It was much the same with the army. As the Empire had introduced there, also, the system of servitude, and of privilege, which prevailed everywhere else, no man who was worth anything cared to enlist in its ranks. We have seen that some, like the curials, were not allowed to do so. Therefore the army was recruited partly from among the masses of men without occupation, without money, and without work, and partly from the barbarians, who joined the legions in crowds. Probus had said that they ought to be felt but not seen. They were both felt and seen, and that very quickly. The 40,000 Goths of Theodosius were less his servants than his masters: the Frank Arbogast had already made an Emperor; a barbarous mercenary, Odovacar (Odoacer), was soon to put an end to the Empire itself.

Degraded by the branding of their bodies, and discouraged by the unseasonable distribution of rewards and favors lavished on the idle guards of the prince, the palatins, the comitatenses, and withheld from the soldiers of the frontiers, the Roman legions had no longer anything to excite them to the defense of their country. They were even to a certain extent disarmed; they had been allowed to give up the shield, the pilum, and the short sword, the powerful arms of ancient Rome, and to take the bow and the light shield, at the same time that their effective strength was reduced to 1500, one-fourth of the former number. Thus the Empire was tottering to its fall, in spite of its hundred and thirty-three legions, its arsenals, its storehouses, and its girdle of fortifications along the Rhine, the Main, the Danube, the Euphrates, and the Arabian desert.

The moral and intellectual condition of this ancient society had fallen very low. No doubt it was well to see everything raised that before had been degraded, slaves, women and children; but, on the other hand, all that before had been strong and brave was now brought low. There could no longer be courage and genius where there was no longer liberty. As there was a lack of soldiers, there was also a lack of writers and artists. In vain were the schools regulated and improved. In vain did Valentinian determine the number of professors, their appointments and their duties, and place the scholars under strict inspection; discipline can regulate but not produce; impulse may be directed but not forced. Instead of men of letters, there were sophists and rhetoricians like Libanius, and poets like Claudian, and the latter were by far the best—they have harmony and some exalted ideas ; but all the others, and with them those rich Romans who cultivated polite letters for a pastime, came to writing trifling verses —epithalamia— the weak literature of a degenerate age; artists were no longer seen, and for the decoration of Constantinople Constantine was obliged to pillage the cities of the Empire that were rich in monuments of antiquity. Literature and art, in fact, were closely allied in antiquity to paganism, and they had not yet been freed from their dependence. And paganism, a worn-out creed, destroyed by philosophy and by Christianity, driven from the throne, and abandoned by almost all except the country people, who are longer bound by custom, paganism no longer inspired faith and would never again be the source of any great work.

But if the old religion was perishing, and the old order of things growing cold in death, a new religion and a new society were coming into being; guardians of that life which is never entirely extinguished in human communities.

Christianity had developed and established itself, in spite of persecutions. The beauty of its ethical precepts and the courage of its apostles had won for it numberless victories. It had at last ascended the throne with Constantine, and this Emperor loaded the Church with privileges. He authorized the bishops, her chiefs, to constitute themselves arbiters in civil matters, with the consent of the two parties; he exempted the churches from municipal taxes, he yielded to them portions of the imperial domain, and allowed them to receive special legacies, so that the Church added the influence of wealth to that which had already been given her by her young and ardent faith, her spirit of proselytism, and the genius of her chiefs. Even heresy—which under several forms had already shown itself in the midst of the Church—had been but nourishment to her strength, a wholesome combat which kept her energies alive. While the literature derived from paganism hardly drew the breath of life, that which sprang from Christianity was impassioned, active, practical; it came from the soul and had to do with facts. It is only necessary to call to mind Tertullian, St. Anastasius, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Lactantius, Salvian, and many others. The numerous councils held in the fourth century show the activity of the Church, the communication which she established between the provinces of the Empire, and the part which all her members took in her affairs. To necessity, the best source of all that is to endure, is due the hierarchical organization, which raised the bishops above the presbyters and the metropolitans above the bishops, and in virtue of which the See of Rome demanded a supremacy due to the ancient capital of the Roman world, and to him who was called the heir of St. Peter.

It was in the new society, or, more property speaking, the religious society, the Church, that life and hope and a future were to be found. Unmoved, she saw everything about her falling to pieces, even the imperial structure in which she had sought temporary shelter; she survived its destruction; she was not in the least unsettled by the shock, nor was she even distressed by it, being neither exclusive nor patriotic; she had no love for the Roman Empire, and was little interested in its safety or its ruin. It was the saving of souls that occupied her thoughts, and her ambition was to lead into her own paths the people encamped about the Empire. She did not hate the barbarians—she loved them as her conquest and her future flock; as children who would receive her words with greater submissiveness. She was already attracting them; she went to meet them and converted them. The Goths of Dacia had an Arian bishop, Ulfilas, who had translated the Bible into their dialect, and the Burgundians were in like manner converted.

