Charlemagne's idea of a great Christian empire.
29.It was Charlemagne's ideal to bring all the German peoples together into one great Christian empire, and he was wonderfully successful in attaining his end. Only a small portion of what is now called Germany was included in the kingdom ruled over by Pippin. Frisia and Bavaria had been Christianized, and their native rulers had been induced by the efforts of Charlemagne's predecessors and of the missionaries, especially Boniface, to recognize formally the overlordship of the Franks. Between these two half-independent countries lay the unconquered Saxons. They were as yet pagans and appear to have still clung to much the same institutions as those under which they lived when the Roman historian Tacitus described them seven centuries earlier.
The conquest of the Saxons.
The Saxons occupied the region beginning somewhat east of Cologne and extending to the Elbe, and north to where the great cities of Bremen and Hamburg are now situated. The present kingdom of Saxony would hardly have come within their boundaries. The Saxons had no towns or roads and were consequently very difficult to conquer, as they could retreat, with their few possessions, into the forests or swamps as soon as they found themselves unable to meet an invader in the open field. Yet so long as they remained unconquered they constantly threatened the Frankish kingdom, and the incorporation of their country was essential to the rounding out of its boundaries. Charlemagne never undertook, during his long military career, any other task half so serious as the subjugation of the Saxons, and it occupied his attention for many years. Nine successive rebellions had to be put down, and it was finally owing rather to the Church than to Charlemagne'smilitary prowess that the great task was brought to a successful issue.
Conversion of the Saxons.
Nowhere do we find a more striking example of the influence of the Church than in the reliance that Charlemagne placed upon it in his dealings with the Saxons. He deemed it quite as essential that after a rebellion they should promise to honor the Church and be baptized as that they should pledge themselves to remain true and faithful vassals of the king. He was in quite as much haste to found bishoprics and abbeys as to build fortresses. The law for the newly conquered Saxon lands, issued sometime between 775 and 790, provides the same death penalty for him who "shall have shown himself unfaithful to the lord king," and him who "shall have wished to hide himself unbaptized and shall have scorned to come to baptism and shall have wished to remain a pagan." Charlemagne believed the Christianizing of the Saxons so important a part of his duty that he decreed that all should suffer death who entered a church by violence and carried off anything by force, or even failed to abstain from meat during Lent.[41]No one, under penalty of heavy fines, was to make vows, in the pagan fashion, at trees or springs, or partake of any heathen feasts in honor of the demons (as the Christians termed the heathen deities), or fail to present infants for baptism before they were a year old.
For the support of the local churches, those who lived in the parish were to give toward three hundred acres of land and a house for the priest. "Likewise, in accordance with themandate of God, we command that all shall give a tithe of their property and labor to the churches and the priests; let the nobles as well as the freemen, likewise the serfs, according to that which God shall have given to each Christian, return a part to God."
Coöperation of the civil government and the Church.
These provisions are characteristic of the theory of the Middle Ages according to which the civil government and the Church went hand in hand in ordering and governing the life of the people. Defection from the Church was regarded by the state as quite as serious a crime as treason against itself. While the claims of the two institutions sometimes conflicted, there was no question in the minds either of the king's officials or of the clergy that both the civil and ecclesiastical government were absolutely necessary; neither class ever dreamed that they could get along without the other.
Foundation of towns in northern Germany.
Before the Frankish conquest the Saxons had no towns. Now, around the seat of the bishop, or about a monastery, men began to collect and towns and cities to grow up. Of these the chief was Bremen, which is still one of the most important ports of Germany.
Charlemagne becomes king of the Lombards.
