, and with him, according to the
victors' accounts, full 375,000 of his troops. The most truth-
like testimonies and calculations do not put down at more
than from 50,000 to 70,000 men, in fighting trim, the number
of Arabs that entered Spain eight or ten years previously, even
with the additions it must have received by means of the emi-
grations from Africa; and undoubtedly El-Samah could not
have led into Aquitania more than from 40,000 to 45,000. How-
ever that may be, the defeat of the Arabs before Toulouse was
160 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [en. ix.
so serious that, four or five centuries afterwards, Ibn-Hayan,
the best of their historians, still spoke of it as the object of
solemn commemoration, and affirmed that the Arab army
had entirely perished there, without the escape of a single
man. The spot in the Boman road, between Carcassonne and
Toulouse, where the battle was fought, was one heap of dead
bodies, and continued to be mentioned in the Arab Chronicles
under the name of Martyrs' Causeway,
But the Arabs of Spain were then in that unstable social
condition and in that hey-day of impulsive youthfulness as a
people, when men are more apt to be excited and attracted by
the prospect of bold adventures and discouraged by reverses.
El-Samah, on crossing the Pyrenees to go plundering and
conquering in the country of the Fraud j, had left as his
lieutenant in the Iberian peninsula Anbessa-ben-Sohim, one of
the most able, most piouss, most just, and most hiunane chief-
tains, say the Arab chronicles, that Islamism ever produced
in Europe. He, being informed of El-Samah's death before
Toulouse, resolved to resume his enterprise and avenge his
defeat. In 725, he entered Ga\il with a strong army; took
Carcassonne ; reduced, either by force or by treaty, the princi-
pal towns of Septimania to submission; and even carried the
Arab arms, for the first time, beyond the Rhone into Provence.
At the news of this fresh invasion Duke Eudes hurried from
Aquitania, collecting on his march the forces of the country,
and after having waited some tinje for a favorable opportimity,
gave the Arabs battle in Provence. It was indecisive at first,
but ultimately won by the Christians without other result
than the retreat of Anbessa, mortally wounded, upon the
right bank of the Rhone, where he died without having been
able himself to recross the Pyrenees, but leaving the Arabs
masters of Septimania, where they established themselves in
force, taking Narbonne for capital and a starting-point for
their future enterprises.
The struggle had now begun in earnest, from the Rhone to
the Garonne and the Ocean, between the Christians of Southern
Gaul and the Mussulmans of Spain. Duke Eudes saw with
profound anxiety his enemies settled in Septimania, and ever
on the point of invading and devastating Aquitania. He had
been informed that the Khalif Hashem had just appointed to
the governor-generalship of Spain Abdel-Rhaman (theAbde
rame of the Christian chronicles), regarded as the most valiant
of the Spanish Arabs, and that this chief lain was making great
CH. IX.] THE PEPIN8 AND THE NEW DTNA8TT, 151
preparations for resuming their course of invasion. Another
I)eril at the same time pressed heavily on Duke Eudes: his
northern neighbor, Charles, sovereign duke of the Franks, the
conqueror, beyond the Rhine, of the Frisons and Saxons, was
directing glances full of regret towards those beautiful countries
of Southern Gaul, which in former days Clovis had won from the
Visigoths, and which had been separated, little by little, from
the Frankish empire.* Either justly or by way of ruse Charles ac-
cused Duke Eudes of not faithfully observing the treaty of peace
they had concluded in 720; and on this pretext he crossed the
Loire, and twice in the same year, 731, carried fear and rapine
into tihe possessions of the Duke of Aquitania on the left bank
of that river. Eudes went, not imsuccessfully, to the rescue
of his domains; but he was soon recalled to the Pyrenees by
the news he received of the movements of Abdel-Ehaman and
by the hope he had conceived of finding, in Spain itself and
under the sway of the Arabs, an ally against their invasion, of
his dominions. The military command of the Spanish frontier of
the Pyrenees and of the Mussulman forces there encamped had
been entrusted to Othman-ben-Abi-NessS,, a chieftain of re-
nown, but no Arab either in origin or at heart, although a
Mussulman. He belonged to the race of Berbers, whom the
Bomans called Moors, a people of the north-west of Africa,
conquered and subjugated by the Arabs, but impatient under
the yoke. The greater part of Abi-Ness£l's troops were likewise
Berbers and devoted to their chiefs. Abi-Nessa, ambitious and
audacious, conceived the project of seizing the government of
the Peninsula, or at the least of making himself independent
master of the districts he governed ; and he entered into nego-
tiations with the Duke of Aqutania to secure his support. In
spite of religious differences their interests were too similar not
to make an imderstanding easy ; and the secret alliance was
soon concluded and confirmed by a precious pledge. Duke
Ehides had a daughter of rare beauty, named Lampagie, and
he gave her in marriage to Abi-Nessi, who, say the chronicles,
became desperately enamored of her.
But whilst Eudes, trusting to this aUiance, was putting him-
self in motion towards the Loire to protect his possessions
against a fresh attack from the Duke of the Franks, the
governor-general of Spain, Abdel-Rhaman, informed of Abi-
Ness&'s plot, was arriving with large forces at the foot of the
Pyrenees, to stamp out the rebellion. Its repression was easy.
**At the approach of Abdel-Rhaman," say the chroniclers,
152 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. ix.
** Abi-Nessa hastened to shut himself up in livia [the ancient
, capital of Cerdagne, on the ruins of which Puycerda was builtj,
flattering himself that he could sustain a siege and there await
succor from his father-in-law, Eudes; but the advance-guard
of Abdel-Rhaman followed him so closely and with such ardor
that it left him no leisure to make the least preparation for de-
fence. Abi-NessS, had scarcely time to fly from the town and
gain the neighboring mountains with a few servants and his
well-beloved Lampagie. Already he had penetrated into an
out-of-the-way and lonely pass, where it seemed to him he ran
no more risk of being discovered. He halted, therefore, to
rest himself and quench the thirst which was torpienting his
lovely companion and himself, beside a waterfall which gushed
from a mass of lofty rocks upon a piece of fresh, green turf.
They were surrendering themselves to the delightful feeling of
being saved, when, all at once, they hear a loud sound of stex)s
and voices; they listen, they glance in the direction of tho
sound, and perceive a detachii^ent of armed men, one of those
that were out in search of them. The servants take to flight ;
but Lami)agie, too weary, cannot follow them, nor can Abi-
NessS, abandon Lampagie. In the twinkling of an eye they
are surrounded by foes. The chronicler Isidore of B6ja says
that Abi - NessS., in order not to fall alive into their hands,
flimg himself from top to bottom of the rocks ; and an Arab
historian relates that he took sword in hand, and fell pierced
with twenty lance-thrusts whilst fighting in defence of her he
loved. They cut off his head, which was forthwith carried to
Abdel-Rhaman, to whom they led away prisoner the hapless
daughter of Eudes. She was so lovely in the eyes of Abdel-
Rhaman, that he thought it his duty to send her to Damascus,
to the commander of the faithful, esteeming no other mortal
worthy of her" (Fauriel, Histoire de la GaulSj &c,^ t. Itl., p. 115).
Abdel-Rhaman, at ease touching the interior of Spain, re-
assembled the forces he had prepared for his expedition,
marched towards the Pyrenees by Pampeluna, crossed the
summit become so famous under the name of Port de Bonce-
vaux, and debouched by a single defile and in a single column,
say ttie chroniclers, upon Gallic Vasconia, greater in extent
than French Biscay now is. M. Fauriel, after scrupulous ex-
amination, according to his custom, estimates the army of
Abdel-Rhaman, whether Mussulman adventurers flocking from
all parts, or Arabs of Spain, at from 65,000 to 70,000 fighting
men. Duke Eudes made a gallant effort to stop his march
CH. IX ] THE PEPINS AND THE NEW DYNASTY, 153
and hurl him back towards the mountams; but exhausted,
even by certain small successes, and always forced to retire,
fight after fight, up to the approaches to Bordeaux, he crossed
the Garonne, and halted on the right bank of the river, to
cover the city. Abdel-Rhaman who had followed him closely,
forced the passage of the river, and a battle was fought, in
which the Aquitanians were defeated with immense loss.
'*Grod alone," says Isidore of Beja, "knows the number of
those who fell." The battle gained, Abdel-Ehaman took Bor-
deaux by assault and delivered it over to his army. The
plunder, to believe the historians of the conquerors, surpassed
all that had been preconceived of the wealth of the vanquished.
"The most insignificant soldier," say they, "had for his
share plenty of topazes, jacinths, and emeralds, to say nothing
of gold, a somewhat vulgar article under the circumstances.""
What appears certain is that, at their departure from Bordeaux,
the Arabs were so laden with booty that their march became
less rapid and unimpeded than before.
-In the face of this disaster, the Franks and their duke were
evidently the only support to which Eudes could have recourse ;
and he repaired in aU haste to Charles and invoked his aid
against the common enemy, who, after having crushed the
Aquitanians, would soon attack the Franks, and subject them
in turn to ravages and outrages. Charles did not require
solicitation. He took an oath of the Duke of Aquitania to
acknowledge his sovereignty and thenceforth remain faithful
to him; and then, simimoning all his warriors, Franks, Bur-
gundians, Gallo - Romans, and Germans from beyond the
Rhine, he set himself in motion towards the Loire. It was
time. The Arabs had spread over the whole country between
the Garonne and the Loire ; they had even crossed the latter
river and penetrated into Burgundy as far as Autun and Sens,
ravaging the country, the towns, and the monasteries, and
massacreing or dispersing the populations. Abdel-Rhaman
had heard tell of the city of Tours and its rich abbey, the
treasures whereof, it was said, surpassed those of any other
city and any other abbey in Gaul. Burning to possess it, he
recalled towards this point his scattered forces. On arriving
at Poitiers he found the gates closed and the inhabitants re-
solved to defend themselves; and, after a fruitless attempt at
assault, he continued his march towards Tours. He was al-
ready beneath the walls of the place when he leamt that the
Franks were rapidly advancing in vast numbers. He fell back
154 HISTORY OF FRANCE, [ch. ix.
towards Poitiers, collecting the troops that were retuming to
TiiTn from all quarters, embarassed with the immense booty
they were dragging in their wake. He had for a moment, say
the historians, an idea of ordering his soldiers to leave or bum
their' booty, to keep nothing but their arms, and think of
nothing but battle: however he did nothing of the kind, and,
to await the Franks, he fixed his camp between the Vienne
and the Clain, near Poitiers, not far from the spot where, two
hundred and twenty-five years before, Clovis had beaten the
Visigoths; or according to others, nearer Tours, at Mir6, in a
plain still called the Landes de Charlemagne,
The Franks arrived. It was in the month of September or
October 732 : and the two armies passed a week face to face, at
one time remaining in their camps, at another deploying
without attacking. It is quite certain that neither Franks nor
Arabs, neither Charles nor Abdel-Bhaman themselves, took
any such account, as we do in our day, of the importance of
the struggle in which they were on the point of engaging; it
was a struggle between East and West, South and North,
Asia and Europe, the Gk)spel and the Koran; and we now say,
on a general consideration of events, peoples, and ages, that
the civilization of the world depended upon it. The genera-
tions that are passing upon earth see not so far nor from such
a height, the chances and consequences of their acts; the
Franks and Arabs, leaders and followers, did not regard them-
selves, now nearly twelve centuries ago, as called upon to
decide, near Poitiers, such future questions; but vaguely,
instinctively they felt the grandeur of the part they were
playing, and they mutually scanned one another with that
grave curiosity which precedes a formidable encounter
between valiant warriors. At length, at the breaking of the
seventh or eighth day, Abdel-Ehaman, at the head of his
cavalry, ordered a general attack; and the Franks received it
with serried ranks, astounding their enemies by their tall
stature, stout armor, and their stem unmobihty. "They
stood there," says Isidore of B6ja, "hke solid walls or ice-
bergs." During the fight a body of Franks penetrated into
the enemy's camp, either for pillage or to take the Arabs in the
rear. The horsemen of Abdel-Rhaman at once left the general
attack, and turned back to defend their camp or the booty
deposited there. Disorder set in amongst them, and, before
long, throughout their whole army; and the battle became a
confused melley, wherein the lofty stature and stout armor of
CH. IX.] THE PEPIN8 AND THE NEW DYNASTY, 165
the EYanks had the advantage. A great number of Arabs and
Abdel-Rhaman himself were slain. At the approach of night
both armies retired to their camps. The next day, at dawn,
the Franks moved out of theirs, to renew the engagement. In
front of them was no stir, no noise, no Arabs out of their tents
and re-assembling in their ranks. Some Franks were sent to
reconnoitre, entered the enemy's camy, and penetrated into
their tents. But they were deserted. **The Arabs had de-
camped silently in the night, leaving the bulk of their booty,
and by this precipitate retreat acknowledging a more severe
defeat than they had really sustained in the fight."
Foreseeing the effect which would be produced by their re-
verse in the country they had but lately traversed as con-
querors, they halted nowhere, but hastened to re-enter
Septimania and their stronghold Narbonne, where they might
await reinforcements from Spain. Duke Eudes, on his side,
after having, as vassal, taken the oath of allegiance to Charles,
who will be henceforth called Charles Martel (Hammer)^ that
glorious name wliich he won by the great blow he dealt the
Arabs, re-entered his dominions of Aquitania and Vasconia,
and applied himself to the re-establishment there of security
and of his own power. As for Charles Martel, indefatigable
alike after and before victory, he did not consider his work in
Southern Gaul as accomplished. He wished to recover and
reconstitute in its entirety the Frankish dominion; and he at
once proceeded to re-imite to it Provence and the portions of
the old kingdom of Burgundy situated between the Alps and
the Rhone, starting from Lyons. His first campaign with this
object, in 733, was successful; he retook Lyons, Vienne, and
Valence, without any stoppage up to the Durance, and charged
chosen *4edues" to govern these provinces with a view es-
pecially to the repression of attempts at independence at home
and incursions on the part of the Arabs abroad. And it was
not long before these two perils showed head. The govern-
ment of Charles MarteFs ** leudes " was hard to bear for popu-
lations accustomed for some time past to have their own way,
and for their local chieftains thus stripped of their influence.
Maurontius, patrician of Aries, was the most powerful and
daring of these chieftains ; and he had at heart the independ-
ence of his country and His own power far more than Frankish
grandeur. Caring little, no doubt, for the interests of religion,
he entered into negotiations with Youssouf-ben-Abdel-
Ehaman, governor of Narbonne, and summoned the Mussul-
160 HISTORY OF FllANCB. [CH. ix.
maos into Provence. Youssouf lost no time in responding to
the summons; and, from 734 to 736, the Arabs conquered and
were in military occupation of the left bank of the Ehone from
Aries to Lyons. But in 737 Charles Martel returned, re-
entered Lyons and Avignon, and, crossing the Ehone, marched
rapidly on Narbonne, to drive the Arabs from Septimania.
He succeeded in beating them within sight of their capital;
but, after a few attempts at assault, not being able to become
master of it, he returned to Provence, laying waste on his
march several towns of Septimania, Agde, Maguelonne, and
Nimes, where he tried, but in vain, to destroy the famous
Roman arenas by fire, as one blows up an enemy's fortress. A
rising of the Saxons recalled him to Northern Gaul; and
scarcely had he set out from Provence, when national insur-
rection and Arab invasion recommenced. Charles Martel
waited patiently as long as the Saxons resisted ; but as soon as
he was at liberty on their score, in 739, he collected a strong
army, made a third campaign along .the Ehone, retook
Avignon, crossed the Durance, pushed on as far as the sea,
took Marseilles, and then Aries, and drove the Arabs defin-
itely from Provence. Some Mussulman bands attempted to
establish themselves about St. Tropez, on the rugged heights
and among the forests of the Alps; but Charles Martel carried
his pursuit even into those wild retreats, and all Southern
Gaul on the left bank of the Ehone, was incorporated in the
Frankish dominion, which will be henceforth called France.
The ordinary revenues of Charles Martel clearly could not
suflBlce for so many expeditions and wars. He was obliged to
attract or retain by rich presents, particularly by gifts of lands,
the warriors, old and new **leudes," who formed his strength.
He therefore laid hands on a great number of the domains of
the Church, and gave them, with the title of benefices, in
temporary holding, often converted into proprietorship, and
under the style of precarious tenure, to the chiefis in his
service. There was nothing new in this: the Merovingian
kings and the mayors of the palace had more than once thus
made free with ecclesiastical proi)erty; but Charles Martel
carried this practice much farther than his predecessors had.
He did more: he someljpnes gave his warriors ecclesiastical
offices and dignities. His Hege Milo received from him the
archbishoprics of Eheims and Treves; and his nephew Hugh
those of Paris, Eouen, and Bayeux, with the abbeys of Fonte-
nelle and Jmni^es. The Church protested with all her might
Ctt. IX. ] THE PBPTN3 AND THE NEW DYNASTY. 157
against such violations of her mission and her interest, her
duties and her rights. She was so specially set against Charles
Martel that, more than a century after his death, in 858, the
hishops of France, addressing themselves to Louis the Ger-
manic on this subject, wrote to him, **St. Eucherius, bishop
of Orleans, who now; reposeth in the monastery of St. Trudon,
being at prayer, was transported into the realms of eternity;
and there, amongst other things which the Lord did show
unto him, he saw Prince Charles delivered over to the tor-
ments of the damned in the lowest regions of hell. And St.
Eucherius demanding of the angel, his guide, what was the
reason thereof, the angel answered that it was by sentence of
the saints whom he had robbed of their possessions, and who,
at the day of the last judgment, will sit with God to judge the
world."
Whilst thus making use, at the expense of the Church .and
for political interests, of material force, Charles Martel was
far from misunderstanding her moral influence and the need
he had of her support at the very time when he was incurring
her anathemas. Not content with defending Christianity
against Islamism, he aided it against Paganism by leading the
Christian missionaries in Germany and the north-west of
Europe, amongst others St. Willibrod and St. Boniface, the
most effectual assistance. In 724, he addressed to all religious
and political authorities that could be reached by his influence,
not only to the bishops, **but to the dukes, counts, their
vicars, our palentines, all our agents, our envoys, and our
friends this circular letter: *Know that a successor of the
Apostles, our father in Christ, Boniface, bishop, hath come
unto us saying that we ought to take him under, our safeguard
and protection. We do you to wit that we do so very will-
ingly. Wherefore we have thought proper to give him con-
firmation thereof under oiu* own hand, in order that, whither-
soever he may go, he may there be in peace and safety in the
name of oiu* affection and under our safeguard ; in such sort
that he may be able every where to render, do, and receive
justice. And if he come to find himself in any pass or neces-
sity which cannot be determined by law, that he may remain
in peace and safety imtil he be come into our presence, he and
all who shall have hope in him or dependence on him. That
none may dare to be contrary-minded towards him or do hiTn
damage ; and that he may rest at all times in tranquility and
safety imder our safeguard and protection. And in order that
158 BISTORT OF FRANCE. [ch. nc.
this may be regarded as certified, we have subscribed these
letters with our own hand and sealed them with our ring.' "
Here were clearly no vague and meaningless words, written
to satisfy solicitation, and without a thought of their conse-
quences: they were urgent recommendations and precise in-
junctions, the most proper for securing success to the protected
in the name of the protector. Accordingly St. Boniface wrote,
soon after, from the heart of Grermany: ** Without the
patronage of the prince of the Franks, without his order and
the fear of his power, I could not guide the people, or defend
the priests, deacons, monks, or handmaids of God, or forbid in
this country the rites of the Pagans and their sacriligious
worship of idols."
At the same time that he protected the Christian mission-
aries launched into the midst of Pagan Germany, Charles
Martd showed himself equally ready to protect, but with as
much prudence as good- will, the head of the Christian Church.
In 741, Pope Gregory III. sent to him two nuncios, the first
that ever entered France in such a character, to demand of him
succor against the Lombards, the Pope's neighbors, who were
threatening to besiege Rome. These envoys took Charles
Martel " so many presents that none had ever seen or heard
tell of the like,'- and amongst them the keys of St. Peter's tomb,
with a letter in which the Pope conjured Charles Martel not
to attach any credit to the representations or words of
Luitprandt, king of the Lombards, and to lend the Boman
Church that effectual support which, for some tims past, she
had been vainly expecting from the Franks and their chief.
"Let them come, we are told," wrote the Pope piteously,
**this Charles with whom ye have sought refuge, and the
armies' of the Franks; let them sustain ye, if they can, and
wrest ye from our hands." Charles Martel was in fact on good
terms with Luitprandt, who had come to his aid in his expedi-
tions against the Arabs in Provence. He, however, received
the Pope's nuncios with Hvely satisfaction and the most strik-
ing proofs of respect ; and he promised them, not to make war
on the Lombards, but to employ his influence with Ein^
Luitprandt to make him cease from threatening Rome. He
sent, in his turn, to the Pope two envoys of distinction,
Sigebert, abbot of St. Denis, and Grimon, abbot of Corbie,
with instructions to offer him rich presents and to really
exert themselves with the Eong of the Lombards to remove
the dangers dreaded by the Holy See. He wished to do some-
ctt. IX.] TEE PEPIN8 AND THE NEW DYNASTY, 159
thing in favor of the Papacy to show sincere good-will, with-
out maJdng his relations with useful allies subordinate to the
desires of the Pope.
Charles Martel had not time to carry out effectually with
respect to the Papacy this policy of protection and at the same
time of independence ; he died at the close of this same year,
October 22^ 741, at Kiersey-sur-Oise, aged fifty-two years, and
his last act was the least wise of his life. He had spent it en-
tirely in two great works; the re-establishment throughout
the whole of Gaul of the Franco-Gallo Roman empii^, and the
driving back, from the frontiers of this empire, of the Gfermans
in the north and the Arabs in the south. The consequence, as
also the condition, of this double success was the victory of
Christianity over Paganism and Islamism. Charles Martel
endangered these results by falling back into the groove of
those Merovingian kings whose shadow he had allowed to
remain on the throne. He divided between his two legitimate
sons, Pepin, called the Short, from his small stature, and Car-
loman, this sole dominion which he had with so much toil re-
constituted and defended. Pepin had Neustria, Burgimdy,
Provence, and the suzerainty of Aquitaine; Carloman
Austrasia, Thuringia, and Allemannia. They both, at their
father's death, took only the title of mayor of the palace, and
perhaps, of duke. The last but one of the Merovingians,
Thierry IV., had died in 737. For four years there had been
no king at all.
But when the works of men are wise and true, that is, in
conformity with the lasting wants of peoples and the natural
tendency of social facts, they get over even the mistakes of
their authors. Immediately after the death of Charles Martel,
the consequences of dividing his empire became manifest. In
the north, the Saxons, the Bavarians, and the Allemannians
renewed their insurrections. In the south, the Arabs of Sep-
timania recovered their hopes of effecting an invasion; and
Hunald, Duke of Aquitaine, who had succeeded his father
Eudos, after his death in 735, made a fresh attempt to break
away from Frankish sovereignty and win his independence.
Charles Martel had left a young son, Grippo, whose legitimacy
had been disputed, biit who was not slow to set up pretensions
and to commence intriguing against his brothers. Every-
where there burst out that reactionary movement which
arises against grand and difficiQt works when the strong hand
that undertook^ them is no longer by to maintain them; but
160 BTSTOnr OF mANCE. [CH. 1%.
this movement wafi of short duration and to little purpose.
Brought up in the school and in the fear of their father, his
two sons, Pepin and Carloman, were inoculated with his ideas
and example ; they remained united in spite of the division of
dominions and lahored together, successfully, to keep down, in
the north the Saxons and Bavarians, in the south the Arabs
and Aquitanians, supplying want of unity by union, and pur-
suing with one accord the constant aim of Charles Martel —
abroad the security and grandeur of the Frankdsh dominion,
at home the cohesion of all its parts and the efficacy of its
government. Events came to the aid of this wise conduct.
Five years after the death of Charles Martel, in 746 in fact,
Carloman already weary of the burden of power, and seized
with a fit of religious zeal, abdicated his share of sovereignty,
left his dominions to his brother Pepin, had himself shorn by
the hands of Pope Zachary and withdrew into Italy to the
monastery of Monte Cassino. The preceding year, in 745,
Hunald, Duke of Aquitaine, with more patriotic and equally
pious views, also abdicated in favor of his son Waifre, whom
he thought more capable than himself of winning the indepen-
dence of Aquitaine, and went and shut himself np in a monas-
tery in the island of Ehe, where was the tomb of his father
Eudes. In the course of divers attempts at conspiracy and in-
surrection, the Prankish princes' young brother, Grippo, was
killed in combat whilst crossing the Alps. The furious
internal dissensions amongst the Arabs of Spain and their inces-
sant wars with the Berbers did not allow them to pursue any
great enterprise in Gaul. Thanks to all these circumstances,
Pepin found himself, in 747, sole master of the heritage of
Clovis and with the sole charge of pursuing, in State and
Church, his fathers's work, which was the luiity and grandeur
of Christian France.
Pepin, less enterprising than his father, but judicious, perse-
vering, and capable of discerning what was at the same time
necessary and possible, was well fitted to continue and con-
solidate what he would, probably, never have begun and
created. Like his father, he, on arriving at power, showed
pretensions to moderation or, it might be said, modesty. He
did not take the title of king; and, in concert with his brother
Carloman, he went to seek, heaven knows in what obscure
asylum, a forgotten Mervingian, son of Chilp^ric II., the last
but one of the sluggard kings, and made him king, the last of
his line, with the title of Child6ric III., himself, as well as his
CHARLEMAGNE INFLICTING BAPTISM UPON THE SAXONS.
ca. IX.] THE PEPTNS AND THE NEW DYNASTY. 161
brother, taking only the style of mayor of the palace. But at
the end of ten years, and when he saw himself alone at the
head of the Frankish dominion, Pepin considered the moment
arrived for putting an end to this fiction, In 751, he sent to
Pope Zachary at Rome, iBurchard, bishop of Wurtzburg, and
Fulrad, abbot of St. Deuis, **to consult the Pontiff," says
Eginhard, "on the subject of the kings then existing amongst
the Franks, and who bore only the name of king without
enjoying a tittle of royal authority." The Pope, whom St.
Boniface, the great missionary of Germany had prepared for
the question, answered that ** it was better to give the title of
king to him who exercised the sovereign power;" and next
year, in March, 752, in the presence and with the assent of the
general assembly of " leudes" and bishops gathered together at
Soissons, Pepin was proclaimed king of the Franks, and
received from the hand of St. Boniface the sacred anointment.
They cut off the hair of the last Merovingian phantom,
Clulderic III., and put him away in the monastery of St.
Sithiu, at St. Omer. Two years later, July 28, 754, Pope
Stephen II., having come to France to claim Pepin's support
against the Lombards, after receiving from him assurance of
it, ** anointed him afresh with the holy oil in the church of
St. Denis to do honor in his person to the dignity of royalty,"
and conferred the same honor on the king's two sons, Charles
and Carloman. The new GaUo-Frankish kingship and the
Papacy, in the name of their common faith and common
interests, thus contracted an intimate alliance. The young
Charles was hereafter to become Charlemagne.
The same year, Boniface, whom six years before Tojpe Zach-
ary had made Archbishop of Mayence, gave up one day the
episcopal dignity to his* disciple Lullus, charging him to carry
on the different works himself had commenced amongst the
churches of Germany, and to uphold the faith of the people.
** As for me," he added, ** I will put myself on my road, for the
time of my passing away approacheth. I have longed for this
departure, and none can turn me from it ; wherefore, my son,
get all things ready, and place in the chest with my books the
winding-sheet to wrap up my old body." And so he departed
with some of his priests and servants to go and evangelize the
Frisons, the majority of whom were stiU pagans and barba-
rians. He pitched his tent on their territory and was arranging
to celebrate their Lord's Supper, when a band of natives came
down and rushed upon the archbishop's retinue. The servitors
163 msTORY OF FRANCB. [ch. ix.
surrounded him, to defend him and themselves; and a battle
began. "Hold, hold, my children," cried the archbishop,
** Scripture biddeth us return good for evil. This is the day I
have long desired, and the hour .of our deliverence is at
hand. Be strong in the Lord : hope in Him, and He will save
your souls.*' The barbarians slew the holy man and the ma*
jority of his company* A little while after, the Christians of
the neighborhood came in arms and recovered the body of St.
Boniface. Near him was a book, which was stained with blood,
and seemed to have dropped from his hands; it contained
several works of the Fathers, and amongst others a writing of
St. Ambrose "on the Blessing of Death." The death of the
J)iou8 missionary was as powerful as his preaching in convert-
ing Friesland. It was a mode of conquest worthy of the
Christian faith, and one of which the history of Christianity
had already proved the effectiveness.
St« Boniface did not condne himself to the evangelization of
the pagans; he labored ardently in the Christian Gallo-Frank-
ish Church, to reform the manners and ecclesiastical disci-
phhe, and to assure, whilst justifying, the moral influence of
the clergy by example as well as precept. The Councils,
which had almost fallen into desuetude in Gaul, became once
more frequent and active there : from 74? to 753 there may be
coimted seven, presided over by St. Boniface, which exercised
within the Church a salutary action. King Pepin, recognizing
the services which the Archbishop of Mayence had rendered
him, seconded his reformatory efforts at one time by giving the
support of his royal authority to the canons of the coimcils,
held often simulantaneously with an almost confounded with
the laic assemblies of the Franks, at another by doing justice
to the protests of the churches against the violence and spo-
liation to which they were subjected. * * There was an im]X)rtant
point," says M. Fauriel, "in respect of which the position of
Charles Martel's sons turned out to be pretty nearly the same as
that of their father: it was touching the necessity of assigning
warriors a portion of the ecclesiastical revenues. But they,
being more religious, perhaps, than Charles Martel, or more
impressed with the importance of humoring the priestly
power, were more vexed and more anxious about the necessity
under which they found themselves of continuing to despoil
the churches and of persisting in a system which was putting
the finishing stroke to the ruin of all ecclesiastical discipline.
They were more eager to mitigate the* evil and to offer the
CH. IX.] THE! PEPtNS AND THE NEW DYNASTY. 163
Church compensation for their share in this evil to which it
wus not in their power to put a stop. Accordingly, at the March
parade held at Leptines in 743, it was decided, in reference to
ecclesiastical lauds applied to the military service: Ist, that
the churches having the ownership of those lands should
share the revenue with the lay holder; 2nd, that on the death
of a warrior in enjoyment of an ecclesiassical benefice, the
benefice should revert to the Church; 3rd, that every benefice
by deprivation wliereof any church would be reduced to
poverty should be at once restored to her. That this capitular
was carried out, or even capable of being carried out, is
very doubtful ; but the less Carloman and Pepin succeeded in
repairing the material losses incurred by the Church since the
accession of the Carlovingians, the more zealous they were in
promoting the growth of her moral power and the restoration
of her discipline. . . . That was the time at which there
began to be seen the spectacle of the national assembhes of
the Franks, the gatherings at the March parades transformed
into ecclesiastical synods under the presidency of the titular
legate of the Roman Pontiff, and dictating, by the mouth of
the i)ohtical authority, regulations and laws with the direct
and formal aim of restoring divine worship and eccesiastical
discipline, and of assuring the spiritual welfare of the people''
(Fauriel, Histoirede la Gaide, &c., t. III., p. 224).
Pepin, after he had been proclaimed king and had settled
matters with the Church as well as the warlike questions re-
maining for him to solve permitted, directed all his efforts
towards the two countries which, after his father's example, he
longed to reimite to the Gallo-Frankish monarchy, that is,
Septimania, still occupied by the Arabs, and Aquitaine, the
independence of which was stoutly and ably defended by
Duke Eudes' grandson, Duke Waifre. The conquest of Septi-
mania was rather tedious than difficult. The Franks, after
having victoriously scoured the open country of the district,
kept invested during three years its capital, Narbonne, where
the Arabs of Spain, much weakened by their dissensions,
vainly tried to throw in reinforcements. Besides the Mussul-
man Arabs the population of the town numbered many Chris-
tian Groths who were tired of suffering for the defence of their
oppressors and who entered into secret negotiations with the
chiefs of Pepin's army, the end of which was that they opened
the gates of the town. In 759, then, after forty years' of
Arab rule, Narbonne- passed definitively imder that of the
164 BISTORT OF FRANCE. [ctt. ix.
Franks, who guaranteed to the inhabitants free enjoyment of
their Gk)thic or Roman law and of their local institutions. It
even appears that, in the province of Spain bordering on
Septimania, an Arab chief, called Soliman, who was in com-
mand at Gerona and Barcelona, between the Ebro and the
Pyrenees, submitted to Pepin, himself and the country imder
him. This was an important event indeed in the reign of
Pepin, for here was the point at which Islamism, but lately
aggressive and victorious in Southern Europe, began to feel
definitively beaten and to recoil before Christianity.
The conquest of Aquitaine and Vasconia was much more
keenly disputed and for a much longer time imcertain. Duke
Waifre was as able in negotiation as in war: at one time he
seemed to accept the pacific overtures of Pepin, or, perhaps,
himself made similar, without bringing about any result; at
another, he went to seek and found even in Grermany aUies
who caused Pepin much embarrassment and peril. The popu-
lation of Aquitaine hated the Franks; and the war, which for
their duke was a question of independent sovereignty, was for
themselves a question of passionate national feeling. Pepin,
who was natm^y more humane and even more generous, it
may be said, in war than his predecessors had usually been,
was nevertheless induced, in his struggle against the Duke of
Aquitaine, to ravage without mercy the countries he scoured,
and to treat the vanquished with great harshness. It was
only after nine years' war and seven campaigns full of vicis-
situdes that he succeeded, not in conquering his enemy in a
decisive battle, but in gaining over some servants who betrayed
their master. In the month of July 759, *'Duke Waifre was
slain by his own fojk, by the king's advice," says Fr^^gaire;
and the conquest of aJl Southern Gaul carried the extent and
power of the Gallo-Frankish monarchy farther and higher
than it had ever yet been, even under Clovis.
In 753, Pepin had made an expedition against the Britons of
Armorica, had taken Vannes and j** subjugated," add certain
chroniclers, **the whole of Brittany." In point of fact Brit-
tany was no more subjugated by Pepin than by his predeces-
sors; all that can be said is that the Franks resumed, under
him, an aggressive attitude towards the Britons, as if to vindi-
cate a right of sovereignty.
Exactly at this ei)och Pepin was engaging in a matter which
did not allow him to scatter his forces hither and thither. It
has been stated already, that in 741 Pope Gregory III. had
CH. IX.] THE PEPIN8 AND THE NEW DYNASTY. 166
asked aid of the Franks against the Lombards who were
threatening Rome, and that, whilst fully entertaining the
Poi)e's wishes, Charlas Martel had been in no hurry to interfere
by deed in the quarrel. Twelve years later, in 753, Pope
Stephen, in his turn threatened by Astolphus, king of the Lom-
bards, after vain attempts to obtain guarantees of peace, re-
paired to Paris, and renewed to Pepin the entreaties used by
Zachary. It was difficult for Pepin to turn a deaf ear; it was
2iachary who had declared that he ought to be made king:
Stephen showed readiness to anoint him a second time, himself
and his sons; and it was the eldest of these sons, Charles,
scarcely twelve years old, whom Pepin, on learning the near
arrival of the Pope, had sent to meet him and give brilliancy
to his reception. Stephen passed the winter at St. Denis, and
gained the favor of the people as well as that of the king.
Astolphus peremptorily refused to listen to the remonstrances
of Pepin who called u]X)n him to evacuate the towns in the
exarchate of Ravenna, and to leave the Pope unmolested in the
environs of Rome as well as in Rome itself. At the March
parade held at Braine, in the spring of 754, the Franks ap-
proved of the wai' against the Lombards; and at the end of the
summer Pepin and his array descended into Italy by Mount
Cenis, the Lombards trying in vain to stop them as they de-
bouched into the valley of Suza. Astolphus beaten, and, be-
fore long, shut up in Pavia, promised all that was demanded
of him ; and Pepin and his warriors, laden with booty, returned
to France, leaving at Rome the Pope, who conjured them to
remain a while in Italy, for to a certainty, he said. King Astol-
phus would not keep his promises. The Pope was right. So
soon as the Franks had gone, the King of the Lombards con-
tinued occupying the places in the exarchate and molesting the
neighborhood of Rome. The Pope, in despair and doubtful of
his auxiliaries' return, conceived the idea of sending **tothe
king, the chiefs, and the people of the Franks, a letter written,
he said, by Peter, Apostle of Jesus Christ, Son of the living
God, to announce to them that, if they came in haste, he would
aid them as if he were aUve according to the flesh amongst
them, that they would conquer all their enemies and make
themselves sure of eternal life 1" The plan was perfectly suc-
cessful: the Franks once more crossed the Alps with enthusi-
asm, once more succeeded in beating the Lombards, and once
more shut up in Pavia King Astolphus, who was eager to pm*-
chase peac^ at any price. He obtaiAcd it on two principal
166 HISTOllT OF FBANCE, [CH. x
conditions: 1st, that he would not again make a hostile at-
tack on Roman territory or wage war against the Pope or
people of Rome ; 2d, that he would henceforth recognize the
sovereignty of the Franks, pay them tribute, and cede forth-
with to Pepin the towns and all the lands, belonging to the
jurisdiction of the Roman empire, which were at that time oc-
occupied by the 'Lombards. By virtue of these conditions
Ravenna, Rimini, Pesaro, that is to say, the Romagna, the
Duchy of Urbino and a ]X)rtion of the Marches of Ancona,
were at once given up to Pepin, who, regarding them as his
own direct conquest, the fruit of victory, disposed of them
forthwith, in favor of the Popes, by that famous deed of gift
which comprehended pretty nearly what has since formed the
Roman States, and which founded the temporal independence
of the Papacy, the guarantee of its independence in the exer-
cise of the spiritual power.
At the head of the Franks as mayor of the palace from 741,
and as king from 752, Pepin had conpleted in France and ex-
tended in Italy the work which his father, Charles Martel, had
begun and carried on, from 714 to 741, in State and Church.
He left France re-united in one and placed at the head of
Christian Europe. He died at the monastery of St. Denis,
September 18, 768, leaving his kingdom and his dynasty thus
ready to the hands of his son, whom history has dubbed
Charlemagne.
CHAPTER X.
CHARLEMAGNE AND HIS WARS.
The most judicious minds are sometimes led blindly by tra-
dition and habit, rather than enlightened by reflection and ex-
perience. Pepin the Short commited at his death the same
mistake that his father, Charles Martel, had committed: he
divided his dominions between his two sons, Charles and Carlo-
man, thus destroying again that unity of the Gallo Frankish
monarchy which his father and he had been at so much pains
to establish. But, just as had already happened in 746 through
the abdication of Pepin's brother, events discharged the duty
of repairing the mistake of men. After the death of Pepin,
CH. X.] CEABLEMAQNE AND HIS WARS. 167
and notwithstanding that of Duke Waifre, insurrection broke
out once more in Aquitaine: and the old duke, Hunald, issued
from his monastery in the island of Rhe to try and recover
power and independence. Charles and Carloman marched
against him; but, on the march, Carloman, who was jealous
and thoughtless, fell out with his brother, and suddenly quitted
the expedition, taking away his troops, Charles was obliged
to continue it alone, which he did with complete success. At
the end of this first campaign, Pepin's widow, the Queen-mother
Bertha, reconciled her two sons; but an unexpected incident,
the death of Carloman two years afterwards in 771, re-estab-
lished imity more surely than the reconciliation had re-estab-
lished harmony. For, although Carloman left sons, the
grandees of his dominions, whether laic or ecclesiastical, as-
sembled at Corbeny, between Laon and Eheims, and pro-
claimed in his stead his brother Charles, who thus became sole
king of the Gallo-Franco-Germanic monarchy. And as ambi-
tion and manners had become less tinged with ferocity than
they had been imder the Merovingians, the sons of Carloman
were not killed or shorn or even shut up in a monastery : they
retired with their mother, Grerberge, to the court of Didier,
king of the Lombards. ** King Charles," says Eginhard, ** took
;fcheir departure patiently, regarding it as of no importance."
Thus commenced the reign of Charlemagne.
The original and dominant characteristic of the hero of this
reign, that which won for him, and keeps for him after more
than ten centuries, the name of great, is the striking variety of
his ambition, his faculties, and his deeds. Carlems^ift aspired
to and attained to every sort of greatness— mihtary gi*eatness,
political greatness, and intellectual greatness; he was an able
warrior, an energetic legislator, a hero of poetry. And he
united, he displayed all these merits in a time of general and
monotonous barbarism when, save in the Church, the minds of
men were dull aud barren. Those men, few in number, who
made themselves a name at that epoch, raUied round Charle-
magne and were developed imder his patronage. To know
him wen and appreciate him justly, he must be examined
under those various grand r^pects, abroad and at home, in his
wars and in his government.
In Guizot's History of Civilization in France is to be found
a complete table of the wars of Charlemagne, of his many
different expeditions in Germany, Italy, Spain, all the coim-
tries, in fact, that became his dominion. A smnmary will here
168 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. x.
suffice. From 769 to 813, in Grermany and Western and North-
ern Europe, Charlemagne conducted thirty-one campaigns
against the Saxons, Frisons, Bavarians, Avars, Slavons, and
Danes; in Italy, five against the Lombards; in Spain, Corsica,
and Sardinia, twelve against the Arabs; two against the
Greeks ; and three in Gaul itself, against the Aquitanians and
the Britons; in all, fifty-three expeditions; amongst which
those he undertook against the Saxons, the Lombards, and
the Arabs, were long and difficult wars. It was undesirable
to recount them in detail, for the relation would be monoto-
nous and useless; but it is obhgatory to make fully known
their causes, their characteristic incidents, and their results.
It has already been seen that, under the last Merovingian
kings, the Saxons were, on the right bank of the Rhine, in
frequent collision with the Franks, esi)ecially with the Austra-
sian Franks, whose territory they were continually threaten-
ing and often invading. Pepin the Short had more than once
hurled them back far from the very uncertain frontiers of
Germanic Austrasia; and, on becoming king, he dealt his
blows still farther, and entered, in his turn, Saxony itself.
**In spite of the Saxons's stout resistance," says Eglnhard
{Annalea, t. i., p. 135), **he pierced through the points they
had fortified to bar enterance into their country, and, after,
having fought here and there battles wherein fell many
Saxons, he forced them to promise that they would submit to
his rule; and that, every year, to do him honor, they would
send to the general assembly of Franks a present of three
hundred* horses. When these conventions were once settled,
he insisted, to insure their performance, upon placing them
under the guarantee of rites peculiar to the Saxons; then he
returned with his army to Gaul." ♦
Charlemagne did not confine himself to resuming his father's
work ; he before long changed its character and its scope. In
772, being left sole master of France after the death of his
brother Carloman, he convoked at Worms the general assembly
of the Franks, '^ and took," says Eginhard, ** the resolution of
going and carrying war into Saxony. He invaded it without
delay, laid it waste with fire and sword, made himself master
of the fort of Ehresburg, and threw down the idol that the
Saxons called IrminsuV^ And in what place was this first
victory of Charlemagne won? Near the sources of the Lipx)e,
just where, more than seven centuries before, the German
Arminius (Herrman) had destroyed the legions of Varus, and
CH. X.] CHARLEMAGNE AND HIS WARS. 169
whither Germanicus had come to avenge the disaster of Varus.
This ground belonged to Saxon territory ; and this idol, called
Irminsvl^ which was thrown down by CSharlemagne, was
probably a monument taised in honor of Arminius {Herrrnann-
SdtHe^ or Herrmann'a pillar) whose name it called to mind.
The patriotic and hereditary pride of the Saxons was passion-
ately roused by this blow; and, the following year, '^ thinking
to find in the absence of the king the most favorable oppor-
tunity," says Eginhard, they entered the lands of the Franks,
laid them waste in their turn, and. paying back outrage for
outrage, set fire to the church not long since built at Fritzlar,
by Boniface, martyr. From that time the question changed
its asx)ect; it was no longer the repression of Saxon invasions
of France, but the conquest of Saxony by the Franks that was
to be dealt with ; it was between the Christianity of the Franks
and the national Paganism of the Saxons that the struggle was
to take place.
For thirty years such was its character. Charlemagne re-
garded the conquest of Saxony as indispensibfe for putting a
stop to the incursions of the Saxons, and the conversion of the
Saxons to Christianity as indispensible for assuring the con-
quest of Saxony. . The Saxons were defending at one and the
. same time the independence of their coimtry and the gods of
their fathers. Here was wherewithal to stir up and foment,
on both sides, the profoundest passions; and they burst forth,
on both sides, with equal fury. Withersoever Charlemagne
penetrated he built strong castles and churches; and, at his
departure, left garrisons and missionaries. When he was
gone the Saxons returned, attacked the forts and massacred the
garrisons and the missionaries. At the conmiencement of the
struggle, a priest of Anglo-Saxon origin, whom St. WiUibrod,
bishop of Utrecht, had but lately consecrated — St. Liebwin,
in fact — ^undertook to go and preach the Christian rehgion in
the very heart of Saxony, on the banks of the Weser, amidst
the general assembly of the Saxons. ** What do ye?" said he,
cross in hand; " the idols ye ^worship hve not, neither do they
perceive: they are the work of men's hands; they can do
naught either for themselves or for others. Wherefore the
one God, good and just, having compassion on your errors,
hath sent me unto you. If ye put not away your iniquity, I
foretell imto you a trouble that ye do not exi)ect, and that the
King of Heaven hath ordained aforetime: there shall come a
prince, strong and wise and indefatigable, not from afar, but
170 . UISTORT OF FRANCE, [CH. x.
from nigh at hand, to fall upon you like a torrent, in order to
soften your hard hearts and bow down your proud heads. At
one rush he shall invade the country; he shall lay it waste
with fire and sword, and carry away your wives and children
into captivity." A thrill of ra^ ran through the assembly;
and already many of those present had begun to cut, in the
neighboring woods, stakes sharpened to a point to pierce the
priest, when one of the chieftains named But ocried aloud,
** listen, ye who are the most wise. There have often come
unto us ambassadors from neighboring peoples, Northmen,
Slavons or Frisons ; we have received them in peace, and when
their messages have been heard, they have been sent away
with a present. Here is an ambassador from a great God, and
ye would slay him !" Whether it were from sentiment or from
prudence the multitude was calmed, or at any rate restrained;
and for this time the priest retired safe and sound.