The barbarians might come, might overturn the worm-eaten barriers, and grind to powder all the structure of the Empire—the only institution that had life, the Church, presented no obstacles, but rose alone, in the midst of ruins, young and strong.

When Rome called herself the Mistress of the World, she knew well enough that it was an exaggeration, and that her bounds were not those of the earth also.

Cruel experience had taught her that she had not one frontier that was not threatened by tribes hidden in the depths of the north, the south, or the west.

To the north lay three great peoples, arranged in the following order: the Germans, the Slavs, and the Asiatic nations. To the east dwelt the Persians, who had often made war on the Romans and were long to continue do it, for the sake of certain frontier-towns—but who had no thought of invasion, not caring to change their abode. To the south the Arabs, who had not as yet inspired fear, wandered over the deserts of their great peninsula; and in the African deserts dwelt the Moorish tribes, who were numerous enough to alarm the Roman officers and to aid in the dissolution of the Empire, but not numerous enough to make an invasion themselves.

At the death of Theodosius (395), serious danger threatened only from the north. Pushed on by the Slavs, who were themselves pushed by Asiatic hordes from the banks of the Volga, the Germans crowded all along the Roman frontier. The Suevi, the Alemanni, and the Bavarians occupied, the southern country, between the Main and the Lake of Constance. The Marcomanni, Quadi, Hermunduri, Heruli, and the Goths, at the extremity of the Germanic zone, reached to the banks of the Danube. To the west, along the lower Rhine, lay the confederation of the Franks (Salians, Ripuarians, Sigambri, Bructeri, Chatti, Chamavi, etc.), who had united to resist the Romans in the middle of the third century. To the north dwelt the Frisians between the Lake Flevo and the mouth of the Ems; farther to the east were the Vandals, the Burgundians, the Rugians, the Longobards or Lombards, and, between the Elbe and the Eider, the Angles and the Saxons; finally, back of all these peoples, the Jutes, Danes, and Scandinavians, who inhabited Denmark and Sweden, and who, in the ninth century, made the second invasion. The customs, government, and character of these nations formed such a contrast to those of the Roman world that the thought of it is said to have inspired Tacitus's book on Germany. Discipline and slavery, the principles of government in the Empire, were held in horror among the Germans. Love of individual independence and voluntary devotion were the basis of their character; war— not disciplined and scientific as among the Romans, but adventurous, carried on afar from home—for glory and booty, was their greatest delight. As soon as a young man had been presented before the public assembly, and had received from the hands of his father or of some famous chief his shield and javelin, he was a soldier and a citizen; he attached himself immediately to some chief of great renown whom he followed in peace and in war, with other warriors recruited in the same way. They formed the comitatus or gefolge of the chief, and were always ready to sacrifice their lives for his, always bound to him through every danger, but bound by an obligation entirely voluntary, by bonds of honor alone.

It was impossible to establish the despotism of a single man over such people, so the government of the Germans consisted of an assembly (mall) in which all took part, a sacred institution founded, they said, by the Gods themselves. It was held in sacred places and on sacred days, at the new and at the full moon under the open sky, on heights or in groves. There the warriors gathered with their arms, the symbol of military sovereignty. The clashing of shields indicated the applause of the assembly—a loud murmur, their disapprobation. The same assemblies exercised judicial power, sometimes by a gathering of all the free men, sometimes by a delegation (rachimburgi).

Each canton or hundred had its magistrate, and usually the whole nation a king, chosen from among the members; of one family, which had the hereditary possession of this title. The warriors themselves chose whom they would follow in battle—herzog, as he was called. Thence the saying of Tacitus Reges ex nobilitate, duces ex virtute sumunt.

The Olympus of these people corresponded to their spirit of pride and heroism, bloodthirsty passion and love of glory, but at times a certain charm mingled with their terrible fancies. Besides Woden, who gives victory and who comes down every night from his heavenly palace, whose windows open toward the east, to ride through the air with the dead warriors; besides Donar, the Hercules of the Germans, to whom lightning-struck trees are dedicated; besides the wild joys of Walhalla, a strange paradise, where the warriors fight and drink without ceasing—appear the gracious goddesses, who carry everywhere peace and the arts : Freya, the Venus of the North, who had the magic necklace, and Holda, beautiful and chaste like Diana, who flies through the air on wintry nights clothed all in white, and scattering snow upon her path. In this mythology we find again the worship of the stars; Hertha, the earth, is the first goddess of the Germans; they also worshiped Sunna, the sun, and her brother Mani, the moon, who is pursued by two wolves. These are not the fancies of Greece, but they, too, are poetry, and sometimes sublime poetry. The Song of the Niebelungen preserves the last reflection of their glory.