30.Pippin, it will be remembered, had covenanted with the papacy to protect it from its adversaries. The king of the Lombards had taken advantage of Charlemagne's seeming preoccupation with his German affairs to attack the city of Rome again. The pope immediately demanded the aid of Charlemagne, who prepared to carry out his father's pledges. He ordered the Lombard ruler to return the cities that he had taken from the pope. Upon his refusal to do this, Charlemagne invaded Lombardy in 773 with a great army and took Pavia, the capital, after a long siege. The Lombard king was forced to become a monk, and his treasure was divided among the Frankish soldiers. Charlemagne then took the extremely important step, in 774, of having himself recognized by all the Lombard dukes and counts as king of the Lombards.
The Empire of CharlemagneTHE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE
Aquitaine and Bavaria incorporated in Charlemagne's empire.
The considerable provinces of Aquitaine and Bavaria had never formed an integral part of the Frankish realms, but had remained semi-independent under their native dukes up to the time of Charlemagne. Aquitaine, whose dukes had given Pippin much trouble, was incorporated into the Frankish state in 769. As for the Bavarians, Charlemagne felt that so long as they remained under their duke he could not rely upon them to defend the Frankish empire against the Slavs, who were constantly threatening the frontiers. So he compelled the duke of Bavaria to surrender his possessions, shut him up in a monastery, and proceeded to portion out the duchy among his counts. He thus added to his realms the district that lay between his new Saxon conquest and the Lombard kingdom.
Foreign policy of Charlemagne.
31.So far we have spoken only of the relations of Charlemagne with the Germans, for even the Lombard kingdom was established by the Germans. He had, however, other peoples to deal with, especially the Slavs on the east (who were one day to build up the kingdoms of Poland, Bohemia, and the vast Russian empire) and, on the opposite boundary of his dominion, the Arabs in Spain. Against these it was necessary to protect his realms, and the second part of Charlemagne's reign was devoted to what may be called his foreign policy. A single campaign in 789 seems to have sufficed to subdue the Slavs, who lay to the north and east of the Saxons, and to force the Bohemians to acknowledge the supremacy of the Frankish king and pay tribute to him.
The marches and margraves.
The necessity of insuring the Frankish realms against any new uprising of these non-German nations led to the establishment, on the confines of the kingdom, ofmarches, i.e., districts under the military control of counts of the march, ormargraves.[42]Their business was to prevent any hostileincursions into the interior of the kingdom. Much depended upon the efficiency of these men; in many cases they founded powerful families and later helped to disintegrate the Empire by establishing themselves as practically independent rulers.
Charlemagne in Spain.
At an assembly that Charlemagne held in 777, ambassadors appeared before him from certain disaffected Mohammedans. They had fallen out with the emir of Cordova[43]and now offered to become the faithful subjects of Charlemagne if he would come to their aid. In consequence, he undertook his first expedition to Spain in the following year. The district north of the Ebro was conquered by the Franks after some years of war, and Charlemagne established the Spanish March.[44]In this way he began that gradual expulsion of the Mohammedans from the peninsula which was to be carried on by slowly extending conquests until 1492, when Granada, the last Mohammedan stronghold, fell.[45]
Charlemagne crowned emperor by the pope.
32.But the most famous of all the achievements of Charlemagne was his reëstablishment of the Western Empire in the year 800. It came about in this wise. Charlemagne went to Rome in that year to settle a controversy between Pope Leo III and his enemies. To celebrate the satisfactory adjustment of the dispute, the pope held a solemn service on Christmas day in St. Peter's. As Charlemagne was kneeling before the altar during this service, the pope approached him and set a crown upon his head, saluting him, amid the acclamation of those present, as "Emperor of the Romans."
Charlemagne merited the title of emperor.
The reasons for this extraordinary act, which Charlemagne afterward persistently asserted took him completely by surprise, are given in one of the Frankish histories, theChronicles of Lorsch, as follows: "The name of Emperor had ceased among the Greeks, for they were enduring the reign of a woman [Irene], wherefore it seemed good both to Leo, the apostolic pope, and to the holy fathers [the bishops] who were in council with him, and to all Christian men, that they should name Charles, king of the Franks, as Emperor. For he held Rome itself, where the ancient Cæsars had always dwelt, in addition to all his other possessions in Italy, Gaul and Germany. Wherefore, as God had granted him all these dominions, it seemed just to all that he should take the title of Emperor, too, when it was offered to him at the wish of all Christendom."
