THE CAROLINGIANS Merovingian savagery and chaos ended in a general paralysis of the State. A new Clovis was needed, and found in Pippin II. of Heristal. In his person he united the two great houses of Pippin and of Arnulf, archbishop of Metz, The Pippins, from father to son, had succeeded to the mayoralty of the palace in Austrasia from 615 to 655. They had at their back a great company of vassals and vast landed estates ; above all they had patience— without which nothing lasting can be built. It took them nearly
years to supplant the Merovingians by the Carolingian dynasty.
Pippin of Heristal governed under four kings. A pioneer, he began all those tasks which his descendants were to carry to com pletion; he was himself precipitate in nothing. As warrior, he defended the frontiers that were threatened by the Frisians, the Alammani and Bavarians ; as a son of the Church, the descendant of Arnulf, he brought in the train of his armies, missionaries through whom the Carolingians were to consolidate their con quests. He died in 714 without having deemed it opportune, or without having found the occasion, to sweep away the phantom I kings whose sole utility was to date charters and diplomas.
With Charles Martel began the greatness of Austrasia. He accomplished successfully a fourfold task. Although a bastard, he asserted his power in Austrasia where he deposed his half-brothers from the mayoralty. He achieved the supremacy of Austrasia over Neustria and Burgundy by the victory of Vincy (717). Frankish unity was re-established. He then defended Gaul against the Frisians, the Alammani and the Bohemians. Without being any more conscious of his mis sion than was Clovis, Charles Martel proved himself another sol dier of the Cross by repelling the Moorish invasion at Poitiers (732), which won for him the appellation of Martel—the Hammer. An alliance with Charles Martel, the pacifier of Gaul, the pro tector of St. Boniface, and the vanquisher of the "Infidels," be came ever more necessary to Pope Gregory III., menaced as he was by the Lombards, and promised to be even more fruitful than was that of Clovis with Remigius. Unable to forget that the Lombards had aided him in expelling the Saracens from Provence, Charles contented himself with professions of zeal.
Pippin the Short at once took over and continued his father's work. In 747 he became sole mas ter of the kingdom, for his elder brother, Carloman, became a monk and Pippin compelled Childeric III., the last of the rois fainéants, to shave his royal locks. Grifon, Pippin's half-brother, was also set aside. It only remained for Pippin to assume the royal title. Consulting Pope Zacharias on this mat ter and receiving the answer that "he who exercises the king's power should enjoy the king's title," Pippin had himself crowned at Soissons in Nov. 751, an act which was further consecrated in 754 by the grander coronation in Saint Denis, whereby the Church pronounced the new dynasty to be holy and its title in disputable. The title of patrician also conferred by the pope, still further attached the dynasty to Rome. But these rewards were not unearned. During 754-756 it was Pippin who founded, at the expense of the Lombards, that temporal power of the papacy which was to endure till 187o, the bulwark of their spiritual authority. The price for his consecration paid, Pippin, between
and 768, assured the safety of his kingdom on the farther bank of the Rhine against the Germans and Slays, and against the Arabs to the south of the Pyrenees. Moreover, by the al liance between the greatest material force of the age with the greatest moral authority, the way was opened up for a restoration of the Western Empire.
On the death of Pippin in 768 the kingdom was divided between his two sons, Charles and Carloman; but in 771, Carloman died, and the whole of this great inheritance was united under Charlemagne. Charles devoted his half-bar barian genius to the service of the Church and of the traditions of Rome, and in realizing this ideal of his age, earned his appel lation of "the Great." He attempted to found an empire after the Roman model. Prevented by the Moors from founding its capital on a Mediterranean site, he placed it in his own native land, Aus trasia, with the intention of doing for Germany what Caesar had accomplished for Gaul. Christianity, which had been the weakness of the old empire, was to be the strength of the new. The victory of the soldiers was to be completed by the victory of the mis sionaries. And thus would a common religion unite peoples other wise separated by blood, language and customs.