The bards were held in great honor among them. "Everything dies, said the Germans; “one thing alone does not die, the memory of the famous dead”. Such a thought made death easy; and how they defied it! how rashly and fearlessly did they brave the terrors of the deep! Who does not know the story of those Franks whom Probus had transported to the shores of the Euxine Sea, and who one day having seized several boats embarked, and sailed over the whole Mediterranean, pillaging as they went the shores of Greece, of Italy, and of Africa, and who returned by way of the ocean, after defying the tempests and the Roman Empire. It was their boast to laugh in the face of death.

The Germans paid little attention to the cultivation of land; they had no property in their own right, and every year the magistrates distributed to each village, and to each family, the lot it was to cultivate, in order, as Caesar said, not to divert the men from their taste for fighting, and to maintain an equality of fortune. For this reason their civilization made little progress. They had no towns either, a result perhaps of this same arrangement, but scattered huts of earth separated from each other, each one surrounded by the field which the owner cultivated. Their closely fitting dress formed another contrast to the full robes of the Greeks and Romans.

Purity of life was general among the Germans, polygamy was only allowed to kings and great men. But sobriety was not one of their virtues; they drank a great deal at their Homeric feasts; their cup of honor was the skull of a vanquished enemy, and often the feast ended in bloodshed and the death of some one of the guests. They also had a passion for gambling, and staked everything, even their own persons. Whoever lost himself at play became the slave of the winner; it was a debt of honor, and he would not think of breaking his word. Barbarians have their vices, as well as civilized races, but they are perhaps preferable because they spring from a coarseness that can be refined, and not from corruption and moral exhaustion, for which there is no remedy.

Such were the habits of the great Germanic race that was about to invade, and for some time to occupy, the best part of the Roman Empire. Behind them were two other barbarous nations, pushing them on, differing much more from the Roman world than did the Germans. These were the Slavonians and the Huns.

The Slavonians, who are today a race of one hundred millions of men in the family of European nations, were then scattered under the name of Venedi and Slovenes, near the Danube, the Borysthenes, and the Black Sea, at the source of the Volga and the Niemen, and along the Baltic as far as the Elbe, where they may have mingled with some of the Germanic tribes. Elsewhere they did not appear till later, and then divided into three branches,— the southern Slavs (Bosnians, Serbs, Croats, modern Dalmatians), between the Danube and the Adriatic Sea; the western Slavonians (Lekhs or Poles, Czechs or Bohemians, Moravians, Pomeranians, etc.), between the Elbe and the Vistula, the Baltic and the Carpathian mountains; the northern or settled Slavonians, who joined with the Finns or Tchoudes of the eastern Baltic, formed the primitive Russian nation—among whom are included the Livonians, the Esthonians, the Lithuanians and the Prussians.

The Huns (Hiong-Nu), who belong to the Tartar-Finnish race, were objects of fear and horror to all the western peoples, whether Germans or Romans; their wandering life spent in huge chariots or in the saddle, their bony faces pierced by little eyes, their broad and flat noses, their great flaring ears, their brown and tattooed skin—were all peculiarities of manners and appearance entirely foreign to Europe. Ammianus Marcellinus called them “two-legged beasts”, and compared them to those grotesque figures which adorn the parapets of bridges. The Germans accused them of being the offspring of infernal spirits and Scythian sorceresses, from the boundless steppes which stretched far away into the North and East, an unknown and dreaded region well fitted to harbor such beings.

This Tartar-Finnish family sent representatives many times into Europe, after the Huns—the Avars in the sixth century, the Bulgarians and Chazars in the seventh, the Magyars or Hungarians in the ninth, the Mongols or Tartars in the thirteenth, and the Turks in the fourteenth. These last ended the invasions.

 

CHAPTER II

FIRST PERIOD OF INVASION (375-476). ALARIC, RADAGAISUS, GAISERIC, AND ATTILA.

 

First Movement of the Barbarians Before the Death of Theodosius.—Division of the Empire at the Death of Theodosius (395)—Alaric and the Visigoths (395-419); the Great Invasion of 406.—Founding of the Kingdom of the Burgundians (413) of the Visigoths, and of the Suevi(419).—Conquest of Africa by the Vandals (431).—Invasion of Attila (451-453).—Taking of Rome by Gaiseric (455)—End of the Empire of the West (476)

 

IN the end of the fourth century there came from the depth of the Steppes which extend to the borders of Europe and Asia, an impulse which shook the whole barbarian world, and caused that great rising of peoples which overturned the Empire of the West. The Huns, who had been settled since the third century B. C. in the great plains of Central Asia, beyond the Caspian Sea, had advanced little by little toward the West. In consequence of internal discord the nation divided itself into two parts, and one part founded on the Oxus the nation of the White Huns, or Ephthalites, which proved so formidable to Persia, while the other, attracted by the report of the wealth of Rome, which had penetrated even to their deserts, pressed on toward Europe and crossed the Volga. They carried along with them the Alani, who were established between the Black and Caspian seas, crossed the Don, and threw themselves upon the great Gothic Empire in which Hermanric had united the three branches of his nation—the Ostrogoths or Eastern Goths, on the east of the Dnieper, the Visigoths or Western Goths, to the west of it, and the Gepidae or Loiterers, toward the Baltic, who had been left behind by the other two tribes.