Charlemagne appears to have accepted gracefully the honor thus thrust upon him. Even if he had no right to the imperial title, there was an obvious propriety and expediency in granting it to him under the circumstances. Before his coronation by the pope he was only king of the Franks and the Lombards; but his conquests seemed to entitle him to a more comprehensive designation which should include his outlying dependencies. Then the imperial power at Constantinople had been in the hands of heretics, from the standpoint of the Western Church, ever since Emperor Leo issued his edict against the veneration of images. What was still worse, the throne had been usurped, shortly before the coronation of Charlemagne, by the wicked Irene, who had deposed and blinded her son, Constantine VI. The coronation of Charlemagne was, therefore, only a recognition of the real political conditions in the West.[46]
Continuity of the Roman Empire.
The empire now reëstablished in the West was considered to be a continuation of the Roman Empire founded by Augustus. Charlemagne was reckoned the immediate successor of Constantine VI, whom Irene had deposed. Yet, inspite of this fancied continuity, it is hardly necessary to say that the position of the new emperor had little in common with that of Marcus Aurelius or Constantine. In the first place, the eastern emperors continued to reign in Constantinople for centuries, quite regardless of Charlemagne and his successors. In the second place, the German kings who wore the imperial crown after Charlemagne were generally too weak really to rule over Germany and northern Italy, to say nothing of the rest of western Europe. Nevertheless, the Western Empire, which in the twelfth century came to be called the Holy Roman Empire, endured for over a thousand years. It came to an end only in 1806, when the last of the emperors, wearied of his empty if venerable title, laid down the crown.
The title of emperor a source of trouble to the German rulers.
The assumption of the title of emperor was destined to make the German rulers a great deal of trouble. It constantly led them into futile efforts to maintain a supremacy over Italy, which lay without their natural boundaries. Then the circumstances under which Charlemagne was crowned made it possible for the popes to claim, later, that it was they who had transferred the imperial power from the old eastern line of emperors to the Carolingian house, and that this was a proof of their right to dispose of the crown as they pleased. The difficulties which arose necessitated many a weary journey to Rome for the emperors, and many unworthy conflicts between the temporal and spiritual heads of Christendom.
Charlemagne's system of government.
33.The task of governing his vast and heterogeneous dominions taxed even the highly gifted and untiring Charlemagne; it quite exceeded the capacity of his successors. The same difficulties continued to exist that had confronted Charles Martel and Pippin,—above all a scanty royal revenue and over-powerful officials who were prone to neglect the interests and commands of their sovereign. Charlemagne's distinguished statesmanship is nowhere so clearly seen as in his measures for extending his control to the very confines of his realms.
Charlemagne's farms.
His income, like that of all mediæval rulers, came chiefly from his royal estates, as there was no system of general taxation such as had existed under the Roman Empire. He consequently took the greatest care that his numerous plantations should be well cultivated and that not even a turnip or an egg which was due him should be withheld. An elaborate set of regulations for his farms is preserved, which sheds much light upon the times.[47]
Origin of titles of nobility.
The officials upon whom the Frankish kings were forced to rely chiefly were the counts, the "hand and voice of the king" wherever he could not be in person. They were to maintain order, see that justice was done in their district, and raise troops when the king needed them. On the frontier were the counts of the march, or margraves (marquises), already mentioned. These titles, together with that of duke, still exist as titles of nobility in Europe, although they are no longer associated with governmental duties except where their holders have the right to sit in the upper house of parliament.
Themissi dominici.