Just as the pious zeal of the missionaries was of service to
Charlemagne, so did the power of Charlemagne support and
sometimes preserve the missionaries. The mob, even in the
midst of its passions, is not throughout or at all times in-
accessible to fear. The Saxons were not one and the same
nation, constantly united- in one and the same assembly and
governed by a single chieftain. Three populations of the same
race, distinguished by names borrowed from their geographical
situation, just as had happened amongst the Franks in the case
of the Austrasians and Neustrians, to wit, Eastphalian or east-
em Saxons, Westphalian or western, and Angrians, formed
the Saxon confederation. And to them was often added a
fourth peoplet of the same origin, closer to the Danes and
called Nortb-Albingians, inhabitants of the northern district of
the Elbe. These four principal Saxon populations were sub-
divided into a large number of tribes who had their own par-
ticular chieftains, and who often decided, each for itself, their
conduct and their fate. Charlemagne, knowing how to profit
by this want of cohesion and unity amongst his foes, attacked
now one and now another of the large Saxon peoplets or the
small Saxon tribes, and dealt separately with each of them,
according as he f oimd them inclined to submission or resist-
ance. After having, in four or five successive expeditions,
gained victories and sustained checks, he thought himself
sufiS^ciently advanced in his conquest to put his relations with
the Saxons to a grand trial. In 777, he resolved, says Hgin-
hard, ^'to go and hold, at the place called Paderbom (clo60 to
CH. X.] CHARLEMAGNE ANH HIS WARS. 171
Saxony) the general assembly of this people. On his arrival
he found there assembled the senate and people of this per-
fidious nation, who, comformably to his orders, had repaired
thither, seeking to deceive him by a false show of submission
and devotion. . . . They earned their pardon, but on this con-
dition however, that, if hereafter they broke their engage-
ments, they would be deprived of country and liberty, A
great number amongst them had themselves baptized on this
occasion; but it was with far from sincere intentions that they
had testified a desire to become Christians.''
There had been absent from this great meeting a Saxon
chieftain called Wittikind, son of Wernekind, king of the
Saxons at the north of the Elbe. He had espoused the sister
of Siegfried, king of the Danes ; and he was the friend of Bat-
bod, king of the Frisons. A true chieftain at heart as well as
by descent, he was made to be the hero of the Saxons just as,
seven centuries before, the Cheruscan Herrmann (Arminius)
had been the hero of the Germans. Instead of repairing to
Paderbom, Wittikind had left Saxony, and taken refuge with
his brother-in-law, the King of the Danes. Thence he encour-
aged his Saxon compatriots, some to persevere in their resist-
ance, others to repent them of their show of submission. War
began again ; and Wittikind hastened back to take part in it.
In 778 the Saxons advanced as far as the Bhine; but, *'not
having been able to cross this river," says Eginhard, "they
set themselves to lay waste with fire and sword, all the towns
and all the villages from the city of Duitz (opposite Cologne)
as far as the confluence of the Moselle. The churches as well
as the houses were laid in ruins from top to bottom. The
enemy, in his frenzy, spared neither age nor sex, wishing to
show thereby that he had invaded the territory of the Franks,
not for plunder but for revenge I" For three years the struggle
continued, more confined in area, but more and more obsti-
nate. Many of the Saxon tribes submitted; many Saxons
were baptized; and Siegfried, king of the Danes, sent to Char-
lemagne a deputation, as if to treat for peace. Wittikind
had left Denmark; but he had gone across to her neighbors,
the Northmen; and, thence re-entering Saxony, he kindled
there an insurrection as fierce as it was imexpected. In 783
two of Charlemagne's lieutenants were beaten on the banks of
the Weser, and killed in the battle, * ' together with four counts
and twenty leaders, the noblest in the army ; indeed the Franks
were nearly all exterminated. At news of this disaster," says
173 BISTORT OF FRANCS. [ch. x.
Eginhard, '^ Charlemagne, without losing a moment, re-assem-
bled an army and set out for Saxony. He summoned into his
presence all the chieftains of the Saxons and demanded of
them who had been the promoters of the revolt. All agreed in
denouncing Wittikind as the author of this treason. But aa
they could not deliver him up, because immediately after his
sudden attack he had taken refuge with the Northmen, those
who, at his instigation, had been accomplices in the crime,
were placed, to the number of four thousand five hundred, in
the hands of the king; and, by his order, all had their heads
cut off the same day, at a place called Werden, on the river
Aller. After this deed of vengeance the king retired to Thion-
ville to pass the winter there."
But the vengeance did not put an end to the war. ** Blood
calls for blood," were words spoken in the English parliament,
in 1643, by Sir Benjamin Rudyard, one of the best citizens of
his country in her hour of revolution. For thtee years Charle-
magne had to redouble his efforts to accomplish in Saxony, at
the cost of Frankish as well as Saxon blood, his work of con-
quest and conversion ; * ' Saxony, " he often repeated, * * must be
christianized or wiped out." At last, in 785, after several
victories which seemed decisive, he went and settled down in
his strong castle of Ehresburg, "whither he made his wife
and children come, being resolved to remain there all the bad
season," says Eginhard, and applying himself without cessar
tion to scouring the country of the Saxons and wearing them
out by his strong and indomitable determination. But deter-
mination did not blind him to prudence and policy. " Having
learned that Wittikind and Abbio (another great Saxon chief-
tain) were abiding in the part of Saxony situated on the other
side of the Elbe, he sent to them Saxon envoys to prevail upon
them to renounce their perfidy, and come, without hesitation,
and trust themselves to him. They, conscious of what they
had attempted, dared not at first trust to the king's word; but
having obteined from him the promise they desired of im-
punity and, besides, the hostages they demanded as guarantee
of their safety and who were brought to them, on the king's
behalf, by Amalwin, one of the oflBcers of his court, they came
with the said lord and presented themselves before the king in
his palace of Attigny [Attigny-sur-Aisne, whither Charlemagne
had now returned] and there received baptism."
Charlemagne did more than amnesty Wittikind; he named
him Duke of Saxony, but without attaching to the title any
CH. X.] OHARLEMAGNE AND HIS WARS, 173
right of sovereignty. Wittikind, on his side, did more than
come to Attigny and get baptized there ; he gave up the struggle
remained faithful to his new engagements, and led, they say,
so Christian a life, that some chroniclers have placed him *on
the list of saints. He was killed in 807, in a battle against
G^rold, duke of Suabia, and his tomb is still to be seen at
Ratisbonne. Several families of Gtermany hold him for their
ancestor; and some French genealogists have, without solid
ground, discovered in him the grand&ither of Eobert the
Strong, great-grandfather of Hugh Capet. However that may
be, after making peace with Wittikind, Charlemagne had still,
for several years, many insurrections to repress and much
rigor to exercise in Saxony, including the removal of certain
Saxon peoplets out of their country and the establishment of
foreign colonists in the territories thus become vacant; but the
great war was at an end, and Charlemagne might consider
Saxony incorporated in his dominions.
He had stiQ, in Germany and all around, many enemies to
fight and many campaigns to re-open. Even amongst the
Grermanic populations, which were regarded as reduced under
the sway of the King of the Franks, some, the Frisons and
Saxons as well as others, were continually agitating for the re-
covery of their independence. Farther off towards the north,
east, and south, people differing in origin and language —
Avars, Huns, Slavons, Bulgarians, Danes, and Northmen-
were still pressing or beginning to press upon the frontiers of
the Frankish dominion, for the purpose of either penetrating
within or settling at the threshold as powerful and formidable
neighbors. Charlemagne had plenty to do, with the view at
one time of checking their incursions and at another of destroy-
ing or hurling back to a distance their settlements; and he
brought his usual vigor and perseverance to bear on this second
struggle. But by the conquest of Saxony he had attained his
direct national object: the great flood of population from East
to West came, and broke against the Gallo-Franco-Germanic
dominion as against an insurmountable rampart.
This was not, however, Charlemagne's only great enterprise
at this epoch, nor the only great struggle he had to maintain.
Whilst he was incessantly fighting in Germany, the work of
policy commenced by his father Pepin in Italy called for his
care and his exertions. The new king of the Lombards, Didier,
and the new Pope, Adrian I., had entered upon a new war;
and Didier was besieging Home, which was energetically de«
174 HISTORY OF FnANClS, [cH. X.
fended by the Pope and its inhabitants. In 778, Adrian in-
voked the aid of the King of the Franks whom his envoys
succeeded, not without diflSculty, in finding at Thionville.
C^rlemagne could not abandon the grand position left him by
his father as protector of- the Papacy and as patrician of Home.
The i)ossessions, moreover, wrested by Didier- from the Pope
were exactly those which Pepin had won by conquest from
King Astolphus, and had presented to the Papacy. Charle-
magne was besides, on his own accoimt, on bad terms with the
King of the Lombards, whose daughter, D^sir^, he had mar-
ried, and afterwards repudiated and sent home to her father,
in order to marry HUdegarde, a Suabian by nation. Didier,
in dudgeon, had given an asylum to Carloman's widow and
sons, on whose intrigues Charlemagne kept a watchful eye.
Being prudent and careful of appearances, even when he was
preparing to strike a heavy blow, Charlemagne tried, by
means of special envoys, to obtain from the King df the Lom-
bards what the Pope demanded. On Didier's refusal he at
once set to work, convoked the general paeetingof the Franks,
at Geneva, in the autumn of 773, gained them over, not with-
out encountering some objections, to the projected Italian ex-
pedition, and forthwith commenced the campaign with two
armies. One was to cross the Valais and descend upon Lom-
bardy by Mount St. Bernard ; Charlemagne in person led the
other, by Mount Cenis. The Lombards, at the outlet of the
passes of the Alps, offered a vigorous resistance; but when the
second army had penetrated into Italy by Moimt St. Bernard,
Didier, threatened in his rear, retired precipitately , and, driven
from position to position, was. obliged to go and shut himself
up in Pavia, the strongest place in his kingdom, whither
Charlemagne, having received on the march the submission of
the principal counts and nearly all the towns of Lombardy,
came promptly to besiege him.
To place textually before the reader a fragment of an old
chronicle will serve better than any modem description to
show the impression of admiration and fear produced upon his
contemporaries by Charlemagne, his person and his ]X)wer.
At the close of this ninth century a monk of the abbey of St.
Gall, in Switzerland, had collected, direct from the mouth of
one of Charlemagne's warriors, Adalbert, nmnerous stories of
his campaigns and his life. These stories are full of fabulous
legends, puerile anecdotes, distorted reminiscences and chrono-
logical errors, and they are written sometimes with a credulity
CH. X.] CHARLEMAGNE AND 1118 WAR8. 175
and exaggeration of language which raise a smile ; but they re-
veal the state of men^s i^ds and fancies within the circle of
Charlemagne^s influence and at the sight of him. This monk
gives a naive account of Charlemagne's arrival before Pavia
and of the King of the Lombard's disquietude at his approach.
Didier had with him at that time one of Charlemagne's most
famous comrades, Ogier the Dane, who fills a prominent place
in the romances and epopoeas, relating to chivalry, of that age.
Ogier had quarrelled with his great chief and taken refuge with
the King of the Lombards. It is probable that his Danish
origin and his relations with the King of the Danes, Grottfried,
for a long time an enemy of the Franks, had something to do
with his misunderstanding with Charlemagne. However that
may have been, "when Didier and Ogger (for so the monk
calls him) heard that the dread monarch was coming, they
ascended a tower of vast height whence they could watch his
arrival from afar off and from every quarter. They saw, first
of all, engines of war such as must have been necessary for the
armies of Darius or Julius Caesar. *Is not Charles,' asked
Didier of Ogger, * with this great army? ' But the other
answered *No.' The Lombard, seeing afterwards an im-
mense body of soldiery gathered from all quarters of the vast
empire, said to Ogger, * Certes, Charles advanceth in triumph
in the midst of this throng. ' * No, not yet ; he will not appear
so soon,' was the answer. * What should we do, then,' re-
joined Didier, who began to be perturbed, * should he come
accompanied by a larger band of warriors?' *You will see
what he is when he comes,' replied Ogger, *but as to what
wiQ become of us I know nothing.' As they were thus par-
leying appeared the body of guards that knew no repose; and
at this sight the Lombard, overcome with dread, cried, * This
time 'tis surely Charles.' *No,' answered Ogger, *not yet.'
In their wake came the bishops, the abbots, the ordinaries of
the chapels royal, and the coimts; and then Didier, no longer
able to bear the light of day or to face death, cried out with
groans, * Let us descend and hide ourselves in the bowels of
the earth, far from the face and the fury of so terrible a foe.'
Trembling the while, Ogger, who knew by experience what
were the power and might of Charles and who had learned the
lesson by long consuetude in better days, then said, * When ye
shall behold the crops shaking for fear in the fields, and the
gloomy Po and the Ticino overflowing the walls of the city
with their waves blackened with steel (iron), then may ye
176 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. X.
think that Charles is conung.' He had not ended these words
when there began to be seen in the west, as it were a black
cloud, raised by the north-west wind or by Boreas, which
turned' the brightest day into awful shadows. But as the
emperor drew nearer and nearer, the gleam of arms caused to
shine on the people shut up within the city a day more gloomy
than any kind of night. And then appeared Charles himself,
that man of steel, with his head encased in a helmet of steel,
his hands garnished with gauntlets of steel, his heart of steel
and his shoulders of marble protected by a cuirass of steel, and
his left hand armed with a lance of steel which he held aloft in
the air, for as to his right hand he kept that continually on the
hilt of his invincible sword. The outside of his thighs, which
the rest, for their greater ease in paoimting a-horseback, were
wont to leave unshackled even by straps, he wore encircled by
plates of steel. What shall I say concerning his boots? All
the army were wont to have them invariably of steel; on his
buckler there was naught to be seen but steel ; his horse was of
the color and the strength of steel. All those who went before
the monarch, all those who marched at his side, all those who
followed after, even the whole mass of the army had armor of
the like sort, so far as the means of each permitted. The fields
and the highways were covered with steel : the points of steel
reflected the rays of the sim ; and this steel, so hard, wajs borne
by a people with hearts still harder. The flash of steel spread
terror throughout the streets of the city. ^ What steel ! alack,
what steel I' Such were the bewildered cries the citizens
raised. The firmness of manhood and of youth gave way at
sight of the steel ; and the steel paralyzed the wisdom of grey-
beards. That which I, poor tale-teller, mumbling and tooth-
less, have attempted to depict in a long description, Ogger per-
ceived at one rapid glance, and said to Didier, * Here is what
ye have so anxiously sought:' and whilst uttering these words
he fell down almost lifeless."
The monk of St. Gall does King Didier and his people wrong.
ThQy showed more firmness and vaJor than he ascribes to
them; they resisted Charlemagne obstinately, and repulsed
his first assaults so well that he changed the siege into an in-
vestment and settled down before Pavia, as if making up his
mind for a long operation. His camp became a town; he sent
for Queen Hildegarde and her court ; and he had a chapel built
where he celebrated the festival of Christmas. But on the
arrival of spring, close upon the festival of Easter, 774, wearied
CH. X.] CUARLEMAQ^E AND JUS WARS. 177
with the duration of the investment, he left to his Keutenants
the duty of keeping it up, and, attended hy a numerous and
hrilliant following, set off for Rome, whither the Pope was
urgently pressing him to come.
On Holy Saturday, April 1, 774, Charlemagne found, at three
miles from Rome, the magistrates and the banner of the city,
sent forward by the Pope to meet him ; at one mile all the
municipal bodies and the pupils of the schools carrying palm-
branches and singing hymns; and at the gate of the city, the
cross, which was never taken out save for exarchs and patri-
cians. At sight of the cross Charlemagne dismounted, entered
Ronie on foot, ascended the steps of the ancient basilica of St.
Peter, repeating at each step a sign of respectful piety, and
was received at the top by the Pope himself. All around him
and in the streets a chant was sung, '^ Blessed be he that
Cometh in the name of the Lord I" At his entry and during
his sojourn at Rome Charlemagne gave the most striking
proofs of Christian faith and respect for the Head of the
Church. According to the custom of pilgrims he visited all
the basilicas, and in that of St. Maria Maggiore he performed
his solemn devotions. Then, passing to temporal matters, he
caused to be brought and read over, in his private conferences
with the Pope, the deed of territorial gift made by his father
Pepin to Stephen II., and with his own lips dictated the con-
firmation of it, adding thereto a new gift of certain territories
which he was in course of wresting by conquest from the
Lombards. Pope Adrian, on his side, rendered to him, with a
mixture of affection and dignity, all the honors and all the
services which could at one and the same time satisfy and
exalt the king and the priest, the protector and the protected.
He presented to Charlemagne a book containing a collection of
the canons written by the pontiffs from the origin of the
Church, and he put at the beginning of the book, which was
dedicated to Charlemagne, an address in forty-five irregulai'
verses, written with his own hand, which formed an anagram :
" Pope Adrian to his most excellent son Charlemagne, king"
(Domino eoccellentissimo filio Carolo Magno regi^ Hadrianus
papa). At the same time he encouraged him to push his vic-
tory to the utmost and make himself King of the Lombards,
advising him, however, not to incorporate his conquest with
the Frankish dominions, as it would wound the pride of the
conquered people to be thus absorbed by the conquerors, and
to take merely the title of **King of the Franks and Loni-
178 HISTOnr OP PRANCS!. tcH. X.
bards." Charlemagne appreciated and accepted this wise
advice; for he could preserve proper Umits in his ambition and
in the hour of victory. Three years afterwards he even did
more than Pope Adrian had advised. In 777 Queen Hildegarde
bore him a son, Pepin, whom in 781 Charlemagne had baptized
and anointed King of Italy at Rome by the Pope, thus sepa-
rating not only the two titles but also the two kingdoms, and
restoring to the Lombards a national existence, feeling quite
sure that, so long as he lived, the unity of his different do-
minions would not be imperilled. Having thus regulated at
Home his own affairs and those of the Church, he returned to
his camp, took Pavia, received the submission of all the Lom-
bard dukes and counts, save one only, Aregisius, duke of
Beneventum, and entered France again, taking with him as
prisoner KingDidier, whom he banished to a monastery, first
at Li^ge and then at Corbie, were the dethroned Lombard, say
the chroniclers, ended his days in saintly fashion.
The prompt success of this war in Italy, imdertaken at the
appeal of the Head of the Chiuxjh, this first sojourn of Charle-
magne at Rome, the spectacles he had witnessed and the
homage he had received, exercised over him, his plans and his
deeds, a powerful influence. This rough Frankish warrior,
chief of a people who were beginning to make a brilliant ajn
pearance upon the stage of the world, and issue himself of a
new line, had a taste for what was grand, splendid, ancient,
and consecrated by time and public respect; he imderstood and
estimated at its fuU worth the moral force and importance of
such allies. He departed from Rome in 774, more determined
than ever to subdue Saxony, to the advantage of the Church
as well as of his own power, and to promote, in the South as in
the North, the triumph of the Frankish Christian dominion.
Three years afterwards, in 777, he had convoked at Pader-
bom, in Westphalia, that general assembly of his different
peoples at which Wittikind did not attend, and which was
destined to bring upon the Saxons a more and more obstinate
war. "The Saracen Ibn-al-Arabi," says Eginhard, "came to
this town, to present himself before the king. He had arrived
from Spain, together with other Saracens in his train, to sur-
render to the King of the Franks himself and all the towns
which the King of the Saracens had confided to his keeping."
For a long time past the Christians of the West had given the
Mussulmans, Arab or other, the name of Saracens, Ibn-al-
Arabi was governor of Saragossa, and one of the Spanish-Arab
Ctt. X.] CHAHLEMAOKE AND IITS WARS. 179
chieftains in league against Abdel-Rhaman, the last offshoot of
the Ommiad khalifs, who, with the assistance of the Berbers,
had seized the government of Spain. Amidst the troubles of
his coimtry and his nation, Ibn-al-Arabi sunnnoned to his aid,
against Abdel-Rhaman, the Franks and the Christians, just as,
but lately, Maurontius, duke of Aries, had summoned to Pro-
vence, against Charles Martel, the Arabs and the Mussulmans.
Charlemagne accepted the summons with alacrity. With
the coming of spring in the following year, 778, and with the
full assent of his chief warriors, he began his march towards
the Pyrenees, crossed the Loire, and halted at Casseneuil, at
the confluence of the Lot and the Garonne, to celebrate there
the festival of Easter, and to make preparations for his expedi-
tion thence. As he had but lately done for his campaign in
Italy against the Lombards, he divided his forces into two
armies: one composed of Austrasians, Neustrians,* Burgun-
dians, and divers Grerman contingents, and commanded by
Charlemagne in person, was to enter Spain by the valley of
Roncesvalles, in the western Pyrenees, and make for Pampe-
luna; the other, consisting of Provengals, Septimanians, Lom-
bards, and other populations of the South, under the command
of Duke Bernard, who had already distinguished himself in
Italy, had orders to penetrate into Spain by the eastern Pyre-
nees, to receive on the march the submission of Gerona and
Barcelona, and not to halt till they were before Saragossa,
where the two armies were to form a junction, and which Ibn-
al-Arabi had promised to give up to the King of the Franks.
According to this plan, Charlemagne had to traverse the ter-
ritories pf Aquitaine and Vasconia, domains of Duke Lupus II.,
son of Duke Waif re, so long the foe of Pepin the Short, a Mero-
vingian by descent, and, in all these qualities, little disposed to
favor Charlemagne. However, the march was accomplished
without diflSculty. The King of the Franks treated his power-
ful vassal well; and Duke Lupus swore to him afresh, **or for
the first time," says M. Fauriel, *' submission and fidelity; but
the event soon proved that it was not without umbrage or
without all the feelings of a true son of Waif re that he saw the
Franks and the son of Pepin so close to hina."
The aggressive camx)algn was an easy and a brilliant one.
Charles with his army entered Spain by the valley of Ronces-
valles without encountering any obstacle. On his arrival
before Pampelima the Arab governor surrendered the place to
him, and Charlemagne pushed forward vigorously to Sara-
180 BISTORT OF GRANGE. [ch. X.
gossa. But there fortune changed. The presence of foreign-
ers and Christians on the soil of Spain caused a suspension of
interior quarrels amongst the Arabs^ who rose in mass, at all
points, to succor Saragossa. The besieged defended themselves
with obstinacy; there was more scarcity of provisions amongst
the besiegers than inside the place ; sickness broke out amongst
them; they were incessantly harassed from without; and ru-
mors of a fresh rising amongst the Saxons reached Charle-
magne. The Arabs demanded negotiation. To decide the
King of the Franks upon an abandonment of the siege, they
offered him **an immense quantity of gold," say the chroni-
clers, hostages, and promises of homage and fidelity. Appear-
ances had been saved ; Charlemagne could say, and even per-
haps believe, that he had pushed his conquests as far as the
Ebro ; he decided on retreat, and all the army was set in motion
to recross the Pyrenees. On arriving before Pampeluna
Charlemagne had its walls completely razed to the ground,
**in order that," as he said, **that city might not be able to
revolt. " The troops entered those same passes of Roncesvalles
which they had traversed without obstacle a few weeks before;
and the advance-guard and the main body of the army were
already clear of them. The account of what happened shall
be given in the words of Eginhard, the only contemporary
historian whose accoimt, free from all exaggeration, can be
considered authentic. * * The king, " he says, * * brought back his
army without experiencing any loss, save that at the summit
of the Pyrenees he suffered somewhat from the perfidy of the
Vascons (Basques). Whilst the army of the Franks, embar-
rassed in a narrow defile, was forced by the nature of the
ground to advance in one long close line, the Basques, who
were in ambush on the crest of the mountain (for the thickness
of the forest with which these parts are covered is favorable to
ambuscade), descend and fall suddenly on the baggage-train
and on the troops of the rear-guard, whose duty it was to
cover all in their front, and precipitate them to the bottom of
the valley. There took place a fight in which the Franks were
killed to a man. The Basques, after having plundered the
baggage-train, profited by the night which had come on, to
disperse rapidly. They owed all their success in this engage-
ment to the lightness of their equipment and to the nature of
the spot where the action took place; the Franks, on the con-
trary, being heavily armed and in an unfavorable position,
struggled against too many disadvantages. Eginhard, masteor
CH. X.] CEARLEMAOFE AND EI8 WARS. 181
of the household of the king; Anselm, count of the palace;
and Roland, prefect of the marches of Brittany, fell in this en-
gagement. There were no means, at the time, of taking re-
venge for this check ; for, after their sudden attack, the enemy
dispersed to such good purpose that there was no gaining any
trace of the direction in which they should be sought for."
History says no more; hut in the poetry of the people there
is a longer and a more faithful memory than in the court of
kings. The disaster of Roncesvalles and the heroism of the
warriors who perished there became, in France, the object of
popular sympathy and the favorite topic for the exercise of the
popular fancy. The Song of Roland, a real Homeric poem in
its great beauty, and yet rude and simple as became its nation-
al character, bears witness to the prolonged importance at-
tained in Europe by this incident in the history of Charle-
magne. Four centuries later the comrades of WiUiam the
Conqueror, marching to battle at Hastings for the possession
of England, struck up The Song of Roland **to prepare them-
selves for victory or death," says M. Vitel, in his vivid esti-
mate and able translation of this poetical monument of the
manners and first impulses towards chivalry of the middle
ages. There is no determining how far history must be made
to participate in these reminiscences of national feehng; but,
assiu'edly, the figures of Eoland and Oliver, and Archbishop
Turpin, and the pious, unsophisticated, and tender character
of their heroism are not pure fables invented by the fancy of a
poet, or the credulity of a monk, li the accuracy of historical
narrative must not be looked for in them, their moral truth
must be recognized in their portrayal of a people and an age.
The pontic genius of Charlemagne comprehended more fully
than would be imagined from his panegyrist's brief and dry
account aU the gravity of the affair of Roncesvalles. Not only
did he take immediate vengeance by hanging Duke Lupus of
Aquitaine, whose treason had brought down this mishap, and
by reducing his two sons, Adalric and Sancho, to a more feeble
and precarious condition; but he resolved to treat Aquitaine
as he had but lately treated Italy, that is to say, to make of it,
according to the correct definition of M. Fauriel, "a special
kingdom, an integral portion, indeed, of the Frankish empire,
but with an especial destination, which was that of resisting
the invasions of the Andalusian Arabs, and confining them as
much as possible to the soil of the Peninsula. This was, in
some sort, giving back to the country its primary task as an
182 EISTORY OF FRANCE. [CH. x.
independent duchy ; and it was the most natural and most cer-
tain way of making the Aquitanians useful subjects, by giving
play to their national vanity, to their pretensions of forming a
separate people, and to their hopes of once more becoming,
sooner or later, an independent nation. Queen Hildegard,
during her husband's sojourn at Casseneuil, in 778, had borne
him a son whom he called Louis, and who was, aiterwards, Louis
the Debonnair. Charlemagne, summoned a second time to
Rome, in 781, by the quarrels of Pope Adrian I. with the imperial
court of Constantinople, brought with him his two sons, Pepin
aged only four years, and Louis only three years, and had
them anointed by the Pope, the former King of Italy, and the
latter King of Aquitaine. ** On returning from Rome to Aus-
trasia, Charlemagne sent Louis at once to take possession of
his kingdom. From the banks of the Mouse to Orleans the
little prince was carried in his cradle ; but once on the Loire,
this manner of travelling beseemed him no longer; his con-
ductors would that his entry into his dominions should have
a manly and warrior-like appearance; they clad him in arms
proportioned to his height and age ; they put him and held him
on horseback; and it was in such guise that he entered Aqui-
taine. He came thither accompanied by .the officers who were
to form his council of guardians, men chosen by Charlemagne,
with care, amongst the Frankish **Leudes," distinguished not
only for bravery and fimmess, but also for adroitness, and
such as they should be to be neither deceived nor scared by
the cunning, fickle, and turbulent populations with whom they
would have to deal." From this period to the death of Charle-
magne, and by his sovereign influence, though all the while
under his son's name, the government of Aquitaine was a
series of continued efforts to hurl back the Arabs of Spain be-
yond the Ebro, to extend to that river the dominion of the
Franks, to divert to that end the forces as well as the feelings
of the populations of Southern Gaul, and thus to pursue, in the
South as in the North, against the Arabs as well as against the
Saxons and Huns, the grand design of Charlemagne, which
was the repression of foreign invasions and the triumph of
Christian France over Asiatic Paganism and Islamism.
Although continually obliged to watch, and often still to
fight, Charlemagne might weU believe that he had nearly
gained his end. He had everywhere greatly extended the
frontiers of the Frankish dominions and subjugated the popu-
lations comprised in his conquests. He had proved that his
CH. X.] CHARLEMAQKE AND HIS WARS. 183
new frontiers would be vigorously defended against new in-
vasions or dangerous neighbors. He had pursued the Huns
and the Slavons to the confines of the empire of the East, and
the Saracens to the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. The cen-
tre of the dominion was no longer in ancient Gaul; he had
transferred it to a point not far from the Ehine, in the midst
and within reach of the Gtermanic populations, at the town of
Aix-la-Chapelle, which he had founded, and which was his
favorite residence; but the principal parts of the Gallo-Frank-
ish kingdom, Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy, were effect-
ually welded in one single mass. What be had done with
Southern Gaul has but just been pointed out; how he had both
separated it from his own kingdom and still retained it under
his control. Two expeditions into Armorica, without taking
entirely from the Britons their independence, had taught them
real deference, and the great warrior Boland, installed as count
upon their frontier, warned them of the peril any rising would
encoimter. The moral influence of Charlemagne was on a par
with his material power ; he had everywhere protected the mis-
sionaries of Christianity ; he had twice entered Rome, also in
the character of protector, and he could count on the faithful
support of the Pope at least as much as the Pope could count on
him. He had received embassies and presents from the sover-
eigns of the East, Christian and Mussulman, from the emperors
of Constantinople and the khalif s at Bagdad. Every where, in
Europe, in Africa, and in Asia, he was feared and respected by
kings and people. Such, at the close of the eighth century, were,
so far as he was concerned, the results of his wars, of the supe-
rior capacity he had displayed, and of the successes he had won
and kept.
In 799 he received, at Aix-la-Chapelle, news of serious dis-
turbances which had broken out at Rome; that Pope Leo HI.
had been attacked by conspirators, who, after pulhng out, it
was said, his eyes ai;id his tongue, had shut him up in the mon-
astery of St. Erasmus, whence he had with great diflSculty
escaped, and that he had taken refuge with Winigisius, duke
of Spoleto, announcing his intention of repairing thence to the
Frankish king. Leo was already known to Charlemagne; at
his accession to the pontificate, in 795, he had sent to him, as
to the patrician and defender of Rome, the keys of the prison
of St. Peter and the banner of the city. Charlemagne showed
a disposition to receive him with equal kindness and respect.
The poi)e arrived, in fact, at Paderbom, passed some days
184 HISTORY OF FRANCE, [CH. x.
there, according to Eginhard, and returned to Borne on the
30th of November, 799, at ease regarding his future, but with-
out knowledge on the part of any one of what had been settled
between the King of the Franks and him. Charlemagne re-
mained all the winter at Aix-la-Chapelle, spent the first months
of the year 800 on affairs connected with Western France, at
Rouen, Tours, Orleans, and Paris, and, returning to Mayence
in the month of August, then for the first time annoimced to
the general assembly of Franks his design of making a journey
to Italy. He repaired thither, in fact, and arrived on the 23rd
of November, 800, at the gates of Rome. The pope ** received
him there as he was dismounting; then, the next day, stand-
ing on the steps of the basilica of St. Peter and amidst general
hallelujahs, he introduced the king into the sanctuary of the
blessed apostle, glorifying and thanking the Lord for this happy
event." Some days were spent in examining into the griev- .
ances which had been set down to the pope's account, and in
receiving two monks arrived from Jerusalem to present to the
king, with the patriarch's blessing, the keys of the Holy Sepul-
chre and Calvary, as well as the sacred standard. Lastly, on
the 25th of December, 800, "the day of the Nativity of our
Lord," says Eginhard, ** the king came into the basilica of the
blessed St. Peter, apostle, to attend the celebration of mass.
At the moment when, in his place before the altar, he was
bowing down to pray, Pope Leo placed on his head a crown,
and all the Roman people shouted, * Long life and victory to
Charles Augustus, crowned by Grod, the great and pacific Em-
peror of the Romans I' After this proclamation the pontiff
prostrated himself before him and paid him adoration, accord-
ing to the custom established in the days of the old emperors ;
and thenceforward Charles, giving up the title of patrician,
bore that of emperor and Augustus."
Eginhard adds, in his Life of Charlemagne, "The king at
first testified great aversion for this dignity, for he declared
that, notwithstanding the importance of the festival, he would
not on that day have entered the church, if he could have fore-
seen the intentions of the sovereign pontiff. However, this
event excited the jealousy of the Roman emperors (of Con-
stantinople), who showed great vexation at it; but Charles
met their bad graces with nothing but great patience, and
thanks to this magnanimity which raised him so far above
them, he managed, by sending to them frequent embassies and
giving them in his letters the name of brother, to triumph over
their conceit."
CH. XL] CHARLEMAGNE AND HIS GOVERNMENT. 185
No one, probably, believed, in the ninth century, and no one,
assuredly, will now-a-days believe that. Charlemagne was in-
nocent beforehand of what took place on the 25th of December,
800, in the basilica of St. Peter. It is doubtful, also, if he were
seriously concerned about the ill-temper of the emperors of the
East. He had wit enough to imderstand the value which al-
ways remains attached to old traditions, and he might have
taken some pains to secure their countenance to his title of em-
peror; but all his contemporaries behoved, and he also un-
doubtedly behoved that he had on that day really won and set
up again the Roman empire.
CHAPTER XL
CHARLE!kA.GNE AND HIS GOVERNMENT.
• What, then, was the government of this empire of which
Charlemagne was proud to assume the old title? How did this
Gterman warrior govern that vast dominion which, thanks to
his conquests, extended from the Elbe to the Ebro, from the
North Sea to the Mediterranean ; which comprised nearly all
Germany, Belgimn, France, Switzerland, and the north of
Italy and of Spain, and which, sooth to say, was still, when
Charlemagne caused himself to be made emperor, scarce more
than the hunting-ground and the battle-field of all the swarms
of barbarians who tried to settle on the ruins of the Roman
world they had invaded and broken to pieces? The govern-
ment of Charlemagne in the midst of this chaos is the striking,
complicated, and transitory fact which is now to be passed in
review,
A word of warning must be first of all given touching this
word government with which it is impossible to dispense. For
a long time past the word has entailed ideas of national xmity,
general organization, and regular and efficient power. There
has been no lack of revolutions which have changed dynasties
and the principles and forms of the supreme power in the
State; but they have always left existing, under different
names, the practical machinery whereby the supreme power
makes itself felt and exercises its various functions over the
whole country. Open the Almanack, whether it be called the
186 HISTORY OF FRANCE, [ch. xi.
Imperial, the BoyaJ, or the National, and you will find there
always the working system of the government of France ; all
the powers and their kgents, from the lowest to the highest,
are there indicated and classed according to their prei^>gatiTes
and relations. Nor have we there a mere empty nomenclature,
a phantom of theory ; things go on actually as they are de-
scrihed— the book is the reflex of the reality. It were easy to
construct, for the empire of Charlemagne, a similar list of
officers; there might be set down in it dukes, counts, vicars,
centeniers, and sheriflfe (scdbini)y and they might be distrib-
uted, in regular gradation, over the whole territory; but it
would be one huge lie ; for most frequently, in the majority of
places, these magistracies were utterly powerless and them-
selves in complete disorder. The efforts of Charlemagne,
either to establish them on a firm footing or to make them act
with regularity, were continual but unavailing. In spite of
the fixity of his purpose and the energy of his action the dis-
order around him was measureless and insurmountable. He
might check it for a moment at one point; but the evil existed
wherever his terrible will did not reach, and wherever it did
the evil broke out again so soon as it had been withdrawn.
How could it be otherwise? Charlemagne had not to grapple
with one single nation or with one single system of institu-
tions ; he had to deal with different nations, without cohesion,
and foreign one to another. The authority belonged, at one
and the same time, to assemblies of free men, to landholders
over the dwellers on their domains, and to the king over the
**leudes"and their following. These three powers appeared
and acted side by side in every locality as well as in the totality
of the State. Their relations and their prerogatives were not
governed by any generally-recognized principle, and none of
the three was invested with sufficient might to habitually pre-
vail against the independence or resistance of its rivals. Force
alone, varying according to circumstances and always imcer-
tain, decided matters between them. Such was France at the
accession of the second line. The coexistence of and the strug-
gle between the three systems of institutions and the three
powers just alluded to had as yet had no other result. Out of
this chaos Charlemagne caused to issue a monarchy, strong
through him alone and so long as he was by, but powerless
and gone Hke a shadow, when the man was lost to the in-
stitution.
Whoever is astonished either at this triumph of absolute
CH. XI.] CHARLEMAGNE AND E18 GOVERNMENT. 187
monarchy through the personal movement of Charlemagne,
or at the si>ee(ly fall of the f ahric on the disappearance of the
moving spirit, understands neither what can be done by a
great man, when, without him, society sees itself given over to
deadly peril, nor how unsubstantial and frail is absolute power
when the great man is no longer by, or when society has no
longer need of him.
It has just been shown how Charlemagne by his wars, which
had for their object and result permanent and well-secured
conquests, had stopped the fresh incursions of barbarians, that
is, had stopped disorder coming from without. An attempt
will now be made to show by what means he* set about sup-
pressing disorder from within and putting his own rule in the
place of the anarchy that prevailed in the Boman world which
lay in ruins, and in the barbaric world which waa a prey to
blind and ill-regulated force.
A distinction must be drawn between the local and central
government.
Far from the centre of the State, in what have since been
called the provinces, the power of the emi)eror was exercised
by the medium of two classes of agents, one local and perma-
nent, the other despatched from the centre and transitory.
In the first class we find:
1st. The dukes, counts, vicars of coimts, centeniers, sheriffs
{8caJbini)y officers or magistrates residing on the spot, nomi-
nated by the emperor himself or by his delegates, and charged
with the duty of acting in his name for the levying of troops,
rendering of justice, maintenance of order, and receipt of im-
posts.
2nd. The beneficiaries or vassals of the emperor, who held
of him, sometimes as hereditaments, more often for life, and
more often still without fixed rule or stipulation, lands ; do-
mains, throughout the extent of which they exercised, a little
bit in their own name and a Httle bit in the name of the em-
peror, a certain jurisdiction and nearly all the rights of sover-
eignty. There was nothing very fixed or clear in the position
of the beneficiaries and in the nature of their power; they
were at one and the same time delegates and independent,
' Owners and enjoyers of usufruct, and the former or the latter
character prevailed amongst them according to circumstances.
But, altogether, they were closely boimd to Charlemagne, who,
in a great number of cases, charged them with the execution of
his orders in the lands they occupied.
188 niSTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. xi.
Above these agents, local and resident, ma^trates or bene-
ficiaries, were the mia&i dominici, temporary commissioners,
charged to inspect, in the emperor's name, the condition of the
provinces; authorized to penetrate into the interior of the free
lands as well as of the domains granted with the title of ben-
efices; having the right to reform certain abuses, and bound
to render an account of all to their master. The misai do-
minici were the principal instruments Charlemagne had,
throughout the vast territory of his empire, of order and
administration.
As to the central government, setting aside for a moment
the personal action of Charlemagne and of his counsellors, the
general assemblies, to judge by appearances and to believe
nearly all the modem historians, occupied a prominent place
in it. They were, in fact, during his reign, numerous and ac-
tive; from the year 770 to the year 813 we may count thirty-
five of these national assemblies, March -parades and May-
parades, held at Worms,. Valenciennes, Geneva, Paderbom,
Aix-la-Chapelle, Thionville, and several other towns, the ma-
jority situated round about the two banks of the Rhine. The
niunber and periodical nature of these great political reunions
are undoubtedly a noticeable fact. What, then, went on in
their midst? What character and weight must be attached to
their intervention in the government of the State? It is im-
portant to sift this matter thoroughly.
There is extant, touching this subject, a very curious docu-
ment. A contemporary and coimsellor of Charlemagne, his
cousin-german Adalbert, abbot of Corbie, had written a treatise
entitled Of the Ordering of the Palace (De Ordine Palatii), >
and designed to give an insight into the government of
Charlemagne, with especial reference to the national assem-
blies. This treatise was lost; but towards the close of the ninth
century, Hincmar, the celebrated archbishop of Rheims, re-
produced it almost in its entirety, in the form of a letter or of
instructions, written at the request of certain grandees of the
kingdom who had asked counsel of him with resi)ect to the
government of Carloman, one of the sons of Charles the Stut-
terer. We read therein :
" It was the custom at this time to hold two assemblies every '
year. ... In both, that they might not seem to have been
convoked without motive, there were submitted to the exami-
nation and deliberation of the grandees .... and by virtue of
orders from the king, the fragments of law called capitula^
Ctt. XI.] CHARLEMAGNE AND HIS GOVERNMENT. 189
wliich the king himself had drawn up under the mspiration of
God or the necessity for which had been made manifest to him
in the intervals between the meetings."
Two striking facts are to be gathe^d from these words: the
first, that the majority of the members composing these assem-
bUes probably regarded as a burden the necessity for being
present at them, since Charlemagne took care to explain their
convocation by declaring to them the motive for it and by
always giving them something to do; the second, that the
proposal of the capitularies, or, in modem phrase, the initia-
tive, proceeded from the emperor. The initiative is naturally
exercised by him who wishes to regulate or reform, and, in
his time, it was especially Charlemagne who conceived this
design. There is no doubt, however, but that the members of
the assembly might make on their side such proposals as
api>eared to them suitable; the constitutional distrusts and
artifices of our time were assuredly unknown to Charle-
magne, who saw in these assembUes a means of government
rather than a barrier to his authority. To resume the text of
Hincmar:
** After having received these communications, they delib-
erated on them two or three days or more, according to the
importance of the business. Palace-messengers, going and
coming, took their questions and carried back the answers.
No stranger came near the place of their meeting until the
result of their deUberations had been able to be submitted to
the scrutiny of the great prince, who then, with the wisdom
he had received from Grod, adopted a resolution which all
obeyed."
The definite resolution, therefore, depended upon Charle-
magne alone; the assembly contributed only information and
counsel.
Hincmar continues, and supplies details worthy of repro
duction, for they give an insight into the imperial govern-
ment and the action of Charlemagne himself amidst those
most ancient of the national assemblies.
** Things went on thus for one or two capitularies, or a
greater nmnber, until, with God's help, all the necessities of
the occasion were regulated,
"Whilst these matters were thus proceeding out of the
king's presence, the prince himself, in the midst of the multi-
tude, came to the general assembly, was occupied in receiving
the presents, saluting themen of most note, conversing with
190 HISTORY OF mANCJE!. [ch. xi.
•
thoBe he saw Beldom, showing towards the elders a tender
interest, disporting himself with the youngsters, and doing
the same thing, or something like it, with the ecclesiastics as
well as the seculars. However, if those who were deliberating
about the matter submitted to their examination showed a
desire for it, the king repaired to them and remained with
them as long as they wished; and then they rex>orted to him
with perfect familiarity what they thought about all matters,
and what were the friendly discussions that had arisen
amongst them. I must not forget to say that, if the weather
were fine, every thing took place in the oi)en air; otherwise,
in several distinct buildings, where those who had to de-
hberate on the king^s proposals were separated from the mul-
titude of persons come to the assembly, and then the men of
greater note were admitted. The places appointed for the
meeting of the lords were divided into two parts, in such sort
that the bishops, the abbots, and the clerics of high rank
might meet without mixture with the laity. In the same
way the counts and other chiefs of the State underwent sepa-
ration, in the morning, until, whether the king was present or
absent, all were gathered together; then the lords above
specified, the clerics on their side, and the laics on theiilB, re-
paired to the hall which had been assigned to them, and
where seats had been with due honor prepared for them.
When the lords laical and ecclesiastical were thus separated
from the multitude, it remained in their power to sit sepa-
rately or together, according to the nature of the business
they had to deal with, ecclesiastical, secular, or mixed. In
the same way, if they wished to send for any one, either to
demand refreshment, or to put any question and to dismiss
him after getting what they wanted, it was at their option.
Thus took place the examination of affairs proposed to them
by the king for deliberation.
"The second business of the king was to ask of each what
there was to report to him, or enlighten him touching the
part of the kingdom each had come from. Not only was this
permitted to all, but they were strictly enjoined to make in-
quiries during the interval between the assemblies, about what
happened within or without the kingdom; and they were
boimd to seek kilowledge from foreigners as well as natives,
enemies as well as friends, sometimes by employing emis-
saries, and without troubling themselves much about the
manner in which they acquired their information. The king
CH. XL] CHABLEMAGIfE AND HI8 GOVERNMENT. 191
wished to know whether in any part, in any comer of the
kingdom, the people were restless, and what was the cause of
their restlessness; or whether there had hapi)ened any dis-
turbance to which it was necessary to draw the attention of
the council-general, and other similar matters. He sought
also to know whether any of the subjugated nations were
inclined to revolt; whether any of those that had revolted
seemed disposed towards submis^on ; and whether those that
were still independent were threatening the kingdom with
any attack. On all these subjects, whenever there was any
manifestation of disorder or danger, he demanded chiefly
what were the motives or occasion of them."
There is need of no great reflection to recognize the true
character of these assemblies: it is clearly imprinted upon the
sketch drawn by Hincmar. The figure of Charlemagne alone
fills the picture: he is the centre-piece of it and the soul of
every thing. 'Tis he who wills that the national as^embhes
should meet and deliberate ; 'tis he who inquires into the state
of the coimtry ; 'tis he who proposes and approves of, or re-
jects the laws ; with him rests will and motive, initiative and
decision. He has a mind sufficiently judicious, unshackled,
and elevated to understand that the nation ought not to be
left in darkness about its affairs, and that he himself has need
of communicating with it, of gathering information from it,
arid of learning its opinions. But we have here no exhibition
of great poUtical liberties, no people discussing its interests
and its business, interfering effectually in the adoption of reso-
lutions, and, in fact, taking in its government so active and
decisive a part as to have a right to say that it is self-govern-
ing, or, in other words, a free people. It is Charlemagne, and
he alone who governs; it is absolute government marked by
prudence, ability, and grandem'.
When the mind dwells upon the state of Gallo-Frankish
society in the eighth century, there is nothing astonishing in
such a fact. Whether it be civilized or barbarian, that which
every society needs, that which it seeks and demands first of
all in its government, is a certain degree of good sense and
strong will, of intelligence and innate influence, so far as the
public interests are concerned; qualities, in fact, which suffice
to keep social order maintained or make it reaHzed, and to
promote respect for individual rights and the progress of the
general well-being. This is the essential aim of every com-
munity of men; and the institutions and guarantees of &ee
192 HISTORY OF FRANCS!. [c^. xi.
government are the means of attaining it. It is dear that, in
the eighth century, on the ruins of ttie Eoman and beneath
the blows of the barbaric world, the Gallo-Frankish nation,
vast and without cohesion, brutish and ignorant, was inca-
pable of bringing forth, so to speak, from its own womb, with
the aid of its own wisdom and virtue, a government of the
kind. A host of different forces, without enlightenment and
without restraint, were every where and incessantly strug-
gling for dominion, or, in other words, were ever troubling
and endangering the social condition. Let there but arise in
the midst of this chaos of unruly forces and selfish passions, a
great man, one of those elevated minds and strong characters
that can understand the essential aim of society and then urge
it forward, and at the same time keep it well in hand on the
roads that lead thereto, and such a man will soon seize and
exercise the personal power almost of a despot, and people
will not only make him welcome, but even celebrate his
praises, for they do not quit the substance for the shadow, or
sacrifice the end to the means. Such was the empire of
Charlemagne. Amongst annalists and historians, some, treat-
ing him as a mere conqueror and despot, have ignored his
merits and his glory; others, that they might admire him
without scruple, have made of him a founder of free institu-
tions, a constitutional monarch. Both are equally mistaken,
Charlemagne was, indeed, a conqueror and a despot; but by
his conquests and his personal power he, so long as he was
by, that is, for six and forty years, saved Gallo-Frankish
society from barbaric invasion without and anarchy within.