The conquest of Gaul, from Brittany to Gascony (769-811) assured for his armies a reserve of soldiers that cost him nothing, since military service was obligatory upon all free men. The poor and the serfs cultivated the land. Between 774 and 777 he con solidated the patrimony of St. Peter by the destruction of the Lombard kingdom, whose iron crown he placed on his own brow. This accomplished, he turned his forces against the Saxons (q.v.), but it took him 32 years (772-804) and 18 campaigns before he was at last victorious. But, unlike the Gauls, despite compulsory baptism, destruction of their idols, and deportation or massacre, these heathens submitted themselves unwillingly to "the easy yoke of Christ." Charlemagne fortified his frontiers by marches, or military districts, but in multiplying these advance-posts the Frankish empire came into contact with new peoples—each a prospective enemy. In Spain Charlemagne suffered disaster at Roncevaux (A.D. 778) (see CHARLEMAGNE LEGENDS) and after wards created the Spanish March as a defence for his southern borders. From their camp on the Hungarian plain, the tireless cavalry of the Avars had over-run Bavaria in the very year of its subjugation by Charlemagne (788), and it was not before the Danubian lands had been devastated that this new menace was destroyed. Meanwhile, behind the Elbe and the Saale, the Slays of Bohemia were engaged in an unceasing warfare with the Saxons, and in the north the Danish pirates raided the coasts of the North Sea and the Channel. After 47 years of warfare, the Carolingian empire stretched from the Elbe to the Ebro, and from the Eider to the Tiber—growing greater day by day, but also exposed in creasingly to attack. Charlemagne's power extended further than his frontiers. Christian princes from beyond the Channel and the Pyrenees, Moorish emirs from Fez and Baghdad visited his palaces or offered him presents, as to the great Christian emperors. Through men like Alcuin and Peter of Pisa the Church taught this German—still primitive in many ways—the traditions of Rome and Byzantium. Why should not he be the heir to the Caesars? Why should he not restore, in his own favour, the empire of the West? Nothing was wanting save the imperial crown. In 797 the empress of Constantinople had deposed and blinded her son Con stantine VI., and the imperial throne might be considered vacant. In 797 the pope had been driven from Rome by a revolt and only restored by a Frankish army. The time was ripe, and at Christmas, Soo, Charles was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III.
Of the reconstituted empire, Charlemagne wished to be himself the lawgiver. He was himself the ruler of his empire. He made his power felt to the furthest extremities of the empire by his missi dominici, or representatives, by his courts, military, judicial or political. High-handed with his people in this violent world, the emperor believed that he was no less responsible for their eternal salvation in the next. The missi enforced his spiritual as well as his temporal authority. By this administrative hierarchy and central ization on the Roman model Charlemagne reconstituted the super structure of the imperial monarchy ; but in legalizing by his capit ularies the fief and the beneficium he undermined the foundations of the edifice which he believed himself to be strengthening; by requiring from the greatest in the land the oath of fealty, he admit ted that the sovereign of all needed in addition to be definitely ack nowledged as the direct overlord of his most powerful subjects; by the extension of beneficia the small freeholder gradually disap peared to make room for the feudal tenant (see FEUDALISM). The poor free men gave up their freedom to win protection from the neighbouring lord or prelate. Unable to prevent this development Charlemagne systematized it, thinking himself strong enough to turn it to his own account. As long as he lived he was successful; but, even during his lifetime, the treason of Ganelon proved that he was not always served by a Turpin or a Roland. His authority, powerful and respected, decayed because it depended on him, and him alone. When, in 814, Charlemagne was laid in his tomb at Aix-la-Chapelle, his work was buried with him. There remained only a twofold legend—the religious one that made of him a saint ; the other that made of him the hero of French epic. Twenty-nine years after the death of Charlemagne the empire had again fallen into three kingdoms; 4o years later, a single one of these kingdoms was divided into seven. A century passed away. France was no more than a scrap-heap of almost independent states, out of which feudalism was springing. The seignorial system, which had at first aggrandized the Carolingians, had also prepared their ruin.
The empire devolved upon Louis the Pious or affable—titles indicative of his characteristics, so valuable in peace, so calamitous in times of stress. From the be ginning of his reign, the clumsy machine of government was out of his control. Like his father and ancestors before him, he re tained the entire sovereignty in his own hands, but divided his benefices and offices between his three sons, Lothair, the eldest, whom he associated with himself in the empire, Pippin and Louis. A fourth, Charles, was born to him in 823 of a second marriage, and to him he gave a share also. War between the brothers re sulted : the imperial dignity became a laughing stock, and Louis himself was twice deposed and imprisoned in a monastery. Scarcely was he buried at Metz (84o) before his sons rushed to arms. Lothair desired to preserve the unity of the empire and the pat ronage of all the fiefs in one hand. Louis the German and Charles the Bald leagued themselves against him by the Oath of Stras bourg, the first treaty in the history of France and Germany to be written in the vulgar tongue. An amicable partition of the paternal property was, however, clearly desirable and this was presently effected by a treaty made at Verdun in
The Treaty of Verdun (843).—The Treaty of Verdun marks an important turning point in history. Louis received for his share the land which has become Germany ; Lothair the title of emperor, with Italy and the valleys of the Rhone, the Saone and the Meuse, in addition to the two capitals, Rome and Aix-la Chapelle; Charles, called the Bald, found himself the possessor of the rest of Gaul. The unity of the Carolingian empire was defi nitely broken. The boundaries between the kingdoms were ill defined. That of Lothair, without a national basis, soon split up into transient principalities, so that the vast and indeterminate ter ritories of Burgundy, Lorraine and Provence (q.v.), were to be the battleground of France and Germany till the loth century. Charles the Bald (840-877).—Charles the Bald was the first king of western France. Anxious as he was to maintain the tradi tions of Charlemagne, he was not strong enough. Rather a man of culture than a warrior, he was obliged to spend his life sword in hand, fighting against the Bretons, against the people of Aquitaine who had appealed to Louis the German, against the Norman raiders who were becoming more and more insolent ; fighting al ways, but always without success. He even found himself obliged to entrust the defence of his patrimony to Robert the Strong, duke of the country between Loire and Seine, and ancestor of the Capetian dynasty. Unable to defend his own kingdom of western France, Charles the Bald yet coveted other crowns, and looked obstinately eastwards. He succeeded in becoming, in turn, king of Lorraine, emperor of Germany and king of Italy : an accumulation indeed of titles, but not of strength.