To keep the counts in order, Charlemagne appointed royal commissioners (themissi dominici), whom he dispatched to all parts of his realm to investigate and report to him how things were going in the districts assigned to them. They were sent in pairs, a bishop and a layman, so that they might act as a check on one another. Their circuits were changed each year so that they should have no chance to enter into conspiracy with the counts whom it was their special business to watch.[48]
The revival of the Roman Empire in the West made no difference in Charlemagne's system of government, except that he required all his subjects above twelve years of age to take a new oath of fidelity to him as emperor. He held importantassemblies of the nobles and prelates each spring or summer, where the interests of the Empire were considered. With the sanction of his advisers, he issued an extraordinary series of laws, calledcapitularies, a number of which have been preserved. With the bishops and abbots he discussed the needs of the Church, and above all the necessity of better schools for both the clergy and laity. The reforms which he sought to introduce give us an opportunity of learning the condition in which Europe found itself after four hundred years of disorder.
The dark century before Charlemagne.
34.Charlemagne was the first important king since Theodoric to pay any attention to book learning, which had fared badly enough since the death of Boethius, three centuries before. About 650 the supply of papyrus had been cut off, owing to the conquest of Egypt by the Arabs, and as paper had not yet been invented there was only the very expensive parchment to write upon. While this had the advantage of being more durable than papyrus, its cost discouraged the multiplication of copies of books. The eighth century, that immediately preceding Charlemagne's coronation, is declared by the learned Benedictine monks, in their great history of French literature, to have been the most ignorant, the darkest, and the most barbarous period ever seen, at least in France. The documents of the Merovingian period often indicate great ignorance and carelessness on the part of those who wrote them out.
The elements of learning preserved by the Church.
Yet, in spite of this dark picture, there was promise for the future. It was evident, even before Charlemagne's time, that the world was not to continue indefinitely in the path of ignorance. Latin could not be forgotten, for that was the language of the Church and all its official communications were in that tongue. The teachings of the Christian religion had to be gathered from the Bible and other books, and the church services formed a small literature by themselves. Consequently it was absolutely necessary that the Church should maintainsome sort of education in order to perform its complicated services and conduct the extensive duties which devolved upon it. All the really efficient church officers, whatever their nationality, must have been able to read the Latin classics, if they were so inclined. Then there were the compilations of ancient knowledge already mentioned,[49]which, incredibly crude and scanty as they were, kept up the memory of the past. They at least perpetuated the names of the various branches of knowledge and contained, for example, enough about arithmetic and astronomy to help the isolated churchman to calculate each year the date of Easter.
Two letters of Charlemagne's respecting the neglect of education among the clergy.
Charlemagne was the first temporal ruler to realize the serious neglect of education, even among the clergy, and we have two interesting letters from him, written before he was made emperor, relating to this subject. In one to an important bishop, he says: "Letters have been written to us frequently in recent years from various monasteries, stating that the brethren who dwelt therein were offering up holy and pious supplications in our behalf. We observed that the sentiments in these letters were exemplary but that the form of expression was uncouth, because what true devotion faithfully dictated to the mind, the tongue, untrained by reason of neglect of study, was not able to express in a letter without mistakes. So it came about that we began to fear lest, perchance, as the skill in writing was less than it should be, the wisdom necessary to the understanding of the Holy Scriptures was also much less than was needful. We all know well that, although errors of speech are dangerous, errors of understanding are far more dangerous. Therefore, we exhort you not merely not toneglectthe study of letters, but with a most humble mind, pleasing to God, earnestly to devote yourself to study, in order that you may be able the more easily and correctly to penetrate the mysteries of the Holy Scriptures."
In the other letter he says: "We have striven with watchful zeal to advance the cause of learning which has been almost forgotten through the negligence of our ancestors; and by our own example, we invite all those who can, to master the studies of the liberal arts. In this spirit, God aiding us, we have already carefully corrected all the books of the Old and New Testaments, corrupted by the ignorance of the copyists."