That is the characteristic of his government and his title to
glory.
What he was in his wars and his general relations with his
nation has just been seen; he shall now be exhibited in all his
administrative activity and his intellectual life, as a legislator
and as a friend to the hiunan mind. The same man will be
recognized in every case ; he will grow in greatness, without
changing, as he appears under his various aspects.
There are often joined together, under the title of Capitvla'
ries {capitula, small chapters, articles) a mass of Acts, very
different in point of dates and objects, which are attributed
indiscriminately to Charlemagne. This is a mistake. The
Capitularies are the laws or legislative measures of the Frank-
ish kings, Merovingian as well as Carlovingian. Those of the
Merovingians are few in number and of slight imx)ortance,
CHARLEMAGNE PRESIDING AT THE SCHOOL OF THE PALACE.
THE l^E'JV ¥f ^F
CH. XI.] CHABLEMAGNE AND HIS GOVERNMENT. 193
€uid aanongst those of the Carlovingians, which amount to
152, 66 only are due to Charlemagne. When an attempt is
made to classify these last according to their ohject, it is im-
possible not to be struck with their incoherent variety; and
several of them are such as we should now-a-days be sur-
prised to meet with in a code or in a special law. Amongst
Charlemagne^s 65 Capitularies, which contain 1151 articles,
may be counted 89' of moral, 293 of political, 130 of penal, 110
of civil, 85 of religious, 305 of canonical, 73 of domestic, and
12 of incidental legislation. And it must not be supposed that
all these articles are really acts of legislation, laws proi)erly
so called ; we find amongst them the texts of ancient national
laws revised and promulgated afresh; extracts from and addi-
tions to these same ancient laws, Salic, Lombard, and Bava-
rian; extracts from acts of coimcils; instructions given by
Charlemagne to his envoys in the provinces; questions that he
proposed to put to the bishops or counts when they came to
the national assembly; answers given by Charlemagne to
questions addressed to him by the bishops, coimts, or commis-
sioners {missi dominici) ; judgments, decrees, royal pardons,
and simple notes that Charlemagne seems to have had written
down for himself alone, to remind him of what he proi)osed to
do; in a word, nearly all the various acts which could possibly
have to be framed by an earnest, far-sighted, and active gov-
ernment. Often, indeed, these Capitularies have no impera-
tive or prohibitive character; they are simple counsels, purely
moral precepts. We read therein, for example, —
** Covetousness doth consist in desiring that which others
possess, and in giving away naught of that which oneself
possesseth; according to the Apostle, it is the root of all evil."
And, —
*' Hospitality must be practised."
The Capitularies which have been classed tmder the heads
of political, penaJ, and canonical legislation are the most
numerous, and are those which bear most decidedly an im-
perative or prohibitive stamp; amongst them a prominent
place is held by measures of political economy, administra-
tion, and police; you will find therein an attempt to put a
fixed price on provisions, a real trial of a maximum for
cereals, and a prohibition of mendicity, with the following
clause: —
** If such mendicants be met with, and they labor not with
their hands, let none take thought about giving imto them."
194 SlafOttT OF FRANCE. [crt. ±L
The interior police of the palace was regulated thereby, as
well as that of the empire:—
*' We do will and decree that none of those who serve in our
palace shall take leave to receive therein any man who seeketh
refuge there and cometh to hide there, by reason of theft,
homicide, adultery, or any other crime. That if any free man
do break through our interdicts and hide such malefactor in
om: palace, he shall be boimd to carry him on his shoulders to
the public quarter, and be there tied to the same stake as the
malefactor."
Cert£tin Capitularies have been termed religiotts legislation
in contradistinction to canonical legislation, because they are
really admonitions, religious exhortations, addressed not to
ecclesiastics alone, but to the faithful, the Christian people in
general, and notably characterized by good sense and, one
inight almost say, freedom of thought.
For example, —
^ *' Beware of venerating the names of martyrs falsely so
called, and the memory of dubious saints.^'
*^ Let none suppose that prayer cannot be made to God save
in three tongues [probably Latin, Greek, and Germanic, or
perhaps the vulgar tongue; for the last was really beginning
to take form], for God is adored in all tongues, and man is
heard if he do but ask for the things that be right."
These details are put forward that a proper idea may be
obtained of Charlemagne as a legislator, and of what are
called his laws. We have here, it wiU be seen, no ordinary
legislator and no ordinary laws: we see the work, with in-
finite variations and in disconnected form, of a prodigiously
energetic and watchful master, who had to think and pro-
vide for every thing, who had to be everywhere the moving
and the regulating spirit. This universal and untiring en-
ergy is the grand characteristic of Charlemagne's govern-
ment, and was, perhaps, what made his superiority most
incontestable and his power most efficient.
It is noticeable that the majority of Charlemagne's Capitu-
laries belong to that epoch of his reign when he was Emperor
of the West, when he was invested with all the splendor of
sovereign power. Of the 65 Capitularies classed under differ-
ent heads, 13 only are previous to the 25th of December, 800,
the date of his coronation as emperor at Rome; 52 are com-
prised between the years 801 and 804.
The energy of Charlemagne as a warrior and a politician
CH. XI.] CHABLEMAONt: AND Eta GOVEttNMElfT. 195
having thus been exhibited, it remains to say a few words
about his intellectual energy. For that is by no means the
least original or least grand feature of his character and his
influence.
Modem times and civilized society have more than once
seen despotic sovereigns filled with distrust towards scholars
of exalted intellect, especially such as cultivated the moral
and political sciences, and little inclined to admit them to theiir
favor or to public office. There is no knowing whether, in
our days, with our freedom of thought and of the press,
Charlemagne would have been a stranger to this feeling of
antipathy; but what is certain is, that in his day, in the midst
of a barbaric society, there was no inducement to it, and that,
by nature, he was not disposed to it. His power was not in
any respect questioned; distinguished intellects were very
rare; Charlemagne had too much need of their services to
fear their criticisms, and they, on their part, were more
anxious to second his efforts than to show, towards him, any
thing like exaction or indei)endence. He gave rein, therefore,
without any embarrassment or misgiving to his spontaneous
inclination towards them, their studies, their labors, and their
influence. He drew them into the management of affairs. In
Guizot's History of Civilization in France, there is a list of the
names and works of twenty-three men of the eighth and ninth
century who have escaped oblivion, and they are all found
grouped about Charlemagne as his own habitual advisers, or
assigned by him as advisers to his sons Pepin and Louis in
Italy and Aquitania, or sent by him to all points of his empire
as bis commissioners (missi dominid), or charged in his name
with important negotiations. And those whom he not did
employ at a distance formed, in his inamediate neighborhood, a
learned and industrious society, a school of the palace, accord-
ing to some modem commentators, but an academy and not a
school, according to others, devoted rather to conversation
than to teaching. It probably fulfilled both missions; it
attended Charlemagne at his various residences, at one time
working for him at questions he invited them to deal with, at
another giving to the regular components of his court, to his
children and to himself lessons in the different sciences called
liberal, grammar, rhetoric, logic, astronomy, geometry, and
even theology and the great religious problems it was begin-
ning to discuss. Two men, Alcuin and Eginhard, have re-
mained justly celebrated in the literary history of the age.
196 mSTORT OF FRANCS. [cR. xt.
Alcuin was the principal director of the school of the palace,
and the favorite, the confidant, the learned adviser of Charle-
magne. " If your zeal were imitated," said he one day to the
emperor, ** perchance one might see arise in France a new
Athens, far more glorious than the ancient— the Athens of
Christ.'' Eginhard, who was younger, received his scientific
education in the school of the palace, and was head of the
public works to Charlemagne, before becoming his biographer,
and, at a later period, the intimate adviser of his son Louis
the Debonnair. Other scholars of the school of the palace,
Angilbert, Leidrade, Adalhard, Agobard, Theodulph, were
abbots of St. Riquier or Corbie, archbishops of Lyons, and
bishops of Orleans. They had all assmned, in the school itself,
names illustrious in pagan antiquity; Alcuin called himself
Flaccus; Angilbert, Homer; Theodulph, Pindar. Charle-
magne himself had been pleased to take, in their society, a
great name of old, but he had borrowed from the history of
the Hebrews— he called himself David; and Eginhard, ani-
mated, no doubt, by the same sentiments, was Bezaleel, that
nephew of Moses to whom Gk)d had granted the gift of know-
ing how to work skilfully in wood and all the materials which
served for the construction of the ark and the tabernacle.
Either in the lifetime of their royal patron or after his death
all these scholars became great dietaries of the Church, or
ended their Uves in monasteries of note; but, so long as they
lived, they served Charlemagne or his sons not only with the
devotion of faithful advisers, but also as f ollowe;^ proud of the
master who had known how to do them honor by making use
of them.
It was without effort and by natural sympathy that Charle-
magne had inspired them with such sentiments; for he too
really loved sciences, literature, and such studies as were then
possible, and he cultivated them on his own account and for
his own pleasure, as a sort of conquest. It has been doubted
whether he could write, and an expression of Eginhard's might
authorize such a doubt; but, according to other evidence and
even according to the passage in Eginhard, one is inclined to
believe merely that Charlemagne strove painfully, and with-
out much success, to write a good hand. He had learnt
Latin, and he understood Greek. He caused to be commenced,
and, perhaps, himself commenced the drawing up of the first
Grermanic grammar. He ordered that the old barbaric poems,
in which the deeds and wars of the ancient kings were cele*
OH. XL] CHABLEMAQNB AND HIS GOVERNMENT. 197
brated, should be collected for poBterity. He gave Germanic
names to the twelve months of the year. He distinguished
the winds hy twelve si)ecial terms, whereas before, his time
they had but four designations. He paid great attention to
astronomy. Being troubled one day at no longer seeing in the
firmament one of the known plajxets, he wrote to Alcuin,
*' What thinkest thou of this Mars^ which, last year, being
concealed in the sign of Cancer, was intercepted from the sight
of men by the Hght of the sun? Is it the regular course of his
revolution? Is it the influence of the sun? Is it a miracle?
Could he have been two years about performing the course of
a single one?" In theological studies and discussions he
exhibited a particular and grave interest. **It is to him,"
say MM. Ampere and Haureau, **that we must refer the
honor of the decision taken in 794 by the Council of Frankfort
in the great dispute about images ; a temperate decision which,
is as far removed from the infatuation of the image-worship-
pers as from the frenzy of the image-breakers." And at the
same time that he thus took part in the great ecclesiastical
questions, Charlemagne paid zealous attention to the instruc-
tion of the clergy whose ignorance he deplored. ** Ah," said
he one day, "if only I had ahout me a dozen clerics learned in
all the sciences, as Jerome and Augustin were 1" With all his
puissance it was not in his power to make Jeromes and
Aiigustins; but he laid the foundation, in the cathedral
churches and the great monasteries, of episcopal and cloistral
schools for the education of ecclesiastics, and, carryiog his
solicitude still farther, he reconunended to the bishops and
abbots that, in those schools, **they should take care to make
no difference between the sons of serfs and of free men, so
that they might come and sit on the same henches to study
granomar, music, and arithmetic " [Capitularies of 789, art.
70], Thus, in the eighth century, he foreshadowed the exten-
sion which, in the nineteenth, was to be accorded to primary
instruction, to the advantage and honor not only of the clergy,
but also of the whole people.
After so much of war and toil at a distance, Charlemagne
was now at Aix-la-ChapeUe, finding rest in this work of peace-
ful civilization. He was emheUishing the capital which he
had founded, and which was called the king^s court. He had
built there a grand basilica, magnificently adorned. He was
completing his own palace there. He fetched from Italy
clerics sW^d in churcjh music, a piou3 joyance to which Jig
198 mSTOBT OF FRANCE. [ch. xi.
was much devoted, and which he recommended to the bishops
of his empire. In the outskirts of Aix-la-Chapelle *'he gave
full scope," says Eginhard, "to his delight in riding and hunt-
ing. Baths of naturally-tepid water gave him great pleasure.
Being passionately fond of swimming, he became so dexterous
tliat none could be compared with him. He invited not only
his sons, but also his friends, the grandees of his court, and
sometimes even the soldiers of his guard, to bathe with \\\tx\^
insomuch that there were often a hundred and more persons
bathing at a time." When age arrived, he made no alteration
in his bodily habits ; but, at the same time, instead of putting
away from him the thought of death, he was much takeii up
with it, and prepared himself for it with stem severity. He
drew up, modified, and completed his will several times over.
Three years before his death he made out the distribution of
his treasures, his money, his wardrobe, and all his furniture,
in the presence of his friends and his officers, in order that
their voice might insure, after his death, the execution of this
partition, and he set down his intentions in this respect in a
written summary, in which he massed all his riches in three
grand lots. The first two were divided into twenty -one i)or-
tions, which were to be distributed amongst the twenty-one
metropolitan churches of his empire. After having put these
first two lots under seal, he willed to preserve to himself his
usual enjoyment of the third so long as he hved. But after
his death or volimtary renimciation of the things of this world,
this same lot was to be subdivided into four portions. His in-
tention was that the first should be added to the twenty-one
portions which were to go to the metropolitan churches; the
second set aside for his sons and daughters, and for the sons
and daughters of his sons, and redivided amongst them in a
just and proportionate manner; the third dedicated, according
to the usage of Christians, to the necessities of the poor; and,
lastly, the fourth distribute^ in the same way, imder the name
of alms, amongst the servants, of both sexes, of the palace for
their lifetime. .... As for the books of which he had amassed
a large number in his hbrary, he decided that those who
wished to have them might buy them at their proper value,
and that the money which they produced should be distributed
amongst the poor."
Having thus carefully regulated his own private affairs and
bounty, he, two years later, in 813, took the measures neces-
sary for the regulation, after his death, of public affairs. He
CH. XI.] CHARLEMAGNE AND HIS GOVERNMENT. 199
had lost, in 811, his oldest~son Charles, who had been his con-
stant companion in his wars, and, in 810, his second son Pepin,
whom he had made king of Italy; and he summoned to his
side his third son Louis, king of Aquitaine, who was destined
to succeed him. He ordered the convocation of five local
coimcils which were to assemble at Mayence, Hheims, Cha-
lons, Tours, and Aries, for the purpose of bringing about, sub-
ject to the king's ratification, the reforms necessary in the
Church. Passing from the affairs of the Church to those of
the State, he convoked at Aix4a-Chapelle a general assembly
of bishops, abbots, counts, laic grandees, and of .the entire
people, and, holding council in his palace with the chief
amongst them, *' he invited them to make his son Louis king-
emperor; whereto all assented, saying that it was very expe-
dient, and pleasing, also, to the people. On Sunday in the
next month, August 813, Charlemagne repaired, crown on
head, with his son Louis to the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle,
laid upon the altar another crown, and, after praying, ad-
dressed to his son a solemn exhortation respecting all his
duties as king towards God and the Church, towards his
family and his people, asked him if he were fully resolved to
fulfil them, and, at the answer that he was, bade him take the
crown that lay upon the altar, and place it with his own hands
upon his head, which Louis did amidst the acclamations of all
present, who cried, * Long live the emperor Louis ! ' Charle-
magne then declared his son emperor jointly with him, and
ended the solemnity with these words: * Blessed be Thou, O
Lord God, who hast granted me grace to see with mine own
eyes my son seated on my throne I ' " And Louis set out again
immediately for Aquitaine.
He was never to see his father again. Charlemagne, after
his son's departure, went out hunting, according to his custom,
in the forest of Ardenne, and continued during the whole
autunm his usual mode of life. ** But in January, 814, he was
taken ill," says Eginhard, *' of a violent fever, which kept him
to his bed. Recurring forthwith to the remedy he ordinarily
employed against fever, he abstained from all notu'ishment,
persuaded that this diet would suflSce to drive away or at the
least assuage the malady ; but added to the fever came that
pain in the side which the Greeks caU pleurisy; nevertheless
the emperor persisted in his abstinence, supporting his body
only by drinks taken at long intervals; and on the seventh
day after that he had taken to his bed, having received th©
200 HI8T0BT OF FRANCE, [ch. xi.
holy communion," he expired ahout nine a.m., on Saturday,
the 28th of January, 814, in his seventy-first year.
'^ After performance of ablutions and funeral duties, the
corpse was carried away and buried, amidst the profound
mourning of all the people, in the church he had himself had
built; and above his tomb there was put up a gilded arcade
with his image and this superscription : * In this tomb reposeth
the body of Charles, great and orthodox emi)eror, who did
gloriously extend the kingdom of the Franks, and did govern
it happily for forty-seven years. He died at the age of seventy
years, in the year of the Lord 814, in .the seventh year of the
Indiction, on the 5th of the Kalends of February.' "
If we smn up his designs and his achievements, we find an
admirably sound idea and a vain dream, a great success and a
great faQure.
Charlemagne took in hand the work of placing upon a solid
foundation the Frankish Christian dominion by stopping, in
the north and south, the flood of barbarians and Arabs, Pagan-
ism and Islamism. In that he succeeded: the inundations of
Asiatic populations spent their force in vain against the Gallic
frontier. Western and Christian Europe was placed, territo-
rially, beyond reach of attacks from the foreigner and infidel.
No sovereign, no human being, perhaps, ever rendered greater
service to the civilization of the world.
Charlemagne formed another conception and made another
attempt. Like more than one great barbaric warrior, he ad-
mired the Roman empire that had fallen, its vastness all in
one, and its powerful organization under the hand of a single
master. He thought he could resuscitate it, durably, through
the victory of a new people and a new faith, by tl\e hand of
Franks and Christians. With this view he labored to con-
quer, convert, and govern. He tried to be at one and the
same time, Caesar, Augustus, and Constantine. And for a
moment he appeared to have succeeded; but the appearance
passed away with himself. The imity of the empire and the
absolute power of the emperor were buried in his grave. The
Christian rehgion and human hberty set to work to prepare for
Em'ope other governments and other destinies.
Great men do great things which would not get done with-
out them; they set "their mark plainly upon history, which
realizes a portion of their ideas and wishes; but they are far
from doing all they meditate, and they know not all they do.
They are at one and the same time instruments and free
HE REMAINED THERE A LONG WHILE. AND HIS EYES WERE FILLED WITH TEARS
CH. xiL] DEOAYAND FALL OF THE CARLOVINGIANa. 201
agents in a general design which is infinitely above their ken,
and which, even if a glimpse of it be caught, remains inscru-
table to them— the design of God towards mankind. When
great men understand that such is their position and accept it, "
they show sense and they work to some purpose. When they
do not recognize the limits of their free agency and the veil
which hides from their eyes the future they are laboring for,
they become the dupes and frequently the victims of a blind .
pride which events in the long run always end by exposing
and punishing.
Amongst men of his rank Charlemagne has had this singu-
lar good fortune that his error, his misguided attempt at im-
perialism, perished with him, whilst his salutary achievement,
the territorial seciuity of Christian Europe, has been durable,
to the great honor as well as great profit of European civiliza-
tion.
CHAPTER Xn.
DECAY AND FALL OP THE OARLOVmaiANS.
From the de^th of Charlemagne to the accession of Hugh
Capet, that is, from 814 to 987, thirteen kings sat upon the
throne of France. What then, became, under their reign aind
in the course of those hundred and seventy-three years, of the
two great facts which swayed the mind and occupied the life
of Charlemagne? What became, that is, of the solid territorial
f oimdation of the kingdom of Christian France through effi-
cient repression of foreign invasion, and of the unity of that
vast empire wherein Charlemagne had attempted and hoped
to resuscitate the Boman empire ?
The fate of those two facts is the very history of France
under the Carlovingian djmasty ; it is the only portion of the
events of that epoch which still deserves attention now-a-days,
for it is the only one which has exercised any great and last-
ing influence on the general history of France.
Attempts at foreign invasion of France were renewed very
often and in many parts of Gallo-Frankish territory dimng
the whole duration of the Carlovingian dynasty, and, even
though they failed, they caused the population of the kingdom
to suffer from cruel ravages. Charlemagne, even 0fter Ws
202 HISTORY OF FRANCE. \ [ch. xii.
successes against the different barbaiic invaders, had foreseen
the evils which would be inflicted .on France by the most for-
midable and most determined of them, the Northmen, coming
by sea and landing on the coast. The most closely contempo-
raneous and most given to detail of his chroniclers, the monk
of St. Gall, tells in prolix and pompous but evidently heart-felt
and sincere terms the tale of the great emperor's far-sighted-
ness. "Charles, who was ever astir," says he, "arrived by
mere hap and unexpectedly in a certain town of Narbonnese
Gaul. Whilst he was at dinner and was as yet Unrecognized
of any, some corsairs of the Northmen came to ply their pira-
cies in the very port. When their vessels were descried, they
were supposed to be Jewish traders according to some, African
according to others, and British in the opinion of others; but
the gifted monarch, perceiving, by the build and lightness of
the craft, that they bare not merchandise but foes, said to his
own folk, * These vessels be not laden with merchandise, but
manned with cruel foes.' At these words all the Franks, in
rivalry one with another, run to their ships, but uselessly: for
the Northmen, indeed, hearing that yonder was he whom it
was still their wont to call Charles the Hammer, feared lest all
their fleet should be taken or destroyed in the port, and they
avoided, by a flight of inconceivable rapidity, not only the
glaives, but even the eyes of those who were pursuing them.
" Pious Charles, however, a prey to well-grounded fear, rose
up from table, stationed himself at a window looking east-
ward, and there remained a long while and his eyes were
filled with tears. As none durst question him, this warlike
prince explained to the grandees who were about his person
the cause of his movement and of his tears: ^Know ye, my
heges, wherefore I weep so bitterly? Of a surety I fear not
lest these fellows should succeed in injuring me by their
miserable piracies; but it grieveth me deeply that, whilst I
hve, they should have been nigh to touching at this shore,
and I am a prey to violent sorrow when I foresee what evils
they will heap upon my descendants and their people.' "
The forecast and the dejection of Charles were not imreason-
able. It will be found that there is special mention made, in
the chronicles of the ninth and tenth centuries, of forty-seven
incursions into France of Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and
Irish pirates, all comprised imder the name of Northmen;
and, doubtless, many other incursions of less gravity have left
iiQ trace ii^ history. "The Northnxen," says M. Fauriel^
CH. XTi.] DECAY AND FALL OF THE CABL0VINQIAN8, 203
'' descended from the north to the south by a sort of natural
gradation or ladder. The Scheldt was the first river by the
mouth of which they penetrated inland; the Seine was the
second; the Loire the third. The advance was threatening
for the countries tmversed by the Garonne; and it was in 844
that vessels freighted with Northmen for the first time as-
cended this last river to a considerable distance inland, and
there took immense booty. . . . The following year they pil-
laged and burnt Saintes. In 846 they got as far as Limoges.
The inhabitants, finding themselves unable to make head
against the dauntless pirates, abandoned their hearths, to-
gether with all they had not time to carry away. Encouraged
by these successes the Northmen reappeared next year upon
the coasts and in the rivers of Aquitaine, and they attempted
to take Bordeaux, whence they were valorously repulsed by
the inhabitants; but in 848, having once more laid siege to
that city, they were admitted into it at night by the Jews, who
were there in great force ; the city was given up to plunder
and conflagration; a portion of the people was scattered
abroad and the rest put to the sword." Tours, Eouen, Angers,
Orleans, Meaux, Toulouse, Saint-Lo, Bayeux, Evreux, Nantes,
and Beauvais, some of them more than once, met the fate
of Saintes, Limoges, and Bordeaux. The monasteries and
churches, wherein they hoped to find treasures, were the
favorite object of the Northmen's enterprises; in particular,
they plundered, at the gates of Paris, the abbey of St. Ger-
main des Pr6s and that of St. Denis, whence they carried off
the abbot, who could not purchase his freedom save by a
heavy ransom. They penetrated more than once into Paris
itself, and subjected many of its quarters to contributions or
pillage. The populations grew into the habit of suffering and
fleeing; and the local lords, and even the kings, made arrange-
ment sometimes with the pirates either for saving the royal
domains from the ravages, or for having their own share
therein. In 850, Pepin, king of Aquitaine, and brother of
Charles the Bald, came to an understanding with the North-
men who had ascended the Garonne and were threatening
Toulouse. "They arrived under his guidance," says M.
Fauriel, "they laid siege to it, took it and plundered it, not
halfwise, not hastily, as folks who feared to be surprised, but
leisurely, with all security, by virtue of a treaty of alH^ce
with one of the kings of the coimtry. Throughout Aquitaine
there wc|J3 but one cry of indignation against Pepin, apd th^
204 BISTORT OF FRANCE. " [oh. xn.
popularity of Oharles was increased in proportion to all the
horror inspired by the ineffable misdeed of his adversary.
Charles the Bald himself, if he did not ally himself, as Pepin
did, with the invaders, took scarce any interest in the fate of
the populations and scarcely more trouble to protect them,
for Hincmar, archbishop of Bheims, wrote to him in 859:
'^Many folks say that you are incessantly rex)eating that it is
not for you to mix yomrself up with these depredations and
robberies, and that every one has but to defend himself as
best he may."
It were tedious to relate or even to enumerate all these
incursions of the Northmen, with their monotonous incidents.
When their frequency and their general character has been
notified, all has been done that is due to them from history.
iaCowever there are three on which it may be worth while to
dwell particularly, by reason of their grave historical conse-
quences, as well as of the dramatic details which have been
transmitted to us about them.
In the middle and during the last half of the ninth century,
a chief of the Northmen, named Hastenc or Hastings, ap-
peared several times over on the coasts and in the rivers of
France, with numerous vessels and a following. He had also
with him, say the chronicles, a yoimg Norwegian or Danish
prince, Bicem, called Ironsides, whom he had educated, and
who had preferred sharing the fortunes of his governor to
living quietly with the king his father. After several expedi-
tions into Western France, Hastings became the theme of
terrible and very probably fabulous stories. He extended
his cruises, they say, to the Mediterranean, and, having
arrived at the coasts of Tuscany, within sight of a city which
in his ignorance he took for Rome, he resolved to pillage it;
but, not feeling strong enough to attack it by assault, he sent
to the bishop to say he was very ill, felt a wish to become a
Christian, and begged to be baptized. Some days afterwards
his comrades spread a report that he was dead, and claimed
for him the honors of a solemn biuial. The bishop consented ;
the cofiObi of Hastings was csuried into the church, attended
by a large number of his followers, without visible weapons;
but, in the middle of the ceremony, Hastings suddenly leaped
up, sword in hand, from his cofOin; his followers displayed
the weapons they had concealed, closed the doors, slew the
priests, pillaged the ecclesiastical treasures, and re-embarked
before the very eyes of the stupefied population, to go BfoA
CH. xn.] DEOAT AND FALL OP TSE OAMLOVINGIAN^ 205
resume, on the coasts of France, their incursions and their
ravages.
Whether they were true or false, these rumors of bold arti-
fices and distant expeditions on the part of Hastings aggra-
vated the dismay inspired by his apx)earance. He penetrated
into the interior of the country in Poitou, Anjou, Brittany,
and along the Seine; pillaged the monasteries of Jumi^ges,
St. Vaudrille, and St. Evroul; took possession of Chartres and
appeared before Paris, where Charles the Bald, entrenched at
St. Denis, was dehberating with his prelates and barons as to
how he might resist the Northmen or treat with them. The
chronicle says that the barons advised resistance, but that the
king preferred negotiation, and sent the Abbot of St. Denis,
"the which was an exceeding wise man," to Hastings, who,
** after long parley and by reason of large gifts and promises,"
consented to stop his cruisings, to become a Christian and to
settle in the coimtship of Chartres, " which the king gave him
as an hereditary possession, with all its appurtenances."
According to other accounts, it was only some years later,
under the young king Louis III., grandson of Charles the
Bald, that Hastings was induced, either by reverses or by
payment of money, to cease from his piracies and accept in
recompense the countship of Chartres. Whatever may have
been the date, he was, it is believed, the first chieftain of the
Northmen who renounced a life of adventure and plimder, to
become, in France, a great lande^ proprietor and a count of
the king's. Prince Bioem then separated from his governor
and put again to sea, ** laden with so rich a booty that he
could never feel any want of wealth ; but a tempest swallowed
up a great part of his fleet, and cast him upon the coasts of
Friesland, where he died soon after, for which Hastings was
exceeding sorry."
*A greater chieftain of the Northmen than Hastings was
soon to follow his example and foimd Normandy in France;
but before Rolf, that is, BoUo, came and gave the name of his
race to a French province, the piratical Northmen were again
to attempt a greater blow against France and to suffer a great
reverse.
In November, 885, under the reign of Charles the Fat, after
having, for more than forty years, irregularly ravaged France,
they resolved to \mite their forces in order at length to obtain
possession of Paris, whose outskirts they had so often pillaged
without having been able to enter the heart of the place, in
206 BISTORT OP PBANCB. [en. xn.
the lie de la Cit^, which had originally been and still was the
real Paris. Two bodies of troops were set in motion; one,
under the command of RoUo, who was already famous
amongst his comrades, marched on Bouen; the other went
right up the course of the Seine, under the orders of Siegfried,
whom the Northmen called their king. Eollo took Bouen,
and pushed on at once for Paris. Duke Benaud, general of
the Gtello-Frankish troops, went to encounter him on the
banks of the Eure, and sent to him, to sound his intentions,
Hastings, the newly-made count of Chartres. "Valiant
warriors," said Hastings to Bollo, ** whence come ye? What
seek ye here? What is the name of your loi-d and master?
Tell us this; for we be sent unto you by the king of the
Franks." **We be Danes," answered Bollo, **and all be
equally masters amongst us. We be come to drive out the
inhabitants of this land, and to subject it as our own country.
But who art thou, thou who speakest sogUbly?" *' Ye have
sometime heard tell of one Hastings, who, issuing forth from
amongst you, came hither with much shipping and made
desert a great part of the kingdom of the Franks?" "Yes,"
said Bollo, "we have heard tell of him; Hastings began well
and ended ill." " Will ye yield you to King Charles?" asked
Hastings. '*We yield," was the answer, "to noue; all that
we shall take by our arms we will keep as our right. Go and
tell this, if thou wilt, to the king, whose envoy thou boastest
to be." Hastings returned to the Gallo-Frankish army, and
Bollo prepared to march on Paris. Hastings had gone back
somewhat troubled in mind. Now there was amongst the
Franks one Count Tetbold (Thibault), who greatly coveted
the countship of Chartres, and he said to Hastings, "Why
slumberest thou softly? Knowest thou not that King Charles
doth purpose thy death by cause of all the Christian blood
that thou didst aforetime unjustly shed? Bethink thee of all
the evil thou hast done him, by reason whereof he purposeth
to drive thee from his land, Take heed to thyself that thou
be not smitten unawares." Hastings, dismayed, at once sold
to Tetbold the town of Chartres, and, removing all that be-
longed to him, departed to go and resume, for all that appears,
his old course of life.
On the 25th of November, 885, all the forces of the North-
men formed a junction before Paris; seven hundred huge
barques covered two leagues of the Seine, bringing, it is said,
more than 30,000 men. The chieftains were astonished at
CH. xli] DECAY AND FALL OF THE CARLOYINOTANS, 207
sight of the new fortifications of the city, a double waJl of
circumvallation, the bridges crowned with towers, and in the
environs the ramparts of the abbeys of St. Denis and St.
Germain solidly rebuilt. Siegfried hesitated to attack a town
so well defended. He demanded to enter alone and have an
interview with the bishop, Gozlin. " Take pity on thyself and
thy flock," said he to him ; ** let us but pass through this city ;
we will in nowise touch the town; we will do our best to
preserve, for thee and Count Eudes, all your possessions."
" This city," replied the bishop, *'hath been confided xmto us
by the Emperor Charles, king and ruler, under God, of the
powers of the earth. He hath confided it unto us not that it
should cause the ruin but the salyation of the kingdom. If
peradventure these walls had been confided to thy keeping as
they have been to mine, wouldst thou do as thou biddest me?"
'*K ever I do so," answered Siegfried, "may my head be
condemned to fall by the sword and serve as food to the dogs I
But if thou yield not to our prayers, so soon as the sun shall
commence his course, our armies will launch upon thee their
poisoned arrows ; and when the sun shall end his course, they
will give thee over to all the horrors of famine; and this will
they do from year to year." The bishop, however, persisted,
without further discussion; being as certain of Count Eudes
as he was of himself. Eudes, who was young and but re-
cently made coimt of Paris, was the eldest son of Eobert the
Strong, coimt of Anjou, of the same line as Charlemagne, and
but lately slain in battle against the Northmen. Paris had
for defenders two heroes, one of the Church and the other of
the Empire: the faith of the Christian and the fealty of the
vassal; the conscientiousness of the priest and the honor of
the warrior.
The siege lasted thirteen months, whiles pushed vigorously
forward with eight several assaults, whiles maintained by close
investment, and with all the alternations of success and re-
verse, all the intermixture of brilliant daring and obscure suf-
ferings that can occur when the assailants are determined and
the defenders devoted. Not only a contemporary but an eye-
witness, Abbo, a monk of St. Germain des Pres, has recoimted
the details in a long poem, wherein the writer, devoid of talent,
adds nothing to the simple representation of events; it is his-
tory itself which gives to Abbo's poem a high degree of interest.
We do not possess, in reference to these continual struggles of
the Northmen with the Gallo-Frankish populations, any other
208 BISTORT OF FRANCS. £ch. xn.
document which is equally precise and complete, or which
could make us so well acquainted with all the incidents, all the
phases of this irregular warfare hetween two peoples, one with
out a government, the other without a country. The bishop,
Gozlin, died during the siege. Coimt Eudes quitted Paris for a
time to go and beg aid of the emperor; but the Parisians soon
saw him reappear on the heights of Montmartre with three bat-
talions of troops, and he re-entered the town, spurring on his
horse and striking right and left with his battle-axe through
the ranks of the dumbfoimded besiegers. The struggle was
prolonged throughout the summer; and when, in November,
886, Charles the Fat at last appeared before Paris, *'with a
large army of all nations," it was to purchase the retreat of the
Northmen at the cost of a heavy ransom, and by allowing them
to go and winter in Burgundy, ** whereof the inhabit! ^ts
obeyed not the emperor."
Some months afterwards, in 887, Charles the Fat was deposed,
at a diet held on the banks of the Rhine, by the grandees of
Germanic France; and Amulf, a natural son of Carloman, the
brother of Louis III., was proclaimed emperor in his stead. At
the same time Count Eudes, the gallant defender of Paris, was
elected king at Compi^gne and crowned by the Archbishop of
Sens. Gruy, duke of Spoleto, descended from Charlemagne in
the female line, hastened to France and was declared king at
Langres by the bishop of that town, but returned with precipi-
tation to Italy, seeing no chance of maintaining himself in his
French kingship. Elsewhere, Boso, duke of Aries, became
king of Provence, and the Burgundian Count Rodolph had
himself crowned at St. Maurice, iq the Valais, king of tranF-
juran Burgundy. There was still in France a legitimate Car-
lovingian, a son of Louis the Stutterer, who was hereafter to
become Charles the Simple; but being only a child, he had
been rejected or completely forgotten, and, in the interval that
was to elapse ere his time should arrive, kings were being made
in all directions.
In the midst of this confusion, the Northmen, though they
kept at a distance from Paris, pursued in Western France their
cruising and plundering. In Rollo they had a chieftain far su-
perior to his vagabond predecessors. Though he still led the
same life that they had, he displayed therein other faculties,
other inclinations, other views. In his youth he had made an
expedition to England and had there contracted a real friend-
ship with the wise king Alfred the Great. During a campaign
Ji
[WY: :-'.W VfT'K
PUBLIC UBRARY
ASTOR, L£NOX
THE BARQUES OF THE NORTHMEN.
CH. XII.] DECAY AND FALL OF THE CABLOVlNQIANS. 209
in Friesland he had taken prisoner Rainier, count of Hainault;
and Alberade, countess of Brabant, made a request to Hollo for
her husband's release, offering in return to set free twelve cap-
tains of the Northmen, her prisoners, and to give up all the
gold she possessed. RoUo took only half the gold, and restored
to the countess her husband. When, in 886, he became master
of Rouen, instead of devastating the city after the fashion of
his kind, he respected the buildings, had the walls repaired, and
humored the inhabitants. In spite of his violent and extor-
tionate practices where he met with obstinate resistance, there
were to be discerned in him symptoms of more noble sentiments
and of an instinctive leaning towards order, civilization, and
government. After the deposition of Charles the Fat and dur-
ing the reign of Eudes, a lively struggle was maintained between
the Frankish king and the chieftain of the Northmen, who had
neither of them forgotten their early encounters. They strove,
one against the other, with varied fortunes; Eudes succeeded
in beating the Northmen at Montfaucon, but was beaten in
Vermandois by another band, commanded, it is said, by the
veteran Hastings, sometime Count of Chartres. Rollo, too, had
his share at one time of success, at another of reverse ; but he
made himself master of several important towns, showed a dis-
position to treat the quiet populations gently, and made a fresh
trip to Epgland, during which he renewed friendly relations
with her king, Athelstan the successor of Alfred the Great.
He thus became, from day to day, more reputable as weU as
more formidable in France, in so much that Eudes himself was
obliged to have recourse, in dealing with him, to negotiations
and presents. When, in 898, Eudes was dead and Charles the
Simple, at hardly nineteen years of age, had been recognized
sole king of France, the ascendency of Rollo became such that
the necessity of treating with him was clear. In 911 Charles,
by the advice of his councillors and, amongst them, of Robert,
brother of the late king Eudes, who had himself become Count
• of Paris and Duke of France, sent to the chieftain of the North-
men Franco, archbishop of Rouen, with orders to offer him the
cession of a considerable portion of Neustria and the hand of
his young daughter Gis^le, on condition that he became a
Christian and acknowledged himself the king's vassal. Rollo,
by the advice of his comrades, received these overtures with a
good grace and agreed to a truce for three months, during
which they might treat about peace. On the day fixed, Charles,
accompanied by Duke Robert, and Rollo, surrounded by his
210 ntsTosr of phanoa [ca. m.
warriors, repaired to St. Clair-sur-Epte, on the opposite banks
of the river, and exchanged numerous messages. Charles of-
fered Rollo Flanders, which the Northman refused, considering
it too swampy; as to the maritime portion of Neustria, he
would not be contented with it; it was, he said, covered with
forests, and had become quite a stranger to the ploughshare,
by reason of the Northmen's incessant incursions ; he demanded
the addition of territories taken from Brittany, and that the
princes of that province, B^renger and Alan, lords, respectively,
of Bedon and Dol, should take the oath of fidehty to him.
When matters had been arranged on this basis, "the bishops
told Bollo that he who received such a gift as the duchy of
Normandy was bound to kiss the king's foot. * Never,' quoth
Hollo, * will I bend the knee before the knees of any, and I will
kiss the foot of none.' At the solicitation of the Franks he
then ordered one of his warriors to kiss the king's foot. The
Northman, remaining bolt upright, took hold of the king's foot,
raised it to his mouth, and so made the king fall backward,
which caused great bursts of laughter and much disturbance
amongst the throng. Then the king and all the grandees who
were about him, prelates, abbots, dukes, and counts, swore, in
the ^name of the Cathohc faith, that they would protect the
patrician Rollo in his life, his members, and his folk, and would
guarantee to him the possession of the aforesaid land, to him
and his descendants for ever, After which the king, well-sat-
isfied, returned to his domains; and Bollo departed with Duke
Robert for the town of Bouen."
The dignity of Charles the Simple had no reason to be well-
satisfied; but the great pohtical question which, a century be-
fore, caused Charlemagne such lively anxiety was solved ; the
most dangerous, the most incessantly renewed of all foreign in-
vasions, those of the Northmen, ceased to threaten France.
The vagabond pirates had a coimtry to cultivate and defend;
the Northmen were becoming French.
No such transformation was near taking place in the case of
the invasions of the Saracens in Southern Gaul, they continued
to infest Aquitania, Septimania, and Provence; their robbeiv
hordes appeared frequently on the coasts of the Mediterranean
and the banks of the Rhone, at Aigues-Mortes, at Marseilles, at
Aries, and in Camargue ; they sometimes penetrated into Dau-
phin^, Bouergue, Limousin, and Saintonge. The author of this
history saw, at the commencement of the present century, in
the moimlains of the Cevennes, the ruins of the towers bmlt, a
CH. xn.] DECAY AND FALL OF THE CARLO VlNQIAlTS. 211
thousand years ago, by the inhabitants of those nigged coun-
tries, to put their famiMes and their flocks under shelter from
the incursions of the Saracens- But these incursions were of
short duration, and most frequently undertaken by plunderers
few in number, who retreated precipitately with their booty.
Africa was not, as Asia was, an inexhaustible source of nations
burning to push onward, one upon anotheu^ to go wandering
and settling elsewhere. The people of the north move willingly
towards the south, where living is easier and pleasanter; but
the people of the south are not much disposed to migrate to the
north, with its soil so hard to cultivate and its leaden skies, and
into the midst of its fogs and frosts. After a course of plunder-
ing in Aquitania or in Provence, the Arabs of Spain and of
Africa were eager to recross the Pyrenees or the Mediterranean,
and regain their own lovely climate and their life of easeful-
ness that never palled. Furthermore, between Christians and
Mussulmans the religious antipathy was profound. The Chris-
tian missionaries were not much given to carrying their pious
zeal into the home of the Mussulman; and the Mussulmans
were far less disposed than the pagans to become Christians.
To preserve their conquests, the Arabs of Spain had to struggle
against the refugee Groths in the Asturias; and Charlemagne,
by extending those of the Franks to the Ebro, had given the
C^iuistian Goths a powerful alliance against the Spanish Mus-
sulmans. For all these reasons the invasions of the Saracens
in the south of France did not threaten, as those of the North-
men did in the north, the security of the Gallo-Frankish mon-
archy, and the GaJlo-Boman populations of the south were able
to defend their national independence at the same time against
the Saracens and the Franks. They did so successfully in the
ninth and tenth centuries ; and the French monarchy, which
was being founded between the Loire and the Rhine, had thus
for some time a breach in it without ever suffering serious dis-
placement.
A new people, the Himgarians, which was the only name
then given to the Magyars, appeared at this epoch, for the first
time, amongst the devastators of Western Europe. From 910
to 954, as a consequence of movements and wars on the Danube,
Hungarian hordes, after scouring central Germany, penetrated
into Alsace, Lorraine, Champagne, Burgundy, Berry, Dauphin^,
Provence, and even Aquitaine ; but this inundation was transi-
tory, and if the populations of those countries had much to suf-
fer from, it, the GaUo-Frankish dominion, in spite of inward
212 msTOJRY OF FRANOB, [ch. xft.
disorder and the feebleness of the latter Oarlovingians, was not
seriously endangered thereby. •
And 80 the first of Charlemagne's grand designs, the terri-
torial security of the Gallo-Frankish and Christian dominion,
was accomplished. In the east and the north, the Germanic
and Asiatic populations, which had so long upset it, were partly
arrested at its frontiers, partly incorporated regularly in its
midst. In the south, the Mussulman populations which, in the
eighth century, had appeared so near overwhelming it, were
powerless to deal it any heavy blow. Substantially France
was founded. But what had become of Charlemagne's second
grand design, the resuscitation of the Roman empire at the
hands of the barbarians that had conquered it and become
Christians?
Let us leave Louis the Debonnair his traditional name,
although it is not an exact rendering of that which was given
him by his contemporaries. They called him Louis the Pious.
And so indeed he was, sincerely and even scrupulously pious;
but he was still more weak than pious, as weak in heart and
character as. in mind ; as destitute of ruling ideas as of strength
of will ; fluctuating at the mercy of transitory impressions, or
surrounding influences, or positional embarrassments. The
name of Debonnair is suited to him; it expresses his moral
worth and his political incapacity, both at once.
As King of Aquitania, in the time of Charlemagne, Louis
made himself esteemed and loved ; his justice, his suavity, his
probity, and his piety were pleasing to the people, and his
weaknesses disappeared under the strong hand of his father.
When he became emperor, he began his reign by a reaction
against the excesses, real or supposed, of the preceding reign.
Charlemagne's morals were far from regular, and he troubled
himself but little about the license prevailing in his family or
his palace. * At a distance, he ruled with a tight and heavy
hand. Louis established at his court, for his sisters as well as
his servants, austere regulations. He restored to the subju-
gated Saxons certain of the rights of which Charlemagne had
deprived them. He sent out every where his commissioners
(missi dominict) with orders to listen to complaints and redress
grievances, and to mitigate his father's rule, which was rigor-
ous in its application and yet insuflScient to repress disturb-
ance, notwithstanding its preventive purpose and its watchful
sui)ervision.
Almost simultaneously with his accession, Louis committed
CH. xii.] BEGAT AND FALL OF TEE CARL0VINQIAN8. 213
an act more serious and CQinpromising. He had, by his wife
Hermengarde, three sons, Lothaire, Pepin, and Louis, aged
respectively nineteen, eleven, and eight. In 817, Louis sum-
moned at Aix-la-Chapelle the general assembly of his domin-
ions; and there, whilst declaring that ** neither to those who
were wisely-minded, nor to himself, did it appear expedient to
break up, for the love he bare his sons and by the will of man,
the unity of the empire, preserved by God himself," he had re-
solved to share with his eldest son, Lothaire, the imperial
throne. Lotliairewas in fact crowned emperor; and his two
brothers, Pepin and Louis, were crowned king, ^* in order that
they might reign, after their father's death and under their
brother and lord, Lothaire, to wit : Pepin, over Aquitaine and a
great part of Southern Gaul and of Burgundy; Louis, beyond
the Ehine, over Bavaria and the divers peoples in the east of
Germany." The rest of Gaul and of Germany, as well as the
kingdom of Italy, was to belong to Lothaire, emperor and head
of the Frankish monarchy, to whom his brothers would have
to repair year by year to come to an understanding with him
and receive his instructions. The last-named kingdom, the
most considerable of the three, remained under the direct gov-
ernment of Louis the Debonnair, and at the same time of his
son Lothaire, sharing the title of emperor. The two other
sons, Pepin and Louis, entered, notwithstanding their child-
hood, upon immediate possession, the one of Aquitaine and the
other of Bavaria, under the superior authority of their father
and their brother, the joint emperors.
Charlemagne had vigorously maintained the unity of the
empire, for all that he had delegated to two of his sons, Pepin
and Louis, the government of Italy and Aquitaine with the
title of king. Louis the Debonnair, whilst regulating before-
hand the division of his dominion, likewise desired, as he said,
to maintain the unity of the empire. But he forgot that he was
no Charlemagne.
It was not long before nmnerous mournful experiences
showed to what extent the unity of the empire required per-
sonal superiority in the emperor, and how rapid would be the
decay of the fabric when there remained nothing but the title
of the founder. .