The Gothic Empire fell: the Ostrogoths submitted, but the Visigoths retreated to the shores of the Danube and begged the Emperor Valens for an asylum on the lands of Empire. They were received into the Empire (376), but finding themselves ill-used by the Roman officers, they repaid the hospitality they had received with revolt, and marched against Valens, whom they killed at the battle of Adrianople (378). Theodosius stopped their progress, and by means of skillful treaties incorporated some of them into his army, and scattered the others in Thrace, Moesia, and Asia Minor. Those who settled in Thrace remained loyal and defended the frontier against the Huns.

The Empire had apparently admitted the Goths to its territory as a favor, but the truth is that it dared not refuse such formidable suppliants. Formerly it had formed the barbarians into colonies after subduing them; now it received them seemingly through generosity, in reality through fear, and as the boldness of the barbarians and the feebleness of the Empire increased, they broke through the barriers by force and became masters of the Roman soil.

The invasion had reached this point when the Empire of Theodosius passed to his two sons, and was divided between them never to be united (395). The boundary in Europe Was the Drinus, tributary of the Save, and the Adriatic and Ionian seas; in Africa the end of the greater Syrtis. Honorius had the west; Arcadius the east. The Empire of the East lasted 1058 years after this separation; that of the West, only 81 years. During these 81 years, though entirely independent of one another, the two empires continually combined their forces for their common defense.

The Empire of the East was saved by the double barrier of the Danube and the Balkan Mountains, by the general direction of the barbarian invasion, which was at first turned rather against the west than the south, and perhaps, also, by its greater vigor, being the younger of the two empires, and by the greater pains taken to defend Constantinople, which had become the real and living capital of the Roman world, while Rome was but the shadow of one. The Empire of the West, on the other hand, was the object of all the great attacks, and in one half-century endured four terrible assaults : that of Alaric, with the Visigoths; Radagaisus, with the Suevi, the Vandals and the Alans; Gaiseric with the Vandals, and Attila with the Huns. To be able to resist successfully such blows, falling in such quick succession, the Empire of the West would have needed far more power than it could command.

The Visigoths having chosen for their leader Alaric, chief of their most illustrious family, that of the Balthi, revolted again at the instigation of the Goth Rufinus, a perfidious minister of Arcadius, who had neglected to pay them the bounty which the court of Constantinople allowed them annually (395). They ravaged Thrace and Macedonia, and passing Thermopylae without encountering a Leonidas; they spared Athens, but devastated Attica and the Peloponnesus. The Empire had, however, a protector in the Vandal Stilicho, to whose genius Theodosius had confided his two sons at his death. Stilicho hastened against the Visigoths and surrounded them on Mount Pholoe, in Arcadia, but either through neglect or policy he let them escape by the strait of Naupactus, and to prevent new ravages, Arcadius had no recourse but to appoint Alaric chief of the soldiery in Illyricum.

This peaceful honor could not satisfy a barbarian chief. Raised on the shields of his compatriots, that is, made their king, Alaric led them to the conquest of Italy, and probably at Asti, besieged the Emperor, who had fled there from his capital at Milan. Fortunately Stilicho hastened thither from Rhaetia, which he had saved from an invasion of barbarians, rescued Honorius, and defeated the Visigoths at Pollentia (Polença on the Tanaro, 402). It was said that Alaric again received honors after his defeat in Italy, as after his defeat in Greece. Honorius appointed him general, and gave him the secret mission of conquering Illyricum for the Empire of the West. After this treachery and meanness, the Emperor celebrated his victory in Rome, where the bloody games of the circus were held for the last time. He then retired to Ravenna, beyond the marshes at the mouth of the Po, as he scorned Rome and did not dare to live longer at Milan, where Alaric had so nearly taken him by surprise.