An Example of the Style of Writing used in the Books of Charlemagne's TimeAn Example of the Style of Writing used in the Books of Charlemagne's Time[50]
It seemed to Charlemagne that it was the duty of the Church not only to look after the education of its own officers but to provide the opportunity of at least an elementary education for the people at large. In accordance with this conviction, he issued (789) an admonition to the clergy to gather together the children both of freemen and serfs in their neighborhood and establish schools "in which the boys may learn to read."[51]
Establishment of monastery schools and the 'school of the palace.'
It would be impossible to say how many of the innumerable abbots and bishops established schools in accordance with Charlemagne's recommendations. It is certain that famous centers of learning existed at Tours, Fulda, Corbie, Orleans, and other places during his reign. Charlemagne further promoted the cause of education by the establishment of the famous "school of the palace" for the instruction of the sons of his nobles and of his own children. He placed the Englishman, Alcuin, at the head of the school, and called distinguished men from Italy and elsewhere as teachers. The best known of these was the historian, Paulus Diaconus, who wrote a history of the Lombards, to which we owe most of what we know about them.
Charlemagne appears to have been particularly impressed with the constant danger of mistakes in copying books, a task frequently turned over to ignorant and careless persons. After recommending the founding of schools, he continues: "Correct carefully the Psalms, the signs used in music, the [Latin] grammar, and the religious books used in every monastery or bishopric; since those who desire to pray to God properly often pray badly because of the incorrect books. And do not let your boys misread or miswrite them. If there is any need to copy the Gospel, Psalter or Missal, let men of maturity do the writing with great diligence." These precautions were amply justified, for a careful transmission of the literatureof the past was as important as the attention to education. It will be noted that Charlemagne made no attempt to revive the learning of Greece and Rome. He deemed it quite sufficient if the churchmen would learn their Latin well enough to read the missal and the Bible intelligently.
The hopeful beginning that was made under Charlemagne in the revival of education and intellectual interest was destined to prove disappointing in its immediate results. It is true that the ninth century produced a few noteworthy men who have left works which indicate acuteness and mental training. But the break-up of Charlemagne's empire, the struggles between his descendants, the coming of new barbarians, and the disorder caused by the unruly feudal lords, who were not inclined to recognize any master, all conspired to keep the world back for at least two centuries more. Indeed, the tenth and the first half of the eleventh centuries seem, at first sight, little better than the seventh and eighth. Yet ignorance and disorder never were quite so prevalent after, as they were before, Charlemagne.
General Reading.—The best life of Charlemagne in English isMombert,A History of Charles the Great(D.C. Appleton & Co., $5.00). See alsoHodgkin,Charles the Great(The Macmillan Company, 75 cents), andWest,Alcuin(Charles Scribner's Sons, $1.00).
General Reading.—The best life of Charlemagne in English isMombert,A History of Charles the Great(D.C. Appleton & Co., $5.00). See alsoHodgkin,Charles the Great(The Macmillan Company, 75 cents), andWest,Alcuin(Charles Scribner's Sons, $1.00).
Louis the Pious succeeds Charlemagne.
35.It was a matter of great importance to the world whether Charlemagne's extensive empire was, after his death, to remain one or to fall apart. He himself appears to have had no expectation that it would hold together, for in 806 he divided it up in a very arbitrary manner among his three sons. We do not know whether he was led thus to undo his life's work simply because the older tradition of a division among the king's sons was as yet too strong to permit him to hand down all his possessions to his eldest son, or because he believed it would be impossible to keep together so vast and heterogeneous a realm. However this may have been, the death of his two eldest sons left only Louis, who succeeded his father both as king and emperor.
Partition of Charlemagne's empire among the sons of Louis the Pious.