In 816 Poi)e Stephen IV. came to France to consecrate Louis
the Debonnair emperor. Many a time already the popes had
rendered the Frankish kings this service and honor. The
Franks had been proud to se3 their king, Charlemagne, pro-
214 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. xn.
tecting Adrian I. against the Lombards; then crowned em-
peror at Rome by Leo III., and then having his two sons,
Pepin and Louis, crowned at Home, by the same pope, kings
respectively of Italy and of Aquitaine. On these different oc-
casions Charlemagne, whilst testifying the most profoimd re-
spect for the Pope, had, in his relations with him, always taken
care to preserve, together with his political greatness, all his
personal dignity. But when, in 816, the Franks saw Louis the
Pious not only go out of Eheims to meet Stephen IV., but pros-
trate himself, from head to foot, and rise only v|hen the Poi)e
held out a hand to him, the spectators felt saddened and
hmnOiated at the sight of their emperor in the posture of a
penitent monk.
Several insurrections burst out in the empire; the first
amongst the Basques of Aquitaine; the next in Italy, where
Bernard, son of Pepin, having, after his father's death, become
king in 812, with the consent of his grandfather Charlemagne,
could not quietly see his kingdom pass into the hands of his
cousin Lothaire at the orders of his imcle Louis. These two
attempts were easily repressed, but the third was more serious.
It took place in Brittany amongst those populations of Armo-
rica who were still buried in their woods, and were excessively
jealous of their independence. In 818 they took for king one
of their principal chieftains, named Morvan; and, not confining
' themselves to a refusal of all tribute to the king of the !EYanks,
they renewed their ravages upon the Frankish territories bor-
dering on their frontier. Louis was at that time holding a
general assembly of his dominions at Aix-la-Chapelle ; and
Coimt Lantbert, commandant of the marches of Brittany,
came and reported to him what was going on. A, Frankish
monk, named Ditcar, happened to be at the assembly: he was
a man of piety and sense, a friend of peaoe, and, moreover,
with some knowledge of the Breton king Morvan, as his mon-
astery had property in the neighborhood. Him the emperor
commissioned to convey to the king his grievances and his de-
mands. After some days' journey the monk passed the fronr
tier and arrived at a vast space enclosed on one side by a noble
river, and on all the others by forests and swamps, hedges and
ditches. In the middle of this space was a large dwelling,
which was Morvan's. Ditcar found it full of warriors, the king
having, no doubt, some expedition on hand. The monk an-
noimced himself as a messenger from the Emperor of the
Franks. The style of announcement caused some confusion,
CH. XII.] DECAY AND FALL OF THE GARLOVINGIANS, 215
at first, to the Briton, who, however, hasted to conceal his
emotion under an air of goodwill and joyousness, to impose
ui>on his comrades. The latter were got rid of; and the king
remained alone with the monk, who explained the ohject of his
mission. He descanted upon the power of the Emperor Louis,
recounted his complaints, and warned the Briton, kindly and
in a private capacity, of the danger of his situation, a danger
so much the greater in that he and his people would meet with
the less consideration, seeing that they kept up the rehgion of
their Pagan forefathers. Morvan gave attentive ear to this
sermon, with his eyes fixed on the groimd, and his foot tapping
it from time to time. Ditcar thought he had succeeded; but
an incident supervened. It was the hour when Morvan's wife
was accustomed to come and look for him ere they retired to
the nuptial couch. She appeared, eager to know who the
stranger was, what he had come for, what he had said, what
answer he had received. She preluded her questions with
Qglings and caresses; she kissed the knees, the hands, the
beard, and the face of the king, testifying her desire to be
alone with him. **0 king and glory of the mighty Britons,
dear spouse of mine, what tidings bringeth this stranger? Is it
peace, or is it war?" *' This stranger," answered Morvan with
a smile, **is an envoy of the Franks; but bring he peace or
bring he war, is the affair of men alone ; as for thee, content
thee witii thy woman's duties." Thereupon Ditcar, perceiving
that he was countered, said to Morvan, "Sir king, 'tis time
that I return; tell me what answer I am to take back to my
sovereign." ** Leave me this night to take thought thereon,"
replied the Breton chief, with a wavering air. When the morn-
ing came, Ditcar presented himself once more to Morvan, whom
he found up, but still half -drunk and full of very different sen-
timents from those 6f the night before. It required some effort,
stupefied and tottering as he was with the effects of wine and
the pleasures of the night, to say to Ditcar, *' Go back to thy
king, and tell him from me that my land was never his, and
that I owe him naught of tribute or submission. Let him reign
over the Franks; as for me, I reign over the Britons. If he
will bring war on me, he will find me ready to pay him back."
The monk returned to Louis the Debonnair, and rendered
accoimt of his mission. War was resolved upon; and the em-
peror collected his troops, Allemannians, Saxons, Thuringians,
Burgundians, and Aquitanians, without counting Franks or
Gallo-Bpmans. They began their march, moving upon Vannes ;
216 HISTORY OF FRANCE, [ch. xii.
Louis was at their head, and the empress accompanied liirn, but
he left her, already ill and fatigued, at Angers. The Franks
entered the country of the Britons, searched the woods and
morasses, found no armed men in the open country, but en-
countered them in scattered and scanty companies, at the en-
trance of all the defiles, on the heights commanding pathways,
and wherever men could hide themselves and await the moment
for appearing unexpectedly. The Franks heard them, from
amidst the heather and the brushwood, uttering shrill cries, to
give warning one to another or to alarm the enemy. The
Franks advanced cautiously, and at last arrived at the entrance
of the thick wood which surrounded Morvan's abode. He had
not yet set out with the pick of the warrioi;|3 he had about him ;
but, at the approach of the Franks, he summoned his wife and
his domestics, and said to them, ^^ Defend ye well this house
and these woods; as for me, I am going to march forward to
collect my people ; after which to return, but not without booty
and spoils." He put on his armor, took a javelin in each hand,
and mounted his horse. '^Thou seest," said he to his wife,
** these javehns I brandish: I will bring them back to thee this
very day dyed with the blood of Franks. Farewell." Setting
out he pierced, followed by his men, through the thickness of
the forest, and advanced to meet the Franks.
The battle began. The large numbers of the Franks who
covered the ground for some distance dismayed the Britons,
and many of them fled, seeking where they might hide them-
selves. Morvan, beside himself with rage and at the head of
his most devoted followers, rushed down upon the Franks as if
to demolish them at a single stroke; and many fell beneath his
blows. He singled out a warrior of inferior grade, towards
whom he made at a gallop, and, insulting him by word of
mouth, after the ancient fashion of the Celtic warriors, cried,
" Frank, I am going to give tbee my first present, a present
which I have been keeping for thee a long while, and which I
hope thou wilt bear in mind ;" and launched at him a javelin
which the other received on his shield. ** Proud Briton," re-
plied the Frank, *' I have received thy present, and I am going
to give thee mine." He dug both spurs into his horse's sides
and galloped down upon Morvan, who, clad though he was in
a coat of mail, fell pierced by the thrust of a lance. The Frank
had but time to dismount and cut off his head when he fell him-
self, mortally wounded by one of Morvan's young warriors, but
not without having, in his turn, dealt the other his deathblow.
COUNT EUDES REENTERING PARIS THROUGH THE BESEI(;ERS.
•■.YX NEW ftRK
FUBUC LIBRARY
AS'IOR, LENQX
CH. xu.] DECAY AND FALL OF THE CABL0VINQIAN8, 217
It spreads on all sides that Morvan is dead ; and the Franks
come thronging to the scene of the encounter. There is picked
up and passed from hand to hand a head all hloody and fear-
fully disfigured. Ditcar the monk is called to see it, and to say
whether it is that of Morvan ; but he has to wash the mass of
disfigurement, and to partially adjust the hair, before he can
pronounce that it is really Morvan's. There is then no more
doubt ; resistance is now impossible ; the widow, the family and
the servants of Morvan arrive, are brought before Louis the
Debonnair, accept all the conditions imposed upon them, and
the Franks withdraw with the boast that Brittany is henceforth
their tributary. {Fait8 et Geates de Louis le Pteiwc, a poem by
Ermold le Noir, in M. Guizot's Collection des M4moires relatifs
d VHistoire de France, t. iv., p. 1-113.— Fauriel, Histoire de la
Ganle, etc. t. iv., p. 77-88.)
On arriving at Angerg, Louis found the Empress Hermen-
garde dying; and two days afterwards she was dead. He had
a tender heart which was not proof against sorrow; and he
testified a desire to abdicate and turn monk. But he was dis-
suaded from his purpose; for it was easy to influence his reso-
lutions. A little later, he was advised to marry again, and he
yielded. Several princesses were introduced; and he chose
Judith of Bavaria, daughter of Cotmt Welf (Guelf), a family
already powerful and in later times celebrated. Judith was
young, beautiful, witty, ayxbitious, and skilled in the art of
making the gift of pleasing subserve the passion for ruling.
Louis, during his expedition into Brittany, had just witnessed
the fatal result of a woman's empire over her husband ; he was
destined himself to offer a more striking and more long-lived
example of it. In 823, he had, by his new empress Judith, a
son, whom he called Charles, and who was hereafter to be
known as Charles the Bald. This son became his mother's rul-
ing, if not exclusive, passion, and the source of his father's
woes. His birth could not fail to cause ill-temper and mistrust
in Louis' three sons by Hermengarde, who were already kings.
They had but a short time previously received the first proof
of their father's weakness. In 822, Louis, repenting of his
severity towards his nephew Bernard of Italy, whose eyes he
had caused to be put out as a punishment for rebellion, and
who had died in consequence, considered himself bound to per-
form at Attigny, in the church and before the people, a solemn
act of penance; which was creditable to his honesty and piety,
but the details left upon the minds of the beholders an impres-
218 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. xit.
sion unfavorable to the emperor's dignity and authority. In
829, during an assembly held at Worms, he, yielding to his
wife's entreaties and doubtless also to his own yearnings
towards his youngest son, set at naught the solemn act
whereby, in 817, he had shared his dominions amongst his
three elder sons; and took away from two of them, in Bur-
gundy and Allemannia, some of the territories he had assigned
to them, and gave them to the boy Charles for his share.
Lothaire, Pepin, and Louis thereupon revolted. Court rival-
ries were added to family differences. The emperor had sum-
moned to his side a young Southron, Bernard by name, duke
of Septimania and son of Count William of Toulouse, who had
gallantly fought the Saracens. He made him his chief cham-
berlain and his favorite counsellor. Bernard was bold, am-
bitious, vain, imperious, and restless. He removed his rivals
from court, and put in their places his own creatures. He was
accused not only of abusing the emperor's favor, but even of
carrying on a guilty intrigue with the Empress Judith. There
grew up against him, and, by consequence, against the em-
peror, the empress, and their yoimgest son, a powerful opposi-
tion, in which certain ecclesiastics, and, amongst them, Wala,
abbot of Corbie, cousin-german and but lately one of the privy
counsellors of Charlemagne, joined eagerly. Some had at
heart the unity of the empire, which Louis was breaking up
more and more; others were concerned for the spiritual inter-
ests of the Church which Louis, in spite of his piety and by
reason of his weakness, often permitted to be attacked. Thus
strengthened, the conspirators considered themselves certain
of success. They had the empress Judith carried off and shut
up in the convent of St. Eadegonde at Poitiers ; and Louis in
person came to deliver himself up to them at Compi^gne,
where they were assembled. There they passed a decree to
the effect that the power and title of emperor were transferred
from Louis to Lothaire, his eldest son; that the act whereby a
share of the empire had but lately been assigned to Charles
was annulled; and that the act of 817, which had regulated the
partition of Louis' dominions after his death, was once more in
force. But soon there was a burst of reaction in favor of the
emperor; Lothaire's two brothers, jealous of his late elevation,
made overtures to their father; the ecclesiastics were a little
ashamed at being mixed up in a revolt; the people felt pity for
the poor, honest emperor ; and a general assembly, meeting at
Nimeguen, abolished the acts of Compiegne, and restored to
CH. xn.] DECAY AND FALL OF THE CARLO VINQIAN8, 219
Ix>ui8 his title and his power. But it was not long hef ore there
was revolt again, originating this time with Pepin, king of
Aquitaine. Louis fought him, and gave Aquitaine to Charles
the Bald. The alliance het ween the three sons of Hermengardo
was at once renewed; they raised an army; the emx)eror
inarched against them with his; and the two hosts met be-
tween Colmar and BMe, in a place called le Champ rouge {the
field of red). Negotiations were set on foot; and Louis was
called ux)on to leave his wife Judith and his son Charles, and
put himself under the guardianship of his elder sons. He re-
fused ; but, just when the conflict was about to commence, de-
sertion took place in Louis' army; most of the prelates, laics,
and men-at-arms who had accompanied him passed over to the
camp of Lothaire ; and the field of red became the field of false-
flood (le Champ du mensonge), Louis, left almost alone,
ordered his attendants to withdraw, "being unwilling," he
said, '* that any one of them should lose life or limb on his ac-
count," and surrendered to his sons. They received him with
great demonstrations of respect, but without relinquishing the
prosecution of their enterprise. Lothaire hastily collected an
assembly, which proclaimed him emperor, with the addition
of divers territories to the kingdoms of Aquitaine and Bavaria:
and, three months afterwards, another assembly, meeting at
Compi^ne, declared the Emperor Louis to have forfeited the
crown, '*for having, by his faults and incapacity, suffered to
sink so sadly low the empire which had been raised to grandeur
and brought into unity by Charlemagne and his predecessors."
Louis submitted to this decision ; himself read out aloud, in the
church of St. MMard at Soissons, but not quite unresistingly,
a confession, in eight articles, of his faults, and, laying his
baldric upon the altar, stripped off his royal robe, and received
from the hands of Ebbo, archbishop of Eheims, the gray vest-
ment of a penitent.
Lothaire considered his father dethroned for good, and him-
self henceforth sole emperor; but he was mistaken. For six
years longer the scenes which have just been described kept
repeating themselves again and again; rivalries and secret
plots began once more between the three victorious brothers
and their partisans; popular feeling retvived in favor of Louis;
a large portion of the clergy shared it; several counts of Neu-
stria and Burgundy appeared in arms, in the name of the de-
posed emperor; and the seductive and able Judith came afr^h
upon the scene, and gained over to the cause of her husbandl
220 HISTORY OF FRANCE, [ch. xn.
and her son a multitude of friends. In 834, two assemblies,
one meeting at St. Denis and the other at ThionviUe, annulled
all the acts of the assembly of Compi^gne, and for the third
time put Louis in possession of the imperial title and power.
He displayed no violence in his use of it; but he was growing
more and more irresolute and weak, when, in 838, the second
of his rebellious sons, Pepin, king of Aquitaine, died suddenly.
Louis, ever under the sway of Judith, speedily convoked at
Worms, in 839, once more and for the last time, a general a^
sembly, whereat, leaving his son Louis of Bavaria reduced to
his kingdom in eastern Europe, he divided the rest of his do-
minions into two nearly equal parts, separated by the course
of the Meuse and the Ehone. Between these two parts he left
the choice to Lothaire, who took the eastern portion, promising
at the same time to guarantee the western portion to his
younger brother Charles. Louis the Germanic protested
against this partition, and took up arms to resist it. His
father, the emperor, set himself in motion towards the Rhine,
to reduce him to submission; but, on arriving close to May-
ence, he caught a violent fever, and died on the 20th of June,
840, at the castle of Ingelheim, on a little island in the river.
His last acts were a fresh proof of his goodness towards even
his rebelhous sons, and of his sohcitude for his last-bom. He
sent to Louis the Gerinauic his pardon, and to Lothaire the
golden crown and sword, at the same time bidding him fulfil
his father's wishes on behalf of Charles and Judith.
There is no telling whether, in the credulousness of his good
nature, Louis had, at his dying hour, any great confidence in
the appeal he made to his son Lothaire, and in the impression
which would be produced on his other son, Louis of Bavaria,
by the pardon bestowed. The prayers of the dying are of httle
avaU against violent passions and barbaric manners. Scarcely
was Louis the Debonnair dead, when Lothaire was already
conspiring against yoimg Charles, and was in secret alliance,
for his despoilment, with Pepin II., the late King of Aquitaine's
son, who had taken up arms for the purpose of seizing his
f ather^s kingdom, in the possession of which his grandfather
Louis had not been pleased to confirm him. Charles suddenly
learnt that his mother Judith was on the point of being be-
sieged in Poitiers by the Aquitanians ; and, in spite of the
friendly protestations sent to him by Lothaire, it was not long
before he discovered the plot formed against him. He was not
wanting in shrewdness or energy; and, having first provided
CH. xiT.] DSCATANH pall op the CABLonNGTANS. 221
for his mother^s safety, he set about forming an alliance, iii
the cause of their common interests, with his other brother,
Louis the Germanic, who was equally in danger from the am-
bition of Lothaire. The historians of the period do not say
what negotiator was employed by Charles on this distant and
delicate mission; but several circumstances indicate that the
Empress Judith herself undertook it; that she went in quest of
the King of Bavaria ; and that it was she who, with her accus-
tomed grace and address, determined him to make common
cause with his youngest against their eldest brother. Divers
incidents retarded for a whole year the outburst of this family
plot, and of the war of which it was the precursor. The posi-
tion of the young King Charles appeared for some time a very
bad one; but '* certain chieftains," says the historian Nithard,
" faithful to his mother and to him, and having nothing more
to lose than Hfe or limb, chose rather to die gloriously than to
betray their king." The arrival of Louis the Germanic with
his troops helped to swell the forces and increase the confidence
of Charles; and it was on the 21st of June, 841, exactly a year
after the death of Louis the Debonnair, that the two armies,
that of Lothaire and Pepin on the one side, and that of Charles
the Bald and Louis the Germanic on the other, stood face to
face in the neighborhood of the village of Fontenailles, six
leagues from Auxerre, on the rivulet of Audries. Never, ac-
cording to such evidence as is forthcoming, since the battle on
the plains of Chalons against the Huns, and that of Poitiers
against the Saracens, had so great masses of men been engaged*
** There would be nothing untruthlike," says that scrupulous
authority, M. Fauriel, "in putting the whole number of com-
batants at 300,000; and there is nothing to show that either of
the two armies was much less numerous than the other."
However that may be, the leaders hesitated for four days to
come to blows ; and whilst they were hesitating, the old favorite
not only of Louis the Debonnair, but also, accordiug to several
chroniclers, of the Empress Judith, held himself aloof with his
troojws in the vicinity, having made equal promise of assistance
to both sides, and waiting, to govern his decision, for the pros-
j)ect afforded by the first conflict. The battle began on the 26th
of June, at daybreak, and was at first in favor of Lothaire;
but the troops of Charles the Bald recovered the advantage
which had been lost by those of Louis the Germanic, and the
action was soon nothing but a terribly simple scene of carnage
between enormous masses of men, charging hand to hand,
222 BISTORT OF FBANCS. [ch. xn.
again and again, with a front extending over a couple of
leagues. Before mid-day the slaughter, the plunder, the spolia-
tion of the dead— ^ was over; the victory of CSiarles and
Louis was complete ; the victors had retired to their camp, and
there remained nothing on the field of battle but corpses in
thick heaps or a long line, according as they had fallen in the
disorder of flight or steadily fighting in their ranks. . . . "Ac-
cursed be this day !" cries Angilbert, one of Lothaire's officers,
in rough Latin verse; **be it unnumbered in the return of the
year, but wiped out of all remembrance! Be it unht by the
light of the sun ! Be it without either dawn or twilight ! Ac-
cursed, also, be this night, this awful night in which fell the
brave, the most expert in battle! Eye ne'er hath seen more
fearful slaughter: in streams of blood fell Christian men; the
linen vestments of the dead did whiten the champaign even as
it is whitened by the birds of autumn I"
In spite of this battle, which appeared a decisive one, Lothaire
made zealous efforts to continue the struggle ; he scoured the
coimtries wherein he hoped to find partisans ; to the Saxons he
promised the unrestricted re-establishment of their pagan wor-
ship, and several of the Saxon tribes responded to his appeal.
Louis the Germanic and Charles the Bald, having information
of these preliminaries, resolved to solemnly renew their al-
liance; and, seven months after their victory at Fontenailles,
in February, 842, they repaired both of them, each with hia
army, to Argentaria, on the right bank of the Ehine, between
B&le and Strasbourg, and there, at an open-air meeting, Louis
first, addressing the chieftains about him in the German
tongue, said, " Ye all know how often, since our father's death,
Lothaire hath attacked us, in order to destroy us, this my
brother and me. Having never been able, as brothers and
Christians, or in any just way, to obtain peace from him, we
were constrained to appeal to the judgment of God. Lothaire
was beaten and retired, whither he could, with his following ;
for we, restrained by paternal affection and moved with com-
passion for Christian people, were unwilling to pursue them to
extermination. Neither then nor aforetime did we demand
aught else save that each of us should be maintained in his
rights. But he, rebelling against the judgment of God, ceaseth
not to attack us as enemies, this my brother and me; and he
destroyeth our peoples with fire and pillage and the sword.
That is the cause which hath imited us afresh; and, as we trow
that ye doubt the soundness of our alliance and our fraternal
CH. xn.] DECAY AND FALL OF THE CARL0VINQIAN8,
union, we have resolved to bind ourselves afresh by this oath
in your presence, being led thereto by no prompting of wicked
covetousness, but only that we may secm^e our common ad
vantage in case that, by your aid, Gknl should cause us to ob-
tain peace. If, then, I violate— which God forbid— this oath
that I am about to take to my brother, I hold you all quit of
submission to me and of the faith ye have sworn to me."
Charles repeated this speech, word for word, to his own
troops, in the Ebmance language, in that idiom derived from a
mixture of Latin and of the tongues of ancient Gaul, and
spoken, thenceforth, with varieties of dialect and pronunciation,
in nearly all parts of Frankish Gaul. After this address, Louis
pronounced and Charles repeated after him, each in bis own
tongue, the oath couched in these terms : * * For the love of God,
for the Christian people and for our common weal, from this
day forth and so long as God shall grant me power and knowl-
edge, I will defend this my brother and will be an aid to him
in every thing, as one ought to defend his brother, provided
that he do likewise unto me; and I will never make with
Lothaire any covenant which may be, to my knowledge, to the
damage of this my brother."
When the two brothers had thus sworn, the two armies, offi-
cers and men, took, in their turn, a similar oath, going bail, in
a mass, for the engagements of their kings. Then they took
up their quarters, all of them, for some time, between Worms
and Mayence, and followed up their poHtical proceeding with
military fdtes, precursors of the knightly tournaments of the
middle ages. ** A place of meeting was fixed," says the con-
temporary historian Nithard, ' ' at a spot suitable for this kind of
exercises. Here were drawn up, on one side, a certain number
of combatants, Saxons, Yasconians, Austrasians or Britons;
there were ranged, on the opposite side, an equal niunber of
warriors, and the two divisions advanced, each against the
other, as if to attack. One of them, with their bucklers at
their backs, took to flight as if to seek, in the main body, shel-
ter against those who were pursuing them; then suddenly,
facing about, they dashed out in pursuit of those before whom
they had just been flying. This sport lasted until the two
kings, appeariiig with all the youth of their suites, rode up
at a gallop, brandishing their spears and chasing first one lot
and then the other. It was a fine sight to see'so much temper
amongst so many valiant folks, for, great as was the nmnber
and the mixture of different nationalities, no one was insulted
224 BT8T0RY OP t'RANCK [en. xit.
or maltreated, though the contrary is often the case amongst
men in small numbers and known one to another. "
After four or five months of tentative measures or of inci-
dents which taught both parties that they could not, either of
them, hope to completely destroy their opponents, the two
allied brothers received at Verdun, whither they had repaired
to concert their next movement, a messenger from Lothaire,
with peaceful proposals which they were imwilling to reject.
The principal was that, with the exception of Italy, Aquitaine,
and Bavaria, to be secured without dispute to their then
possessors, the Frankish empire should be divided into three
portions, that the arbiters elected to preside over the partition
should swear to make it as equal as possible, and that Lothaire
should have his choice, with the title of Emperor. About mid
June, 842, the three brothers met on an island of the Saone,
near Chalons, where they began to discuss the questions which
divided them; but it was not till more than a year after, in
August, 843, that assembling, all three of them, with their
umpires, at Verdun, they at last came to an •agreement about
the partition of the Frankish empire, save the three coimtries
which it had been beforehand agreed to except. Louis kept
aU the provinces of Germany of which he was already in pos-
session, and received besides, on the left bank of the Rhine,
the towns of Mayence, Worms, and Spire, with the territory
appertaining to them. Lothaire, for his part, had the eastern
belt of Gaul, bounded on one side by the Rhine and the Alps,
on the other by the courses of the Meuse, the Saone, and the
Rhone, starting from the confluence of the two latter rivers,
and, further, the country comprised between the Meuse and
the Scheldt, together with certain countships lying to the west
of that river. To Charles fell all the rest of Gaul: Vasconia
or Biscaye, Septimania, the marshes of Spain, beyond the
Pyrenees, and the other countries of Southern Gaul which had
enjoyed hitherto, under the title of the Kingdom of Aquitaine,
a special government subordinated to the general govern-
ment of the empire but distinct from it, lost this last remnant
of their Gallo-Roman nationaUty, and became integral por-
tions of Frankish Gaul, which fell by partition to Charles the
Bald, and formed one and the same kingdom under one and
the same king.
Thus fell through and disappeared, in 843, by virtue of the
treaty of Verdim, the second of Charlemagne^s grand designs,
the resuscitation of the Roman empire by means of the
DITCAR THE MONK RECOGNIZING THE HEAD OK MORVAN.
E NEW WRK
.^^ sue LIBRARY
ASIOR, LENOX
CH. xn.] DECAY AND FALL 0^ THE CARLOVINQIANS, 225
Frankish and Christian masters of Gaul. The name of
emperor still retained a certain value in the minds of the peo-
ple and still remained an object of ambition to princes; but
the empire was completely abolished, and, in its stead, sprang
up three kingdoms, independent one of another, without any-
necessary connection or relation. One of the three was thence-
forth France.
In this great event are comprehended two facts; the dis-
appearance of the empire and the formation of the three king-
doms which took its place. The first is easily explained. The
resuscitation of the Roman empire had been a dream of
ambition and ignorance on the part of a great man, but a bar-
barian. Political unity and central, absolute power had been
the essential characteristics of that empire. They became in-
troduced and established, through a long succession of ages, on
the ruins of the splendid Roman republic destroyed by its
own dissensions, imder favor of the still greeit influence of the
old Roman senate, though fallen from its high estate^ and
beneath the guardianship of the Roman legions and imperial
praetorians. Not one of these conditions, not one of these
forces was to be met with in the Roman world reigned over
by Charlemagne. The nation of the Franks and Charlemagne
himself were but of yesterday; the new emperor had neither
ancient senate to hedge at the same time that it obeyed him,
nor old bodies of troops to support him. PoUtical unity and
absolute power were repugnant alike to the intellectual and
the social condition, to the national manners and personal
sentiments of the victorious barbarians. The necessity of
placing their conquests beyond the reach of a new swarm of
barbarians and the personal ascendency of Charlemagne were
the only things which gave his government a momentary
gleam of success in the way of unity and of factitious
despotism imder the name of empire. In 814, Charlemagne
had made territorial security an accomplished fact; but the
personal power he had exercised disappeared with him. The
new Gallo-Frankish community recovered, under the mighty
but gradual influence of Christianity, its proper and natural
course, producing disruption into different local communities
and bold struggles for individual liberties, either one with
another, or against whosoever tried to become their master.
As for the second fact, the formation of the three kingdoms
which were the issue of the treaty of Verdim, various explana-
tions have been given of it. This distribution of certain
226 ' BISTORT OF FRANCE, [ch. xn.
peoples of Western Europe into three distinct and independ-
ent groups, Italians, Germans, and French, has been attri-
buted at one time to a diversity of histories and manners; at
another to geographical causes and to what is called the rule
of natural frontiers; and oftener still to a spirit of nationaKty
and to differences of language. Let none of these causes be
gainsaid; they all exercised some sort of influence, but they
are all incomplete in themselves and far too redolent of
theoretical system. It is true that Grermany, France, and
Italy began, at that time, to emerge from the chaos into which
they had been plunged by barbaric invasion and the conquests
of Charlemagne, and to form themselves into quite distinct
nations; but there were, in each of the kingdoms of Lothaire,
of Louis the Germanic, and of Charles the Bald, populations
widely differing in race, language, manners, and geographical
aflSnity, and it required many great events and the lapse of
many centuries *to bring about the degree of national unity
they now possess. To say nothing touching the agency of
individual and independent forces, which is always consider-
able, although so many men of intellect ignore it in the present
day, what would have happened, had any one of the three
new kings, Lothaire, or Louis the Grermanic, or Charles the
Bald, been a second Charlemagne, as Charlemagne had fceen
a second Charles Martel? Who can say that, in such a case,
the three kingdoms would have taken the form they took in
843?
Happily or unhappily, it was not so; none of Charlemagne's
successors was capable of exercising on the events of his time,
by virtue of his brain and his own will, any notable influence.
Not that they were all unintelligent, or timid, or indolent. It
has been seen that Louis the Debonnair did not lack virtues
and good intentions ; and Charles the Bald was clearsighted,
dexterous, and energetic; he had a taste for information and
intellectual distinction; he liked and sheltered men of learning
and letters, and to such purpose that instead of speaking, as
imder Charlemagne, of the school of the palace^ people called
tthe palace of Charles the Bald the palace of the school.
Amongst the eleven kings who after him ascended the Carlo-
vingian throne, several, 'such as Louis III. and Carloman, and,
especially, Louis the Ultramarine (d'Outremer) and Lothaire,
displayed, on several occasions, energy and courage ; and the
kings elected, at this epoch, without the pale of the Carlo-
vingian dynasty, Eudes in 887 and Raoul in 923, gave proofjs of
CH. xin.] FEUDAL FRANCE AND HVQH CAPET. 227
a valor both discreet and effectual. The CarloTingians did not,
as the Merovingians did, end in monkish retirement or shame-
ful inactivity : even the last of them, and the only one termed
sltiggard, Louis V., was getting ready, when he died, for an
expedition in Spain against the Saracens. The truth is that,
mediocre or undecided or addle-pated as they may have been,
they all succumbed, internally and externally, without initi-
ating and without resisting, to the course of events, and that,
in 987, the fall of the Carlovingian line was the natural and
easily accomplished consequence of the new social condition
which had been preparing in France under the empire.
CHAPTER XIII.
FEUDAL FRAKOB AND HUGH OAPBT.
The reader has just seen that, twenty-nine years after the
death of Charlemagne, that is, in 843, when, by the treaty of
Verdun, the sons of Louis the Debonnair had divided amongst
them his dominions, the great empire split up into three
distinct and independent kingdoms, the kingdoms of Italy,
Germany and France. The split did not stop there. Forty-
five years later, at the end of the ninth century, shortly after
the death of Charles the Fat, the last of the Carlovingians,
who appears to have reunited for a while all the empire of
Charlemagne, this empire had begotten seven instead of three
kingdoms, those of France, of Navarre, of Provence or Cis-
juran Burgundy, of Trans-juran Burgundy, of Lorraine, of
Allemannia and of Italy. This is what had become of the
factitious and ephemeral unity of that empire of the West
which Charlemagne had wished to put in the place of the
Eoman empire.
We will leave where they are the three distinct and inde-
pendent kingdoms; and turn our introspective gaze upon the,
kingdom of France. There we recognize the same fact ; there
the same work of dismemberment is going on. About the end
of the ninth century there were already twenty-nine pro- *
vinces or fragments of provinces which had become petty
states, the former governors of which, imder the names of
dukes, counts, marquises and viscounts, were pretty nearly
228 HiaTOBT OF FRANCE. [ch. xm.
real sovereigns. Twenty-nine great fiefe, which have played
a special part in French history, date back to this ex>och.
These petty states were not all of equal importance or in pos-
session of a perfectly similar independence; there were certain
ties imiting them to other states, resulting in certain reciprocal
obligations which became the basis, or, one might say, the
constitution of the feudal community; but their prevailing
feature was, nevertheless, isolation, personal existence. They
were really petty states begotten from the dismemberment of
a great territory; those local governments were formed at the
expense of a central power.
From the end of the ninth pass we to the end of the tenth
century, to the epoch when the Capetians take the place of the
Carlovingians. Instead of seven kingdoms to replace the em-
pire of Charlemagne, there were then no more than four. The
kingdoms of Provence and Trans-juran Burgundy had formed,
by reunion, the kingdom of Aries. The kingdom of Lorraine
was no more than a duchy in dispute between Allemannia and
France. The Emperor Otho the Great had united the kingdom
of Italy to the empire of Allemannia. Overtures had pro-
duced their effects amongst the great states. But in the
interior of the kingdom of France dismemberment had held on
its course; and instead of the twenty-nine petty states or
great fiefs observable at the end of the ninth century, we find
at the end of the tenth, fifty-five actually established. {Vide
Guizot's Histoire de la Civilization^ t. ii., pp. 238-246.)
Now how was this ever-increasing dismemberment accom-
plished? What causes determined it, and little by little made
it the substitute for the unity of the empire? Two causes, per-
fectly natural and independent of all human calculation, one
moral and the other political. They were the absence from
the minds of men of any general and dominant idea; and the
reflux, in social relations and manners, of the individual
liberties but lately repressed or regulated by the strong hand
of Charlemagne. In times of formation or transition, states
and governments conform to the measure, ©ne had almost said
to the height, of the men of the period, their ideas, their senti-
ments, and their personal force of character; when ideas are
few and narrow, when sentiments spread only over a confined
circle, when means of action and expansion are wanting to
men, communities become petty and local, just as the thoughts
and existence of their members are. Such was the state of
things in the ninth and tenth centuries: there was no general
CH. xin.] FEUDAL FRANCE AND HUGH CAPET. 229
and fructifyingidea, save the Christian creed ; no great intellec-
tual vent; no great national feeling; no easy and rapid means
of communication; mind and life were both confined in a
narrow space and encountered, at every step, stoppages and
obstacles well-nigh insurmoimtable. At the same time, by the
fall of the empires of Rome and of Charlemagne^ men regained
possession of the rough and ready individual liberties which
were the essential characteristic of Germanic manners;
Franks, Visi^ths, Burgundians, Saxons, Lombards, none of
these new peoples had lived as the Greeks and Romans had,
imder the sway of an essentially political idea, the idea of city,
state, and fatherland; they were free men and not citizens,
comrades not members of one and the same public body. They
gave up their vagabond life; they settled upon a soil conquered
by themselves and partitioned amongst themselves; and there
they lived each by himself, master of himself and all that was
his, family, servitors, husbandmen, and slaves: the territorial
domain became the fatherland, and the owner remained a free
man, a local and independent chieftain, at his own risk and
peril. And thus, quite naturally, grew up feudal France,
when the new comers, settled in their new abodes, were no
more swayed or hampered by the vain attempt to re-establish
the Roman empire. ^
The consequences of such a state of things and of such a dis-
position of persons were rapidly developed. Territorial owner-
ship became the fundamental characteristic of and warranty
for independence and social importance. Local sovereignty,
if not complete and absolute, at least in respect of its principal
rights, right of making war, right of judicature, right of taxa-
tion, and right of regulating the police, became one with the
territorial ownership, which before long grew to be hereditary,
whether, under the title of alleu (cdlodium), it had been origi-
nally perfectly independent and exempt from any feudal tie,
or, under the title of beneficCy had arisen from grants of land
made by the chieftain to his followers, on condition of certain
obligations. The offices, that is, the divers functions, military
or civil, conferred by the king on his lieges, also ended by be-
coming hereditary. Having become established in fact, this
heirship in lands and local powers was soon recognized by the
law. A capitulary of Charles the Bald, promulgated in 877,
contains the two following provisions:
** If, after our death, any one of our lieges, moved by love
for CK)d and our person, desire to renounce the world, and if
230 HiaTORT OF FRANCE, [ch. mi.
he have a son or other relative capahle of serving the puhlic
weal, let him he free to transmit to him his henefices and his
honors, according to his pleasure."
^^ If a coimt of this kingdom happen to die, and his son he
ahout our person, we will that our son, together with those of
our lieges who may chanc^ to he the nearest relatives of the
deceased coimt, as well as with the other ofllcers of the said
coimtship and the bishop of the diocese wherein it is situated,
shall provide for its administration until the death of the here-
tofore count shall have been annotmced to us and we have been
enabled to confer on the son, present at our court, the honors
wherewith his father was invested."
Thus the king still retained the nominal right of conferring
on the son the offices or local functions of the father, but he
recognized in the son the right to obtain them. A host of
documents testify that at this epoch, when, on the death of a
governor of a province, the king attempted to give his count-
ship to some one else than his descendants, not only did x>er-
sonal interest resist, but such a measure was considered a
violation of right. Under the reign of Louis the Stutterer,
son of Charles the Bald, two of his lieges, Wilhelm and
Engelschalk, held two countships on the confines of Bavaria;
and, at their death, their offices were given to Count Arbo, to
the prejudice of their sons. * * The children and their relatives, "
says the chronicler, " taking that as a gross injustice, said that
matters ought to go differently, and that they would die by the
sword or Arbo should give up the countship of their family."
Heirship in territorial ownerships and their local rights, what-
ever may have originally been their character; heirship in
local offices or powers, militeuy or civil, primarily conferred
by the king; and, by consequence, hereditary imion of terri-
torial ownership and local government, under the condition, a
little confused and precarious, of subordinated relations and
duties between suzerain and vassal— such was, in law and in
fact, the feudal order of things. From the ninth to the tenth
century it had acquired full force.
This order of things being thus well defined, we find our-
selves face to face with an indisputable historic fact : no period,
no system has ever, in France, remained so odious to the pub-
Uc instincts. And this antipathy is not peculiar to our age,
nor merely the fruit of that great revolution which not long
since separated, as by a gulf, the French present from its past.
Gk) back to any portion of French history, and stop where you
CH. XIII.] FEUDAL FRANCE AND HUGH CAPET, 231
will; and you will everywhere find the feudal system consid-
ered, by the mass of the population, a foe to be fought and
fought down at any price. At aU times, whoever dealt it a
blow has been popular in France.
The reasons for this fact are not all, or even the chief of
them, to be traced to the evils which, in France, the people
had to endure under the feudal system. It is not evil plight
which is most detested and feared by peoples; they have more
than once borne, faced, and almost wooed it, and there are
wof ul epochs, the memory of which has remained dear. It is
in the political character of feudalism, in the nature and shape
of its power that we find lurking that element of popular
aversion which, in France at least, it has never ceased to
inspire.
It was a confederation of petty sovereigns, of petty despots,
unequal amongst themselves, and having, one towards another,
certain duties and rights, but invested in their own domains,
over their personal and direct subjects, with arbitrary and
absolute power. That is the essential element of the feudal
system ; therein it differs from every other aristocracy, every
other form of government.
There has been no scarcity in this world of aristocracies and
despotisms. There have been peoples arbitrarily governed,
nay absolutely possessed by a single man, by a college of
priests, by a body of patricians. But none of these despotic
governments was like the feudal system.
In the case where the sovereign power has been placed in the
hands of a single man, the condition of the people has been
servile and woful. At bottom the feudal system was some-
what better; and it will presently be explained why. Mean-
while, it must be acknowledged that that condition often
appeared less burdensome and obtained more easy acceptance
than the feudal system. It was because, under the great ab-
solute monarchies, men did, nevertheless, obtain some sort of
equality and tranquillity. A shameful equality and a fatal
tranquillity, no doubt ; but such as peoples are sometimes con-
tented with under the dominance of certain circumstances,
or in the last gasp of their existence. Liberty, equality, and
tranquillity were all alike wanting, from the tenth to the
thirteenth century, to the inhabitants of each lord's domains;
their sovereign was at their very doors, and none of them was
hidden from him or beyond reach of his mighty arm. Of all
tyrannies the worst is that which can thus keep account of its
232 HISTORY OF FRANCE, [ch. xm.
subjects, and which sees, from its seat, the limits of its empire.
The caprices of the human will then show themselves in all
their intolerable extravagance and, moreover, with irresistible
promptness. It is then, too, that inequality of conditions makes
itself more rudely felt; riches, might, independence, every
advantage and every right present themselves every instant
to the gaze of misery, weakness, and servitude. The inhabi-
tants of fiefs could not find consolation in the bosom of tran-
quillity ; incessantly mixed up in the quarrels of their lord, a
prey to his neighbors' devastations, they led a Ufe still more
precarious and still more restless than that of the lords them-
selves, and they had to put up at one and the same time with
the presence of war, privilege, and absolute power.
Nor did the rule of feudalism differ less from that of a college
of priests or a senate of patricians than from the desi)otism
of an individual. In the two former systems we have an
aristocratic body governing the mass of the people; in the
feudal system we have an aristocracy resolved into individuals,
each of whom governs on his own private account a certain
number of persons dependent upon him alone. Be the aristo-
cratic body a clergy, its power has its root in creeds which
are common to itself and its subjects. Now in every creed
common to those who command and those who obey there is
a moral tie, an element of sympathetic equality, and oh the
part of those who obey a tacit adhesion to the rule. Be it a
senate of patricians that reigns, it cannot govern so capriciously,
so arbitrarily, as an individual. There are differences and dis-
cussions in the very bosom of the government; there may be,
nay there always are, formed factions, parties which, in order
to arrive at their own ends, strive to conciliate the favor of the
people, sometimes take in hand its interests, and, however bad
may be its condition, the people, by sharing in its masters'
rivalries, exercises some sort of influence over its own destiny.
Feudalism was not, properly speaking, an aristocratic govern-
ment, a senate of kings— to use the language used by Oineas to
Pyrrhus; it was a collection of individual despotisms, exer-
cised by isolated aristocrats, each of whom, being sovereign in
his own domains, had to give no account to another, and asked
nobody's opinion about his conduct towards his subjects.
Is it astonishing that such a system incurred, on the part of
the peoples, more hatred than even those which had reduced
them to a more monoffconous and more lasting servitude? There
was despotism just as in pure monarchies, and there was privi-
CH. xin.] FEUDAL FRANCE AND HUGH CAPET. 233
lege just as in the very closest aristocracies. And both ob-
truded themselves in the most offensive and, so to speak,
crude form. Despotism was not tapered off by means of the
distance and elevation of a throne; and privilege did not veil
itself behind the majesty of a large body. Both were the ap-
purtenances of an individual ever present and ever alone, ever
at his subjects' doors, and never called upon, in dealing with
their lot, to gather his peers around him.
And now we will leave the subjects in the case of feudalism,
and consider the masters, the owners of fiefs, and their relations
one with another. We here behold quite a different spectacle;
we see liberties, rights, and guarantees, which not only give
protection and honor to those who enjoy them, but of which
the tendency and effect are to open to the subject population
an outlet towards a better future.
It could not, in fact, be otherwise: for, on the one hand,
feudal society was not wanting in dignity and glory ; and, on
the other, the feudal system did not, as the theocracy of Egypt
or the despotism of Asia did, condemn its subjects irretrievably
to slavery. It oppressed them; but they ended by having the
power as well as the will to go free.
It is the fault of pure monarchy to set up power so high and
encomx)ass it with such splendor that the possessor's head is
turned, and that those who are beneath it dare scarcely look
upon it. The sovereign thinks himself a god; and the people
fall down and worship him. But it was not so in society under
owners of fiefs: the grandeur was neither dazzling nor unap-
proachable; it was but a short step from vassal to suzerain;
they lived familiarly one with another, without any possibility
that superiority should think itself illimitable, or subordina-
tion think itself servile. Thence came that extension of the
domestic circle, that ennoblement of personal service, from
which sprang one of the most generous sentiments of the
middle ages, fealty, which reconciled the dignity of the man
with the devotion of the vassal. .
Further, it was not from a numerous aristocratic senate, but
from himself, and almost from himself alone, that every pos-
sessor of fiefs derived his strength and his lustre. Isolated as
he was in his domains, it was for him to maintain himself
therein, to extend them, to keep his subjects submissive and
his vassals faithful, and to correct those who were wanting in
obedience to him or who ignored their duties as members of
the feudal hierarchy, It was, as it were, a people consisting
234 HISTORT OF FRANCE. [ch. xiil
of scattered citizens, of whom each, ever armed, accompanied
by his following or intrenched in his castle, kept watch himself
over his own safety and his own rights, relying far more on
his own courage and his own renown than on the protection of
the public authorities. Such a condition bears less resemblance
to an organized and settled society than to a constant prospect
of peril and war; but the energy and the dignity of the indi-
vidual were kept up in it, and a more extended and better
regulated society might issue therefrom.
And it did issue. This society of the future was not slow to
sprout and grow in the midst of that feudal system so turbulent,
so oppressive, so detested. For five centuries, from the invasion
of the barbarians to the fall of the Carlovingians, France pre-
sents the appearance of being stationary in the middle of chaos.
Over this long, dark space of anarchy, feudalism is slowly
taking shape, at the expense, at one time, of liberty, at another,
of order; not as a real rectification of the social condition, but
as the only order of things which could possibly acquire fixity,
as, in fact, a sort of unpleasant but necessary alternative. No
sooner is the feudal system in force than, with its victory
scarcely secured, it is attacked in the lower grades by the
mass of the people attempting to regain certain fiberties, owner-
ships, and rights, and in the highest by royalty laboring to
recover its pubUc character, to become once more the head of
a nation. It is no longer the case of free men in a vague and
dubious position, unsuccessfully defending, against the domi-
nation of the chieftains whose lands they inhabit, the wreck
of their independence, whether Gallic or Roman or barbaric;
it is the case of burgesses, agriculturists, and serfs who know
well what their grievances and who their oppressors are, and
who are working to get free. It is no longer the case of a king
doubtful about his title and the nature of his power, at one
time a chieftain of warriors, at another the anointed of the
Most High; here a mayor of the palace of some sluggard bar-
barian, there the heir of the emperors of Rome; a sovereign
tossing about confusedly amidst followers or servitors eager at
one time to invade his authority, at another to render them-
selves completely isolated: it is the case of one of the premier
feudal lords exerting himself to become the master of all, to
change his suzerainty into sovereignty. Thus in spite of the
servitude into which the people had sunk at the end of the
tenth century, from this moment the enfranchisement of the
people makes way. In spite of the w^akn^e, 07 lather nullity
CH. xni.] FEUDAL FRANCS AND HUGE CAPET. 236
of the regal power at the same epoch, from this moment l^e
regal power begins to gain gromid. That monarchical system
which the genius of Charlemagne could not f oimd, kings tax
inferior to Charlemagne will little by little make triiunphant.
Those liberties and those guarantees which the German
warriors were incapable of transmitting to a well-regulated
society, the commonalty will regain one after another. Nothing
but feudalism could have sprung from the womb of barbarism ;
but scarcely is feudalism established when we see monarchy
and liberty nascent and growing in its womb.
From the end of the ninth to the end of the tenth century,
two families were, in French history, the representatives and
instruments of the two systems thus confronted and conflict-
ing at that epoch, the imperial which was falling and the
feudal which was rising. After the death of Charlemagne,
his descendants, to the number of ten, from Louis the Debon-
nair to Louis the Slu^ard, strove obstinately but in vain to
maintain the unity of the empire and the imity of the central
power. In four generations, on the other hand, the descen-
dants of Eobert the Strong climbed to the head of feudal
France. The former, though German in race, were imbued
with the maxims, the traditions and the pretensions of that
Boman world which had been for a while refsuscitated by their
glorious ancestor; and they claimed it as their heritage. The
latter preserved, at their settlement upon Gallo-Boman terri-
tory, Germanic sentiments, manners, and instincts, and were
occupied only with the idea of getting more and more settled
and greater and greater in the new society which was little by
little being formed upon the soil won by the barbarians, their
forefathers. Louis the Ultramarine and Lothaire were not, we
may suppose, less personally brave than Robert the Strong
and his son Eudes; but when the Northmen put the Frankish
dominions in peril, it was not to the descendants of Charle-
magne, not to the emperor Charles the Fat, but to the local
and feudal chieftain, to Eudes, count of Paris, that the popula-
tion turned for salvation: and Eudes it was who saved them.