The great vassals of the crown had remained faithful to Charlemagne because they had had need of his protection. Under Charles the Bald, and still more under his successors, it was the prince who had need of the nobles. Thus was the feudal system turned against the throne, for the great vassals took advantage of it to perpetuate themselves in their offices and in their fiefs, and to gain possession of lands and authority. Little by little the monarchy lost influence, since it no longer performed any services ; hence, from the end of the reign of Charles the Bald, there was left but the appearance of royalty— administrative officialdom. No longer deeply rooted in the soil, a shadow without effective force, it hovered above the local powers which encroached upon it, seized its land, and divorced it from its subjects. The king, the lord of lords, was poorer than his lords; while they were establishing themselves in strong principalities, he alone was creating no strong territorial basis for his power. The great vassals were confirmed in their new rights by the capitularies of Mersen (847), of Pitres (862), of Quierzy-sur-Oise
Vassalage could only be a disintegrating, not a unifying factor. That this disintegrating process did not go on indefinitely was due to the existence of 12 or 1 S great military commands—Flanders, Burgundy, Aquitaine, etc. (q.v.). The duchy of France, which Robert the Strong had received as a reward for his services, grew into a powerful fief, but it was not strong enough to withstand outside attack. In 911 King Charles the Simple gave to Rollo, a Danish chief, the lordship of the district surrounding the lower reaches of the Seine, land nominally under the rule of the dukes of the French. Rollo began to build up the Norman duchy (see NOR MANDY) . The ecclesiastical fiefs emancipated themselves in the same manner as the lay fiefs, and ceased to sustain the royal authority unless it was given into their control. Day by day the disparity became clearer between the vastness of the Carolingian empire, and the feeble administrative control of its weak rulers over a society once again become barbarian and menaced by other barbarians. None obeyed an emperor whom all hoped perhaps to supplant. Each country developed its individual life and language.
The races no longer understood one another, nor possessed com mon ideals.
The death-struggle of the Caro lingians lasted for a century. Royal power hitherto hereditary, tended to become elective. It was only given to Charles the Bald's son, Louis the Stammerer, after election by the great magnates and bishops under the leadership of the successor of Robert the Strong. Since the kings were no longer rendering service, they could no longer claim service from others, as in the case of Charles the Fat who narrowly escaped deposition for his incapacity and cowardice in face of the Normans. After many intrigues, Eudes (Odo) son of Robert the Strong, was chosen as king in 888 on ac count of his brilliant defence of Paris. Henceforth there ensued a long duel between the Robertians and the Carolingians, as much literary as political in character. For long the issue was uncer tain: three times Robertians were chosen and might have taken the crown ; three times they deemed it more expedient to favour the restoration of the Carolingians, or more advantageous to have the power without the title. Thus heredity was asserted in favour of Charles the Simple in 893, of Louis IV. in 936, of Lothair in 954, and of Louis V. in 986. The difficulty indeed was not the tak ing of the crown but the keeping of it when once taken. The dukes of France had rivals (notably Herbert of Vermandois), capable of crushing them by forming coalitions; and if the Robertians had the support of Normandy, the Carolingians had that of Germany. Moreover the support of the archbishop of Rheims, faithfully rendered to the Carolingians, gave to them more distinction than the bishop of Sens gave to the Robertians. Hence, until his death in 956, Hugh the Great (son of Robert, count of Paris, and grand son of Robert the Strong), was content to remain the "king maker" of the Carolingians, even as Pippin's descendants had been of the Merovingian rois fainéants. But by waiting for the fruit to ripen, he almost lost the chance of gathering it. The Caro lingians whom he had had elected—Louis IV. and Lothair—dis played a fresh energy and capacity. Was it the last flicker of a dy ing light, or the long-delayed return of their fortune? For 3o years none knew on which side the balance would dip; but on the death of Louis V. after a reign of only one year, the Assembly of Senlis eliminated from the succession, the rightful heir, Charles of Lor raine, and elected Hugh Capet, son of Hugh the Great. The final struggle followed. The conflict raged between Laon, the royal capital, and Rheims, the ecclesiastical capital. The one ensured the kingdom of France; the other the crown. Hugh Capet won the first in 985 and the second in 987 ; but the prestige of the Caro lingians was still such that their fall seemed to presage the end of the world.