Louis the Pious had been on the throne but a few years before he took up the all-important problem of determining what share each of his sons should have in the empire after his death. As they were far too ambitious to submit to the will of their father, we find no less than six different partitions between the years 817 and 840. We cannot stop to trace these complicated and transient arrangements, or the rebellions of the undutiful sons, who set the worst possible example to the ambitious and disorderly nobles. On the death of Louis the Pious, in 840, his second son, Louis the German, was in possession of Bavaria and had at various times been recognized as ruler of most of those parts of the empire now included in Germany. The youngest son, Charles the Bald, had all the westernportion of the Frankish possessions, while Lothaire, the eldest, had been designated as emperor and ruled over Italy and the district lying between the possessions of the younger brothers. Charles and Louis promptly combined to resist the attempts of Lothaire to assert his superiority as emperor, and defeated him at Fontenay (841). The treaty of Verdun, which followed, is one of the most memorable in the history of western Europe.[52]
Map of Treaty of VerdunMap of Treaty of Verdun
Treaty of Verdun, 843.
In the negotiations which led up to the treaty of Verdun there appears to have been entire agreement among the three parties that Italy should go to Lothaire, Aquitaine to Charles the Bald, and Bavaria to Louis the German. The real difficulty lay in the disposal of the rest of the empire. It seemed appropriate that the older brother, as emperor, should have, in addition to Italy, the center of the Frankish dominions,including the capital, Aix-la-Chapelle. A state of the most artificial kind, extending from Rome to northern Holland, was thus created, which had no natural unity of language or custom. Louis the German was assigned, in addition to Bavaria, the country north of Lombardy and westward to the Rhine. As for Charles the Bald, his realm included a great part of what is France to-day, as well as the Spanish March and Flanders.
36.The great interest of the treaty of Verdun lies in the tolerably definite appearance of a western and an eastern Frankish kingdom, one of which was to become France and the other Germany. In the kingdom of Charles the Bald the dialects spoken by the majority of the people were derived directly from the spoken Latin, and in time developed into Provençal and French. In the kingdom of Louis the German, on the other hand, both people and language were German. The narrow strip of country between these regions, which fell to Lothaire, came to be calledLotharii regnum, or kingdom of Lothaire.[53]This name was perverted in time into Lotharingia and, later, into Lorraine. It is interesting to note that this territory has formed a part of the debatable middle ground over which the French and Germans have struggled so obstinately down to our own day.
The Strasburg oaths.
We have a curious and important evidence of the difference of language just referred to, in the so-called Strasburg oaths (842). Just before the settlement at Verdun, the younger brothers had found it advisable to pledge themselves, in an especially solemn and public manner, to support one another against the pretensions of Lothaire. First, each of the two brothers addressed his soldiers in their own language, absolving them from their allegiance to him should he desert his brother. Louis then took the oath in what the chronicle calls thelingua romana, so that his brother's soldiers might understand him, and Charles repeated his oath in thelingua teudiscaforthe benefit of Louis' soldiers.[54]Fortunately the texts of both of these oaths have been preserved. They are exceedingly interesting and important as furnishing our earliest examples, except some lists of words, of the language spoken by the common people, which was only just beginning to be written. Probably German was very rarely written before this time, as all who could write at all wrote in Latin. The same is true of the old Romance tongue (from which modern French developed), which had already drifted far from the Latin.
Map of Treaty of MersenMap of Treaty of Mersen
New divisions of the empire corresponding to France, Germany, and Italy.
37.When Lothaire died (855) he left Italy and the middle kingdom to his three sons. By 870 two of these had died, and their uncles, Charles the Bald and Louis the German, did not hesitate to appropriate the middle kingdom and divide itbetween them by the treaty of Mersen. Italy was left to Lothaire's only surviving son, together with the imperial crown, which was to mean nothing, however, for a hundred years to come. The result was that, as early as 870, western Europe was divided into three great districts which corresponded with startling exactness to three important states of modern Europe, i.e., France, Germany, and Italy.
The empire temporarily reunited under Charles the Fat.
Louis the German was succeeded in the East-Frankish kingdom by his son, Charles the Fat. In 884, owing to the death of the sons and the grandsons of Charles the Bald, there was no one to represent his line except a child of five years. So the aristocracy of the West-Frankish kingdom invited Charles the Fat to become their king. In this way it came about that the whole empire of Charlemagne was reunited for two or three years under a single ruler.[55]
Charles the Fat and the Northmen.