In this painful parturition of French monarchy, one fact
deserves to be remarked, and that is the lasting respect at-
tached, in the minds of the people, to the name and the
reminiscences of the Carlovingian rule, notwithstanding its
decay. It was not alone the lustre of that name and of the
memory of Charleniagne which inspired and prolonged this
respect; a certain instinctive feeling about th© vortb pf b^rddi-'
236 mSTOJRY OF FRANCE, [ch. xin.
tary monarchy, as an element of stability and order, already
existed amongst the populations, and glimpses thereof were
visible amongst the rivals of the royal family in the hour of
its dissolution. It had been consecrated by religion; the title
of anointed of the Most High was united, in its case, to that
of lawful heir. Why did Hugh the Great, Duke of France, in
spite of favorable opportunities and very palpable temptations,
abstain perseveringly from taldng the crown and leave it tot-
tering upon the heads of Louis the Ultramarine and Lothaire?
Why did his son, Hugh Capet himself, wait, for his election as
king, imtil Louis the Sluggard was dead and the Carlovingian
line had only a collateral and discredited representative? In
these hesitations and lingerings of the great feudal chieftains
there is a forecast of the authority already vested in the prin-
ciple of hereditary monarchy, at the very moment when it
was about to be violated, and of the great part which would
be played by that principle in the history of France.
At last the day of decision arrived for Hugh Capet. There
is nothing to show that he had conspired to hasten it, but he
had foreseen the probabihty of it, and, if he had done nothing
to pave the way for it, he had held himself, so far as he was
concerned, in readiness for it. During a trip which he made
to Bome in 981, he had entered into kindly personal relations
with the Emperor Otho II., king of Germany, the most im-
portant of France's neighbors, and the most disposed to med-
dle in her affairs. In France, Hugh Capet had formed a close
friendship with Adalb6ron, archbishop of Rheims, the most
notable and most able of the French prelates. The event
showed the value of such a friend. On the 21st of May, 987,
King Louis V. died without issue; and, after his obsequies,
the grandees of the kingdom met together at Senlis. We will
here borrow the text of a contemporary witness, Richer, the
only one of the chroniclers of that age who deserves the name
of historian, whether for the authenticity of his testimony or
the extent and clearness of his narrative. **The bishop," he
says, " took his place, together with the duke, in the midst of
the assembly, and said to them, * I come and sit down amongst
you to treat of the affairs of the state. Far from me be any
design of saying anything but what has for aim the advantage
of the common weal. As I do not see here all the princes whose
wisdom and energy might be useful in the government of the
kingdom, it seems to me that the choice* of a king should be
put off for some time, in order that, at a period fixed upon, all
OH. xni.] FEUDAL FRANOE AND HUGH CAPET. 237
may be able to meet in assembly, and that every opinion, hav-
ing been dificussed and set forth in the face of day, may thus
produce its full effect. May it please you, then, all of ye who
are here assembled to deliberate, to bind yourselves in con-
junction with me by oath to this illustrious duke, and to prom-
ise between his hands not to engage yourselves in any way in
the election of a Head, and not to do anything to this end until
we be re-asseml)led here to deliberate upon that choice.' This
opinion was well received and approved of by all: oath was
taken between the hands of the duke, and the time was fixed
at which the meeting should assemble again."
Before the day fixed for re-assembling, the last of the de-
scendants of Charlemagne, Charles, duke of Lower Lorraine,
brother of the late King Lothaire, and paternal imcle of the
late King Louis, ^' went to Hheims in quest of the archbishop,
and thus spake to him about his rights to the throne: * All the
world knoweth, venerable father, that, by hereditary right, I
ought to succeed my brother and my nephew. I am wanting
in naught that should be required, before all from those who '
ought to reign, to wit, birth and the courage to dare. Where-
fore am I thrust out from the territory which all the world
knows to have been possessed by my ancestors? To whom
could I better address myself than to you, when all the sup-
X)ort8 of my race have disappeared? To whom, bereft as I am
of honorable protection, should I have recourse but to you?
By whom, if not by you, should I be restored to the honors of
my fathers? Please God things turn out favorably for me and
for my fortunes! Rejected, what can become of me save to
be exhibited as a spectacle to all who look on me? Suffer
yourself to be moved by some feeling of humanity: be com-
passionate towards a man who has been tried by so many
reversesl'"
Such language was more calculated to inspire contempt than
compassion. ^*The metropolitan, firm in his resolution, gave
for answer these few words: ' Thou hast ever been associated
with the perjured, the sacrilegious, and the wicked of every
sort, and now thou art dtill unwilling to separate from them:
how canst thou, in company with such men, and by means of
such men, seek to attain to the sovereign power? ' And when
Charles replied that he must not abandon his friends, but
ratfier gain over others, the bishop said to himself, * Now that
he possesses no position of dignity, he hath allied himself with
the wicked* whose companionship he will not, in any way, give
238 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [gh. xra.
up: what misfortune would it be for the good if he were elected
to the throne I ' To Charles, however, he made answer that
he would do naught without the consent of the princes ; and so
left him."
At the time fixed, probably the 29th or 30th of June, 987, the
grandees of Frankish Gaul who had boimd themselves by oath
re-assembled at Senlis. Hugh Capet was present with his
brother Henry of Burgundy, and his brother-in-law Kichard
the Fearless, duke of Normandy. The majority of the direct
vassals of the crown were also there, Foulques Nerra (the
Black), count of Anjou; Eudes, count of Blois, Chartres, and
Tours; Bouchard, count of Vendome and Corbeil; Gautier,
count of Vexin; and Hugh, count of Maine. Few counts
came from beyond the Loire; and some of the lords in the
North, amongst others Amulf II., count of Flanders, and the
lords of Vermandois were likewise missing. "When those
present were in regular assembly. Archbishop Adalb^ron, with
the assent of Duke Hugh, thus spake unto them: 'Louis, of
blessed memory, having been taken from us without leaving
issue, it hath become necessary to engage seriously in seeking
who may take his place upon the throne, to the end that the
common weal remain not in peril, neglected and without a
head. That is why on the last occasion we deemed it useful to
put ofE this matter, in order that each of ye might come hither
and submit to the assembly the opinion with which God should
have inspired him, and that from all those sentiments might
be drawn what is the general will. Here be we assembled : let
us, then, be guided by our wisdom and our good faith to act in
such sort that hatred stifle not reason, and affection distort not
truth. We be not ignorant that Charles hath his partisans,
who maintain that he ought to come to the throne transmitted
to him by his relatives. But if we examine this question, the
throne is not acquired by hereditary right, and we be bound to
place at the head of the kingdom none but him who not only
hath the distinction of corporeal nobility, but hath also honor
to recommend him and magnanimity to rest upon. We read
in the annals that to emperors of illustrious race, whom their
own lS,ches caused to fall from power, succeeded others, at one
time similar, at another different ; but what dignity could we
confer on Charles, who hath not honor for his guide, who is
enfeebled by lethargy, and who, finally, hath lost head io far
that he hath no shame in serving a foreign king, and in mis*
uniting himself to a woman taken from the rank of the knights
CH. xni.] FEUDAL FRANCE AND HUGH CAPET. 239
his vassals? How could the puissant duke hrook that a woman
issuing from a family of his vassals should become queen, and
have dominion over him? How could he walk behind her
whose equals and even superiors bend the knee before him and
place their hands beneath his feet? Examine carefully into the
matter, and consider that Charles hath been rejected more
through his own fault than that of others. Decide ye rather
for the good than the ill of the common weal. If ye wish it
ill, make Charles sovereign; if ye hold to its prosperity, crown
Hugh, the illustrious duke. Let attachment to Charles seduce
nobody, and let hatred towards the duke distract nobody, from
the common interest. . . . Give us then, for our head, the duke,
who has deeds, nobility, and troops to recommend him; the
duke, in whom ye will find a defender not only of the conmion
weal but also of your private interests. Thanks to his bene-
volence, ye will have in him a father. Who hath had recourse
to him and hath not found protection? Who, that hath been
torn from the care of home, hath not been restored thereto
by him?'
"This opinion having been proclaimed and well received,
Duke Hugh was imanimously raised to the throne, crowned
on the 1st of July by the metropolitan and the other bishops,
and recognized as king by the Gauls, the Britons, the Nor-
mans, the Aquitanians, the Goths, the Spaniards, and the Gas-
cons. Surroimded by the grandees of the kingdom, he passed
decrees and promulgated laws according to royal custom, reg-
ulating successfully and disposing of all matters. That he
might deserve so much good fortune, and under the inspira-
tion of so many prosperous circumstances, he gave himself up
to deep piety. Wishing to have a certainty of leaving, after
his death, an heir to the throne, he conferred with his grandees,
and after holding coimcil with them he first sent a deputation
to the Metropolitan of Eheims, who was then at Orleans, and
subsequently went himself to see him touching the association
of his son Eobert with himself upon the throne. The arch-
bishop having told him that two kings could not be, regularly,
created in one and the same year, he immediately showed a
letter sent by Borel, duke of inner Spain, proving that that
duke requested help against the barbarians. . . . The metro-
politan, seeing advantage was likely to result, ultimately
yielded to the king's reasons; and when the grandees were
assembled, at the festival of our Lord's nativity, to celebmte
the coronation, Hugh assumed the purple, and he crowned
240 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [cfl. xm.
Bolenmly, in the basilica of Sainte- Croix, his son Eobert,
amidst the acclamations of the French.
Thus was founded the dynasty of the Capetians, under the
double influence of German manners and feudal connections.
Amongst the ancient Germans royal heirship was generally
confined to one and the same family ; but election was often
joined with heirship, and had more than once thrust the latter
aside. Hugh Capet was head of the family which was. the
most Ulustrioud in his time and closest to the throne, on which
the personal merits of Counts Eudes and Robert had already
twice seated it. He was also one of the greatest chieftains of
feudal society, duke of the country which was already called
France, and Count of Paris, of that city which Clovis, after
his victories, had chosen as the centre of his dominions. In
view of the Roman rather than Germanic pretensions of the
Carlovingian heirs and of their admitted decay, the rise of
Hugh Capet was the natural consequence of the principal facts
as well as of the manners of the period, and the crowning mani-
festation of the new social condition in France, that is, feudal-
ism. Accordingly the event reached completion and confirma-
tion without any great obstacle. The Carlovingian, Charles of
Lorraine, vainly attempted to assert his rights; but, after some
gleams of success, he died in 992, and his descendants fell, if
not into obscurity, at least into poUtical insignificance. In
vain, again, did certain feudal lords, especially in Southern
France, refuse for some time their adhesion to Hugh Capet.
One of them, Adalbert, count of P^rigord, has remained almost
famous for having made to Hugh Capet's question ** Who made
thee coimt?" the proud answer, ** Who made thee king?" The
pride, however, of Count Adalbert had more bark than bite.
Hugh possessed that intelligent and patient moderation, which,
when a position is once acquired, is the best pledge of continu-
ance. Several facts indicate that he did not underestimate the
worth and range of his title of king. At the same time that by
getting his son Robert crowned with him he secured for his line
the next succession, he also performed several acts which went
beyond the limits of his feudal domains and proclaimed to all
the kingdom the presence of the king. But those acts were
temperate and wise; and they paved the way for the future
without anticipating it. Hugh Capet confined himself care-
fully to the sphere of his recognized rights as well as of his
effective strength, and his government remained faithful to the
character of the revolution which had raised him to the throne.
WHO MADE THEE KING?
CH. xm.] FEUDAL FRANCE AND HUGH CAPET, 241
at the same time that it gave warning of the future progress
of royalty independently of and over the head of feudalism.
When he died, on the 24th of Octoher, 996, the crown, which
he hesitated, they say, to wear on his own head, passed with-
out ohstacle to his son Robert, and the course which was to be
followed for eight centuries, under the government of his de-
scendants, by civilization in France, began to develop itself.
It has already been pointed out, in the case of Adalb^ron,
archbishop of Rheims, what part was taken by the clergy in
this second change of dynasty ; but the part played by it was
so important and novel that we must make a somewhat more
detailed acquaintance with the real character of it and the
principal actor in it. When, in 751, Pepin the Short became
king in the place of the last Merovingian, it was, as we have
seen, Pope Zachary who decided that *4t was better to give
the title of king to him who really exercised the sovereign
power than to him who bore only its name." Three years
later, in 754, it was Pope Stephen II. who came over to France
to anoint King Pepin, and, forty-six years afterwards, in 800,
it was Pope Leo in. who proclaimed Charlemagne emperor of
the West. From the Papacy, then, on the accession of the
Carlovingians, came the principal decisions and steps. The
reciprocal services rendered one to the other by the two
powers, and still more, perhaps, the similarity of their maxims
as to the unity of the empire, established between the Papacy
and the Carlovingians strong ties of gratitude and policy ; and,
accordingly, when the Carlovingian dynasty was in danger,
the court of Rome was grieved and troubled; it was hard for
her to see the fall of a dynasty for which she had done so
much and which had done so much for her. Far, then, from
aiding the accession of the new dynasty, she showed herself
favorable to the old, and tried to save it without herself be-
coming too deeply compromised. Such was, from 985 to 996,
the attitude of Pope John XVI., at the crisis which placed
Hugh Cai)et ujwn the throne. In spite of this poUcy on the
part of the Papacy, the French Church took the initiative in
the event, and supported the new king; the Archbishop of
Rheims affirmed the right of the people to accomplish 4 change
of dynasty, and anointed Hugh Capet and his son Robert.
The accession of the Capetians was a work independent of
all foreign influence and strictly national, in Church as well b&
instate.
The authority of Adalb^ron was of great weight in the mat-
242 BISTORT OF FRANCE. [ch. xnt
ter. As archbishop he was full of zeal, and at the same time
of wisdom in ecclesiastical administration. Engaging in poli-
tics, he showed boldness in attempting a great change in the
state, and ability in carrying it out without precipitation as
well as without hesitation. He had for his secretary and
teacher a simple priest of Auvergne, who exercised over this
enterprise an influence more continuous and still more effectual
than that of his archbishop. Gterbert, bom at Aurillac, and
brought up in the monastery of St. Gteraud, had, when he was
summoned to the directorate of the school of Eheims, already
made a trip to Spain, visited Rome, and won the esteem of
Pope John XIII. and of the Emperor Otho II., and had thus
had a close view of the great personages and great questions,
ecclesiastical and secular, of his time. On his establishment at
Rheims, he pursued a double course with a double eud: he was
fond of study, science, and the investigation of truth, but he
had also a taste for the sphere of politics and of the world; he
excelled in the art of instructing, but also in the art of pleas-
ing; and the address of the courtier was in him united with the
learning of the doctor. His was a mind lofty, broad, search-
ing, proUfic, open to conviction, and yet inclined to give way,
either from calculation or attraction, to contrary ideas, but
certain to recur, under favorable circumstances, to its original
purpose. There was in him almost as much changeableness as
zeal for the cause he embraced. He espoused and energetically
supported the elevation of a new dynasty and the independence
of the Roman Church. He was very active in the cause of
Hugh Capet; but he was more than once on the point of going
over to King Lothaire or to the pretender, Charles of Lorraine.
He was in his time, even more resolutely than Bossuet in the
seventeenth century, the defender and practiser of what have
since been called the hberties of the Gallican Church, and, in
992, he became, on this ground. Archbishop of Rheims; but,
after having been interdicted, in 995, by Pope John XVI., from
the exercise of his episcopal functions in France, he obtained,
in 998, from Pope Gregory V., the archbishopric of Ravenna
in Italy, and the favor of Otho HI. was not unconnected, in
999, with his elevation to the Holy See, which he occupied for
four years, with the title of Sylvester II., whilst putting in
practice, but with moderation and dignity, maxims very dif-
ferent from those which he had supported, fifteen years before,
as a French bishop. He became, at this later period of his life,
so much the more estranged from France in that he was em-
tJH. XIV.] CAPETIAN8 TO TEE TIME OF THE CBUSADES. 243
broiled with Hugh Capet^s son and successor. King Robert,
whose quondam preceptor he had been and of whose marriage
with Queen Bertha, widow of Eudes, count of Blois, he had
honestly disapproved.
In 995, just when he had been interdicted by Pope John
XVI. from his fimctions as Archbishop of Rheims, Gerbert
wrote to the abbot and brethren of the monastery of St. Ge-
raud, where he had been brought up: ** And now farewell to
your holy community ; farewell to those whom I knew in old
times, or who were connected with me by blood, if there still
survive any whose namies, if not their features, have remained
upon my memory. Not that I have forgotten them through
pride ; but I am broken down, and— if it must be said — changed
by the ferocity of barbarians; what I learnt in my boyhood I
forgot in my youth; what I desired in my youth I despised in
my old age. Such are the fruits thou hast borne for me, O
pleasure! Such are the joys afforded by the honors of the
world I BeUeve my experience of it : the higher the great are
outwaiyily raised by glory, the more cruel is their inward an-
guish I"
Length of life brings, in the soul of the ambitious, days of
hearty imdeception; but it does not discourage them from their
coiirse of ambition. Gerbert was, amongst the ambitious, at
the same time one of the most exalted in point of intellect and
one of the most persistent as well as restless in attachment to
the affairs of the world.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE OAPETIAKS TO THB TIME OF TH B ORUSADES.
From 996 to 1108, the first three successors of Hugh Capet,
his son Robert, his grandson Henry I., and his great-grand^n
Philip I., sat upon the throne of France; and during this long
space of 112 years the kingdom of France had not, sooth to
say, any history. Parcelled out, by virtue of the feudal sys-
tem, between a multitude of princes, independent, isolated,
and scarcely sovereigns in their own dominions, keeping up
any thing like frequent intercourse only with their neighbors,
and loosely united, by certain rules or customs of vassalage.
244 mSTOET OF FRANCE. [ch. xnr.
to hiTn amongst them who hore the title of king, the France of
the eleventh century existed in little more than name: Nor-
mandy, Brittany, Burgundy, Aquitaine, Poitou, Anjou, Flan-
ders, and Nivemais were the real states and peoples, each witli
its own distinct life and history. One single event, the Cru-
sade, united, towards the end of the century, those scattered
sovereigns and peoples in one common idea and one combined
action. Up to that x>oint, then, let us conform to the real
state of the case and faithfully trace out the features of the
epoch without attempting to introduce a connection and a
combination which did not exist; and let us pass briefly in re-
view the isolated events and personages which are still worthy
of remembrance and which have remained historic without
having belonged exactly to a national history. Amongst
events of this kind one, the conquest of England, in 1066, by
William the Bastard, diike of Normandy, was so striking, and
exercised so much ii^uence over the destinies of France, that,
in the incoherent and disconnected picture of this eleventh
century, particular attention must first be drawn to the conse-
quences, as regarded France, of that great Norman enterprise.
After the sagacious Hugh Capet, the first three Capetians,
Kobert, Henry I., and Philip I., were very mediocre individ-
uals, in character as well as intellect; and their personal in-
significance was one of the causes that produced the emptiness
of French history under their sway. Robert lacked neither
physical advantages nor moral virtues: **He had a lofty
figure," says his biographer Helgaud, archbishop of Bourges,
" hair smooth and well arranged, a modest eye, a pleasant and
gentle mouth, a tolerably furnished beard and high shoiQders.
He was versed in all the sciences, philosopher enough and an
excellent musician, and so devoted to sacred Uterature that he
never passed a day without reading the Psalter and praying
to the Most High God together with St. David." He composed
several hymns which were adopted by the Church, and, dur-
ing a pilgrimage he made to Rome, he deposited upon the altar
of St. Peter his own Latin poems set to music. ** He often
went to the church of St. Denis, clad in his royal robes and
with his crown on his head; and he there conducted the sing-
ing at matins, mass, and vespers, chanting with the monks
and himself calling upon them to sing. When he sat in the
consistory, he voluntarily styled himself the bishops^ client."
Two centuries later, St. Louis proved that the virtues of the
saint are not incompatible with the qualities of the king; but
CH. XIV.] 0APETIAN8 TO THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES, 245
the former cannot form a substitute for the latter, and the
qualities of king were to seek in Robert. He was neither war-
rior nor politician; there is no sign that he ever gathered
about him, to discuss afEairs of state, the laic barons together
vnth the bishops, and when he interfered in the wars of the
great feudal lords, notably in Biu'gundy and Flanders, it was
with but little energy and to but little purpose. He was
hardly more potent in his family than in his kingdom. It
has already been mentioned that, in spite of his preceptor
Gerbert's advice, he had espoused Bertha, widow of Eudes,
count of Blois, and he loved her dearly; but the marriage was
assailed by the Church, on the ground of kinship. Bobert
offered resistance, but afterwards gave way before the ex-
commimication pronounced by Pope Gregory V., and then
espoused Constance, daughter of William Taillefer, count of
Toulouse; and forthwith, sq,ys the chronicler Baoul Glaber,
** were seen pouring into France and Burgundy, by cause of
this queen, the most vain and most frivolous of all men, com-
ing from Aquitaine and Auvergne. They were outlandish and
outrageous equally in their manners and their drqss, in their
arms and* the appointments of their horses ; their hair came
only half way down their head; they shaved their beards like
actors ; they wore boots and shoes that were not decent ; and,
lastly, neither fidelity nor security was to be looked for in any
of their ties. Alack! that nation of Franks, which was wont
to be the most virtuous, and even the people of Burgundy, too,
were eager to follow these criminal examples, and before long
they reflected only too faithfully the depravity and infamy of
their models." The evil amounted to something graver than
a disturbance of court-fashions. Eobert had by Constance
three sons, Hugh, Henry, and Robert. First the eldest, and,
afterwards, his two brothers, maddened by the bad character
and tyrannical exactions of their mother, left the palace, and
withdrew to Dreux and Burgundy, abandoning themselves, in
the royal domains and the neighborhood, to all kinds of depre-
dations and excesses. Reconciliation was not without great
diflOiculty effected; and, indeed, peace was never really re-
stored in the royal family. Peace was every where the wish
and study of King Robert; but he succeeded better in main-
taining it with his neighbors than with his children. In 1006,
he was on the point of having a quarrel with Hmry II., em-
peror of Germany, who was more active and enterprising, but
fortuxiately not less pious than himselE. The two sovereigns
246 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. xiv.
resolved to have an interview at the Meuse, the houndary of
their dominions. '^ The question amongst their respective fol-
lowings was which of the two should cross the river to seek
audience on the other bank, that is, in the other^s dominions;
this would be a humiliation, it was said. The two learned
princes remembered this saying of Ecclesiaaticua : * The greater
thou art, the humbler be thou in all things.' The Emperor,
therefore, rose up early in the morning, and crossed, with
some of his people, into .the French king's territory. They
embraced with cordiahty; the bishops, as was proper, cele-
brated the sacrament of the mass, and they afterwards sat
down to dinner. When the meal was over. King Robert
offered H^nry immense presents of gold and silver and pre-
cious stones, and a hxmdred horses richly caparisoned, each
carrying a cuirass and a helmet ; and he added that all that
the Emperor did not accept of these gifts would be so much
deducted from their friendship. Henry, seeing the generosity
of his friend, took of the whole only a book containing the
Holy Gospel, set with gold and precious stones, and a golden
amulet, wherein was a tooth of St. Vincent, priest and martyr.
The Empress, likewise, accepted only two golden cups'. Next
day, Bling Robert crossed with his bishops into the territories
of the Emperor, who received him magnificently, and, after
dinner, offered him a hundred pounds of pure gold. The king,
in his turn, accepted only two golden cups; and, after having
ratified their pact of friendship, they returned each to his own
dominions."
Let us add to this summary of Robert's reign some facts
which are cjiaracteristic of the epoch. In a.d. 1000, in conse-
quence of the sense attached to certain words in thd Sacred
Books, many Christians expected the end of the world. The
time of expectation was full of anxieties; plagues, famines,
and divers accidents which then took place in divers quarters,
were an additional aggravation; the churches were crowded;
penances, offerings, absolutions, all the forms of invocation
and repentance multiplied rapidly: a multitude of souls, in
submission or terror, prepared to appear before their judge.
And after what catastrophes ? In the midst of what gloom or
of what light ? These were fearful questions of which men's
imaginations were exhausted in forestalling the solution.
When the last day of the tenth and the first of the eleventh
centuries were past, it was like a general regeneration; it
might have been said that time was beginning over again;
CH. XIV.] CAPETIAN8 TO THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES, 247
and the work was commenced of rendering the Christian
-world worthy of the future. ** Especially in Italy and in
Gkiul," says the chronicler Baoul Glaher, **men took in hand
the reconstruction of the hasilicas, although the greater part
had no need thereof. Christian peoples seemed to vie one
with another which should erect the most heautiful. It was
as if the world, shaking itself together and casting off its old
garments, would have decked itself with the white rohes of
Christ." Christian art, in its earliest form of the Gothic style,
dates from this epoch; the power and riches of the Christian
Church, in its different institutions, received, at this crisis of
the himian imagination, a fresh impulse.
Other facts, some lamentable and some salutary, began,
about this epoch, to assume in French history a place which
was destined before long to become an important one. Piles
of faggots were set up, first at Orleans and then at Toulouse,
for the punishment of heretics. The heretics of the day were
Manicheans. King Robert and Queen Constance sanctioned
by their presence this return to human sacrifices offered to
Gk)d as a penalty inflicted on mental offenders against His
word. At the same time a double portion of ire blazed forth
against the Jews. ** What have we to do," it was said, " with
going abroad to make war on Mussulmans ? Have we not in
the very midst of us the greatest enemies of Jesus Christ ?"
Amongst Christians acts of oppression and violence on the
part of the great against the small became so excessive and so
frequent that they excited in country parts, particularly in
Normandy, insurrections which the insurgents tried to organ-
ize into permanent resistance. **In several counties of Nor-
mandy," says William of Jumi^ges, " all the peasants, meeting
in conventicles, resolved to live according to their own wills
and their own laws, not only in the heart of the forests but also
on the borders of the rivers, and without care for any estab-
lished rights. To accomplish this design, these mobs of mad-
men elected each two deputies, who were to form, at the 'cen-
tral point, an assembly charged with the execution of their de-
crees. So soon as the duke (Richard II.) was informed thereof,
he sent a large body of armed men to suppress this audacity
in the country parts and to disperse this rustic assembly. In
execution of his orders, the deputies of the peasantry and
many other rebels were forthwith arrested; their feet and
hands were cut off and they were sent home thus mutilated
to deter ther fellows from such enterprises and to render
248 BISTORT OF FRANCE, [ch. xrr.
them more prudent, for fear of worse. After this experience,
the x>6Si'Sants gave up their meetings and returned to their
ploughs."
This is a literal translation of the monkish chronicler, who
was far from favorable to the insurgent peasants, and was
more for applauding the suppression than justifying the in-
surrection. The suppression, though undoubtedly effectual
for the moment and in the particular spots it reached, pro-
duced no general or lasting effect. About a century after the
cold recital of William of Jumi^ges, a poet-chronicler, Robert
Wace, in his Romance of Rou, a history in verse of EoUo and
the first Dukes of Normandy, related the same facts with far
more sympathetic feeling and poetical coloring. "The lords
do us naught but ill," he makes the Norman peasants say;
"with them we have nor gain nor profit from our labors;
every day is, for us, a day of suffering, toil, and weariness;
every day we have our cattle taken from us for road-work and
forced service. We have plaints and grievances, old and new
exactions, pleas and processes without end, money*pleas, mar-
ket-pleas, road-pleas, forest-pleas, mill-pleas, blackmail-pleas,
watch-and- ward-pleas. There are so many provosts, bailiffs,
and sergeants, that we have not one hour's peace; day by day
they run us down, seize our movables, and drive us from our
lands. There is nb security for us against the lords; and no
pact is binding with them. Why suffer all this evil to be done
to us and not get out of our plight? Are we not men even as.
they are? Have we not the same stature, the same limbs, the
same strength— for suffering? All we need is courage. Let
us, then, bind ourselves together by an oath : let us swear to
support one another; and if they will make wai* on us, have
we not, for one knight, thirty or forty young peasants, nimble
and ready to fight with club, with boar-spear, with arrow, with
axe, and even with stones if they have not weapons? Let us
learn to resist the knights, and we shall be free to cut down
trees,* to hunt and fish after our fashion, and we shall work
our will in flood and field and wood."
Here we have no longer the short account and severe esti-
mate of an indifferent spectator; it is the cry of popular rage
and vengeailce reproduced by the lively imagination of an
angered poet. Undoubtedly the Norman peasants of the
twelfth century did not speak of their miseries with such de-
scriptive ability and philosophical feeling as were lent to them
by Robert Wace; they did not meditate the democratic revolu-
GERBERT.
CH. XIV.] CAPETIAN8 TO THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES, 249
tion of which he attributes to them the idea and almost the
plan; but the deeds of violence and oppression against which
they rose were very real, and they exerted themselves to es-
cape by reciprocal violence from intolerable suffering. Thence
date those alternations of demagogic revolt and tyrannical
suppression which have so often ensanguined the land and
putin i)eril the very foundations of social order. Insurrections
became of so atrocious a kind that the atrocious chastise-
ments with which they were visited seemed equally natural
and necessary. It needed long ages, a rei)etition of civil wars
and terrible poHtical shocks to put an end to this brutal chaos
which gave birth to so many evils and reciprocal crimes, and
to bring about, amongst the different classes of the French
population, equitable and truly human relations. So quick-
spreading and contagious is evil amongst men, and so difficult
to extirpate in the name of justice and truth I
However, even in the midst of this cruel egotism and this
gross unreason of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the neces-
sity, from a moral and social point of view, of struggling
against such disgusting irregularities made itself felt and
found zealous advocates. From this epoch are to be dated the
first efforts to establish, in different parts of France, what was
called CMf's peace, OocTs truce. The words were well chosen
for prohibiting at the same time oppression and revolt, for it
needed nothing less than law and the voice of God to put some
restraint upon the barbarous manners and passions of men,
great or small, lord or peasant. It is the peculiar and glorious
characteristic of Christianity to have so well understood the
primitive and permanent evil in human nature that it fought
against all the great iniquities of mankind and exposed them in
principle, even when, in point of general practice, it neither
hoped nor attempted to sweep them away. Bishops, priests,
and monks were, in their personal hves and in the coimcils of
the Church, the first propagators of GhxTs peace or truce, and
in more than one locality they induced the laic lords to follow
their lead. In 1164, Hugh 11., coimt of Rodez, in concert with
his brother Hugh, bishop of Bodez, and the notables of tlie dis-
trict, established the peace in the diocese of Rodez; "and this
it is," said the learned Benedictines of the eighteenth century,
in the Art of Verifying Dates, " which gave rise to the toll of
commune paix or pesade, which is still collected in Rouergue."
King Robert always showed himself favorable to this pacific
work; and he is the first amongst the five kings of France, in
250 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. xiv.
other respects very different,— himself , St. Louis, Louis XII.,
Henry IV., and Louis XVI.,— who were particularly distin-
guished for sympathetic kindness and anidety for the popular
welfare. Bohert had a kindly feeling for the weak and poor;
not only did he protect them, on occasion, against the powerful,
hut he took pains to conceal their defaults, and, in his church
and at his tahle, he suffered Imnself to he rohhed without com-
plaint, that he might not have to denounce and punish the
rohhers. ** Wherefore at his death," says his biographer Hel-
gaud, "there was great mourning and intolerable grief; a
countless niunber of widows and orphans sorrowed for the
many benefits received from him; they did beat their breasts
and went to and from his tomb, crying, * Whilst Robert was
king and ordered all, we lived in peace, we had naught to fear.
May the soul of that pious father, that father of the senate,
that father of all good, be blest and saved I May it mount up
and dwell for ever with Jesus Christ, the King of kings 1 ' "
Though not so pious or so good as Robert, his son, Henry I.,
and his grandson, Philip I., were neither more energetic nor
more glorious kings. During their long reigns (the former
from 1031 to 1060, and the latter from 1060 to 1108) no impor-
tant and well-prosecuted design distinguished their govern-
ment. Their pubHc life was passed at one time in petty war-
fare, without decisive results, against such and such vassals,
at another in acts of capricious intervention in the quarrels of
their vassals amongst themselves. Their home-hfe was neither
less irregular nor conducted with more wisdom and regard for
the public interest. King Robert had not succeeded in keep-
ing his first wife, Bertha of Burgundy; and his second, Con-
stance of Aquitaine, with her imperious, malevolent, avari-
cious, meddlesome disposition, reduced him to so abject a state
that he never gave a gratuity to any of his servants without
saying, "Take care that Constance know naught of it."
After Robert's death, Constance, having become regent for her
eldest son Henry I., forthwith conspired to dethrone him, and
to put in his place her second son Robert, who was her favor-
ite. Henry, on being delivered by his mother's death from
her tyranny and intrigues, was thrice married ; but his first
two marriages with two German princesses, one the daughter
of the Emperor Conrad the Salic, the other of the Emperor
Henry III., were so far from happy that in 1051 he sent into
Russia, to Kieff, in search of his third wife, Anne, daughter of
the Czar Yaroslaff the Halt. She was a modest creature who
CH. XIV.] CAPETIANS TO THE TIME OF TEE CRUSADES. 251
lived quietly up to the death of her husband in 1060, and, two
years afterwards, in the reign of her son Philip I., rather than
return to her own country, married Kaoul, count of Valois,
who put away, to marry her, his second wife Haqueney, called
Menore. The divorce was opi)osed at Rome before Pope
Alexander II., to whom the Archbishop of Eheims wrote upon
the subject: **Our kingdom is the scene of great troubles.
The queen-mother has espoused Coimt Raoul, which has
mightily displeased the Idng. As for the lady whom Raoul
has put away, we have recognized the justice of the com-
plaints she has preferred before you, and the falsity of the pre-
texts on which he put her away." The pope ordered the
count to take back his wife; Haoul would not obey, and was
excommunicated; but he made light of it, and the Princess
Anne of Russia, actually reconciled, apparently, to Philip I.,
lived tranquilly in fe^ance, where, in 1075, shortly after the
death of her second husband. Count Raoul, her signature was
still attached to a charter side by side with that of the king
her son.
The marriages of Philip I. brought even more trouble and
scandal than those of his father and grandfather. At nineteen
years of age, in 1072, he had espoused Bertha, daughter of
Florent I., count of Holland, and in 1078 he had by her the son
who was destined to succeed him with the title of Louis the
Fat, But twenty years later, 1092, Philip took a dislike to his
wife, put her away and banished her to Montreuil-sur-Mer, on
the ground of prohibited consanguinity. He had conceived,
there is no knowing when, a violent passion for a woman
celebrated for her beauty, Bertrade, the fourth wife, for three
years past, of Foulques le R^hin (the brawler), count of
Anjou. Philip, having thus packed oft Bertha, set out for
Tours, where Bertrade happened to be with her husband.
There, in the church of St. John, during the benediction of the
baptismal fonts, they entered into mutual engagements.
Philip went away again ; and, a few days afterwards, Bertrade
was carried off by some people he had left in the neighborhood
of Tours and joined him at Orleans. Nearly all the bishops of
France, and amongst others the most learned and respected of
them, Yves, bishop of Chartres, refused their benediction to
this shocking marriage ; and the king had great difficulty in
finding a priest to render him that service. Then commenced
between Philip and the heads of the Catholic Church, pope and
bishops, a struggle which, with negotiation upon negotiation
252 HISTORY OF FRANCS, [ch. xnr.
and excommunication upon excommunication, lasted twelve
years, without the king's being able to get his marriage canon-
ically recognized; and, though he promised to send away Ber-
trade, he was not content with merely keeping her with him,
but he openly jeered at excommimication and interdicts. " It
was the custom," says William of Malmesbmy, "at the places
where the king sojourned, for divine service to be stopx)ed ;
and, as soon as he was moving away, all the bells began to
I)eal. And then Philip would cry, as he laughed like one be-
side himself, * Dost hear, my love, how they are ringing us
out?'" Atlast, in 1104, the Bishop of Chartres himself, wearied
by the persistency of the king and by sight of the trouble in
which the prolongation of the interdict was plunging the king-
dom, wrote to the Pope, Pascal 11. : " I do not presume to offer
you advice; I only desire to warn you that it were well to
show for awhile some condescension towards the weaknesses
of the man, so far as consideration for his salvation may per-
mit, and to rescue the country from the critical state to which
it is reduced by the excommunication of this prince." The
Pope, consequently, sent instructions to the bishops of the
realm; and they, at the king's summons, met at Paris on the
1st of December, 1104. One of them, Lambert, bishop of
Arras, wrote to the Pope : * ' We sent as a deputation to the king
the bishops John of Orleans and Galon of Paris, charged to
demand of him whether he would conform to the clauses and
conditions set forth in your letters, and whether he were de-
termined to give up the unlawful intercourse which had made
him guilty before God. The king having answered, without
being disconcerted, that he was ready to make atonement to
God and the holy Roman Church, was introduced to the as-
sembly. He came bare-footed, in a posture of devotion and
humility, confessing his sin and promising to purge him of his
excommunication by expiatory deeds. And thus, by your
authority, he earned absolution. Then laying his hand on the
book of the holy Gospels, he took an oath, in the following
terms, to renounce his guilty and unlawful marriage : * Hearken,
thou Lambert, bishop of Arras, who art here in place of the
Apostolic Pontiff ; and let the archbishops and bishops here
present hearken unto me. I, Philip, king of the French, do
promise not to go back to my sin and to break off wholly the
criminal intercourse I have heretofore kept up with Bertrade.
I do promise that henceforth I will have with her no inter-
course or companionship, save in the presence of persons be-
CH. XIV.] CAPETIAN8 TO THE TIME OF THE CRIT8ABE8, 253
yond suspicion. I will observe, faithfully and without turn-
ing aside, these promises, in the sense set forth in the letters of
the Pope and as ye understand. So help me Gk)d and these
holy Gospels! ' Bertrade, at the moment. of her release from
excommunication, took in person the same oath on the holy
Gospels."
According to the statement of the learned Benedictines who
studiously examined into this incident it is doubtful whether
Philip I. broke off all intercourse with Bertrade. " Two years
after his absolution, on the 10th of October, 1106, he arrived at
Angers, on a Wednesday," says a contemporary chronicler,
"accompanied by the queen named Bertrade, and was there
received by Count Foulques and by all the. Aiige vines, cleric
and laic, with great honors. The day after his arrival,
on Thureday, the monks of St. Nicholas, introduced by the
queen, presented themselves before the king, and hmnbly
prayed him, in concert with the queen, to countenance, for the
salvation of his soul and of the queen and his relatives and
friends, all acquisitions made by them in his dominions, or
that they might hereafter make, by gift or purchase, and to be .
pleased to place his seal on their titles to property. And the
king granted their request."
The most complete amongst the chroniclers of the time,
Orderic Vital, says, touching this meeting at Angers of Ber-
trade'stwo husbands, "This clever woman had, by her skil-
ful management, so i)erfectly reconciled these two rivals, that
she made them a splendid feast, got them both to sit at the
same table, had their beds prepared, the ensuing night, in the
same chamber, and ministered to them according to their
pleasure." The most judicious of the historians and statesmen
of the twelfth century, the Abbe Suger, that faithful minister
of Louis the Fat, who cannot be suspected of favoring Bertrade,
expresses himself about her in these terms: " This sprightly
and rarely accomplished woman, well versed in the art, famil-
iar to her sex, of holding captive the husbands they have out-
raged, had acquired such an empire over her first husband,
the Coimt of Anjou, in spite of the affront she had put upon
him by deserting him, that he treated her with homage as his
sovereign, often sat upon a stool at her feet, and obeyed her
wishes by a sort of enchantment."
These details are textually given as the best representation
of the place occupied, in the history of tliat time, by the morals
and private life of the kings. It would not be right, however,
264 HISTORY OF PRANGS!. [ch. xm
to draw therefrom conclusions as to the abddement of Capetiail
royalty in the eleventh century, with too great severity.
There are irregularities and scandals which the great qualities
and the personal glory of princes may cause to he not only
excused but even forgotten, though certainly the three Cape-
tians who immediately succeeded the founder of the dynasty
offered their people no such compensation; but it must not be
supposed that they had fallen into the plight of the sluggard
Merovingians or the last Carlovingians, wandering almost
without a refuge. A profound change had come over society and
royalty in France. In spite of their poHtical mediocrity and
their indolent licentiousness, Robert, Henry I., and Philip I.
were not, in the eleventh century, insignificant personages,
without authority or practical influence, whom their contem-
poraries could leave out of the account; they were great lords,
proprietors of vast domains wherein they exercised over the
population an almost absolute power; they had, it is true,
about them rivals, large proprietors, and almost absolute
sovereigns, like themselves, sometimes stronger even, materi-
ally, than themselves and more energetic or more intellectu-
ally able, whose superiors, however, they remained on two
grounds, as suzerains and as kings : their court was always the
most honored and their alliance always very much sought
after. They occupied the first rank in feudal society and a rank
unique in the body politic such as it was slowly becoming in
the midst of reminiscences and traditions of the Jewish mon-
archy, of barbaric kingship and of the Roman empire for a
while resuscitated by Charlemagne. French kingship in the
eleventh century was sole power invested with a triple charac-
ter, Gfermanic, Roman, and religious; its possessors were at
the same time the chieftains of the conquerors of the soil, the
successors of the Roman emperors and of Charlemagne, and the
laic delegates and representatives of the God of the Christians.
"Whatever were their weaknesses and their personal short-
comings, they were not the mere titularies of a power in
decay, and the kingly post was strong and full of blossom, as
events were not slow to demonstrate.
And as with the kingship, so with the commimity of France
in the eleventh century. In spite of its dislocation into petty
incoherent and turbulent associations, it was by no means in
decay. Irregularities of ambition, hatreds and quarrels amongst
neighbors and relatives, outrages on the part of princes and
peoples were incessantly renewed; but energy of character,
(3H. XIV.] CAPETIANS TO TBE TIME OF TilE CRUSADES. 266
activity of mind, indomitable will smd zeal for the liberty of
the individual were not wanting, and they exhibited them-
selves passionately and at any risk, at one time by brutal or
cynical outbursts which were followed occasionally by fervent
repentsmce and expiation, at another by acts of courageous
wisdom and disinterested piety. At the commencement of the
eleventh century, William III., coimt of Poitiers, and duke of.
Aquitaine, was one of the most honored and most potent
princes of his time ; all the sovereigns of Europe sent embassies
to him as to their peer; he every year made, by way of de-
votion, a trip to Home and was received there with the same
honors as the Emperor. He was fond of literatm-e, and gave
up to reading the early hours of the night; and scholars called
him another Maecenas. Unaffected by these worldly successes
intermingled with so much toil and so many miscalculations,
he refused the crown of Italy, when it was offered him at the
death of the Emperor Henry H., and he finished, like Charles
V. some centuries later, by going and seeking in a monastery
isolation from the world and repose. But, in the same domains
and at the end of the same century, his grandson WiUiam VII.
was the most vagabondish, dissolute, and violent of princes;
and his morals were so scandalous that the Bishop of Poitiers,
after having warned him to no purpose, considered himself
forced to excommimicate him. The duke suddenly burst into
the church, made his way through the congregation, sword in
hand, and seized the prelate by the hair, saying: ^' Thou shalt
give me absolution or die." The bishop demanded a moment
for reflection, profited by it to pronounce the form of excom-
munication, and forthwith bowing his head before the duke,
said, " And now strike !" ** I love thee not well enough to send
thee to paradise," answered the duke; and he confined himself
to depriving him of his see. For fury the Duke of Aquitaine
sometimes substituted insolent mockery. Another bishop, of
Angouleme, who was quite bald, likewise exhorted him to
mend his ways. **I will mend," quoth the duke, ** when thou
shalt comb back thy hair to thy pate." Another great lord of
the same- century, Foulques the Black, count of Anjou, at the
close of an able and glorious lifetime, had resigned to his son
Geoffrey Martel the administration of his countship. The son,
as haughty and harsh towards his father as towards his sub-
jects, took up arms against him, and bade him lay aside the
outward signs, which he still maintained, of power. The old
man in his wrath recovered the vigor and ability of his youth,
256 BlSTORt OB' ^BANOS!. [en, xiv.
and Btrove so energetically and successfully against his son
that he reduced him to such suhjection as to make him do
several miles "crawling on the ground," says the chronicle,
with a saddle on his hack, and to come and prostrate himself
at his feet. When Foulques had his son thus humhled hef ore
him, he spumed him with his foot, repeating over and over
again nothing but **Thou'rt beaten, thou'rt beaten!" "Ay,
beaten," said GteoflErey, " but by thee only, because thou art
my father; to any other I am invincible." The anger of the
old man vanished at once : he now thought only how he might
console his son for the affront put upon him, and he gave >^iTri
back his power, exhorting him only to conduct himself with
more moderation and gentleness towards his subjects. All was
inconsistency and contrast with these robust, rough, hasty
souls ; they cared little for belying themselves when they had
satisfied the passion of the moment.
The relations existing between the two great i)Owers of the
period, the laic lords and the monks, were not less bitter or
less unstable than amongst the laics themselves; and when
artifice, as often happened, was employed, it was by no means
to the exclusion of violence. About the middle of the twelfth
century, the abbey of Toumus in Burgundy had, at Louhans,
a little port where it collected salt-tax, whereof it every year
distributed the receipts to the poor during the first week in
Lent. Girard, count of M^on, established a like toll a little
distance off. The monks of Toumus complained; but he took
no notice. A long while afterwards he came to Toumus with
a splendid following, and entered the church of St. Philibert
He had stopped all alone before the altar to say his prayers,
when a monk, cross in hand, issued suddenly from behind the
altar, and, placing himself before the count, " How hast thou
the audacity," said he, "to enter my monastery and mine
house, thou that dost not hesitate to rob me of my dues?" and,
taking Girard by the hair, he threw him on the ground and
belabored him heavily. The coimt, stupefied and contrite,
acknowledged his injustice, took off the toll that he had wrong-
fully put on, and, not content with this reparation, sent to the
church of Toumus a rich carpet of golden and silken tissue.
In the middle of the eleventh century, Adhemar H., viscount
of Limoges, had in his city a quarrel of quite a different sort
with the monks of the abbey of St. Martial. The abbey had
fallen iato great looseness of discipline and morals; and the
viscount had at heart its reformation. To this end he entered
HOBERT HAD A KINDLY FEELING FOR THE WEAK AND POOR.
■■-VIOi(, LENNOX
■ *.a> [-. N > U U M DA'ilOW
C3H. XIV.] CAPETIAN8 TO THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES. 257
into concert, at a distance, with Hugh, abbot of Cliini, at that
time the most celebrated and most rpspected of the monas-
teries. The Abbot of St. Martial died. Adhemar sent for
some monks from Cluni to come to Limoges, lodged them
secretly near his x)alace, repaired to the abbey of St. Martial
after having had the chapter convoked, and called upon the
monks to proceed at once to the election of a new abbot. A
lively discussion, upon this point, arose between the viscount and
the monks. ** We are not ignorant," said one of them to him,
" that you have sent for brethren from Climi, in order to drive
us out and put them in our places; but you will not succeed."