The Roman Empire did not have a long respite, for the Suevi, leaving the shores of the Baltic under the leadership of Radagaisus, turned toward the South, carrying with them the peoples they encountered, the Burgundians, the Alans and the Vandals. These tribes joined them in the devastation of the Empire all the more readily, as they saw gathering behind them the threatening hordes of the Huns. Two hundred thousand of them, leaving the main body of their companions on the shores of the Rhine, crossed the Alps and, descending into Italy, penetrated as far as Florence. Stilicho again saved Rome and the Empire, by surrounding the barbarians on the rocks of Fiesole, where they all perished of hunger, or were sold as slaves. Radagaisus himself was put to death. The barbarians who had remained in Germany were terrified by the news of this disaster, and, changing their course, attacked Gaul. They crossed the Rhine (406), in spite of the resistance of the Ripuarian Franks, to whom the defense of the river had been confided by Rome. From this time for two years Gaul was a prey to frightful ravages, which did not cease till the Suevi, the Alans, and the Vandals turned to seek south of the Pyrenees the booty which had begun to fail them in the north.

Alaric had stopped on his retreat at the head of the Adriatic. His position, lying as it were between the two empires, allowed him to throw himself on the one or the other as the opportunity offered. He was again attracted toward the Western Empire. Though Stilicho had defeated the Goths, he had not ceased to maintain friendly relations with their chief, and also kept a body of 30,000 barbarians in Italy, in the pay of the Empire, either because he admired their valor or because he really wished to rely on their assistance to make his son emperor. Honorius, alarmed at this, had him assassinated (408), and abandoned all the barbarian auxiliaries in Italy to death. The latter took refuge with Alaric, and he returned with them to avenge their wrongs (408).

This is the most famous invasion of the King of the Goths. He crossed the Alps, passed over the Po and the Apennines, and appeared under the walls of the Eternal City. Deputies came to his camp with words of peace. They represented to him the size of the city and the number of the inhabitants. “The thicker the grass, the better the mowing”, said he. Nevertheless he consented to a treaty which ransomed the ancient capital of the world on the payment of 5000 pounds of gold and 30,000 pounds of silver, and went into winter quarters in Tuscany. He soon perceived that he was being trifled with, and returned to Rome in great rage, receiving into his ranks the fugitive slaves who rushed to him from every side. The city, after having been surrounded, deprived of the supplies from Sicily and devastated by a terrible famine, opened its gates. The senate, obedient to the conquerors, bestowed the purple on the prefect Attalus and appointed Alaric himself master-general of the armies. The Goths assumed Roman dignities, and this same instinct led them at first to respect Rome. But Honorius, who preferred stratagem to force, secured the assistance of the Goth Sarus, and persuaded him to attack suddenly the camp of his compatriots. Alaric returned against Rome for the third time, and, says Bossuet, “this new Babylon, imitator of the ancient city, like it elated by its conquests and triumphant in its luxury and wealth, fell with a great fall”. The city endured the same disgrace which the Gauls had inflicted upon it eight centuries earlier, and was given over to all the horrors of pillage during three days. The barbarians respected only the Christian temples, which were a secure refuge for fugitives (410).

Alaric did not long outlive this triumph, which Hannibal and Pyrrhus had striven for in vain. He had gone down into southern Italy, meaning to take possession of Sicily and Africa, and died the following year at Cosenza, in Bruttii. The barbarians honored the remains of their great chief with a strange and unusual burial. To prevent the possibility of the profanation of his body by the Romans, they had their prisoners turn from its course the Busento, which flows through Cosenza, dig a grave in the bed of the river, and bury Alaric there, surrounded by the rich spoils of his victories. The waters were turned back to their natural course, and the prisoners who had done the work were killed on the tomb so that no one might betray the secret (410).

Athaulf (Adolf), the brother and successor of Alaric, had a great admiration for the Empire and wished to re-establish it by means of and for the profit of his nation. He began by offering his services to Honorius, and in January, 414, he married the Emperor’s sister, Placidia, whom the Goths had kept in their camp as a prisoner or hostage. He promised to drive from Gaul and Spain the usurpers who were there contending for the imperial throne.

As if there had not been attacks enough from without the Empire, three usurpers had assumed the purple in Spain and Gaul,—Constantine, Maximus, and Gerontius. They were easily overthrown, but there succeeded them Jovinus and Sebastian. These Athaulf conquered, and then passed into Spain to drive out the barbarians who had invaded it. He was assassinated at Barcelona, the first of the many Visigoth kings who were to meet a violent death,(415). His children were put to death by the Goth Singeric, who was king for seven days and then also died by the hands of assassins.

Walia succeeded him. He tried to pass into Africa, but was unable to cross the currents of the Straits of Gibraltar, which proves that the Goths had had little experience of the sea. Having returned to the heart of Spain, Walia, in the interest of the Emperor of the West, disputed the possession of that region with the Alans, the Suevi, and the Vandals. He partly exterminated the first, drove back the second into the mountains of the Northwest, and the latter into Baetica.