Charles the Fat was ill and proved an incompetent emperor, entirely unequal to the serious task of governing and protecting his vast territories. His weakness was especially shown in his pusillanimous treaties with the Northmen. When Paris was making an heroic defense against them under its count, Odo,Charles, instead of marching at the head of an army to relieve it, agreed to pay the invaders seven hundred pounds of silver if they would raise the siege. They were then permitted to take up their winter quarters far inland, in Burgundy, where they proceeded to burn and pillage at will.
Charles the Fat deposed and succeeded by Arnulf.
This degrading agreement so disgusted the West-Frankish nobility that they were glad to join a conspiracy set on foot by Charles' nephew, the brave Arnulf of Carinthia, who had resolved to supplant his inefficient uncle. Charles was deposed and deserted by all his former supporters in 887. No one, except Napoleon, has ever again succeeded in bringing the eastern, western, and southern parts of Charlemagne's empire under his control, even for a brief period. Arnulf, although enjoying the title of emperor, could scarcely hope to be recognized as king in all parts of the Frankish empire. Even nominal unity was no longer possible. As one of the chronicles of the time puts it, "While Arnulf was frittering away his time, many little kingdoms grew up."
Origin of the kingdom of Burgundy, or Arles.
In the West-Frankish territory the nobility of the northern part chose Odo, the hero of the siege of Paris, as their king; but in the south another enterprising nobleman, Count Boso of Vienne, succeeded in inducing the pope to crown him king of a certain district on the Rhone which included Provence. Immediately after Boso's death a large territory about the Lake of Geneva, which he had hoped to win for himself, became a separate kingdom under its own ruler. This region and that which Boso ruled to the south were later united into the kingdom of Burgundy, or, as it is often called, Arles.
Even before the deposition of Charles the Fat, many of the counts and other important landowners began to take advantage of the weakness of their king to establish themselves as the rulers of the districts about them, although they did not assume the title of king. In the East-Frankish kingdom thevarious German peoples whom Charlemagne had managed to control, especially the Bavarians and Saxons, began to revive their old national independence. In Italy the disruption was even more marked than in the north.[57]
Causes of disruption.
Poor roads.
38.It is clear, from what has been said, that none of the rulers into whose hands the fragments of Charlemagne's empire fell, showed himself powerful and skillful enough to govern properly a great territory like that embraced in France or Germany to-day. The difficulties in the way of establishing a well-regulated state, in the modern sense of the word, were almost insurmountable. In the first place, it was well-nigh impossible to keep in touch with all parts of a wide realm. The wonderful roads which the Romans had built had generally fallen into decay, for there was no longer a corps of engineers maintained by the government to keep them up and repair the bridges. In those parts of Charlemagne's possessions that lay beyond the confines of the old Roman Empire, the impediments to travel must have been still worse than in Gaul and on the Rhine; there not even the vestiges of Roman roads existed.
Scarcity of money for paying government officers and maintaining armies.
In addition to the difficulty of getting about, the king had to contend with the scarcity of money in the Middle Ages. This prevented him from securing the services of a great corps of paid officials, such as every government finds necessary to-day. Moreover, it made it impossible for him to support the standing army which would have been necessary to suppress the constant insubordination of his officials and of the powerful and restless nobility, whose chief interest in life was fighting.
New invasions,—the Northmen, Slavs, Hungarians, and Saracens.
The disintegration of the Frankish empire was hastened by the continued invasions from all sides. From the north—Denmark, Norway, and Sweden—came the Scandinavianpirates, the Northmen.[58]They were skillful and daring seamen, who not only harassed the coast of the North Sea, but made their way up the rivers, plundering and burning towns inland as far as Paris. On the eastern boundary of the empire the Germans were forced to engage in constant warfare with the Slavs. Before long the Hungarians, a savage race, began their terrible incursions into central Germany and northern Italy. From the south came the Saracens, who had got possession of Sicily (in 827), and terrorized southern Italy and France, even attacking Rome itself.