The viscount was furious, seized by the sleeve the monk who
was inveighing, and dragged him by force out of the monas-
tery. His fellows were frightened, and took to flight; and
Adhemar immediately had the monks from Cluni sent for,
and put them in possession of the abbey. It was a ruffianly
proceeding; but the reform was popular in limoges and was
effected.
These trifling matters are faithful samples of the dominant
and fimdamental characteristic of French society during the
tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, the true epoch of the
middle ages. It was chaos and fermentation within the chaos,
the slow and rough but jwwerful and productive fermentation
of unruly Hfe. In ideas, events, and persons there was a
blending of the strongest contrasts: manners were rude and
even savage, yet souls were filled with lofty and tender aspira-
tions; the authority of religious creeds at one time was on the
point of extinction, yet at another shone forth gloriously in
opposition to the arrogance and brutality of mundane passions ;
ignorance was profound, and yet here and there, in the very-
heart of the mental darkness, gleamed bright centres of move-
ment and intellectual labor. It was the period when Abelard,
anticipating freedom of thought and of instruction, drew
together upon Mount St. Genevieve thousands of hearers
anxious to follow him in the study of the great problems of
Nature and of the destiny of man and the world. And, far away
from this throng, in the solitude of the abbey of Bee, St. Anselm
was offering to his monks a Christian and philosophical demon*
stration of the existence of Gk>d— ** faith seeking imderstand-
ing" {fidea qucerens intellectum), as he himself used to say. It
was tiae period, too, when, distressed at the Hcentiousnesd
which was spreading throughout the Church as well as lay
Bocietyi two illustrious monks, St. Bernard and St. Norbert^
258 E18T0RT OF FRANCE. ;\ [cH. xir.
not only went preaching everywhere reformation of niorsds,
but labored at and succeeded in establishing for monastic life a
system of strict discipline and severe austerity. Lastly, it was
the period when, in the kuc world, was created and developed
the most splendid fact of the middle ages, knighthood, that
noble soaring of imaginations and souls towards the ideal of
Christian virtue and soldierly honor. It is impossible to trace
in detail the origin and history of that grand fact which was
so prominent in the days to which it belonged and which is so
prominent still in the memories of men; but a clear notion
ought to be obtained of its moral character and its practical
worth. To this end a few pages shaH be borrowed from Guizot's
History of Civilization in France. Let us first look on at the
admission of a knight, such as took place in the twelfth cen-
tury. We will afterwards see what rules of conduct were im-
posed upon him, not only according to the oaths which he had
to take on becoming knight, but according to the idea formed
of knighthood by the poets of the day, those interpt^ters not
only of actual life but of men's sentiments also. We shall then
imderstand, without difficulty, what influence must have been
exercised, in the souls and lives of men, by such sentiments and
such rules, however great may have been the discrepancy be-
tween the knightly ideal and the general actions and passions
of contemporaries.
"The young man, the esquire who aspired to the title of
knight, was first stripped of his clothes and placed in a bath,
which was symboUcal of purification. On leaving the bath he
was clothed in a white tunic, which was symbolical of purity,
and a red robe, which was symbolical of the blood he was
bound to shed in the service of the faith, and a black sagum or
close-fitting coat, which was symbolical of the death which
awaited him as well as all men.
" Thus purified and clothed, the candidate observed for four
and twenty hours a strict fast. When evening came, he.
entered church, and there passed the night in prayer, some-
times alone, sometimes with a priest and sponsors, who prayed
with him. Next day, his first act was confession; after con-
fession the priest gave him the communion; after the com-
munion he attended a mass of the Holy Spirit; and, 'generally,
a sermon touching the duties of knights and of the new life he
was about to enter on. The sermon over, the candidate ad-
vanced to the altar with the knight's sword hanging from his
Ifieck. This the priest took off, blessed, and replaced upon his
cm. Jtrv.] CAPETIANB TO TBE TIME OF THE 0EUSADE8. 259
neck The candidate then went and knelt before the lord who
was to arm him knight. 'To what purpose/ the lord asked
him, 'do you desire to enter the order? If to be rich, to take
your ease and be held in honor without doing honor to knight-
hood, you are unworthy of it and would be to the order of
knighthood you received, what the simoniacal clerk is to the
prelacy.' On the young man's reply, promising to acquit him-
self well of the duties of knight, the lord granted his request.
'^ Then drew near knights and sometimes ladies to reclothe
the candidate in all his new array; and they put on him, 1, the
spurs; 2, the hauberk or coat of mail; 3, the cuirass; 4, the
armlets and gaimtlets; 5, the sword.
''He was then what was called advbbed (that is, adopted,
according to Du Cange). The lord rose up, went to him and
gave him the accolade or a^ccoUe, three blows with the flat of
the sword on the shoulder or nape of the neck, and some-
times a slap with the palm of the hand on the cheek, saying,
' In the name of Qod, St. Michael and St. George, I make thee
knight.' And he sometimes added, 'Be valiant, bold, and
loyal.'
" The young man having been thus armed knight, had his
helmet brought to him; a horse was led up for him; he leapt
on its back, generally without the help of the stirrups, and
caracoled about, brandishing his lance and making his sword
flash. Finally he went out of church and caracoled about
on the open, at the foot of the castle, in presence of the people
eager to have their share in the spectacle."
Such was what may be called the outward and material part
in the admission of knights. It shows a persistent anxiety to
associate religion with all the phases of so personal an affair;
the sacraments, the most august feature of Christianity, are
mixed up with it; and many of the ceremonies are, as far as
possible, assimilated to the administration of the sacraments.'
Let us continue our examination; let us penetrate to the very
heart of knighthood, its moral character, its ideas, the senti-
ments which it was the object to impress upon the koight.
Here again the influence of religion will be quite evident.
"The knight had to swear to twenty-six articles. These
articles, however, did not make one single formula, drawn up
at one and the same time and all together; they are a col-
lection of oaths required of knights at different epochs and in
more or less complete fashion from the eleventh to the four-
teenth century. The candidates swore, 1, to fear, reverence,
260 STSTORT OF FAANCS. [(m, xir.
and serve God religiously, to fight for the faith with all their
might, and to die a thousand deaths rather than ever renounce
Christianity; 2, to serve their sovereign-prince faithfully, and
to fight for him and fatherland right valiantly; 3, to uphold
the rights of the weaker, such as widows, orphans, and
damsels, in fair quarrrel, exposing themselves on that accoimt
according as need might he, provided it were not against their
own honor or against their king or lawful prince; 4, that they
would not injure any one maliciously, or take what was
another's, hut would rather do hattle with those who did so;
5, that gi^eed, pay, gain, or profit should never constrain them
to do any deed, but only glory and virtue; 6, that they wotild
fight for the good and advantage of the conunon weal; 7, that
they would be bound by and obey the orders of their generals
and captains who had a right to command them; 8, that they
would guard the honor, rank, and order of their comrades,
and that they would neither by arrogance nor by force conmiit
any trespfiB against any one of them; 9, that they would never
fight in companies against one, and that they would eschew
all tricks and artifices; 10, that they would wear but one
sword, unless they had to fight against two or more; 11, that
in toiumey or other sportive contest they would never use the
point of their swords; 12, that beiiig taken prisoner in a
toiumey, they would be bound, on their faith and honor, to
perform in every point the conditions of capture, besides being
bound to give up to the victors their arms and horses, if it
seemed good to take them, and being disabled from fighting in
war or elsewhere without their leave; 13, that they would
keep faith inviolably with all the world, and especially with
their comirades, upholding their honor and advantage, wholly,
in their absence; 14, that they would love and honor one
another, and aid and succor one another whenever occasion
offered; 15, that, having made vow, or promise to go on any
quest or novel adventure, they would never put off their arms,
save for the night's rest; 16, that in pursuit of their quest or
adventure they would not ^un bad and perilous passes, nor
turn aside from the straight road for fear of encountering
powerful knights or monsters or wild beasts or other hindrance
such as the body and courage of a single man might tackle;
17, that they would never take wage or pay from any foreign
prince; 18, that in command of troops of men-at-arms, they
would live in the utmost possible order and discipline, and
especially in their own country, where they would never suffer
CH. XIV]. CAPETIAN8 TO THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES. 261
any harm or violence to be done; 19, that if they were bound
to escort dame or damsel, they would serve her, protect her,
and save her from all danger and insult, or die in the attempt;
20, that they would never offer violence to dame or damsel,
though they had won her by deeds of arms, against her will
and consent; 21, that, being challenged to equal combat, they
would not refuse, without wound, sickness, or other reasonable
hindrance; 22, that, having imdertaken to carry out any
enterprise, they would devote to it night and day, tmless they
were called away for the service of their king and country;
23, that if they made a vow to acquire any honor, they would
not draw back without having attained either it or its equiva-
lent; 24, that they would be faithful keepers of their word and
pledged faith, and that, having become prisoners in fair war-
fare, they would pay to the uttermost the promised ransom,
or return to prison, at the day and hour agreed upon, on
pain of being proclaimed infamous and perjured; 25, that on
returning to the court of their sovereign, they would render
a true account of their adventures, ev^en though they had
sometimes been worsted, to the king and the registrar of the
order, on pain of being deprived of the order of knighthood ;
26, that above all things they would be faithful, courteous and
humble, and would never be wanting to their word for any
harm or loss that might accrue to them."
It is needless to point out that in this series of oaths, these
obligations imposed upon the knights, there is a moral develop-
ment very superior to that of the kdc society of the period.
Moral notions so lofty, so delicate, so scrupulous, and so
humane, emanated clearly from the Christian clergy. Only
the clergy thought thus about the duties and the relations of
mankind; and their influence was employed in directing
towards the accomplishment of such duties, towards the integ-
rity of such relations, the ideas and customs engendered by
knighthood. It had not been instituted with so pious and
deep a design, for the protection of the weak, and maintenance
of justice, and the reformation of morals; it had been, at its
origin and in its earliest features, a natural consequence of
feudal relations and warlike life, a confirmation of the bonds
established and the sentiments aroused between different mas-
ters in the same country and comrades with the same destinies.
The clergy promptly saw what might be deduced from such a
fact ; and they made of it a means of establishing more peace-
fulness in society, and in the conduct of individuals a more
HI8T0BT OF FRANCE, [ch. xiv.
rigid morality. This was the general work they pursued ; and,
if it were convenient to study the matter more closely, we
might see, in the canons of councils from the eleventh to the
fourteenth centuries, the Church exerting herself to develope
more and more in this order of knighthood; this institution of
an essentially warlike origin, the moral and civilizing char-
acter of which a glimpse has just been caught in the docu-
ments of knighthood itself.
In proportion as knighthood appeared more and more in this
simultaneously warlike, religious, and moral character, it
more and more gained power over the imagination of men,
and just as it had became closely interwoven with their creeds,
it soon become the ideal of their thoughts, the source of their
noblest pleasures. Poetry, like religion, took hold of it.
From the eleventh century onwards, knighthood, its cere-
monies, its duties, and its adventures, were the mine from
which the poets drew in order to charm the people, in order to
satisfy and excite at the same time that yearning of the soul,
that need of events more varied and more captivating, and of
emotions more exalted and more pure than real life could
furnish. In the springtide of communities poetry is not
merely a pleasure and a pastime for a nation ; it is a source of
progress; it elevates and developes the moral nature of men at
the same time that it amuses them and stirs them deeply.
We have just seen what oaths were taken by the knights and
administered by the priests; and now, here is an ancient
ballad by Eustache Deschamps, a poet of the fourteenth cen-
tury, from which it will be seen that poets impressed upon
knights the same duties and the same virtues, and that the
influence of poetry had the same aim as that of religion:
i:
Amend your lives, ye who would fain
The order of the knights attain;
Devoutly watch, devoutly pray;
From pride and sin, oh, turn away!
Shun all that's base; the Church defend;
Be the widow's and the orphan's friend;
Be good and leal; take naught by might;
Be bold and guard the people's right;—
This is the rule for the gallant knight.
n.
Be meek of heart; work day by day;
Tread, ever tread, the knightly way;
Make lawful war; long travel dare;
Tourney and joust for lady fair;
CH. XIV.] CAPET1AN8 TO THE TIME OF TEE CRUSADES. 368
To everlasting honor ding.
That none the barbs of blame may fling;
Be never slack in work or fight;
Be ever least in self's own sight \—
This is the rule for the gallant knight
m.
Love the liege lord; with might and malq
His rights above all else miiintain,
Be open-handed, just and true;
The paths of upright men pursue;
No deaf ear to their precepts turn ;
The prowess of the valiant learn ;
That ye may do things great and bright,
As did gi'eat Alexander hight;—
This is the rule for the gallant knight.
A great deal has been said to the effect that all this is sheer
poetry, a beautiful chimera without any resemblance to real-
ity. Indeed, it has just been i:emarked here, that the three
centuries under consideration, the middle ages, were, in point
of fact, one of the most brutal, most ruffianly epochs in history,
one of those wherein we encounter most crimes and violence ;
wherein the public peace was most incessantly troubled ; and
wherein the greatest hcentiousness in morals prevailed. Never-
theless it cannot be denied that side by side with these gross
and barbarous morals, this social disorder, there existed
knightly morality and knightly poetry. We have moral
records confronting ruffiantly deeds; and the contrast is
shocking but real. It is exactly this contrast which makes
the great and fundamental characteristic of the middle
ages. Let us turn our eyes towards other communities,
towards the earliest stages, for instance, of Greek society,
towards that heroic age of which Homer's poems are the
faithful reflection. There is nothing there like the con-
trasts by which we are struck in the middle ages. We dp
not see that, at the period and amongst the people of the
Homeric poems, there was abroad in the air or had penetrated
into the imaginations of men any idea more lofty or more
pure than their e very-day actions; the heroes of Homer seem
to have no misgiving about their brutishness, their ferocity,
their greed, their egotism, there is nothing in their souls
superior to the deeids of their lives. In the France of the
middle ages, on the contrary, though practically crimes and
disorders, moral and social evils abound, yet men have in
their souls and their imaghiations loftier and purer instincts
and desires; their notions of virtue and their ideas of justice
264 EI8T0B7 OF FBANOB. [ch. xv.
are very superior to the practice pursued around them and
amongst themselves; a certain moral ideal hovers above this
low and tumultuous community and attracts the notice and
obtains the regard of men in whose life it is but very faintly
reflected. The Christian religion, undoubtedly, is, if not the
only, at any rate the principal cause of this great fact ; for its
particular characteristic i^ to arouse amongst men a lofty
moral ambition by keeping constantly before their eyes a type
infinitely beyond the reach of human nature and yet pro-
foundly sympathetic with it. To Christianity it was that the
middle ages owed knighthood, that institution which, in the
midst of anarchy and barbarism, gave a poetical and moral
beauty to the period. It was feudal knighthood and Chris-
tianity together which produced the two great and glorious
events of those times, the Norman conquest of England and
the Crusades.
CHAPTER XV.
CONQUEST OF ENGLAND BY THE NOBMAN0.
At the beginning of the eleventh century, Robert, called
''the Magnificent," the fifth in succession from the great chief-
tain Rollo who had established the Northmen in France, was
duke of Normandy. To the nickname he earned by his noble-
ness and liberality some chronicles have added another and
call him " Robert the Devil," by reason of his reckless and vio-
lent deeds of audacity, whether in private life or in warlike
expeditions. Hence a lively controversy amongst the learned
upon the question of deciding to which Robert to apply the
latter epithet. Some persist in assigning it to the Duke of
Normandy; others seek for some other Robert upon whom to
foist it. However that may be, in 1034 or 1035, after having
led a fair Uf e enough from the poUtical point of view, but one
full of turbulence and moral irregularity, Duke Robert resolved
to undertake, bare-footed and staff in hand, a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem, ''to expiate his sins if God would deign to con-
sent thereto." The Norman prelates cmd bai^ons, having been
summoned around him, conjured him to renounce his plan;
for to what troubles and perils would not his dominions be ex-
posed without lord or assured successor? " By my faith," said
CH. XV.] COJ^QUEST OF ENGLAND BT THE NORMANS. 266
Bobert, ''I will not leave ye lordless. I have a young bastard
who will grow up, please Gk>d, and of whose good qualities I
have great hope. Take him, I pray you, for lord. That he
was not born in wedlock matters Uttle to you ; he will be none
the less able in battle, or at court, or in the palace, or to ren-
der you justice. I make him my heir and I hold him seised,
from this present, of the whole duchy of Normandy." And
they who were present assented, but not without objection and
disquietude.
There were certainly ample reason for objection and dis-
quietude. Not only was it a child of eight years of age to
whom Duke Robert, at setting out on his pious pilgrimage, was
leaving Normandy; but this child had been pronounced bas-
tard by the duke his father at the moment of taking him for
his heir. Nine or ten years before, at Falaise, his favorite
residence, Robert had met, according to some at a people^s
dance, according to others on the banks of a stream where she
was washing linen with her companions, a young girl named
Harlette or Harl^ve, a daughter of a tanner in the town, where
they show to this day, it is said, the window from which the
duke saw her for the first time. She pleased his fancy and
was not more straight-laced than the duke was scrupidous;
and Fulbert, the tanner, kept but Uttle watch over his daugh-
ter. Robert gave the son bom to him in 1027 the name of his
glorious ancestor William Longsword, the son and successor
of RoUo. The child was reared, according to some, in his fa-
ther's palace, ^^ right honorably as if he had been bom in wed-
lock," but, according to others, in the house of his grandfather
the tanner; and one of the neighboring burgesses, as he saw
passing one of the principal Norman lords, William de Bel-
lesme, sumamed **Tiie Fierce Talvas," stoppiad him, ironically
saying, **Come in, my lord, and admire your suzerain's son."
The origin of young William was in every mouth and gave
occasion for familiar allusions more often insulting than flat-
tering. The epithet bastardy was, so to speak, incorporated
with his name; and we cannot be astonished that it lived in
history, for, in the height of his power, he sometimes accepted
it proudly, calling himself, in several of his charters, William
the Bastard {Qvlielmua Noihus), He showed himself to be
none the less susceptible on this point when in 1048, during the
seige of Alengon, the domain of the Lord de Bellesme, the inr
habitants himg from their walls hides all raw and covered with
dirt, which they shook when they caught sight of William,
mSTORT OF FRANCE. [ch. xv.
with cries of " Plenty of work for the tanner !" ** By the glory
of Gkxi," cried William, **they shall i»y me dear for this in-
solent bravery I'^ After an assault several of the beseiged w^ere
taken prisoners; and he had their eyes pulled out and their
feet and hands cut off, and shot from his siege-machines these
mutilated members over the walls of the city.
Nothwithstanding his recklessness and his b^ing engrossed
in his pilgrimage, Duke Robert had taken some care for the
situation in which he was leaving his son, and some measures
to lessen its x>erils. He had appointed regent of Normandy,
during William's minority, his cousin Alain V., duke of Brit-
tany, whose sagacity and friendship he had proved; and he
had confided the personal guardianship of the child not to his
mother Harlette, who was left very much out in the cold, but
to one of his most trusty officers, Gilbert Crespon, count of
Brionne; and the strong castle of Vaudreuil, the first founda-
tion of which dated back, it was said, to Queen Fred^gonde,
was assigned for the usual residence of the young duke,
Lastly, to confirm with brilliancy his son's right as his suc-
cessor to the duchy of Normandy and to assure him a power-
ful ally, Robert took him, himself, to the court of his suzerain,
Henry I., king of France, who recognized the title of William
the Bastard, and allowed him to take the oath of allegiance
and homage. Having thus prepared, as best he could, for his
son's future, Robert set out on his pilgrimage. He visited
Rome and Constantinople, every where displaying his mag-
nificence together with his humfiity. He fell ill from sheer fa-
tigue whilst crossing Asia Minor and was obliged to be carried
in a litter by ioxxr negroes. " Go and tell them at home," said
he to a Norman pilgrim he met returning from the Holy Land,
"that you saw me being carried to Paradise by four devils."
On arriving at Jerusalem, where he was received with great
attention by the Mussulman emir in command there, he dis-
charged himself of his pious vow, and took the road back to
Europe. But he was XK>isoned, by whom or for what motive is
not clearly known, at Nicsea in Bithynia, where he was buried
in the basilica of St. Mary, an honor, says the chronicle, which
had never been accorded to any body.
From 1035 to 1042, during William's minority, Normandy
was a prey to the robber-like ambition, the local quarrels, and
the turbulent and brutal passions of a host of i>etty castle-
holders nearly always at war, either amongst themselves or
with the yomjg chieftain whose pow^r they did not fear an4
OH. XV.] CONQUEST OF ENGLAND BY THE NORMANS. 267
whose rights they disputed. In vain did Duke AJain of Brit-
tany, in his capacity as regent appointed by Duke Bobert, at.
tempt to re-establish order; and just when he seemed on the
road to success he was poisoned by those who could not suc-
ceed in beating him. Henry I., king of France, being ill-dis-
posed at bottom towards his Norman neighbors and their
yoimg duke, for all that he had acknowledged him, profited by
this anarchy to filch from him certain portions of territory.
Attacks without warning, f esuihil murders, implacable ven-
geance, and sanguinary disturbances in the towns were evils
which became common and spread. The clergy strove with
courageous perseverance against fthe vices and crimes of the
X)eriod. The bishops convoked councils in their diocesee; the
laic lords and even the people were summoned to them; the
peoQe of Chd was proclaimed; and the priests, having in their
hands lighted tapers, turned them towards the ground and ex-
tinguished them, whilst the populace rei)eated in chorus, '*8o
may God extinguish the joys of those who refuse to observe
I)eace and justice." The majority, however, of the Norman
lords refused to enter into the engagement. In default of
peace it was necessary to be content with the the truce of Chd.
It commenced on Wednesday evening at sunset and concluded
on Monday at sunrise. During the four days and five nights
comprised in this interval, all aggression was forbidden; no
slaying, wounding, pillaging or burning could take place; but
from sunrise on Monday to sunset on Wednesday, for three
days and two nights, any violence became allowable, any
crime might recommence.
Meanwhile William was growing up, and the omens that had
been drawn from his early youth raised the popular hopes.
It was rei)orted that at his very birth, when the midwife had
put him unswaddled on a little heap of straw, he had wriggled
about and drawn together the straw with his hands, insomuch
that the midwife said, ''By my faith, this child beginneth full
young to take and heap up: I know not what he will not do
when he is grown." At a little later period, when a burgess
of FaJaise drew the attention of the Lord William de Bellesme
to the gay and sturdy lad as he played amongst his mates, the
fierce vassal muttered between his teeth, "Accursed be thou
of Gk)d! for I be certain that by thee mine honors will be low-
ered." The child on becoming man was handsomer and hand-
somer, ''and so lively and spirited that it seemed to all a mar-
vel." Amongst his mates, command became soon a habit with
368 HISTORY OF FRANOB. [ch. xv.
him; he made them form line of battle, he gave them the word
of command, and he constituted himself their judge in all
quarrels. At a still later period, having often heard talk el
revolts excited against him and of disorders which troubled
the country, he was moved in consequence to fits of violent
irritation, which, however, he learned instinctively to hide,
'^and in his child's heart," says the chronicle, ^'he had welling
up an the vigor of a man to teach the Normans to forbear from
all acts of irregularity." At fifteen years of age, in 1042, he
demanded to be armed knight and to fulfil all forms necessary
*'f(Kr having the right to serve and command in all ranks.''
These forms were in Nom^dy, by a relic, it is said, of the
Danish and pagan customs, more connected with war and less
with religion than elsewhere; the young candidates were not
bound to confess, to spend a vigil in the church, and to receive
from the priest's hands the sword he had consecrated on. the
altar; it was even the custom to say that ''he whose sword
had been girded upon him by a long-robed cleric was no true
knight, but a dt without spirit." The day on which William
for the first time donned tiis armor was for his servants and all
the spectators a gala day. He was so taU, so manly in face,
and so proud of bearing, that ''it was a sight both pleasant and
terrible to see him guidkig his horse's career, flashing with his
sword, gleaming with his shield, and threatening with his
casque and javelins." His first act of government was a rig-
orous decree against such as should be guilty of murder, arson,
and pillage; but he at the same time granted an amnesty for
past revolts, on condition of fealty and obedience for the
future.
For the establishment, however, of a young and disputed
authority there is need of something more than brilliant cere-
monies and words partly minatory and partly coaxing. Will-
iam had to show what he was made of. A conspiracy was
formed against him in the heart of his feudal court and almost of
his family. He had given kindly welcome to his cousin Guy of
Burgundy, and had even bestowed on him as a fief the count-
ships of Vernon and Brionne. In 1044 the young duke was at
Valognes; when suddenly, at midnight, one of his trustiest
servants, Golet, his fool, such as the great lords of the time
kept, knocked at the door of his chamber, crying, "Open,
open, my lord duke : fiy , fiy , or you are lost. They are armed,
they are getting ready; to tarry is death." William did not
hesitate; he^t up,;ran to;;the stables^ saddled bis horse with
CH. XV.] €0K(IUE8T OF ENGL AM) BY THE NORMANB. 360
his own hands, started off, f oUowed a road called to this day
ths dyke's way^ and reached Falaise as a place of safety. There
news came to him that the conspiracy was taJking the form of
insurrection, and that the rebels were seizing his domains.
William showed no more hesitation at Falaise than at Va-
lognes ; he started off at once, repaired to Poissy, where Henry
I., king of France was then residing, and claimed, as vassal,
the help of his suzerain against traitors. Henry, who himself
was brave, was touched by this bold confidence, and promised
his young vassal effectual support. William returned to Nor-
mandy, summoned his lieg^, and took the field promptly.
King Henry joined him at Argence, with a body of three
thousand men-at-arms, and a battle took place on the 10th of
August, 1047, at Val des Dimes, three leagues from Caen. It
was very hotly contested. King Henry, unhorsed by a lance
thrust, ran a risk of his life; but he remounted and valiantly
returned to the melley. William dashed in wherever the fight
was thickest, showing himself every where as able in command
as ready to expose himself. A Norman lord, Baoul de Tesson,
held aloof with a troop of one hundred and forty knights.
"Who is he that bides yonder motionless?" asked the French
kiQg of the young duke. '^ It is the banner of Baoul de Tes-
son, " answered WiUiam ; " I wot not that he hath aught against
me." But, though he had no personal grievance, Haoul de
Tesson had joined the insurgents, and sworn that he would be
the first to strike the duke in the conflict. Thinking better of
it, and perceiving William from afar, he pricked towards him,
and taking off his glove struck him gently on the shoulder,
saying, "I swore to strike you, and so I am quit: but fear
nothing more from me." "Thanks, Raoul," said William;
"be well disposed, I pray you." Baoul waited until the two
armies were at grijw, and when he saw which way victory was
inclined he hasted to contribute thereto. It was decisive : and
William the Bastard returned to Val des Dunes really Duke of
Normandy.
He made vigorous but not cruel use of his victory. He de-
molished his enemies' strong castles, magazines as they were
for pillage no less than bulwarks of feudal independence; but
there is nothing to show that he indulged in violence towards
persons. He was even generous to the chief concoctor of the
plot, Guy of Burgundy. He took from him the countsliips of
Yemon and Brionne, but permitted him still to live at his
court, a place which the Burgundian found himself too ill at
270 SI8T0RT OF FRANCS, [ch. xr.
ease to remain in, so he returned to Burgundy, to conspire
against bis own eldest brother. William was stem without
hatred and merciful without kindliness, only thinking which '
of the two might promote or retard his success, gentleness or
severity.
There soon came an opportunity for him to return to the
King of France the kindness he had received. Geoffrey Mar-
tel, duke of Anjou, being ambitious cmd turbulent beyond the
measure of his power,. got embroiled with the king his suze-
rain; and war broke out between them. The Duke of Nor-
mandy went to the aid of King Henry and made his success
certain, which cost the duke the fierce hostility of. the Count
of Anjou and a four years' war with that inconvenient neigh-
bor; a war full of dangerous incidents, wherein WilliamL
enhanced his character, already great, for personal valor. In
an ambuscade laid for him by GreoflErey Martel he lost some of
his best knights, " whereat he was so wrath," says a chronicle,
" that he galloped down with such force upon Greoffrey, and
struck him in such wise with his sword that he dinted his
helm, cut through his hood, lopped off his ear, and with the
same blow felled him to earth. But the count was lifted up
and remounted, and so fled away."
William made rapid advances both as prince and as man.
Without being austere in his private life, he was regular in
his habits, and patronized order and respectability in his
household as well as in his dominions. He resolved to
marry to his own honor, and to the promotion of his great-
ness. Baldwin the Debonnair, coimt of Flanders, one of the
most pow;erful lords of the day, had a daughter, Matilda,
** beautiful, well-informed, firm in the faith, a model of virtue
and modesty." William asked her hand in marriage. Ma-
tilda refused, saying, **I would liefer be veiled mm than
given in marriage to a bastard." Hurt as he was, William
did not give up. He was even more persevering than suscep-
tible ; but he knew that be must get still greater, and make an
impression upon a young girl's imagination by the splendor of
his fame and power. Some years later, being firmly estab-
lished in Normandy, dreaded by all his neighbors, and already
showing some f oresbadowings of his design upon England, he
renewed his matrimonial quest in Flanders, but after so
strange a fashion that, in spite of contemporary testimony,
several of the modem historians, in their zeal, even at so
distant a period, for observance of the proprieties, reject as
CH. XV.] CONQUEST OF ENGLAND BY THE NORMANS, 271
fabulous tbe story which is here related on the authority of
the most detailed account amongst all the chronicles which
contain it. '^ A little after that Duke William had heard how
the damsel had made answer, he took of his folk, and went
privily to liUe, where the Duke of Flanders and his wife and
his daughter then were. He entered into the hall, and, pass-
ing on as if to do some business, went into the countess's
chamber, and there fotmd the damsel daughter of Count
Baldwin. He took her by the tresses, dragged her round the
chamber, trampled her under foot, and did beat her soundly.
Then he strode forth from the chamber, leapt upon his horse,
which was being held for him before the hall, struck in his
spurs, and went his way. At this deed was Count Baldwin
much enraged; and when matters had thus remained a while,
Duke William sent once more to Count Baldwin to parley
again of the marriage. The count soimded his daughter on
the subject, and she answered that it pleased her well. So the
nuptials took place with very great joy. And after the afore-
said matters. Count Baldwin, laughing withal, asked his
daughter, wherefore she had so lightly accepted the marriage
she had aforetime so cruelly refused. And she answered that
she did not then know the duke so well as she did now; for,
said she, if he had not great heart and high emprise, he had
not been so bold as to dare come and beat me in my father's
chamber."
Amongst the historians who treat this story as a romantic
and untruthlike fable, some believe themselves to have dis-
covered, in divers documents of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, circumstances almost equally singular as regards
the cause of the obstacles met with at first by Duke William
in his pretensions to the hand of Princess Matilda, and as
regards the motive for the first refusal on the part of Matilda
herself. According to some, the Flemish princess had con-
ceived a strong passion for a noble Saxon, Brihtric Meaw, who
had been sent by King Edward the Confessor to the court of
Flanders, and who was remarkable for his beauty. She
wished to marry him, but the handsome Saxon was not will-
ing; and Matilda at first gave way to violent grief on that
accotmt, and afterwards, when she became queen of England,
to vindictive hatred, the weight of which she made him feel
severely. Other writers go still farther, and say that, before
beiug sought in marriage by William, Matilda had not fallen
in love with a handsome Saxon, but had actually married a
273 ' maTORT OV VRAHtm. [CH. XV.
FlemiBh burgess, named Gerbod, patron of the church of St.
Bertin, at St. Omer, and that she had by him two and perhaps
three children, traces of whom recur, it is said, under the
reign of William, king of England. There is no occasion to
enter upon the learned controversies of which these different
allegations have been the cause; it is sufficient to say that
they have led to nothing but obscurity, contradiction, and
doubt, and that there is more moral verisimilitude in the
account just given, especially in Matilda's first prejudice
against marriage with a bastard and in her conversation with
her father. Count Baldwin, when she had changed her opinion
upon the subject. Independently of the testimony of several
chroniclers, French and English, this tradition is mentioned
with all the simplicity of belief, in one of the principal Flem-
ish chronicles; and as to the ruffianly gallantry employed by
William to win his bride, there is nothing in it very singular,
considering the habits of the time, and we meet with more
than one example of adventures if not exactly similar, at any
rate very analogous.
However that may be, this marriage brought William an
unexpected opportimity of entering into personal relations
with one of the most distinguished men of his age, and a man
destined to become one of his own most intimate advisers.
In 1049, at the council of Rheims, Pope Leo IX., on political
grounds rather than because of a prohibited degree of relation-
ship, had opposed the marriage of the Duke of Normandy
with the daughter of the Duke of Flanders, and had ih*o-
nounced his veto upon it. William took no heed ; and, in 1062
or 1053, his marriage was celebrated at Bouen vith great
pomp; but this ecclesiastical veto weighed upon his mind, and
he sought some means of getting it taken off. A learned
Italian, Lanfranc, a jurisconsult of some fame already,
whilst travelling in France and repairing from Avranches to
Rouen, was stopped near Brionne by brigands, who, having
plundered him, left him, with his eyes bandaged, in a forest.
His cries attracted the attention of passers-by, who took him
to a neighboring monastery, but lately founded by a pious
Norman knight retired from the world. Lanfranc was re-
ceived in it, became a monk of it, was elected its prior,
attracted to it by his learned teaching a host of pupils, and
won therein his own great renown whilst laying the founda-
tion for that of the abbey of Bee, which was destined to be
carried still higher by one of his disciples, St. Anselm. Lan*
THE "ACCOLADE.'
cs. XV.] CONQUEST OF ENGLAND BT THE NORMANS. 273
franc was eloquent, great in dialectics, of a sprightly wit and
lively in repartee. Belying Mpon the pope's decision, he spoke
ill of William's marriage with Matilda. William was in-
formed of this, and in a fit of despotic anger, ordered Lan-
franoe to be driven from the monastery and banished from
Normandy, and even, it is said, the dependency, which he
inhabited as prior of the abbey, to be burnt, i The order was
executed; and Lanfranc set out, moimted on. a sorry little
horse given him, no doubt, by the abbey. By what chance is
not known, but probably on a himting-party , his favorite diver-
sion, William, with his retinue, happened to cross the road
which Lanfranc was slowly pursuing. **My lord," said the
monk, addressing him, *^ I am obeying your orders; I am go-
ing away, but my horse is a sorry beast ; if you wiU give me a
better one, I will go faster." William halted, entered into con-
versation with Lanfranc, let him stay, and sent him back with
a present to his abbey. A little while afterwards Lanfranc
was at Home, and defended before Pope- Victor II. William's
marriage with Matilda: he was successful, and the pope took
off the veto on the sole condition that the couple, in sign of
penitence, should each foimd a religious house. Matilda, ac-
cordingly, founded at Caen, for women, the abbey of the Holy
Trinity; and William, for men, that of St. Stephen. Lanfranc
was the first abbot of the latter; and, when William became
king of England, Lanfranc was made Archbishop of Canter-
bury and primate of the Church of England, as well as privy
ootmsellor of his king. William excelled in the art, so essen-
tial to government, of promptly recognizing the worth of men,
and of appropriating their influence to himself whilst exerting
his own over them.
. About the same time he gave his contemporaries, princes
and peoples, new proofs of his ability and power. Henry I.,
king of France, growing more and more disquieted at and jeal-
ous of the Duke of Normandy's ascendancy, secretly excited
against him opposition and even revolt in his dominions. These
dealings led to open war between the suzerain and the vassal,
and the war concluded with two battles won by William, one
at Mortemer near Neuch^tel in Bray, the other at Varayille
near Troam. ** After which," said William himself, "King
Henry never passed a night tranquilly on my ground." In
1059 peace was concluded between the two princes. Henry I.
died almost immediately afterwards, and, on the 25th of
August, 1060, his son Philip I. succeeded him, under the re-
274 HISTORY OF FRAKCSI. [ch. XIT.
gency of Baldwin, count of Flanders, father of the Duchess
Matilda. Duke William was present in state at the coronation
of the new king of France, lent him effectual assistance against
the revolts which took place in Gkwcony, re-entered Normandy
for the purpose of holding at Caen, in 1061, the Estates of his
duchy, and at that time puhhshed the famous decree ohserved
long after him, under the name of the law of curfew^ which
ordered 'Hhat every evening the hell should he rung in all
parishes to warn every one to prayer, and house-closing, and
no more running ahout the streets."
The passion for orderliness in his dominion did not cool his
ardor for conquest. In 1063, after the death of his young
neighhor Herhert II., count of Maine, William took possession
of this heautiful countship; not without , some opposition on
the part of the inhabitants, nor without suspicion of having
poisoned his rival, Walter, count of Yezin. It is said that af-
ter this conquest William meditated that of Brittany; but
there is every indication that he had formed a far vaster design,
and that the day of its execution was approaching.
From the time of Hollo's settlement in Normandy, the com-
munications of the Normans with England had become more
and more frequent, and important for the two countries. The
success of the invasions of the Danes in England in the tenth
century, and the reigns of three kings of the Danish line had
obliged the princes of Saxon race to take refuge in Normandy,
the duke of which, Eichard I., had given his daughter Emma
in marriage .to their grandfather, Ethelred 11. When, at the
death of the last Danish king, Hardicanute, the Saxon prince
Edward ascended the throne of his fathers, he had passed
twenty-seven years of exile in Normandy, and he returned to
England ^^ almost a stranger," in the words of the chronicles,
to the country of his ancestors; far more Norman than Saxon
in his manners, tastes and language, and surrounded by Nor-
mans, whose numbers and prestige under his reign increased
from day to day. A hot rivalry, nationally as well as courtly,
grew up between them and the Saxons. At the head of these
latter was Godwin, count of Kent, and his five sons, the eldest
of whom, Harold, weis destined before long to bear the whole
brunt of the struggle. Between these powerful rivals, Edward
the Confessor, a pacific, pious, gentle, and undecided king,
wavered incessantly; at one time trying to resist, and at an-
other compelled to yield to the pretensions and seditions by
which he was beset. In 1051 the Saxon party and its head,
Ctt. XV.] CONQUEST OF ItNQLAND BY THE NORMANS, 276
Godwin, had risea in revolt. Duke William, no invitation,
perhaps, from King Edward, paid a brilliant visit to England,
where he found Normans every where established and power-
ful, in Church as well as in State; in command of the fleets,
ports, and principal English places. King Edward received
him '^ as his own son; gave him arms, horses, hounds and
hawking birds," and sent him home full of presents and hopes.
The chronicler, Ingulf, who accompanied William on his re-
turn to Normandy, and remained attached to him as private
s^retary, affirms that, during this visit, not only was there no
question, between King Edward and the Duke of Normandy, of
the latter's possible succession to the throne of England, but
that never as yet had this probability occupied the attention of
William.
It is very doubtful whether William had said nothing upon
the subject to King Edward at that time; and it is certain,
from William's own testimony, that he had for a long while
been thinking about it. Four years after this visit of the duke
to England, King Edward was reconciled to and lived on good
terms with the family of the Godwins. Their father was dead,
and the eldest son, Harold, asked the king's permission to go to
Normandy and claim the release of his brother and nephew,
who had been left as hostages in the keeping of Duke William.
The king did not approve of the project. **I have no wish to
constrain thee," said he to Harold: '* but if thou go, it will be
without my consent: and, assuredly, thy trip will bring some
misfortune upon thee and oiur countiy. I know Duke William
and his crafty spirit; he hates thee, and will grant thee naught
imless he see his advantage therefrom. The only way to make
him give up the hostages will be to send some other than thy-
self. " Harold, however, persisted and went. William received
him with apparent cordiality, promised him the release of the
two hostages, escorted him and his comrades from castle to
castle, and from entertainment to entertainment, made them
knights of the grand Norman order, and even invited them,
**by way of trying their new spurs," to accompany him on a
little warlike expedition he was about to undertake in Brittany.
Harold and his comrades behaved gallantly: and he and Will-
iam shared the same tent and the same table. On returning,
as they trotted side by side, William turned the conversation
upon his youthful connection with the king of England. '^When
Edward and I," said he to the Saxon, '* were living like brothers
under the same roof, he promised, if ever he became King of
276 msTORT OR MtAHrOB. [ca. xr.
England, to make me heir to his kingdom; I should very much
like th^, Harold, to help me to realize this promise; and he
assured that, if hy thy aid I obtain the kingdom, whatsoever
thou askest of me I will grant it forthwith." Harold, in sur-
prise and confusion, answered by an assent which he tried to
make as vague as possible. William took it as positive. *' Since
thou dost consent to serve me," said he, ''thou must engage to
fortify the caatle of Dover, dig a well of fresh Water there, and
put it into the hands of my men-at-arms; thou must also give
me thy sister to be married to one of my barons, and thou must
thyself espouse my daughter Ad^e." Harold, ''not witting,"
says the chronicler, ' ' how to escape from this pressing danger, "
promised all the duke asked of him, reckoning, doubtless, on
disregarding his engagement; and for the moment William
asked y^^rn nothing more.
But a few days afterwards he summoned, at Avranches ac-
cording to some, and at Bayeux according to others, and, more
probably still, at Bonneville-sur-Touques, his Norman barons;
and, in the midst of this assembly, at which Harold was present,
William, seated with his naked sword in his hand, caused to be
brought and placed upon a table covered with cloth of gold two
reliquaries. " Harold," said he, " I call upon thee, in presence
of this noble assemblage, to confirm by oath the promises thou
didst make me, to wit, to aid me to obtain the kingdom of
England after the death of King Edward, to espouse my
daughter Ad^e, and to send me thy sister to be married to one
of my i)eople " Harold, who had not expected this public sum-
mons, nevertheless did not hesitate any more than he had hesi-
tated in his private conversation with William; he drew near,
laid his hand on the two reliquaries and swore to observe, to
the best of his pdwer, his agreement with the duke, should he
live and God help. "Gk)d helpl" repeated those who were
present. William made a sign; the cloth of gold was removed
and there was discovered a tub filled to the edge with bones
and relics of all the saints that could be got together. The
chronicler-poet, Eobert Wace, who, alone and long afterwards,
recounts this last particular, adds that Harold was visibly
troubled at sight of this saintly heap ; but he had sworn. It is
honorable to human nature not to be indifferent to oaths even
when those who exact them have but small reliance upon them,
and when he who takes them has but small intention of keeping
them. And so Harold departed laden with presents, leaving
William satisfied but not over-confident.
CH. XV.] CONQUEST OF ENGLAND BY THE NORMANS, 277
When, on returning to England, Harold told King Edward
what h€ul passed between William and himself: ''Did I not
warn thee," said the king, *' that I knew William, and that thy
journey would bring great misfortunes upon thyself and upon
our nation? Grant Heaven that those misfortimes come not
during my life !" The king's wish was not granted. He fell ill ;
and on the 5th of January, 1066, he lay on his couch almost at
the point of death. Harold and his kindred entered the cham-
ber, and prayed the king to name a successor by whom the
kingdom might be governed securely. "Ye know," said Ed-
ward, ''that I have left my kingdom to the Duke of Normandy;
and are there not here, among ye, those who have sworn to as-
sure his succession?" Harold advanced, and once more asked
the king on whom the crown should (Revolve. ' ' Take it, if it is
thy wish, Harold," said Edward; "but the gift will be thy
ruin; against the duke and his barons thy power will not suf-
fice. V Harold declared that he feared neither the Norman nor
any other foe. The kihg, vexed at this importunity, turned
TOimd in his bed, saying, " Let the English make king of whom
they win, Harold or another; /consent;" and shortly after ex-
pired. The very day after the celebration of his obsequies,
Harold was proclaimed king by his partisans, amidst no small
public disqmetude, and Aldred, archbishop of York, lost no
time in anointing him.
William was in his park of Rouvray, near Rouen, trying a
bow and arrows for the chase, when a faithful servant arrived
from England, to tell him that Edward was dead and Harold
proclaimed king. William gave his bow to one of his people,
and went back to his palace at Rouen, where he paced about in
silence, sitting down, rising up, leaning upon a bench, without
opening his lips and without any one of his x)eople's daring to
address a word to him.' There entered his seneschal William
de Breteuil, of whom "What ails the duke?" asked they who
were present. "Ye will soon know," answered he. Then
going up to the duke, he said, "Wherefore conceal your tid-
ings, my lord? All the city knows that King Edward is dead;
and that Harold has broken his oath to you, and had himself
crowned king." " Ay," said William, " it is that which doth
weigh me down." "My lord," said William Fitz-Osbem, a
gallant knight and confidential friend of the duke, "none
should be wroth over what can be mended: it depends but on
you to stop the mischief Harold is doing you ; you shall destroy
him, if it please you. You have right; you have good men
278 BISTORT OF FRANCE. [ch. xv.
and true to serve you; you need but have courage: set on
boldly. '' William gathered together his most important and
most trusted counsellors; and they were unanimous in urging
him to resent the perjury and injury. He sent to Harold a
messenger charged to say, '^ William, duke of the Normans,
doth recall to thee the oath thou swarest to him with thy mouth
and with thy hand, pn real and saintly relics." " It is true,"
answered Harold, ''that I sware, but on compulsion; I prom-
ised what did not belong to me; my kingship is not mine own;
I cannot put it off from me without the consent of the coimtry.
I cannot any the more, without the consent of the coimtry, es-
pouse a foreigner. As for my sister, whom the duke claims
for one of his chieftains, she died within the year; if he will, I
will send him the corpse.? William replied without any vio-
lence, claiming the conditions sworn, and especially Harold's
marriage with his daughter Adele. For all answer to this sum-
mons Harold married a Saxon, sister of two powerful Saxon
chieftains, Edwin and Morkar. There was an open rupture;
and William swore that "within the year he would go and
claim, at the sword's point, payment of what was due to him,
on the very spot where Harold thought himself to be most firm
on his feet."
And he set himself to the work. But, being as far-sighted as
he was ambitious, he resolved to secure for his enterprise the
sanction of religious authority and the formal assent of the Es-
tates of Normandy. Not that he had any inclination to subor-
dinate his power to that of the Pope. Five jesjrs previously,
Bobert de Grandmesnil, abbot of St. Evroul, with whom Will-
iam had got embroiled, had claimed to re-enter his monastery
as master by virtue solely of an order from Pope Nicholas H.
" I will listen to the legates of the Pope, the common father of
the faithful," said William, "if they come to me to speak of
the Christian faith and religion; but if a monk of my Estates
permit himself a single word beyond his place, I will have him
hanged by his cowl from the highest oak of the nearest forest."
When, in 1066, he denounced to Pope Alexander H. the perjury
of Harold, asking him at the same time to do him justice, he
made no scruple about promising that, if the Pope s^thorized
him to right himself by war, he would bring back the kingdom
of England to obedience to the Holy See. He had Lanfranc for
his negotiator with the court of Eome, and Pope Alexander H.
had for chief counsellor the celebrated monk Hildebrand, who
was destined to succeed him imder the name of Gregory VH.