The chief of the Suevi, though defeated, fell back upon the mountains of Asturia and of Gallaecia, where he founded a kingdom (419), which under its kings Rechila and Rechiarius, from 438 to 455 conquered Lusitania, and would have subdued the whole of Spain, if the Goths had nor arrested its progress. These latter people had recovered from the Emperor Honorius (in 419), as recompense for their services, the second Aquitaine with Toulouse as capital. Little by little they spread over Gaul as far as the Rhone and the Loire, and returned into Spain, this time on their own account. Theodoric II conquered the Suevi there in 456, and Leovigild subdued them in 585. The whole of Spain then belonged to the Goths; by 507 the Franks had almost entirely driven them from Gaul.

The kingdom of the Burgundians came sooner into being, for in the year 413 Honorius had ceded to Gundicar territory on both sides of the Jura (Switzerland and the Franche-Comté).

Thus, in the first twenty years of the fifth century, three barbarian kingdoms were founded, which lasted for unequal periods but which all disappeared very soon; that of the Suevi in 585 under the attack of the Visigoths, that of the Burgundians in 534, and that of the Visigoths, to the north of the Pyrenees, in 507, at the hands of the Franks, and in Spain, in 711, at the hands of the Arabs.

Honorius died in 423, incapable of defending his empire, and leaving no glory behind him but that of having, like his father protected the Church and the true faith. Many of his edicts ordered the destruction of idols and of temples, and forbade public employment to pagans and heretics. His nephew Valentinian III, son of Placidia and of Count Constantius, whom she had married after the death of Athaulf, succeeded him. He was only six years old and remained under the guardianship of his mother. During the same time, Pulcheria was governing the Empire of the East for her brother Theodosius II, who had succeeded his father Arcadius in 408. New calamities assailed the two empires under the reign of these feeble emperors, who were controlled by women, and whose ministers and generals made use of the barbarians in their rivalries and court intrigues.

Count Boniface, ruler of Africa, jealous of the favor shown Aetius by the Empress Placidia, called the Vandals and their king, Gaiseric, into Africa. He soon repented it, and tried, but too late, to resist the invasion, which was one of the most destructive that ever passed over the Roman provinces. Gaiseric made an alliance with the nomad tribes of the Moors, defeated Boniface in a bloody battle, and besieged him at Hippo (Bona) fourteen months. Saint Augustine, who was bishop of this city, refused to leave it, and kept up the courage of its inhabitants by his exhortations and piety. His death in 430 saved him from the sight of a new defeat of Boniface and the fall of Hippo. The Romans were obliged to abandon Africa (431), and four years later Valentinian recognized by treaty the establishment of the kingdom of the Vandals. This was the fourth state founded by the barbarians, and was destined to last no longer than the others. Its founder, however, had some remarkable ideas, and showed genius in seizing upon the advantages of his new position. He took Carthage in 439, and tried to revive the maritime power of which these cities had formerly been the seat. He constructed vessels, kept a marine force, though the Empire no longer did so, and took possession of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearic Islands. He harassed the coasts of the Tuscan and the Aegean seas, and, in a word, defied Constantinople as he had done Rome, and became the master of the Mediterranean. At the same time he was conspiring with the barbarians in the North in order that they might press in at once from all sides upon the Empire, where Aetius was trying to restore a little authority and order.

Those whom Gaiseric had summoned were the Huns. They came at last, those barbarians, who were more terrible even than all the others whom we have seen setting the whole universe in commotion, and who had halted for half a century in the center of Europe, holding under their yoke the Ostrogoths, the Gepidae, Marcomanni, and the southern Slavs. Attila, the son of Mundzuk, reigned over them. A dagger planted in the earth had been for all time the religious symbol of the Scythian peoples. A herdsman found a very rusty one in the fields where his flock was grazing, and carried it to Attila. It was believed that it was the dagger of the god of war, and that this find portended the conquest of the world by the King of the Huns. From this time, clothed in the eyes of his people with a divine character, Attila wished to reign alone and had his brother Bleda put to death. He called himself the Scourge of God, adding that the grass could not grow where once his horse had passed.

It is remarkable that this great conqueror accomplished so much by means of negotiation, and that we know of no victory gained by him, although his empire was immense. He first made a strong diversion against Theodosius II to force him to recall the troops which he had just sent against Gaiseric. He crossed the Danube near ;Margus, destroyed seventy towns, and compelled the Emperor not only to pay a heavier tribute than the one he had already submitted to, but also to give up the right bank of the Danube to the Huns. Theodosius II attempted to have him assassinated, and thought that he had succeeded in corrupting his minister Edecon. Attila, hearing of this perfidy, pardoned with contempt the Roman ambassadors who had come to find him in his wooden palace in Pannonia, and contented himself with reproaching Theodosius “with conspiring against the life of his master like a treacherous slave”. But after the death of Theodosius II (450) he found a bolder enemy in Marcian, a prince who declared that he had “gold for his friends and a sword for his enemies”.