Growing power and independence of the great landed proprietor.
39.In the absence of a powerful king with a well-organized army at his back, each district was left to look out for itself. Doubtless many counts, margraves, bishops, and other great landed proprietors who were gradually becoming independent princes, earned the loyalty of the people about them by taking the lead in defending the country against its invaders and by establishing fortresses as places of refuge when the community was hard pressed. These conditions serve to explain why such government as continued to exist during the centuries following the deposition of Charles the Fat was necessarily carried on mainly, not by the king and his officers, but by the great landholders. The grim fortresses of the mediæval lords, which appeared upon almost every point of vantage throughout western Europe during the Middle Ages, would not have been tolerated by the king, had he been powerful enough to destroy them. They plainly indicate that their owners were practically independent rulers.
When the traveler in France or Germany comes upon the picturesque ruins of a mediæval castle, perched upon some rocky cliff, accessible from one side only, and commanding the surrounding country, he cannot but see that those massive walls, with their towers and battlements, their moat and drawbridge, were never intended as a dwelling place for the peaceful household of a private citizen, but rather as the fortified palace of a ruler. We can picture the great hall crowded with armed retainers, who were ready to fight for the proprietor when he was disposed to attack a neighboring lord, and who knew that below were the dungeons to which the lord might send them if they ventured to rebel against his authority.
Mediæval Fortress, showing Moat and DrawbridgesMediæval Fortress, showing Moat and Drawbridges
The landed proprietor and the manor.
In order to understand the position of the mediæval noble and the origin of feudalism we must consider the situation of the great landowners. A large part of western Europe in the time of Charlemagne appears to have been divided up into great estates, resembling the Roman villas. Just how these originated we do not know. These estates, ormanors, as they were called, were cultivated mainly by serfs, who were bound to the land and were under the control of its proprietor. Theytilled such part of the estate as the owner reserved for his own particular use, and provided for his needs and their own without the necessity of buying much from the outside. When we speak of a mediæval landowner we mean one who held one or more of these manors, which served to support him and left him free to busy himself fighting with other proprietors in the same position as himself.[59]
Immunities.
It had been common even before Charlemagne's time to grant to monasteries and churches, and even to individuals, an extraordinary privilege which exempted their lands from the presence or visits of government officials. No public officer with the power to hear cases, exact fines, obtain lodging or entertainment for the king and his followers when traveling about, or make requisitions of any kind, was to enter the lands or villages belonging to the monastery or person enjoying theimmunity. These exemptions were evidently sought with a view to getting rid of the exactions of the king's officials and appropriating the various fines and fees, rather than with the purpose of usurping governmental prerogatives. But the result was that the monasteries or individuals who were thus freed from the requisitions of the government were left to perform its functions,—not, however, as yet in their own right, but as representatives of the king.[60]It is not hard to see how those who enjoyed this privilege might, as the central power weakened, become altogether independent. It is certain that a great many landowners who had been granted no exemption from the jurisdiction of the king's officers, and a great many of the officers themselves, especially the counts and margraves, gradually broke away altogether from the control of those above them and became the rulers of the regions in which they lived.
Tendency to hereditary offices.
The counts were in a particularly favorable position to usurp for their own benefit the powers which they were supposed to exercise for the king. Charlemagne had chosen his counts and margraves in most cases from the wealthy and distinguished families of his realms. As he had little money, he generally rewarded their services by grants of estates, which only served to increase their independence. They gradually came to look upon their office and their land as private property, and they were naturally disposed to hand it on to their sons after them. Charlemagne had been able to keep control of his agents by means of themissi. After his death his system fell into disuse and it became increasingly difficult to get rid of inefficient or rebellious officers.