CH. XV.] CONQUEST OF ENGLAND BT THE N0BMAN8. 279
The opportunity of extending the empire of the Church was
too tempting to be spumed, and her future head too bold not to
seize it whatever might be the uncertainty and danger of the
issue; and in spite of hesitation on the part of some of the
Pope's advisers, the question was promptly decided in accord'
ance with WiUiam's demand. Harold and his adherents were
excommunicated, and, on conunitting his bull to the hands of
William's messenger, the Pope added a banner of the Boman
Chmx5h and a ring containing, it is said, a hair of St. Peter set
in a diamond.
The Estates of Normandy were less easy to manage. Will-
iam called them together at Lillebonne; and several of his
vassals showed a zealous readiness to furnish him with vessels
and victual and to follow him beyond the sea, but others de-
clared that they were not bound to any such service, and that
they would not lend themselves to it; they had calls enough
already and had nothing more to spare. William Fitz-Osbem
scouted these objections. " He is your lord, and hath need of
you," said he to the recalcitrants; **you ought to offer your-
selves to him, and not wait to be asked. If he succeed in his
purpose, you will be more powerful as well as he; if you fail
him, and he succeed without you, he will remember it : show
that you love him, and what ye do, do with a good grace."
The discussion was keen. Many persisted in saying, ** True, he
is our Lord; but if we pay him his rents, that should suffice :
we are not boimd to go and serve beyond the seas; we are
already much burdened for his wars." It was at last agreed
that Fitz-Osbem should give the duke the assembly's reply: for
he "knew weU, they said, the ability of each. ** If ye mind not
to do what I shall say," said Fitz-Osbem, ** charge me not
therewith." ** We will be bound by it, and will do it," was the
cry amidst general confusion. They repaired to the duke's
presence. " My lord," said Fitz-Osbem, " I trow that there be
not in the whole world such folk as these. You know the
trouble and labor they have already imdergone in supporting
your rights; and they are minded to do still more, and serve
you at all points, this side the sea and t'other. Go you before,
and they will follow you; and spare them in nothing. As for
me, I*will furnish you with sixty vessels, manned with good
fighters." **Nay, nay," cried several of those present, prelates
and barons, '*we chained you not with such reply; when he
hath business in his own coimtry, we will do him the service
we owe him; we be not bound to serve him in conquering
280 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [oh. xv.
another's territory, or to go beyond sea for him." And they
gathered themselves together in knots with much uproar.
"William was very wroth," says the chronicler, "retired to
a chamber apart, summoned those in whom he had most confi-
dence, and by their advice called before him his barons, each
separately, and asked them if they were willing to help him.
He had no intention, he told them, of doing them wrong, nor
would he and his, now or hereafter, ever cease to treat witih
them in perfect courtesy ; and he would give them, in writing,
such assurances as they were minded to devise. The majority
of his people agreed to give him, more or less, according to cir-
cumstances; and he had every thing reduced to writing." At
the same time he made an appeal to all his neighbors, Bretons,
Manceaux, and Angevines, hunting up soldiers wherever he
could find them, and promising all who desired them lands in
England if he effected its conquest. Lastly he repaired in per-
son, first to Philip I., king of France, his suzerain, then to
Baldwin V., count of Flanders, his father-in-law, asking their
assistance for his enterprise. Philip gave a formal refusal
" What the duke demands of you," said his advisers, " is to his
own profit and to your hurt ; if you aid him, your coimtry will
be much burdened; and if the duke fail, you will have the
English your foes for ever. " The Count of Flanders made show
of a similar refusal ; but privately he authorized William to
raise soldiers in Flanders, and pressed his vassals to follow him.
William, having thus hunted up and collected all the forces he
could hope for, thought only of putting them in motion and of
hurrying on the preparations for his departure.
Whilst, in obedience to his orders, the whole expedition,
troops and ships, were collecting at Dives, he received from
Conan II., duke of Brittany, this message: "I leam that
thou art now minded to go beyond sea and conquer for thyself
the kingdom of England. At the moment of starting for
Jerusalem, Robert, duke of Normandy, whom thou feignest
to regard as thy father, left all his heritage to Alain, my
father and his cousin: but thou and thy accomplices slew my
father with poison at Vimeux in Normandy. Afterwards
thou didst invade his territory because I was too young to
defend it; and, contrary to all right, seeing that thou art a
bastard, thou hast kept it imtil this day. Now, therefore,
either give me back this Normandy which thou owest me, or
I will make war upon thee with all my forces." "At this
message," say the chronicles, " WilHam was at first somewhat
€H. XV.] CONQUEST OF ENGLAND BT THE NORMANS. 281
dismayed; but a Breton lord, who had sworn fidelity to the
two counts and bore messages from one to the other, rubbed
poison upon the inside of Conan's hunting-horn, of his horse^s
reins, and of his gloves. Conan, having unwittingly put on
his gloves and handled the reins of his horse, lifted his hands
to his face, and the touch having filled him with poisonous in-
fection he died soon after to the great sorrow of his people,
for he was an able and brave man, and inclined to justice.
And he who had betrayed him quitted before long the army
of Conan, and informed Duke William of his death."
Conan is not the only one of William's foes whom he was
suspected of making away with by poison: there are no
proofs; but contemporary assertions are positive and the
public of the time believed them, without surprise. Being as
unscrupulous about means as ambitious and bold in aim,
William was not of those whose character repels such an
accusation. What, however, diminishes the suspicion is that,
after and in spite of Conan's death, several Breton knights,
and, amongst others, two sons of Count Eludes, his uncle, at-
tended at the trysting-place of the Norman troops and took
part in the expedition.
Dives was the place of assemblage appointed for fleet and
army. William repaired thither about the end of August,
1066. But for several weeks contrary winds prevented him
from putting to sea; some vessels which made the attempt
perished in the tempest; and some of the -volunteer advent-
urers got disgusted, and deserted. William maintained strict
discipline amongst this multitude, forbidding plunder so
strictly that "the cattle fed in the fields in full security."
The soldiers grew tired of waiting in idleness and often in
sickness. " Yon is a madman," said they, " who is minded to
possess himself of another's land; Gk)d is against the design
and so refuses us a wind." About the 20th of September the
weather changed. The fleet got ready, but could only go and
anchor at St. Valery at the mouth of the Somme. There it
was necessary to wait several more days; impatience and dis-
quietude were redoubled; " and there appeared in the heavens
a star with a tail, a certain sign of great things to come."
William had the shrine of St. Valery brought out and paraded
about, being more impatient in his soul than any body, but
ever confident in his will and his good fortune. There was
brought to him a spy whom Harold had sent to watch the
forces and plans of the enemy; and William dismissed him,
282 HISTOBT OF FRANCE. [oh. xt.
saying, '* Harold hath no need to take any care or he at
any charges to know how we he and what we he doing; he
shall see for himself, and shall feel hefore the end of the year."
At last, on the 27th of Septehmer, 1066, the sun rose on a calm
sea and with a favorahle^wind; and towards evening the fleet
set out. The Mora, the vessel on which William was, and
which had heen given to him hy his wife Matilda, led the way;
and a figure in gilded bronze, some say in gold, representing
their youngest son William, had been placed on the prow,
with the face towards England. Being a better sailer than the
others, this ship was soon a long way ahead; and William
had a mariner sent to the top of the mainmast to see if the
fleet were following. ^'I see naught but sea and sky," said
the mariner. William had the ship brought to; and, the
second time, the mariner said, ''I see four ships." Before
long he cried, '^ I see a forest of masts and sails." OntheSdth
of September, St. Michael's day, the expedition arrived off the
coast of England, at Pevensey, near Hastings, and ''when the
tide had ebbed and the ships remained aground on the strand,"
says the chronicle, the landing was effected without obstacle ;
not a Saxon soldier appeared on the coast. William was the
last to leave his ship; and on setting foot on the sand he. made
a false step and fell. '' Bad signl " was muttered around him;
*' Gk)d have us in His keeping!" "What say you, lords?" cried
William: ''by the glory of Qod, I have grasped this land
with my hands; all that there is of it, is ours."
With what forces William undertook the conquest of Eng-
land, how many ships composed his fleet, and how many men
were aboard the ships, are questions impossible to be decided
with any precision, as we have frequently before had occasion
to renmrk, amidst the exaggerations and disagreements of
chroniclers. Robert Wace reports, in his Romance of jBou,
that he had heard from his father, one of William^s servants on
this expedition that the fleet numbered 696 vessels, but he had
found in divers writings that there were more than 3000. M.
Augustin Thierry, after his learned researches, says, in his
history of the Conqiisst of England by the Narmana, that
" 400 vessels of four sails and more than a 1000 transport-ships
moved out into the open sea, to the sound of trumpets and of
a great cry of joy raised by 60,000 throats." It is probable
that the estimate of the fleet is pretty accurate and that of the
army exaggerated. We saw in 1830 what efforts and pains it
required, amidst the i>ower and intelligent ability of modem
CH. XV.] CONQUEST OF ENGLAND BY THE N0SMAN8. 283
civilization, to transport from France to Algeria 37,000 men
aboard three squadrons comprising 676 ships of all sorts.
Granted that in the eleventh century there was more hap-
hazard than in the nineteenth, and that there was less care for
human life on the eve of a war; still, without a doubt, the
armament of Normandy in 1066 was not to be compared with
that of France in 1830, and yet William^s intention was to
conquer England, whereas Charles X. thought only of chastis-
ing the Dey of Algiers.
Whilst William was makiag for the southern coast of Eng-
land, Harold was repairing by forced marches to the north in
order to defend, against the rebellion of his brother Tostig and
the invasion of a Norwegian army, his short-lived kingship
thus menaced, at two ends of the country, by two formidable
enemies. On the 25th of September, 1066, he gained at York
a brilliant victory over his northern foe; and, woimded as he
was, he no sooner learnt that Duke WiUiam had on the 29th
pitched his camp and planted his flag at Pevensey, than he set
out in haste for the south. As he approached, William re-
ceived, from what source is not known, this message: ''King
Harold hath given battle to his brother Tostig and the king of
Norway. He hath slain them both, and hath destroyed their
army. He is returning at the head of numerous and valiant
warriors against whom thine own, I trow, will be worth no
more than wretched curs. Thou passest for a man of wisdom
and prudence; be not rash, plunge not thyself into danger; I
adjure thee to abide in thy entrenchments, and not to pome
really to blows." "I thank thy master," answered William,
'' for his prudent counsel, albeit he might have given it to me
without insult. Carry him back this reply : I will not hide me
behind ramparts; I wiU come to blows with Harold as soon as
I may; and with the aid of Heaven^s good will I would trust
in the valor of my men against his, even though I had but
10,000 to lead against his 60,000." But the proud confidence
of William did not affect his prudence. He received from
Harold himself a message wherein the Saxon, affirming his
right to the kingship bv virtue of the Saxon laws and the last
words of King Edward, summoned him to evacuate England
with all his people; on which condition alone he engaged to
preserve friendship with him and all agreements between them
as to Normandy. After having come to an imderstanding
with his barons, William maintained his right to the crown of
England \)j virtue of th^ first decision of Ein^ Edward and
384 HiaTORT OF FRANCE. [ch. xv.
the oaths of Harold himself. *'I am ready," said he, **to
uphold my cause against him by the forms of justice, either
according to the law of the Normans or according to that of
the Saxons, as he pleases. If, by virtue oi equity, Normans
or Eng^h decide that Harold has a right to possess the king-
dom, let him possess it in peace; if they acknowledge that it
is to me that the kingdom ought to belong, let him give it up
to me. If he refuse these conditions, I do not think it just
that my people or his, who are not a whit to blame for our
quarrel, should slay one another in battle; I am ready to
maintain, at the price of my head against his, that it is to me
and not to him that the kingdom of England belongs." At
this proposition Harold was troubled, and remained a while
without replying; then, as the monk was urgent, '* Let the
Lord Gkxl," said he, '' judge this day betwixt me and William
as to what is just." The negotiation continued, and William
summed it aU up in these terms, which the monk re})orted to
Harold in presence of the English chieftains: '^ My lord, the
Duke of Normandy biddeth you do one of these things ; give up
to him the kingdom of England and take his daughter in mar-
riage, as you sware to him on the holy relics; or, respecting
the question between him and you, submit yourself to the
pope's decision; or fight with him body to bodv, and let him
who is victorious and forces his enemy to yield nave the king-
dom." Harold replied, "without opinion or advice taken,"
says the chronicle, ** I will not cede him the kingdom ; I will
not abide by the pope's award; and I will not fight with hinL"
William, still in concert with his barons, made a farther ad-
vance. '*If Harold will come to an agreement with me," he
said, **I will leave him all the territory beyond the Humber,
towards Scotland." ** My lord," said the barons to the duke,
''make an end of these parleys; if we must fight, let it be
soon; for every day come folk to Harold." "By my faith,"
said the duke, "if we agree not on terms to-day, to-morrow
we will join battle." The third proposal for an agreement was
as little successful as the former two ; on both sides there was
no belief in peace, and they were eager to decide the quarrel
once for all.
Some of the Saxon chieftains advised Harold to fall back
on London, and ravage all the country so as to starve out the
invaders. "By my faith," said Harold, "I will not destroy
the country I have in keeping; I, with my people, wiQ fight."
*' Abide in London," said his younger brother Gurth: ^'thou
CH. XV.] COKQUEST OF ENGLAND BY TBE NORMANS. 286
canst not deny that, perforce or by free will thou didst swear
to Duke William; but, as for us, we have sworn naught; we
will fight for our country; if we alone fight, thy cause will be
good in any case; if we fly, thou shalt rally us; if we fall,
thou shalt avenge us." Harold rejected this advice, "consid-
ering it shame to his past life to turn his back, whatever were
the peril." Certain of his people, whom he had sent to recon-
noitre the Norman army, returned saying that there were
more priests in William^s camp than warriors in his own; for
the Normans, at this period, wore shaven chins and g^ort
liair. whilst tne English let hair and beard grow. "Ye do
err,^' said Harold, "these be not priests, but good men-at-
arms who will show us what they can do."
On the eve of the battle, the Saxons passed the night in
amusement, eating, drinking, and singing, with great uproar;
the Normans, on the contrary, were preparing their arms,
saying their prayers, and " confessing to their priests— all
who would." On the 14th of October, 1066, when Duke Wil-
liam put on his armor, his coat of mail was given to him the
wroi^ way. "Bad omen I" cried some of his people: "if
such a thing had happened to us, we would not fight to-day."
"Be ye not disquieted," said the duke: "I have never be-
lieved in sorcerers and diviners, and I never hked them; I
believe in God, and in Him I put my trust." He assembled
his men-at-arms, and "setting himself upon a high place, so
that all might hear him," he said to them, " My true and loyal
friends, ye have crossed the seas for love of me, and for that
I cannot thank ye as I ought; but I will make what return I
may, and what I have ye shall have. I am not come only to
take what I demanded or to get my rights, but to punish felo-
nies, treasons, and breaches of faith committed against our
people by the men of this coimtry. Think, moreover, what
great honor ye will have to-day if the day be ours. And
bethink ye that, if ye be discomfited, ye be dead men with-
out help; for ye have not whither ye may retreat, seeing that
our ships be broken up and our mariners be here with us.
He who flies will be a dead man; he who fights will be saved.
For Gkxl^s sake, let each man do his duty; trust we in Qod,
and the day will be ours."
The address was too long for the duke^s faithful comrade,
William Fitz-Osbem. " My lord," said he, " we dally: let us
all to arms and forward, forward I" The army got in motion,
starting from the hill of Telham or Heathland, according to
286 HI8T0BT OF FRANCE. [ch. xv.
Mr. Freeman, marching to attack the English on the opposite
hill of Senlac. A Norman, called Taillefer^^'who sang very
well, and rode a horse which was very fast, came up to the
duke. 'My lord,' said he, ^ I have served you long, and you
owe me for all my service: pay me to-day, and it please you;
grant imto me, for recompense in full, to strike the first hlow
in the battle.' *I grant it,' quoth the duke. So Taillefer
darted before him, singing the deeds of Charlemagne, of
Boland, of Oliver, and of the vassals who fell at Eoncesvalles."
As he sang, he played with his sword, throwing it up into the
air and catching it in his right hand; and the Normans fol-
lowed, repeating his songs, and crying "God help! God
help I" The English, intrenched upon a plateau towards which
the Normans were ascending, awaited the assault, shouting,
and defying the foe.
The battle, thus begun, lasted nine hours, with equal obsti-
nacy on both sides, and varied success from hour to hour.
Harold, though woimded at the conmiencement of the fray,
did not cease for a moment to fight, on foot, with his two
brothers beside him, and around him the troops of London,
who had the privilege of forming the king's guard when he
delivered a battle. Budely repulsed at the fir^t charge, some
bodies of Norman troops fell back in disorder, and a rumor
spread amongst them that the duke was slain; but William
threw himself before the fugitives, and, taking off his helmet,
cried, " Look at me, here I am; I hve, and by Grod'^ help wiU
conquer." So they returned to the combat. But the English
were firm; the Normans could not force their intrenchments;
and William ordered his inen to feign a retreat, and all but a
flight. At this sight the English bore down in pursmt; '' and
stin Norman fied and Saxon pursued, until a trumpeter, who
had been ordered by the duke thus to turn back the Normans,
began to sound the recall. Then were seen the Normans turn-
back to face the English, and attacking them with their swords,
and amongst the English, some flying, some dying, some ask-
ing mercy in their own tongue." The struggle once more be-
came general and fierce. William had three horses killed
under him; " but he jumped immediately upon a fresh steed,
and left not long unavenged the death of that which had but
lately carried him." At last the intrenchments of the Engliah
were stormed; Harold fell mortally wounded by an arrow
which pierced his skull ; bis two brothers and his bravest com-
rades fell at his side ; the fight was prolonged between the Eng^
CH. XV.] CONQUEST OF ENGLAND B7 THE NORMANS. 287
lish dispersed and the Normans remorselessly pursuing; the
standard sent from Bome to the Duke of Normandy had re-
placed the Saxon flag on the very spot where Harold had
fallen; and, all around, the ground continued to get covered
with dead and dying, fruitless victims of the passions of the
combatants. Next day William went over the field of battle;
and he was heard to say in a tone of mingled triiunph and
sorrow, ** Here is verily a lake of blood 1"
There was, long after the battle of Senlac or Hastings, as it
is commonly called, a patriotic superstition in the country to
the effect that, when the rain had moistened the soil, there
were to be seen traces of blood on the ground where it had
taken place.
Having thus secured the victory, WOliam had his tent
pitched at the very point where the standard which had come
from Bome had replaced the Saxon banner, and he passed the
night supping and chatting with his chieftains, not far from
the corpses scattered over the battle-field. Next day it was
necessary to attend to the bimal of all these dead, conquerors
or conquered. William was full of care and affection towards
his comrades; and on the eve of the battle, during a long and
arduous reconnaissance which he had imdertaken with some
of them, he had insisted upon carrying, for some time, in ad-
dition to his own cuirass, that of his faithful William Fitaf-
Osbem, who he saw was fatigued in spite of his usual strength ;
but towards his enemies William was harsh and resentful.
GFitha, Harold's mother, sent to him to ask for her son's
corpse, offering for it its weight in gold. * * Nay, " said William,
^'Harold was a perjurer; let him have for burial-place the
sand of the shore, where he was so madly fain to rule." Two
Saxon monks from Waltham Abbey, which had been founded
by Harold, came, by their abbot's order, and claimed for their
church the remains of their benefactor ; and William, indifferent
as he had been to a mother's grief, would not displease an
abbey. But when the monks set about finding the body of
Harold, there was none to recognize it, and they had recourse
to a young girl, Edith Swan^a-nech^ whom Harold had loved.
She discovered amongst the corpses her lover's mutilated body;
and the monks bore it away to the chinch at Walth^un, where
it was buried. Some time later a rumor was spread abroad that
Harold*was wounded, and carried to a neighboring castle, per-
haps Dover, whence he went to the Abbey of St. John, at Ches-
ter, where ne lived a long while in a sohtary cell, and where
288 mSTORT OF FRANOtt. [ch. xv.
Williain the Conqueror's Beoond son, Henry I., the third Nor-
man King of England, one day went to see him, and had an
interview with him. But this legend, in which there is nothing
chronologically imi)oeBible, rests on no soimd basis of evidence,
and is discountenanced by all contemporary accounts.
Before following up his victory, William resolved to per-
petuate the remembrance of it by a religious monument, and
he decreed the foundation of an abbey on the very field of the
battle of Hastings, from which it took its name. Battle Ahbev.
He endowed this abbey with all the neighboring territory witn-
in the radius of a league, ''the very spot," says his charter,
"which gave me my crown." He made it free of the juriis-
diction of any prelate, dedicated it to St. Martin of Totms,
patron-saint of the soldiers of Gaul, and ordered that there
should be deposited in its archives a register containing l&e
names of all the lords, knights, and men of mark who had
accompanied him on his expedition. When the building of the
abbey began, the builders observed a want of water; and they
notified William of the fact. "Workaway," said he: "ifOod
grant me life, I will make such good provision for the place
that more wine shall be found there than there is water in
other monasteries."
It was not every thing, however, to be victorious, it was still
necessary to be recognized as king. When the news of the de-
feat at Hastings and the death of Harold was spread abroad in
the coimtry, the emotion was lively and seemed to be pro-
found; the great Saxon national council, the Wittenagemote^ .
assembled at London; the remnants of the Saxon army
rallied there; and search was made for other kings than the
Norman duke. Harold left two sons, very yoimg and ndt in a
condition to reign; but his two brothers-in-law, Edwin and
Morkar, held dominion in the north of England, whilst the
southern provinces, and amongst them the city of London, had
a popular aspirant, a nephew of Edward the Confessor, in
Edgar surnamed Athding (the noble, the iUvstrums), as the
descendant of several kings. What with these different pre-
tensions, there was discussion, hesitation, and delay; but at
last the young Edgar prevailed, and was proclaimed king.
Meanwhile William was advancing with his army, slowly,
prudently, as a man resolved to risk nothing and calculating
upon the natural results of his victory. At some points he en-
countered attempts at resistance, but he easily overcame them,
occupied successively Bomney, Dover, Oanterbmy, and Boch- '
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR LANDING IN ENGLAND.
liii'.
THE NEW y*j:x.
PUBLIC U32ARY
ASTOS?, LEr'CX
EDITH DISCOVERS THE BODY OF HAROLD.
CH. XV.] CONQUEST OF ENGLAND BY THE NORMANS. 289
ester, appeared before London without trying to enter it,
and moved on Winchester which was the residence of Edward
the Confessor's widow, Queen Editha, who had received that
important city as dowry. Through respect for her, William,
who presented himself in the character of relative and heir of
King Edward, did not enter the place, and merely called upon
the inhabitants to take the oath of allegiance to him and do
him homage, which they did with the queen's consent. William
returned towards London and commenced the siege or rather
investment of it, by establishing his camp at Berkhampstead,
in the county of Hertford. He entered before long into secret
communication with an influential burgess, named Ansgard,
an old man who had seen service, and who, riddled with
wounds, had himself carried about the streets in a litter. Ans-
gard had but little difficulty in inducing the authorities of
London to make pacific overtures to the duke, and William
had still less difficulty in convincing the messenger of the
moderation of his designs. *' The king salutes ye, and offers
ye peace," said Ansgard to the mimidpal authorities of London
on his return from the camp: '* 'tis a king who hath no peer;
he is handsomer than the sun, wiser than Solomon, more
active and greater than Charlemagne," and the enthusiastic
poet adds that the people as well as the senate eagerly welcomed
these words, and renounce, both of them, the young king they
had but lately proclaimed. Facts were quick in respond-
ing to this quickly produced impression; a formal deputation
was sent to William's camp; the Archbishops of Canterbury
and York, many other prelates and laic chieftains, the princi-
pal citizens of London, the two brothers-in-law of Harold,
Edwin and Morkar, and the young king of yesterday, Edgar
Atheling himself, formed part of it; and they brought to
Wmiam, Edgar Atheling his abdication, and all the others
their submission, with an express invitation to William to
have himself made, king, ** for we be wont," said they, ** to
. serve a king, and we wish to have a king for lord." William
received them in presence of the chieftains of his army, and
with great show of moderation in his desires. ** Affairs," said
he, ** be troubled stUl; there be still certain rebels; I desire
rather the peace of the kingdom than the crown; I would that
my wife should be crowned with me." The Norman chieftains
murmured whilst they smiled ; and one of them, an Aquitanian,
Aimery de Thouars, cried out, ''It is passing modest to ask
soldiers if they wii^ their chief to be king: soldiers are neveri
290 BISTORT OP FRANCE. [cfl. xv.
or very seldbni) caQed to such deliberationB: let what we de-
sire be done as soon as possible/' William yielded to the en-
treaties of the Saxon deputies and to the counsels of the Nor^
man chieftains; but, prudent still, before going in person to
tiOndon, he Sent thither some of his officers with orders to have
built there immediately, on the banks of the Thames, at a
point which he indicated, a fort where he might establish him-
self in safety* That f ort^ in the course of time, became the
Tower of London*
When William set out, some days afterwards, to make his
entry into the city, he f oimd, on his way to St. Alban's, the
road blocked with huge trunks of trees recently felled.
** What means this barricade in thy domains?" he demanded
of the Abbot of St. Alban's, a Saxon noble. " 1 did what was
tfly duty to my birth and mission," replied the monk: "if
crthers, of my rank and condition, had done as much, as they
ought to and cchild have done, thou hadst not penetrated so far
into our country."
On entering London after all these delays and all these pre-
cautions, William fixed, for his coronation, upon Ohristmas-
day, December 25th, 1066. Esther by desire of the prelate him-
self or by William's own order, it was not the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Stigand, who presided, according to custom, at the
ceremony; the duty devolved upon the Archbishop of York,
Aldred, who had but lately anointed Edgar Atheling. At the
appointed hour, William arrived at Westminster Abbey, the
latest work and the burial-place of Edward the Confessor.
The Conqueror marched between two hedges of Norman
soldiers, behind whom stood a crowd of people, cold and sad,
though full of curiosity. A nmnerous cavalry guarded the ap-
proaches to the church and the quarters adjoining. Two
hundred and sixty counts, barons, and knights of Normandy
went in with the duke. Geoffrey, bishop, of Coutancee, de-
manded, in French, of the Normans, if they would that l^eir
duke should take the title of King of the English. The Arch-
bishop of York demanded of the English, in the Saxon tongue,
if they would have for king the Duke of Normandy. Noisy
acclamations arose in the church and resounded outside. The
soldiery, posted in the neighborhood, took the confused roar
for a symptom of something wrong and in their suspicious
rage set fire to the neighboring houses. The flames spread
rapidly. The people who were rejoicing in the chiuxsh caught
the alarm, and a multitude of men and women of every vxek.
CH. ST.] CONQUEST OF ENGLAND BY THE NORMANS, 291
flung themselves out of the edifice. Alone and trembling, the
bishops with some clerics and monks remained before the altar
and accomplished the work of anointment upon the king's
head, '' himself trembling," says the chronicle. Nearly all the
rest who were present ran to the fire, some to extinguish it,
others to steal and pillage in the midst of the consternation.
William terminated the ceremony by taking the usual oath of
Saxon kings at their coronation, adding thereto, as of his
own motion, a promise to treat the English people according
to their own laws and as well as they had ever been treated by
the best of their own kings. Then he went forth from the
church King of England.
We will pursue no farther the life of William the Conqueror :
for henceforth it belongs to the history of England, not of
IFrance. We have entered, so far as he was concerned, into
pretty long details, because we were bound to get a fair under-
standing of the event and of the»man ; not only because of their
lustre at the time, but especially because of the serious and
loDg-felt consequences entailed upon France, England, and, we
may say,, Europe. We do not care just now to trace out those
consequences in all their bearings; but we would like to mark
out with precision their chief features, inasmuch as they exer-
cised, for centuries, a determining infiuence upon the destinies
of two great nations and upon the course of modem civiliza-
tion.
As to France, the consequences of the conquest of England
by the Normans were clearly pernicious, and they have not
yet entirely disappeared. It was a great evil, as early as the
eleventh century, that the Duke of Normandy, one of the great
French lords, one of the great vassals of the King of France,
should at the same time become King of England, and thus re-
ceive an accession of rank and power which could not fail to
render more complicated and more stormy his relations with
his French suzerain. From the eleventh to the fourteenth
century, from Philip I. to Philip de Valois, this position gave
rise, between the two crowns and the two States, to questions,
to quarrels, to political struggles, and to wars which were a
frequent source of trouble in France to the government and the
people. The evil and the peril became far greater still when,
in the fourteenth century, there arose between France and
England, between Philip de Valois and Edward III., a question
touching the succession to the throne of France and the appli-
cation or negation of the Salic law. Then there commenced,
292 ^ HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. xv.
between the two crowns and the two peoples, that war which
was to last more than a hundred years, was to bring upon
France the saddest days of her history, and was to be ended
only by the inspired heroism of a young girl who, alone, in the
name of her God and His saints, restored confidence and vic-
tory to her king and her country. Joan of Arc, at the cost of
her life, brought to the most glorious conclusion the longest
and bloodiest struggle that has devastated France and some-
times compromised her glory.
Such events, even when they are over, do not cease to weigh
heavily for a long while upon a people. The struggles between
the kings of England, dukes of Normandy, and the kings of
France, and the long war of the fourteenth and fifteenth cen-
turies for the succession to the throne of France, engendered
what historians have called ^^the rivalry between France and
England; '^ and this rivalry, having been admitted as a natural
and inevitable fact, became the permanent incubus and, at
divers epochs, the scourge of French national existence. Un-
doubtedly there are, between great and energetic neighbors,
different interests and tendencies, which easily become the
seeds of jealousy and strife; but there are also, between such
nations, common interests and common sentiments, which
tend to harmony and peace. The wisdom and ability of gov-
ernments and of nations themselves is shown in devoting them-
selves to making the grounds of harmony and peace stronger
than those of discord and war. Any how common sense and
moral sense forbid differences of interests and tendencies to be
set up as a principle upon which to establish general and per-
manent rivalry, and, by consequence, a systematic hostility
and national enmity. And the farther civilization and the
connections between different people proceed with this develop-
ment, the more necessary and,- at the same time, possible it
becomes to raise the interests and sentiments which would
hold them together above those which would keep them
asunder, and to thus found a poUcy of reciprocal equity and of
peace in place of a policy of hostile precautions and continual
strife. "I have witnessed," says M. Guizot, " in the course of
my life, both these policies. I have seen the poHcy of system-
atic hostility, the pohcy practised by the Emperor Napoleon I.
with as much ability and brilliancy as it was capable of, and I
have seen it result in the greatest disaster France ever experi-
enced. And even after the evidence of its errors and calami-
ties this pohcy has still left amongst us deep traces and raised
CH. XV.] CONQUEST OF ENGLAND BT THE NORMANS, 293
serious obfitaclefi to the policy of reciprocal equity, liberty, and
peace which we labored to support and of which the nation felt,
though almost against the grain, the justice and the necessity."
In that feeling we recognize the lamentable results of the old
historic causes which have just been pointed out and the last-
ing perils arising from those blind passions which hiury people
away, and keep them back from their most pressing interests
and their most honorable sentiments.
In spite of appearances to the contrary and in view of her
future interests, England was, in the eleventh century, by the
very fact of the conquest she underwent, in a better position
than France. She was conquered, it is true, and conquered
by a foreign chieftain and a foreign army, but France also had
"been, for several centuries previously, a prey to conquest, and
under circumstances much more unfavorable than those under
which the Norman conquest had f oxmd and placed England.
When the Goths, the Burgundians, the Franks, the Saxons,
and the Normans themselves invaded and disputed over Gaul,
what was the character of the event? Barbarians, up to that
time vagabonds or nearly so, were flooding in upon popula-
tions disorganized and enervated. On the side of the German
victors, po flxity in social life; no general or any thing like
regular government; no nation really cemented and consti-
tuted; but individuals in a state of dispersion and of almost
absolute independence; on the side of the vanquished Gallo-
Romans, the old political ties dissolved; no strong power, no
vital liberty; the lower classes in slavery, the middle classes
ruined, the upper classes depreciated. Amongst the Bar-
barians society was scarcely commencing; with the subjects
of the Boman empire it no longer existed; Charlemagne's at-
tempt to reconstruct it by rallying beneath a new empire both
victors and vanquished was a failure; feudal anarchy was the
first and the necessary step out of barbaric anarchy and
towards a renewal of social order.
It was not so in En^and, when, in the eleventh century,
William transported thither his government and his army.
A people but lately come out of barbarism, conquered, on that
occasion, a people still half barbarous. Their primitive origin
was the same; their institutions were, if not similar, at any
rate analagous; there was no fundamental antagonism in
their habits; the English chieftains lived in their domains an
idle, hunting life, surrounded by their liegemen, just as the
Norman barons lived. Society, amongst both the former and
294 EISTOBT OF FRANCE, [cH. xr.
the latter, was founded, however unrefined and irregular it
still was; and neither the former nor the latter had lost the
flavor and the usages of their ancient liherties. A certain
superiority, in point of organization and social discipline, be-
longed to the Norman conquerors; but the conquered Anglo-
Saxons were neither in a temper to allow themselves to be
enslaved nor out of condition for defending themselves. The
conquest was destined to entail cruel evils, a long oppression,
but it could not bring about either the dissolution of the two
peoples into petty, lawless groups, or the permanent humilia-
tion of one in the presence of the other. There were, at one
and the same time, elements of governments and resistance,
causes of fusion and unity in the very midst of the struggle.
We are now about to anticipate ages, and get a glimpse, in
their development, of the consequences which attended this
difference, so profoimd, in the position of France and of Eng-
land, at the time of the formation of the two States.
In England, immediately after the Norman conquest, two
general forces are confronted, those, to wit, of the two peoples.
The anglo-Saxon people is attached to its ancient institutions,
a mixture of feudalism and liberty, which become its secvirity.
The Norman army assumes organization on EngUsh soil ac-
cording to the feudal system which had been its own in
Normandy. A principle of authority and a principle of re-
sistance thus exist, from the very first, in the community and
in the government. Before long the principle of resistance
gets displaced; the strife between the i)eoples continues; but
a new struggle arises between the Norman king and his barons.
The Norman kingship, strong in its growth, would fain be-
come tyrannical; but its tyranny encounters a resistance, also
strong, since the necessity tor defending themselves against
the Anglo-Saxons has caused the Norman barons to take up
the practice of acting in concert, and has not permitted them
to set themselves up as petty, isolated sovereigns. The spirit
of association receives development in England: the ancient
institutions have maintained it amongst the English land-
holders, and the inadequacy of individual resistance has made
it prevalent amongst the Norman barons. The imity which
springs from community of interests and from junctions of
forces amongst equals becomes a counterpoise to the unity of
the sovereign power. To sustain the struggle with success,
the aristocratic coalition formed against the tyrannical king-
ship has ueeded the assistance of the landed proprietors, great
Ch. XV.] CONQUEST OF ENGLAND BT THE NORMANS. 295
and small, EDgliBh and Norman, and it has not been able to
dispense with getting their rights recognized as well as its
own. Meanwhile the struggle is becoming complicated; there
is a division of parties ; a portion of the barons rally round the
threatened kingship; sometimes it is the feudal, aristocracy,
and sometimes it is the king that smumons and sees flocking
to the rescue the common people, first of the country, then of
the towns. The democratic element thus penetrates into and
keeps growing in both society and government, at one time
quietly and through the stoHd influence of necessity, at
another noisily and by means of revolutions, powerful indeed,
but nevertheless restrained within certain limits. The fusion
of the two peoples and the different social classes is little by
little attaroing accomplishment; it is little byhttle bringing
about the perfect formation of representative government with
its various component parts, royalty, aristocracy and democ-
racy, each invested with the rights and the strength necessary
for their functions. The end of the struggle has been arrrived
at; constitutional monarchy is founded; by the triumph of
their language and of their primitive liberties the English have
conquered their conquerors. It is written in her history, and
especially in her history at the date of the eleventh century,
how England f oimd her point of departure and her first ele-
ments of success in the. long labor she performed, in order to
arrive, in 1688, at a free, and, in our days, at a Hberal govern-
ment.
France pursued her end by other means and in the teeth of
other fortunes. She always desired and always sought for
free government under the form of constitutional monarchy;
and in following her history, step by step, there will be seen
often disappearing and ever re*appearing the efforts made by
the country for the accomplishment of her hope. Why then
did not France sooner and more completely attain what she
had so oftea attempted? Amongst the different causes of this
long miscalcijlation, we will dwell for the present only on the
historical reason just now indicated: France did not find, as
England did, in the primitive elements of French society the
conditions and means of the political system to which she
never ceased to aspire. In order to obtain the moderate
measure of internal order, without which society could not
exist; in order to ensure the progress of her civil laws and her
material civilization; in order even to enjoy those pleasures of
the mind for which she thirsts so much, France was consta^tly
296 EISTORT OF FRANCE, [cH. xvL
obliged to have recourse to the kingly authority and to that
almoBt absolute monarchy which was far from satisfying her
even when she could not do without it, and when she wor-
shipped it with an enthusiasm rather hterary than pohtical, as
was the case under Louis XIY. It was through the refined
rather than profound development of her civilization, and
through the zeal of her intellectual movement that France was
at length impelled not only towards the pohtical system to
which she had so long aspired, but into the boundless ambition
of the imlimited revolution which she brought about and with
which she inoculated all Europe. It is in the first steps
towards the formation of the two societies, French and Eng*
lish, and in the elements, so very different, of their earliest
existence that we find the principal cause for their long-
continued diversity in institutions and destinies.
" In 1823, forty-seven years ago, after having studied," says
M. Guizot, **in my Essays upon a Comparative History of
France and England^ the great fact which we have just now
attempted to make clearly understood, I concluded my labor
by saying, * before our revolution, this difference between the
political fates of France and England might have saddened a
Frenchman: but, now, in spite of the evils we have suffered
and in spite of those we shall yet, perhaps, suffer, there is no
room, so far as we are concerned, for such sadness. The
advances of social equality and the enlightenments of civiliza-
tion in France preceded pohtical liberty; and it will thus be
the more general and the purer. France may reflect, without
regret, upon any history: her own has always been glorious,
and the future promised to her wiQ assuredly recompense her
for all she has hitherto lacked.' In 1870, after the experiences
and notwithstanding the sorrows of my long Hfe, I have still
confidence in our country's future. Never be it forgotten that
Gk)d helps only those who help themselves and who deserve
His aid."
CHAPTER XVI.
THE CBUSADBS, THEm ORIGIN AND THEm SUOOBSS.
Amongst the great events of European history none was for
a longer time in preparation or more naturally brought about
than the Crusades. Christianity, from her eaarliest days, had
CH. XVI.] ORIGIN AND SUCCESS OF THE CRUSADES 297
seen in Jerusalem her sacred cradle ; it had heen, in past times,
the home of her ancestors, the Jews, and the centre of their
history; and, afterwards, the scene of the life, death, and
resurrection of her Divine Founder. Jerusalem became, more
and more, the Holy City. To go t« Jerusalem, to visit the
Mount of Olives, Calvary, and the tomb of Jesus, was, in their
most evil days and in the midst of their obscurity and their
martyrdoms, a pious passion with the early Christians.
When, under Constantine, Christianity had ascended from
the cross to the throne, Jerusalem had fresh attractions for
Christian faith and Christian curiosity. Temples covered and
surrounded the Holy Sepulchre; and at Bethlehem, Nazareth,
Mount Tabor, and nearly all the places which Jesus had con-
secrated by His presence and His miracles were seen to rise up
chmrches, chapels, and monuments dedicated to the memory of
them. The Emperor Cpnstantine's mother, St. Helena, was, at
seveaty-eight years of age, the first royal pilgrim to the holy
places. After the Pagan revival, vainly attempted by the
Emperor Juhan, the number and zeal of the Christian visitors
to Jerusalem were redoubled. At the beginning of the fifth
century, St. Jerome wrote, from his retreat at Bethlehem, that
Judea overfiowed with pilgrims, and that, round about the
Holy Sepulchre, were heard sung, in divers tongues, the
praises of the Lord. He, however, gave but scant encourage-
ment to his friends to make the trip. '* The court of heaven,"
he wrote to St. Paulinus, ** is as open in Britain as at Jerusa-
lem;" and the disorders which sometimes accompanied the
numerous assemblages of pilgrims became such that several of
the most illustrious fathers of the Church, and amongst others
St. Augustine and St. Gregory of Nyssa, exerted themselves to
dissuade the faithful. ''Take no thought," said Augustine,
"for long voyages; go where your faith is; it is not by ship
but by love that we go to Him who is every where."
Eivents soon rendered the pilgrimage to Jerusalem difficult,
and for some time impossible. At the commencement of the
seventh century the Greek empire was at war with the sov-
ereigns of Persia, successors of Cyrus and chiefs of the rehgion
of Zoroaster. One of them, Ehosroes H., invaded Judea, took
Jerusalem, led away captive the inhabitants together with their
patriarch Zacharias, and even carried off to Persia the precious
relic which was regarded as the wood of the true cross, and
which had been discovered, nearly three centuries before, by
the Empress Helena, whilst excavations were making on Cal-
908 mSTOBT OF FBANOBL . [ch. xn.
vary for the erection of the church of the Holy Sepulchre.
But fourteen years later, cifter several victories over the Per-
8iaD8, the Greek Emperor Heraclius retook Jerusalem and re-
entered Constantinople in triumph with the coffer' containing
the sacred reUc. He next year (in 629) carried it back to Jeru-
salem, and bore it upon his own shoulders to the top of Cal-
vary; and on this occasion was instituted the Feast of the Ex-
altation of the Holy Cross. Great was the joy in Christendom ;
and the pilgrimages to Jerusalem resumed their course.
But precisely at this epoch there appeared an enemy far
more formidable for the Christians than the sectaries of Zo-
roaster. In 622 Mahomet founded Islamism; and some years
€ifter his death, in 688, the second of the khalifs his successors,
Omar, sent two of his generals, Kaled and Abou-Obediah, to
take Jerusalem. For to the Mussulmans, also, Jerusalem waa
a holy city. Mahomet, it was said, had been thither; it waa
thence, indeed, that he had started on his nocturnal ascent to
heaven. On approaching the walls, the Arabs repeated these
words from the Koran, '^ Enter we the holy land which Qod
hath promised us." The siege lasted four months. The Chris-
tians at last surrendered, but only to Omar in person, who
came from Medina to receive their submission. A capitulatioH
concluded with their patriarch Sophronius guaranteed them
their Uvea, their property, and their churches. '^When the
draft of the treaty was completed, Omar said to the patriarch,
' Conduct me to the temgle of David/ Omar entered Jerusa^
lem preceded by the patriarch and followed by four thousand
warriors, followers of the Prophet, wearing no other arms but
their swords. Sophronius took him, first of aU, to the Church
of the Resurrection. ' Behold,' said he, * the temple of David.'
' Thou say est not true,' said Omar, after a few moments' re-
flection; ' the Prophet gave ;ine a description of the tempto of
David and it tallieth not with the building I now see.' The
patriarch then conducted him to the Church of Sion. ' Here,'
said he, 'is the temple of David.' * It is a lie,' rejoined Omar,
and went his way, directing his steps towards the gate xxamed
Bab-Mohammed. The spot on which now stands the Mosque
of Omar was so encumbered with filth that the steps leading to
the street were covered with it and that the rubbish reiiched
almost to the top of the vault. * You can only get in here by
crawling, ' said the patriarch. ' Be it so, ' answered Omar. The
patriarch went first ; Omar, with his people, followed ; and they
arrived at the space which at this day forms the fore-court (^
CT. XYL] ORIGIN AND 8U00S88 OF THE CBUSADES. 20»
the mosque. There every one could stand upright. After
having turned his eyes to right and left and attentively ex*
aznined the place, ^ AUah akhbarP cried Omar; ^here is the
temple of David, described to me by the Prophet.' He foimd
the SaJchra (the rock which forms the summit of Mount
Moriah, and which, left alone after the different destructions
of the different temples, became the theme of a multitude of
traditions and legends, Jewish and Mussulman) covered with
filth, heaped np there by the Ohristians through hatred of the
Jews. Omar spread his cloak over the rock opd began to
sweep it; and all the Mussulmans in his train followed his ex-
ample" (Xe Temple de Jiruaalem^ a monograph, pp. 73-75, by
Count Melchior de Vogii^ ch. vi.). The Mosque of Omar rose
up on the site of Solomon's temple. The Christians retained
the practice of their religion in their churches, but they were
obliged to conceal their crosses and their sacred books. The
bell no longer summoned the faithful to prayer; and the pomp
of ceremonies was forbidden them. It was far worse when
Omar, the most moderate of Mussulman fanatics, had left Je-
rusalem. The faithful were driven from their houses, and in-
sulted in their churches; additions were made to the tribute
they had to pay to the new masters of Palestine; they were
pr(^bited from carrying arms and riding on horseback; a
girdle of leather, which they might not lay aside, was their
badge of servitude; their conquerors breoked not even that
the Christians should speak the Arab tongue, reserved for dis-
ciples of the Koran; and the Christian people of Jerusalem had
not the right of nominating their own patriarch without the
intervention of the Saracens.
From the seventh to the eleventh century the situation re-
mamed very much the same. The Mussulmans, khalifs of
Bgypt or Persia^ continued in possession of Jerusalem; and
the Christians, native inhabitants or foreign visitors, continued
to be oppressed, harassed, and humiliated there. At two
I)eriods their condition was temporarily better. At the com-
mencement of the ninth century, Charlemagne reached even
there with the greatness of his mind and of his power. '^ It
was not only in hi& own land and his own kingdom," says
Eginhard, '*that he scattered those gratuitous largesses, which
the Greeks call alms; but beyond the seas, in Syria, in Elgypt,
in Africa, at JerttdoZem, at Alexandria, at Carthage, wherever
he knew that there were Christiana living in poverty, he had
compassion on their misery, and he delighted to send them
800 HTSTOBT OF FRANOK \ck. xvi.
money." In one of his capitularies of the year 810 we find
this paragraph: *' Alms to be sent to Jerusalem to repair the
churches of Gk)d." ''If Charlemagne was so careful to seek
the friendship of the kings beyond the seas, it was above all in
order to obtain for the Christians living under their rule help
and relief He kept up so close a«friendship with Haroun-
al-Baschid, king of Persia, that this prince preferred his good
graces to the alliance of the sovereigns of the earth. Accord-
ingly, when the ambassadors whom Charles had sent, with
presents, to .visit the sacred tomb of our divine Saviour and
the site of the resurrection, presented themselves before him,
and expounded to him their master's wish, Haroun did not
content himself with entertaining Charles' request, he wished,
besides, to give up to him the complete proprietorship of those
places hallowed by the certification of our redemption," and he
sent him, with the most magnificent presents, the keys of the
Holy Sepulchre. At the end of the same century, another
Christian sovereign, far less powerful and less famous, John
Zimisces, emperor of Constantinople, in a war against the
Mussulmans of Asia, penetrated into Galilee, made himself
master of Tiberias, Nazareth, and Mount Tabor, received a
deputation which brought him the keys of Jerusalem, ''and
we have placed," he says himself, "garrisons in all the dis-
trict lately subjected to our rule." These were but strokes of
foreign intervention giving the Christians of Jerusalem gleams
of hope rather than lasting diminution of their miseries.