Attila was not a man to be stopped by menacing words, but as Constantinople was considered impregnable he decided to carry the wrath of heaven in another direction. He demanded of the Emperor of the West the half of his states, and pressing on Gaul with 600,000 barbarians, he passed over the Rhine, ravaged Belgium with fire and sword, crossed the Moselle and the Seine, and marched upon Orleans. The people fled before him in indescribable terror, for the Scourge of God did not leave one stone upon another where he passed. Metz and twenty other cities had been destroyed; Troyes alone had been saved by its bishop, Saint Lupus. Attila wished to possess Orleans, the key to the southern provinces, and surrounded it with his vast army. The bishop, Saint Anianus, kept up the courage of the inhabitants. While he was praying a cloud of dust was seen on the horizon; “Tis the help of God” cried he, and indeed it was Aetius, who had united with the troops of the Romans those of the barbarians of Germanic race who were now inhabiting Gaul and who would be chiefly affected by the new invasion, the Visigoths under Theodoric, the Saxons, the Burgundians, the Ripuarian and the Salian Franks. At first Attila retreated, but only in order to choose a field of battle more favorable to his cavalry. He halted near Méry-sur-Seine on a vast plain, where was fought the battle which saved the West from the dominion of the Huns. This was a terrible conflict of all the nations of the world, and the bodies of 160,000 men strewed the field of carnage. Attila was defeated and retired to his camp, which was surrounded by a wall of chariots, and “in the morning”, says the Goth Jordanes, historian of the war, “the conquerors saw in the midst of this camp an immense funeral pile made of the saddles of horses. Upon it stood Attila, and below the Huns, torch in hand, were ready to set fire to it if their fortification should be forced. Thus a lion pursued by hunters to the entrance of his lair, turning, once more arrests and terrifies them by his roaring”. The allies did not dare brave the despair of the Huns, and allowed Attila to return to Germany (451).

The following year he indemnified himself for his defeat by invading upper Italy. He destroyed Aquileia, whose inhabitants took refuge in the lagoons where their descendants founded Venice. Padua also was reduced to ashes. Vicenza and Verona, Pavia and Milan submitted. In the palace in Milan he saw a picture representing the Emperor sitting on his throne and the chief of the Huns prostrate before him. He ordered the painter to put the king of the Huns on the throne and the Emperor at his feet, and the picture thus came much nearer the truth. In the mean while the Italians had no soldiers to defend them. The Pope, Leo the Great, risked his life to save them. He came to the camp of Attila with deputies of the Emperor and yielded to the barbarian everything he desired, rich presents and the promise of a tribute. The approach of Aetius and a disease which decimated his army decided Attila to return to his forests. The terror of Italy was so great that it was believed to have been saved only by a miracle, which the genius of Raphael has immortalized. Some months afterwards the Scourge of God died at his royal village near the Danube (453). The peoples he had subdued threw off the yoke; the chiefs of the Huns disputed over his crown by terrible combats which reduced their numbers; and their power wasted away like those violent tempests which disappear and leave behind only the traces of their ravages.

Attila had never seen Rome, but Gaiseric, his ally, visited it with fire and sword (455). The Senator Petronius Maximus, who had assassinated Valentinian III, was then Emperor. Exasperated by his weakness the people slew him, but not before Eudoxia, the widow of Valentinian, whom he had compelled to marry him, had sent to the Vandals for help. Leo the Great had less success with the King of the Vandals than with the King of the Huns. During fourteen days Rome was pillaged with such barbarity, that since then the name of Vandalism has been given to all devastation where destruction is wrought for the mere pleasure of destroying. For twenty years longer Gaiseric ruled over the Mediterranean and defied the impotent rage of the two Empires. Indeed he survived the Empire of the West by one year, but the greatness of his people seemed to perish with him (477). His kingdom, torn by religious discord and the revolts of the Moors, fell under the attacks of Belisarius, fifty-seven years after his death