However, it is certain that, during this epoch, pilgrimages
multiplied and were often accomplished without obstacle. It
was from France, England, and Italy that most of the pilgrims
went, and some of them wrote, or caused to be written, an ac-
count of their trip, amongst others the Italian Saint Valentine,
the English Saint WHlibald, and the French Bishop Saint
Arculf , who had as companion a Burgundian hermit named
Peter, a singular resemblance in quality and name to the zeal-
ous apostle of the Crusade three centuries later. The most
curious of these narratives is that of a French monk, Bernard,
a pilgrim of about the year 870. ' ' There is at Jerusalem, " says
he, "a hospice where admittance is given to all who come to
visit the place for devotion's sake and who speak the Roman
tongue ; a church, dedicated to St. Mcwy, is hard by the hospice
and possesseth a noble library which it oweth to the zeal of the
Emperor Charles the Qreat" This pious establishment had
CH. xn.] ORIGIN AND SITCCBSS OF TBE CRXISADEa. BOl
attached to it fields, vineyards, and a garden situated in the
valley of Jehosaphat.
But whilst there were a few isolated cases of Ohristians thus
going to satisfy in the East their pious aud inquisitive zeal, the
Mussulmans, equally ardent as helievers and as warriors
carried Westward their creed and their arms, established
themselves in Spain, penetrated to the very heart of France,
and brought on, between Islamism and Christianity, that grand
struggle in which Charles Martel gained, at Poitiers, the vic-
tory for the Cross. It was really a definitive victory aud yet
it did not end the struggle; the Mussulmans remained masters
in Spain, and continued to infest southern France, Italy, and
Sicily, preserving even, at certain points, posts which they
used as starting-points for distant ravages. Far then from
calming down and resulting in pacific relations, the hostility
between the two races became more and more active aud de-
termined; every where they opposed, fought, and oppressed
one another, inflamed one against the other by the double feel-
ings of faith and ambition, hatred aud fear. To this general
state of afEairs came to be added, about the end of the tenth
and beginning of the eleventh century, incidents best calculated
to aggravate the evU. Hakem, khalif of Egypt from 996 to
1021, persecuted the Ohristians, especially at Jerusalem, with
all the violence of a fanatic and all the capridousness of a
despot. He ordered them to wear upon their necks a wooden
cross five pounds in weight; he forbade them to ride on any
animal but mules or €U3ses ; and, without assigning any motive
for his acts, he confiscated their goods and carried off their
children. It was told to him one day that, when the Christians
assembled in the temple at Jerusalem to celebrate Easter, the
priests of the church rubbed balsam-oil upon the iron chain
which held up the lamp over the tomb of Christ, and after-
wards set fire, from the roof, to the end of the chain; the fire
stole down to the wick of the lamp and lighted it; then they
shouted with admiration, as if fire from heaven had come
down upon the tomb, and they glorified their faith. Hakem
ordered the instant demolition of the church of the Holy
Sepulchre, and it was accordingly demolished. Another time
a dead dog had been laid at the door of a mosque; and the
multitude accused the Christians of this insult. Hakem
ordered them all to be put to death. The soldiers were prepar-
ing to execute the order when a young Christian said to his
802 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. xvi.
friends, '* It were too grievous that the whole Church should
perish ; it were better that one should die for all ; only promise
to bless my memory year by year/' He proclaimed himself
alone to blame for the insult, and was accordingly alone put to
death. It is from this story of the historian William of Tyre,
that Tasso, in his Jerumlem Ddivered^ has drawn the admira-
ble episode of Olindo and Sophronia; a fine example, and not
the only one, of an act of tyranny and an act of virtue inspir-
ing a great poet with the idea of a master-piece. '^ All the
deeds of Hakem were without motive," says the Arab historian
Makrisi, '' and tl^e dreams suggested to him by his frenzy are
incapable of reasonable interpretation. "
These and many other similar stories reached the West,
spread amongst the Christian x)eople and roused them to pity
for their brethren in the East and to wrath against the op-
pressors. And it was at a critical period, in the midst of the
pious alarms and desires of atonement excited by the expecta-
tion of the end of the world a thousand years after the coming
of the Lord, that the Christian population saw this way opened
for purchasing remission of their sins by delivering other
Christians from suffering, and by avenging the wrongs of their
creed. On all sides arose challenges and appeals to the war-
like ardor of the faithful. The greatest mind of the age,
Gterbert, who had become Pope Sylvester 11., constituted him-
self interpreter of the popular feeling. He wrote, in the name
of the Church of Jerusalem,a letter addressed to the universal
Church: " To work, then, soldier of Christ! Be our standard-
bearer and our champion ! And if with arms thou canst do so,
aid us with thy words, thy wealth. What is it, pray, that
thou givest, and to whom, pray, dost thou give? Of thine
abundance thou givest a small matter, and thou givest to Him
who hath freely given thee all thou possessest; but He will not
accept freely that which thou slialt give; for He will multiply
thine offering and will pay it back to thee hereafter." Some
years after Gerbert, another great mind, the greatest among
the popes of the middle ages, Gregory VII. proclaimed an ex-
pedition, at the head of which he would place himself, to go
and deliver Jerusalem and the Christians pf the East from the
insults and t3rranny of the infidels.
Such being the condition of facts and minds, pilgrimages to
Jerusalem became from the ninth to the eleventh century,
more and more numerous and considerable. *' It would never
have been believed," says the contemporary chronicler Baoul
CH. XVI.] ORIGIN AND SUCCESS OF TBS CRUSADES, 803
Glaber, '' that the Holy Sepulchre could attract so prodigious
an influx. First the lower classes, then the middle, after-
wards the most potent kings, the counts, the marquises, the
prelates, and lastly, what had never heretofore heen seen,
many women, nohle or humhle, undertook this pilgrimage."
In 1026, William TaUlefer, count of Angql^me; in 1028, 1086,
and 1039, Foulques the Black, count of Anjou; in 1035, Eohert
the Magnificent, duke of Normandy, father of William the
Conqueror; in 1086, Eohert the Frison, coimt of Flanders; and
many other great feudal lords quitted their estates, or, rather,
their States, to go and— not deliver, not conquer, hut— simply
visit the Holy Land. It was not long before great numbers
were joined to great names. In 1054, liebert, bishop of Cam-
brai, started for Jerusalem with a following of 3000 Picard or
Flemish pilgrims; and in 1064, the Archbishop of Mayence and
the Bishops of Spire, Cologne, Bamberg, and Utrecht set out
on their way from the borders of the Rhine with more than
10,000 Christians behind them. After having passed through
Germany, Himgary, Bulgaria, Thrace, Constantinople, Asia
Minor, and Syria, they were attacked in Palestine by hordes of
Arabs, were forced to take refuge in the ruins of an old castle,
and were reduced to capitulation ; and when at last, "preceded
by the rumors of their battles and their perils, they arrived at
Jerusalem, they were received in trimnph by the patriarch,
and were conducted, to the sound of timbrels and with the
flare of torches, to the church of the Holy Sepulchre. The
misery they had fallen into excited the pity of the Christians
of Asia; and, after having lost more than 3000 of their com-
rades, liiey returned to Europe to relate their tragic adven-
tures and the dangers of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land"
{Histoire dea Croiaades, by M. Michaud, t. i. p. 62).
Amidst this agitation of Western Christendom, in 1076, two
years after Pope Gregory VII. had proclaimed his approaching
expedition to the Holy Land, news arrived in Europe to the
effect that the most barbarous of Asiatics and of Mussulmans,
the Turks, after having first served and then ruled the khalifs
of Persia, and afterwards conquered the greater part of the
Persian empire, had hurled themselves upon the Greek empire,
invaded Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, and lately taken
Jerusalem, where they practised against he Christians, old in-
habitants or foreign visitors, priests and worshippers, dread-
ful cruelties and intolerable exactions, worse than those of the
Persian or E^gyptian khalifs.
904 mSTORT OF FBAirOB. [ch. xvi.
It often happens that popular emotions, however profound
and general, remain barren^ just as in the vegetable world
many sprouts appear at the surface of the soil and die without
having grown and fructified. It is not sufS^cient for the bring-
ing about of great events and practical results that popular
aspirations should be merely manifested; it is necessary,
further, that some great soul, some powerful will should make
itself the organ and agent of the pubHc sentiment, and bring
it to fecundity by becoming its personification. The Christian
passioi;!, in the eleventh century, for the dehverance of Jerusa-
lem and the triumph of the Cross was fortunate in this respect.
An obscure pilgrim, at first a soldier, then a married man and
father of several children, then a monk and a vowed recluse,
Peter the Hermit, who was bom in the neighborhood of
Amiens, about 1050, had gone, as so many others had, to Jeru-
salem ^^ to say his prayers there." Struck disconsolate at the
sight of the sufferings and insults undergone by the Christians,
he had an interview with Simeon, patriarch of Jerusalem, who
^^recognizing in him a man of discretion and full of experience
in affairs of the world, set before him in detail all the evils
with which the people of God, in the holy city, were afOicted.
*Holy father,' said Peter to him, *if the Roman Church and
the princes of the West were informed, by a man of energy
and worthy of behef , of all yom* calamities, of a surety they
would essay to apply some remedy thereto by word and deed.
Write, then, to our lord the pope and to the Roman Church,
and to the kings and princes of the West, and strengthen your
written testimony by the authority of your seal. As for me, I
shrink not from taking upon me a task for the salvation of my
soul; and with the help of the Lord I am ready to go and seek
out all of them, soHcit them, show unto them the immensity of
your troubles, and pray them all to hasten on the day of your
relief.'" The patriarch eagerly accepted the pilgrim's offer;
and Peter set out, going first of all to Rome, where he handed
to Pope Urban II. the patriarch's letters, and commenced in
that quarter his mission of zeal. The pope promised him not
only support, but active co-operation when the propitious mo-
ment for it should arrive. Peter set to work, being still the
pilgrim every where, in Europe, as weU as at Jerusalem. *' He
was a man of very small stature, and his outside made but a
very poor appearance; yet superior powers swayed this miser-
able body; he had a qtdck intellect and a penetrating eye, and
he spoke with ease and fluency. . . . We saw him at that
GOD WILLETH IT !
CH. XVI.] ORIGIN AND SUCCESS OF THE CRUSADES, 305
time," says his contemporary Guibert de Nogent, "scouring
city and town, and preaching everywhere; the people crowded
round him, heaped presents upon him, and celebrated his sanc-
tity by such great praises that I remember not that like honor
was ever rendered to any other person. He displayed great
generosity in the disposal of all things that were given him.
He restored wives to their husbands, not without the addition
of gifts from himself, and he re-established, with marvellous
authority, pe£tce and good understanding between those who
had been at variance. In all that he did or said he seemed to
have in him something divine, insomuch that people went so
far as to pluck hairs from his mule to keep as relics. In the
open air he wore a woollen tunic, and over it a serge cloak
which came down to his heels; he had his arms and feet bare;
he ate Httle or no .bread, and lived chiefly on wine and fish."
In 1095, after the preaching errantry of Peter the Hermit,
Pope Urban H. was at Clermont, in Auvergne, presiding at the
grand council, at which thirteen archbishops and two hundred
and five bishops or abbots were met "together, with so many
princes and lay-lords, that "about the middle of the month of
November the towns and the villages of the neighborhood were
full of people, and divers were constrained to have their tents
and pavilions set up amidst the fields and meadows, notwith-
standing that the season and the coimtry were cold to an
extreme." The first nine sessions of the council were devoted
to the affairs of the Church in the West; but at the tenth
Jerusalem and the Christians of the East became the subject
of deliberation. The Pope went out of the church wherein the
Council was assembled and moimted a platform erected upon
a vast open sx>ace in the midst of the throng. Peter the Her-
mit, standing at his side, spoke first, and told the story of his
sojourn at Jerusalem, all he had seen of the miseries and
humiliations of the Christians, and aU he himself had suffered
there, for he had been made to pay tribute for admission into
the Holy City, and for gazing upon the spectacle of the ex-
actions, insults, and tortures he was recounting. After him
Pope Urban II. siK)ke, in the French tongue, no doubt, as Peter
had spoken, for he was himseM a Frenchman, as the majority
of those present were, grandees and populace. He made a
long speech, entering upon the most painful details connected
with the sufferings of the Christians of Jerusalem," that royal
city which the Eedeemer of the human race had made illus-
trious by His coming, had honored by His residence, had
806 matORt OP FkAKOS, [ca. Tft
hallowed by His passion, had purchased by His death, had
distinguished by His burial. She now demands of you her
deliveranoe .... men of France, men from beyond the
mountains, nations chosen and beloved of Gkxi, right valiant
knights, recall the virtues of your ancestors, tho virtue and
greatness of King Charlemagne and your other kings; it is
from you above all that Jerusalem awaits the help she invokes,
for to you, above all nations, €k)d has vouchsafed signal glory
in arms. Take ye, then, the road to Jerusalom for the remis-
sion of your sins, and depart assured of the imperishable glory
which awaits you in the kingdom of heavea."
From the midst of the throng arose one prolonged and gene-
ral shout, '^God willeth iti God willeth itl'' The pope paused
for a moment; and then, making a sign with his hand as if to
ask for silence, he continued, '*If the Lord God were not in
your souls, ye would not all have uttered the same words. In
the bajktle, then, be those your war-cry, those words that came
from GK)d; in the army of the Lord let naught be heard but
that one shout, ^ God willeth itI God willeth it!' Weordain
not, and we advise not that the jotuney be undertaken by the
old or the weak, or such as be not suited for arms, and let not
women set out without their husbands or their brothers: let
the rich help the poor; nor priests nor clerks may go without
the leave of their bishops; and no layman shall commence the
march save with the blessing of his pastor. Whosoever hath
a wish to enter upon this pilgrimage let him wear upon his
brow or his breast the cross of the Lord, and let him, who, in
accomplishment of his desire, shall be willing to mardi away,
place tne cross behind him, between his shoulders; for thus he
will fulfil the precept of the Lord, who said, ' He that doth not
take up his^cross and follow Me, is not worthy of Me.' "
The enthusiasm was general and contagious, as the first
shout of the crowd had been; and a pious prelate, Adh^ar,
bishop of Puy, was. the first to receive the cross from the
pope's hands. It was of red cloth or silk, sewn upon the right
shoulder of the coat or cloak, or fastened on the front of the
helmet. The crowd dispersed to assume it and spread it.
Beligious enthusiasm was not the only, but the first and the
determining motive of the crusade. It is to the honor of
humanity, and especially to the honor of the French nation,
that it is accessible to the sudden sway of a moral and dism-
terested sentiment, and resolves, without prevision as well as
without premeditation, upon acts which decide, for many a
CH. XVI.] om&m ANJ) sVGoms of tbe cnmADss. 307
long year, the course and the fate of a generation, and, it may
be, of a whole people. We have seen in our own day, in the
conduct of popidace, national assemblies, and armies, under the
impulse not any longer of i-eligious feeling but of political and
social agitation, France thus giving herself up to the rush of
sentiments, generous indeed and pure, but without the least
forecast touching the consequences of the ideas which inspired
them or the acts which they entailed. It is with nations as
with armies; the side of glory is that of danger; and great
works are wrought at a heavy cost, not only of happiness but
also of virtue. It would be wrong, nevertheless, 'to lack
respect for and to speak evil of enthusiasm: it not only bears
witness to the grandeur of himian na^ture, it justly holds its
place and exercises its noble influence in the com*se of the great
events which move across the scene of human eiyors and vices,
according to the vast and inscrutable design of God. It is
quite certain that the crusaders of the eleventh century, in
their haste to deliver Jerusalem from the Mussulmans, were
far from foreseeing that, a few centuries after their triumph,
Jerusalem and the Christian East would fall again beneath the
yoke of the Mussulmans and their barbaric stagnation; and
this future, had they caught but a glimpse of it, would doubt-
less have chilled their zeal. But it is not a whit the less cer-
tain that, in view of the end, their labor was not in vain; for
in the panorama of the world's history, the crusades marked
the date of the arrest of Islamism, a^d powerfully contributed
to the decisive preponderance of Chidstian civilization.
To religious enthusiasm there was joined another motive less
disinterested, but natural and legitimate, which was the still
very vivid recollection of the evils caused to the Christians of the
West by the Mussulman invasions in Spain, France,.and Italy,
and th^ fear of seeing them begin again. Instinctively war was
carried to the East to keep it from the West, just as Charle-
magne had invaded and conquered the country of the Saxons
to put an end to their inroads upon the Franks. And this pru-
dent plan availed not only to give the Christians of the West
a hope of security, it afforded them the pleasure of vengeance.
They were about to pay back alarm for alarm, and evil for
evil to the enemy from whom they had suffered in the same
way; hatred and pride, as well as piety, obtained satisfaction.
There is moreover great motive power in a spirit of enter-
prise and a taste for adventure. Care-f or-nothingness is one
of mankind's chief diseases, and if it plays so conspicuous a
308 mSTOST OF FRANCE, [ch. xvi.
part in comparatiYely enlightened and favored communities,
amidst the labors and the enjoyments of an advanced civiliza-
tion, its influence was certainly not less in times of intellectual
sloth and harshly monotonous existence. To escape therefrom,
to satisfy in some sort the energy and curiosity inherent in
man, the people of the eleventh century had scarcely any re-
source but war, with its excitement and distant excursions
into unknown regions. Thither rushed the masses of the peo-
ple, whilst the minds which were eager, above every thing,
for knowledge, thronged on the mountain of St. Qenevi^ve to
the lectures of Abelard. Need of variety and novelty, and an
instinctive desire to extend their views and enliven their exist-
ence probably made as many crusaders as the feeling against
the Mussulmans and the promptings of .piety.
The Council pf Clermont, at its closing on the 28th of Novem-
ber, 1095, had fixed the month of August in the following year,
and the feast of the Assumption, for the departure of the
crusaders for the Holy Land, but the people's impatience did
not brook this waiting, short as it was in view of the greatness
and difficulties of the enterprise. As early as the 8th of
March, 1096, and in the course of the spring three mobs rather
than armies set out on the crusade, with a strength, it is said,
of 80,000 or 100,000 persons in one case, and of 15,000 or 20,000
in the other two. Persons not men^ for there were amongst
them many women and children, whole families, in fact, who
had left their villages, wit];Lout organization and without pro-
visions, calculating that they would be competent to find their
own way, and that He who feeds the yoimg ravens would not
suffer to die of want pilgrims wearing His cross. Whenever,
on their road, a town came in sight, the children asked if that
were Jerusalem. The first of these mobs had for its head
Peter the Hermit himself, and a Burgundian knight called
Walter Havencmght; the second had a German priest named
Gottschalk; and the third a Count Emico of Leiningen, potent
in the neighborhood of Mayence. It is wrong to call thera
heads, for they were really nothing of the kind; their au-
thority was rejected, at one time as tyrannical, at another as
useless. '^The grass-hoppers," was the saying amongst them
in the words of Solomon's proverbs, **have no king, and yet
they go in companies." In crossing Germany, Hungary, Bul-
garia, and the provinces of the Greek empire, these companies,
urged on by their brutal passions or by their necessities and
material wants, abandoned themselves to such irregularities
CH. xvL] ORIGIN AND SUCCESS OF TEE CRUSADES. 309
that, as they went, princes and peoples, instead of welcoming
them as Christians, came to treat them as enemies, of whom it
was necessary to get rid at any price. Peter the Hermit and
Gottschalk made honorahle and sincere efforts to check the
excesses of their following, which were a source of so much
danger; hut Coxmt Emico, on the contrary, says William of
Tyre, ** himself took part in the plunder, and incited his
comrades to crime." • Thus, at one time taking the offensive,
at another compelled to defend themselves against the attacks
of the justly irritated inhabitants, these three immense com-
panies of pilgrims, these disorderly volunteers, with great
difficulty arrived, after enormous losses, at the gates of Con-
stantinople. Either through fear or through pity the Greek
emperor, Alexis (or Alexius) Comnenus, permitted them to
pitch their camp there; **but before long, plenty, idleness,
and the sight of the riches of Constantinople brought once
more into the camp, Hcence, indiscipline, and a thirst after
brigandage. Whilst awaiting the war against the Mussul-
mans, the pilgrims pillaged the houses, the palaces, and even
the churches in the outskirts of Byzantium. To deliver his
capital from these destructive guests, Alexis furnished them
with vessels and got them shipped off across the Bosphorus."
Whilst the crusade was commencing under these sad aus-
pices, chieftains of more sense and better obeyed were prepar-
ing to give it another character and superior fortunes. Two
great and real armies were forming in the north, the centre,
and the south of France, and a third in Italy, amongst the
Norman knights who had founded there the kingdom of
Naples and Sicily, just before their countryman, William the
Bastard, conquered England. The first of these armies had
for its chief, Godfrey de Bouillon, duke of Lorraine, whom all
his contemporaries have described as the model of a gallant
and pious knight. He was the son of Eustace II., count of
Boulogne, and **the lustre of nobility," says Eaoul of Caen,
chronicler of his times, "was enhanced in his case, by the
splendor of the most exalted virtues, as well in affairs of the
world as of heaven. As to the latter he distinguished himself
by his generosity towards the poor and his pity for those who
had committed faults. Furthermore, his humility, his ex-
treme gentleness, his moderation, his justice, and his chastity
were great; he shone as a light amongst the monks even more
than as a duke amongst the knights. And, nevertheless, he
could also do the things which are of this world, fight, mar-
310 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [ch. xvl
shal the ranks, and extend by arms the domains of the
Church. In his boyhood he learnt to be first or one of the
first to strike the foe; in youth he made it his habitual prac-
tice ; and in advancing age he forgot it never. He was so per-
fectly the son of the warlike Count Ehistaoe and of his mother
Ida de Bouillon, a woman full of piety and versed in literature,
that at sight of him even a rival would have been forced to
say of him, * for zeal in war, behold his father; for serving
Gk)d, behold his mother,' " The second army, consisting chiefly
of crusaders from southern France, marched under the orders
of Raymond IV., count of Toulouse, the oldest chieftain of
the crusade, who still, however, united the ardor of youth
with the experience of ripe age and the stubbornness of the
greybeard. At the side of the Cid he had fought and more
than once beaten the Moors in Spain. He took with him to
the East, his third wife, Elvira, daughter of Alphonso VI.,
king of Castile, as weU as a very young child he had by her,
and he had made a vow, which he fulfilled, that he would re-
turn no more to his country, and would fight the infidels to
the end of his days, in expiation of his sins. He was discreet
though haughty, and not only the richest but the most econ-
omical of the crusader-chiefs: ** Accordingly,'* says Raoiil of
Caen, " when all the rest had spent their money, the riches of
Count Eaymond made him still more distinguished. The peo-
ple of Provence, who formed his following, did not lavish their
resources, but studied economy even more than glory," and
**his army," adds Guibertof Nogent, ** showed no inferiority
to any other, save so far as it is possible to reproach the inhab-
itants of Provence touching their excessive loquacity."
Bohemond, prince of Tarento, commanded the third army,
composed principally of Italians and warriors of various origins
come to Italy to share in the exploits and fortunes of his father,
the celebrated Kobert Guiscard, founder of the Norman king-
dom of Naples, who was at one time the foe and at another
the defender o^ Pope Gregory VQ., and who died in the island
of Cephalonia just as he was preparing to attempt the conquest
of Constantinople. Bohemond had neither less ambition, nor
less courage and ability than his father. *^ His appearance,"
says Anna Conmena, '^ impressed the eye as much as his r^u-
tation astounded the mind ; his height surpassed that of all his
comrades; his blue eyes gleamed readily with pride and anger;
when he spoke, you would have said he had made eloquence
his study; and when he showed himself in armor, you might
CH. XVI.] ORIGIN AND SUCCESS OF THE CRUSADES, 311
have believed that he had never done aught but handle lance
and Bword. Brought up in the school c^ Norman heroes, he
concealed calculations of policy beneath the exterior of force,
and, although he was of a haughty disposition, he knew how
to be blind to a wrong when there was iiothing to be gained
by avenging it. He had learnt from his father to regard as
foes all whose dominions and riches he ooveted; and he was
not restrained by fear of God or by man's opinions, or by his
own oaths. It was not the deliverance of the tomb of Christ
wMch fired his zeal or decided him upon taking up the cross;
but, as he had avowed eternal enmity to the Greek emperors,
he smiled at the idea of traversing their empire at the head of
an army, and, full of confidence in his f ortimes, he hoped to
make for himself a kingdom before arriving at Jerusalem."
Bohemond had as friend and faithful comrade, his cousin
Tancred de Hauteville, great-grandson, through his mother
Emma, of Robert Guiscard, and, according to all his contem-
poraries, the type of a perfect Christian knight, neither more
nor lees. ''From his boyhood," says Eaoul of Caen, his servi-
tor before becoming his biographer, '' he surpassed the young
by his skill in the management of arms and the old by the
strictness of his morals. He disdained to speak ill of whoever
it might be, even when ill had beed spoken of himself. About
himself he would say naught, but he had an insatiable desire
to give cause for talking thereof. Glory was the only passion
that moved that young soul; yet was it disquieted within him,
and he suffered great anxiety from thinking that his knightly
combats seemed contrary to the precepts of the Lord. The
"Lord bids us give our coat and our cloak to him who would
take them from us; whereeis the knight's part is to strip all
that remains from him from whom he hath already taken his
coat and his cloak. These contradictory principles benumbed
sometimes the courage of this man so full of propriety ; but
when the declaration of Pope Urban had assured remission of
all their sins to all Christians who should go and fight the
Gtontiles, then Tancred awoke in some sort, from his dream,
and this new opportunity fired him with a zeal which cannot
be expressed. He therefore made preparations for his depar-
ture; but, accustomed from his infancy to give to others be-
fore thinking of himself, he entered upon no great outlay,
but contented himself with collecting in sufiicient quantity
knightly arms, horses, mules, and provisions necessary for
bis company."
312 HISTORY OF FRANCS, [ch. xvi.
When these four chieftains, who have remained illustrious
in history, that grave wherein small reputations are extin-
guished, were associated, for the deliverance of the Holy Land,
a throng of feudal lords, some powerful as well as valiant,
others valiant but sitnple knights ; Hugh, count of Vermandois,
brother of Philip I., king of France; Robert of Normandy,
called Shortkose, son of William the Conqueror ; Bobert, count
of Flanders; Stephen, count of Blois; Raimbault, coimt of
Orange; Baldwin, count of Hainault; Haoul of Beaugency,
Qerard of Boussillon, and many others whose names contem-
porary chroniclers and learned modems have gathered to-
gether. Not one of the reigning sovereigns of Europe, kings
or emperors, of France, England, Spain, or Germany, took
part in the first crusade. It was the feudal nation, great and
small, castle-owners and populace, who rose in mass for the
deliverance of Jerusalem and the honor of Christendom.
These three great armies of crusaders got on the march from
August to October, 1096, wending their way, Gknifrey de Bouil-
lon by Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria; Bohemond by the
south of Italy and the Mediterranean; and Coimt Baymond of
Toulouse by Northern Italy,' FriuH, and Dalmatia. They ar-
rived one after the other in the empire of the East and at the
gates of Constantinople. Godfrey de BouQlon was the first to
appear there, and the Emperor Alexis Comnenus learnt- with
dismay that other armies of crusaders would soon follow that
which was already so large. It was not long before Bohemond
and Eaymond appeared. Alexlfe behaved towards these for-
midable allies with a mixture of pusillanimity and haughti-
ness, promises and lies, caresses and hostility, which irritated
without intimidating them, and rendered it impossible for
them to feel any confidence or conceive any esteem. At one
time he was thanking them profusely for the support they
were bringing him against the infidels; at another he was
sending troops to harass them on their road, and, when they
reached Constantinople, he demanded that they shoiild swear
fealty and obedience to him, as if they were his own subjects.
One day he was refusing them provisions and attempting to
subdue them by famine; and the next he was lavishing feasts
and presents upon them. The crusaders, on their side, when
provisions fell short, spread themselves over the countiry and
plundered it without scruple; and, when they encountered
hostile troops of Greeks, charged them without warning.
When the emperor demanded of them fealty and homage, the
CH. XVI.) ORIGIN AND SUCCESS OF THE CRUSADES, 313
Count of Toulouse-answered that he had not come to the East
in search of a master. G-odfrey de Bouillon, after resisting
every haughty pretension, heing as just as he was dignified, ac-
knowledged that the crusaders ought to restore to the emperor
the towns which had helonged to the empire, and ap arrange-
ment to that effect was concluded hetween them. Bohemond
had a prox)osal suhmitted to Godfrey to join him in attacking
the Greek empire and taking possession at once of Byzantium;
but Godfrey rejected the proposal, with the reminder that he
hdd come only to fight the infidels. The emperor, fully in-
formed of the greediness as well as ambition of Bohemond, in-
troduced him one day into a room fuU of treasures. " Here,'*
said Bohemond, * * is wherewith to conquer kingdoms. " Alexis
had the treasures removed to Bohemond's, who at first re-
fused, and ended, by accepting them. It is even said that he
asked the emperor for the title of Grand Domestic or of gen-
eral of the empire of the East. Alexis, who had held that dig-
nity and who knew that it was the way to the throne, gave
the Norman chieftain a present refusal, with a promise of it
on account of future services to be rendered by him to the em-
pire and the emperor.
The chiefs of the crusade were not alone in treating with
disdain this haughty, wily, and feeble sovereign. During a
ceremony at which some French princes were doing homage
to the emperor, a Coimt Bobert of Paris went and sat down
free-and-easily beside him; when Baldwin, count of HaJnault,
took the intruder by the arm, saying, **When you are in a
country you must respect its masters and its customs."
"Verily," answered Ttobert, **I hold it shocking that this
jackanapes should be seated, whilst so many noble captains
are standing yonder." When the ceremony was over, the
emperor who had, no doubt, heard the words, wished to have
an explanation; so he detained Eobert, and asked him who
and whence he was. **I am a Frenchman," quoth Eobert;
"and of noble birth. In my country there is, hard by a
church, a spot repaired to by such as bum to prove their valor.
I have been there often without any one's daring to present
himself before me." The emperor did not care to take up this
sort of challenge and contented himself with replying to the
warrior, **If you there waited for foes without finding any,
you are now about to have what will satisfy you; I have, how-
ever, a piece of advice to give you; don't put youself at the
head or the tail of the army; keep in the middle. I have
814 HISTORY OF FRANCE. pm. xvl
learned bow to fight with Turks; and that is the best place you
can choose." The crusaders and the Greeks were mutually
contemptuous, the former with a ruffianly pride, the latter
with an ironical and timid refinement.
This posture, on either side, of inactiyity, ill-will and irrita-
tion, could not last long. On the approach of the spring of
1097, the crusader chiefs and their troops, first Godfrey de
Bouillon, then Bohemond and Tancred, and afterwards Count
Raymond of Toulouse, passed the Bosphorus, being conveyed
across either in their own vessels or those of the Emperor
Alexis, who encouraged them against the infidels and at the
same time had the infidels supphed with information most
damaging to the crusaders. Having effected a junction in
Bithynia, the Christian chiefs resolved to go and lay siege to
Nicsea, the first place, of iDQLi)ortance, in possession of the
Turks. Whilst marching towards the place they saw coming
to meet them, with every appearance of the most woful desti-
tution, Peter the Hermit, followed by a small band of pilgrims
escai)ed from the disasters of their expeditien, who had passed
the winter, as he had, in Bithynia, waiting for more fortunate
crusaders. Peter, affectionately welcomed by the chiefs of the
army, recounted to them **in detail," says William of Tyre,
*' how the people, who had preceded them under bis guidance,
had shown themselves destitute of intelligence, improvident,
and unmanageable at the same ; and so it was far more by their
own fault than by the deed of any other that they had suc-
cumbed to the weight of their calamities." Peter, having thus
relieved his heart and recovered his hopes, joined the i)owerful
army of crusaders who had come at last; and on. the 15th of
May, 1097, the siege of Nicsea began.
The town was in the hands of a Turkish sultan, Elilidge-
Arslan, whose father, Soliman, twenty years before^ had in-
vaded Bithynia and fixed his abode at Nicsea. He, being in-
formed of the approach of the crusaders, had issued forth, to
go and assemble all his forces ; but he had left behind his wife,
his children, and his treasures, and he had sent messengers to
the inhabitants, saying, ^^ Be of good coiurage, and fear not the
barbarous people who make show of besieging our city; to-
morrow, before the seventh hour of the -day, ye shall be de-
livered from your enemies." And he did arrive on the 16th of
May, says the Armenian historian, Matthias of Edessa, at the
head of 600,000 horsemen. The historians of the crusaders are
infinitely more moderate as to the number of their foes; they
QH. XVI.] OBIQIN 4ND 8UC0E88 OF THE CRUSADES, 316
assign to KUidge-Arslan only SO^OOO or 60,000 men, and their
testimony is far more trustworthy, being that of Uie victors.
In any case, the Christians and the Turks fought valiantly for
two days under the walls of Nicsea, and Godfrey de Bouillon
did justice to his fame for valor and skill by laying low a
Turk "remarkable amongst all," says William of Tyre, "for
his size and strength, whose arrows caused much havoc in the
ranks of our men." Kilidge-Arslan, being beaten, withdrew to
collect fresh troops, and, after six weeks' siege, the crusaders
believed themselves on the point of entering Nicaea as masters,
when, on the 26th of June, they saw floating on the ramparts
the standard of the Emperor Alexis. Their suprise was the
greater in that they had just written to the emperor to say
that the city was on the point of surrending, and they added,
<< We earnestly invite you to lose no timb in sending some of
your princes with sufficient retinue, that they may receive
and keep in honor of your name the city which will deliver
itself up to us. As for usi, after having put it in the hands of
your highness, we will not show any delay in pursuing, with
Gk)d's help, the execution of our projects." Alexis ^had antici-
pated this loyal message. Being in constant secret communi-
cation with the former subjects of the Qreek empire, and often
even with tibeir new masters the Turks, his agents in Nicaea
had induced the inhabitants to surrender to him, and not to
the Latins, who would treat them as vanquished. The irrita-
tion amongst tibe crusaders was extreme. They had promised
themselves, if not the plimder of Nicsaa, at any rate great ad-
vantages &om their victory ; and it was said in the camp that
the convention concluded with the emperor contained an
article purporting that " if, with Gk>d's help, there were taken
any one of the towns which had belonged aforetime to the
Greek empire all along the line of march up to Syria, the town
should be restored to the emperor, together with all the adja-
cent territory, and that the booty, the spoils, and all objects,
whatsoever found therein should be given up without discus-
sion to the crusaders, in recompense for their trouble and in-
demnification for their expenses." The wrath waxed still
fiercer when it was known that the crusaders would not be
permitted to enter more than ten at a time the town they had
just taken, and that the Emperor Alexis had set at liberty the
wife of Eilidge-Arslan, together with her two sons and all the
Turks led prisoners of war to Constantinople. The chiefs ci
the crusaders were themselves indignant and distrustful; but
816 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [cjh. xtl
''they resolved with one accord," says William of Tyre, "to
hide their resentment, and they applied all their efforts to
calming their people, whilst encouraging them to push on with-
out delay to the end of their glorious enterprise."
All the army of the crusaders put themselves in motion to
cross Asia Minor from the north-west to the south-east, and to
reach Syria. At their arrival before Nicsea they nmnbered, it
is said, 500,000 foot and 100,000 horse, figures evidently too
great, for every thing indicates that at the opening of the
crusade the three great armies, starting from France and Italy
under Gk)dfrey de Bouillon, Bohemond, and Raymond of Tou-
louse, did not reach this number, and they had certainly lost
many during their long march through their sufferings and in
their battles. However that may be, after they had marched
all in one mass for two days and had then extended themselves
over a large area, for the purpose, no doubt, of more easily
finding provisions, the crusaders broke into two main bodies,
led, one by Gknifrey de Bouillon and Raymond of Toulouse, the
other by Bohemond and Tancred. On the 1st of July, at day-
break, this latter body, encamped at a short distance fronx
Doryleum inPhrygia, saw descending from the neigboring
heights a cloud of enemies who burst upon the Christians, first
rained a perfect hail of missiles upon them, and then pene-
trated into their camp, even to the tents assigned to the women,
children, cuid old men, the nimierous following of the crusaders.
It was Kilidge-Arslan, who, after the fall of Nicaea, had raised
this new army of Sarax^ns, and was pursuing the conquerors
on their march. The battle began in great disorder ; the chiefe
inj>erson sustained the first shock ; and the Duke of Normandy,
Robert Shorthose, took in his hand his white banner, em-
broidered with gold, and waving it over his head, threw him-
self upon the Turks, shouting, "Gk)d willethit! God wiUeth
it I" Bohemond obstinately sought out Kilidge-Arslan in the
• fray; but at the same time he sent messengers in all haste to
Gkxifrey de Bouillon, as yet but a little way off, to smnmon him
to their aid. Godfrey galloi)ed up, and, with some fifty of his
knights, proceeding the rest of his army, was the first to throw
himself into the midst of the Turks. Towards mid-day the
whole of the first body arrived, with standards fiying, with
the sound of trumpets and with the shouting of warriors.
Kilidge-Arslan and his troops fell back upon the heights whence
they had descended. The crusaders, without taking breath,
luscended in pursuit. The Turks saw themselves shut in by a
Cfi. XVI.] ORIGIN AND SUCCESS OP THE CEU8AJ)B8. 317
forest of lances, and fled over wood and rock; and ''two days
afterwards they were still flying," says Albert of Aix, ''though
none pursued them, unless it were Qod himself." The victory
of Doryleum opened the whole country to the crusaders, and
they resumed their march towards Syria, paying their sole at-
tention to not separating again.
It was not long before they had to grapple with other dangers
against which bravery could do nothing. They were crossing,
under a broiling sun, deserted tracts which their enemies had
taken good cape to ravage. Water and forage were not to be
bad ; the men suffered intolerably from thirst; horses died by
hundreds; at the head of their troops marched knights
mounted on asses or oxen; their favorite amusement, the
chase, became imi)0S8ible for them; for their hawking-birds
too, the falcons and gerfalcons they had brought with them,
languished and died beneath the excessive heat. One incident
obtained for the Crusaders a momentary reUef. The dogs
which followed the army, prowling in all directions, one day
returned with their paws and coats wet; they had, therefore,
found water; and the soldiers set themselves to look for it, and
in fact, discovered a small river in a remote valley. They got
water-drunk, and more than three hundred men, it is said,
were affected by it and died.
On arriving in Pisidia, a country intersected by water-
courses, meadows, and woods, the army rested several days;
but at that very point two of its most competent and most
respected chiefs were very nearly taken from it. Count Ray-
mond of Toulouse, who was also called Raymond of Saint-
Gilles, fell so ill that the Bishop of Orange was reading over
him the prayers for the dying, when one of those present cried
out that the count would assuredly live, for that the prayers
of his patron Saint-Gilles, had obtained for him a truce tvith
death. And Raymond recovered. Godfrey de Bouillon,
again, whilst riding in a forest, came ui)on a pilgrim attacked
by a bear, and aU but fallen a victim to the ferocious beast.
The duke drew his sword and urged his horse against the bear
which, leaving the pilgrim, rushed upon the assailant. The
frigntened horse reared; Godfrey was thrown and, kccording
to one account, immediately remounted; but, according to
another, he fell, on the contrary, together with his horse; how-
ever he sustained a fearful struggle sigainst the bear and ulti-
mately killed it by plunging his sword up to the hilt into its
belly, says WiUiam of Tyre, but with so great an effort, and
318 BISTORT OF FRANCS. [ch. xvl
after reoeiving so serious a wound, that his soldiers, hurrying
up at the pilgrim's report, found him stretched on the ground,
covered with blood, and unable to rise, and carried him back
to the camp, where he was, for several weeks, obliged to be
carried about in a litter in the rear of the army.
Through all these perils they continued to advance, and they
were approaching the heights of Taurus, the bulwark and gate
of Syria, when a quarrel which arose between two of the
principal crusader-chiefis was like to seriously endanger the
concord and strength of the army. Tancred, with his men,
had entered Tarsus, the birth-place of St. Paul, and had planted
his flag there. Although later in his arrival, Baldwin, brother
of Gk)dfrey de Bouillon, claimed a right to the possession of the
city, and had his flag set up instead of Tancred's, which was
thrown into a ditch. During several days the strife was fierce
and even bloody; the soldiers of Baldwin were the more
numerous, and those of Tancred considered their chief too
gentle, and his bravery, so often proved, scarcely sufficed to
form an excuse for his forbearance. Chiefs and soldiers, how-
ever, at last, saw the necessity for reconciliation, and made
mutual promises to sink all animosity. On returning to the
general camp, Tancred was received with marked favor; for
the majority of the crusaders, being unconcerned in the quar-
rel at Tarsus, liked him for his bravery and for his gentleness
equally. Baldwin, on the contrary, was much blamed, even
by his brother Godfrey: but he was far more ambitious on his
own account than devoted to the common cause. He had
often heard tell of Armenia and Mesoi)otamia, their riches and
the large number of Christians living there, almost equally
independent of Greeks cmd Turks; and, in the hope of finding
there a chance of greatly improving his personal fortunes, he
left the army of crusaders at Maresa, on the very eve of the
day on which the chiefs came to the decision that no one should
for the future move away from the fiag, and taking with him
a weak detachment of 200 horse and 1000 or 1200 foot, marched
towards Armenia. His name and his presence soon made a
stir there; and he got hold of two littie towns which received
him eagerly. Edessa, the capital of Armenia and. metropolis
of Mesopotamia, was peopled by Christians; and a Greek gov-
ernor, sent from Constantinople by the emperor, lived {here,
on payment of a tribute to the Turks. Internal dissensions
and the fear ever inspired by the vicinity of the Turks kept the
dty in a state of lively agitation; and bishop, people, and
tit. XVI.] OmGW AND StrcaSSS of tee crusades, 319
Q-reek governor, all appealed to Baldwin. He presented him*
self before Edesea with merely a himdred horsemen, having
left the remainder of his forces in garrison at the town he had
already oocupied. All the population came to meet him, bear-
ing branches of olive and singing chants in honor of their de-
liverer. But it was not long before outbreaks and alarms
began again; and Baldwin looked on at them, waiting for
I)ower to be offered him. Still there was no advance; the
Greek governor continued where he was; and Baldwin mut-
tered threats of his departure. The popular disquietude was
extreme ; and the Greek governor, old and detested as he was,
thought to smooth all by adopting the Latin chief and making
him his heir. This, however, caused but a short respite; Bald-
win left the governor to be massacred in a fresh outbreak ; the
I)eople came and offered him the government, and he became
Prince of Edessa, and, ere long of all the neighboring country,
without thinking any more of Jerusalem, of which, neverthe-
less, he was destined at no distant day. to be king.
Whilst Baldwin was thus acquiring, for himself and himself
alone, the first Latin principality belonging to the crusaders in
the East, his brother Gkxifrey and the main Christian army
were crossing the chain of Taurus and arriving before Antioch,
the capitol of Syria. Great was the fame, with Pagans and
Christians, of this city; its site, the beauty of its climate, the
fertility of the land, its fish-abounding lake, its river of Orontes,
its fountain of Daphne, its festivals, and its morals, had made
it, under the Roman empire, a brilliant and favorite abode.
At the same time, it was there that the disciples of Jesus had
assmned the name of Christians, and that St. Paul hjui begun
his heroic life as preacher and as missionary. It was absolute-
ly necessary that the crusaders should take Antioch; but the
difficulty of the conquest was equal to the importance. The
city was well fortified and provided with a strong citadel; the
Turks had been in possession of it for fourteen years; and its
governor Accien or Baghisian (Ydgui-Sian^ or brother of bkick,
according to Oriental historians), appointed by the Sultan of
Persia, Malekschah, was shut up in it with 7000 horse and 20,-
000 foot. The first attacks of the Christians failed; and they
had the prospect of a long siege. At the outset their situation
had been easy and pleasant; they encountered no hostility
from the country-people, who were intimidated or indifferent;
they came and paid visits to the camp, and admitted the crusa-
ders to their markets ; the harvests, which were hardly finished,
320 mSTORT OF FRANCS. [ch. rv£.
had been abundant: ''the grapes,'' says Guibert of Nogent,
'' were still hanging on the branches of the vines; on all sides
discoveries were made of grain shut up, not in bams, but in
subterranean vaults; and the trees were laden with fruit."
These f adlitiee of existence, the softness of the climate, the
pleasantness of the places, the frequency of leisure, partly pleer
sure and partly care-for^nothing-ness, caused amongst the
crusaders irregularity, licence, indiscipline, carelessness and
often perils and reverses. The Turks profited thereby to make
sallies, which threw the camp into confusion and cost the lives
of crusaders surprised or scattered about. Winter came;
provisions grew scarce, and had to be sought at a greater dis-
tance and at greater peril; and living ceased to be agreeable or
easy. Disquietude, doubts concerning the success of the enter-
prise, fatigue and discouragement made way amongst the
army ; and men who were believed to be proved, Bobert Short-
hose, duke of Normandy, William, viscount of Melun, called
the Carpenter, on accoimt of his mighty battle-axe, and Peter
the Hermit himself, ''who had never learned," says Bobert
the monk, "to endure such plaguy hunger," left the camp,
and deserted the banner of the cross, ''that there might be
seen, in the words of the Apocalypse, even the stars Calling
from heaven," says Guibert of Nogent. Great were the scan-
dal and indignation. Tancred hurried after the fugitives and
brought them back ; and they swore.on the Qospel never again
to abandon the cause which they had preached and served so
well. It was clearly indispensable to take measures for re-
storing amongst the army discipline, confidence, and the
morals and hopes of Christians. The different chie& applied
themselves thereto by very different process according to their
vocation, character, or habits. Adh^ar, bishop of Puy, the
renowned spiritual chief of the crusade, Giodfrey de Bouillon,
Baymond of Toulouse, and the military chieftains renowned
for piety and virtue made head against all kinds of disorder
either by fervent address or severe prohibitions. Men caught
drunk had their hair cut off; blasphemous and reckless game-
sters were branded with a red-hot iron; and the women were
shut up in separate tents. To tne irregularities within were
added the perils of incessant espionage on the part of the Turks
in the very camp of the crusaders: and no one knew how to
repress this evil. "Brethren and lords," said Bohemond to
the assembled princes, " let me undertake this business by my-
self; I hope, with Gkxl's help, to find a remedy for this com-
^pushf'"' *' ■
Ci^
THE FOUR LEADERS OF THE FIRST CRUSADE.
CH. xvi.] ORIOIN AND SUCCESS OF THE CRUSADES. 321
plaint." Caring but little for moral reform, he strove to strike
terror into the Turks, and, by coimteraction, restore confidence
to the crusaders. **One evening," says William of Tyre,
** whilst everybody was as usual, occupied in getting supper
ready, Bohemond ordered some Turks who had been caught
in the camp to be brought out of prison and put to death forth-
with; and then, having had a huge fire Hghted, he gave in-
Btructions that they should be roasted and carefully prepared
as if for being eaten. If it should be asked what