After the death of the feeble Maximus the King of the Visigoths in Gaul gave the purple to the rhetorician Avitus. Ricimer transferred it to the Senator Majorian. The barbarians disposed of the Empire as they pleased, but a certain shame kept them from assuming the sceptre themselves. Majorian showed himself a noble character in the midst of general corruption. He wished to overturn the power of the Vandals, and assembled a fleet at Carthage, but his preparations were destroyed, betrayed perhaps by his generals. Disheartened he returned to Italy and died there under the sword of Ricimer (461). His murderer set up successively three Emperors who pass across the scene like shadows (461-472), Severus, Anthemius, and Olybrius, and he even left the throne vacant for a time. Glycerius and Julius Nepos reigned hardly two years (472-475). Finally the Pannonian Orestes gave the purple to his own son Romulus Augustulus, a child of six years, who, as if in bitter irony, united the names of the founder of Rome and the founder of the Empire. Odovacar, commander of the confederate barbarians (Heruli, Rugii, Scyri, Turcilingi, etc.) took Ravenna and Rome, and banished the last heir of the Caesars of the West to the country house of Lucullus. The imperial insignia were sent to Constantinople by the senate, a symbol of the fall of the Empire. Odovakar was proclaimed king by his Heruli and gave them a third of the lands of this country, and demanded the title of Patrician from Zeno the Emperor of the East, thus acknowledging the superiority of the imperial dignity and the majesty of the Roman name. This was the end of the Empire of the West (476), an event which appears more significant to the eyes of posterity than to those of its contemporaries, who had been accustomed for more than half a century to see the barbarians in control of everything.

 

CHAPTER III

SECOND PERIOD OF INVASION: THE FRANKS, THE OSTROGOTHS, THE LOMBARDS AND THE ANGLO-SAXONS (455-569).

 

A Second Invasion of German Barbarians Successful in Founding States.—Clovis (481-511).—The Sons of Clovis (511-561).—Conquest of Burgundy (534) and of Thuringia (530).—Theodoric and the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy (493-526).—The Lombards (568-774).—Foundation of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (455-584).

 

We have seen that in their first period of invasion, the German barbarians destroyed more than they built up. Some, like Alaric, Radagaisus, and Attila, left nothing but ruins behind them; others, like Gundicar, Hermeric, Walia, and Gaiseric, set up kingdoms which did not prove stable. We come now to a second period, a new incursion of barbarians, who founded more durable states on the ruins of the shattered Empire.

The Salian Franks are supposed to have been governed between the years 420 and 428, by a king named Pharamond; but there is some doubt of his existence, as Gregory of Tours did not know of him. Toward 428 they raised on their shields—and thus made king—Clodion the Hairy, who led them as far as the Somme, where they were driven back by Aetius. To succeed him (448), they chose Mérovius, who fought with honor at the great battle of Châlons [Miry-sur-Seine] and from whom sprung the Merovingian dynasty. Nevertheless, his son, Childeric the First (456), was driven out for a time, on account of his excesses, and was replaced by Count Aegidius, who, with the title of Master of the Roman Soldiery, took command of the Gallo-Roman forces between the Somme and the Loire. But the Franks were not content with Aegidius and called back their national chief. Leading his warlike bands as far as the banks of the Loire, over which their descendants were to rule for ever, he joined the Saxon pirates who had disembarked at the mouth of that river. In 481 he died, and his son Chlodoweg or Clovis succeeded him.

Clovis was the founder of the first barbarian monarchy which was fully able to resist successfully the last shocks of invasion and to endure for many centuries. At first he reigned only over the country of Tournay, and had on ly three or four thousand warriors at his command. But the divided condition in which he found Gaul made easy for him a conquest which would have been impossible fifty years before, when the Empire of the West was still in existence. All the country to the south of the Loire belonged to the Visigoths; the Burgundians ruled from Langres to the Durance, and from the Loire to the Alps; Alsace and the country between the Rhine and the Vosges belonged to the Alemanni; Armorica, which was destined to receive from British emigrants the name of Brittany, was independent and had renewed the old federation of the Armorican cities; finally, Alans were encamped by the Vilaine; Saxons occupied Bayeux, and Frankish kings ruled at Cambray, Thérouanne and Cologne. In this way the barbarians held almost the whole of Gaul divided among them; of the Roman power only a feeble remnant was left in Champagne and Picardy, where Syagrius, the son of Aegidius, called by the barbarians King of the Romans, held Beauvais, Soissons, Troyes and Rheims.

Clovis attacked Syagrius ;and defeated him near Soissons (486); from that time nothing was left of the Empire of the West, and the barbarians were at last fairly masters of the country. Three peoples, then, held dominion in Gaul; the Visigoths, the Burgundians, and the Franks. Alaric II, king of the Visigoths, sought an alliance with Clovis, who eagerly accepted it. Gundobad, King of the Burgundians, having just put to death two of his three brothers, so that he need only share his kingdom with one, gave Clovis, at his request, the hand of his niece Clotilda; she was a Catholic.

Clovis had no intention of confining his conquests to what he already possessed. He was resolved not to share at all with new invaders—that is, he was resolved to change the Franks into defenders of the soil of which they had just taken possession, and also to subjugate the barbarians who had established themselves in Gaul before him. In 496, he conquered the Alemanni on the left bank of the Rhine and pursued them as far as Swabia; he also drove the Thuringians, who were ravaging the right bank of the river, back to their forests.

In the heat of the battle against the Alemanni, he had called upon the God of Clotilda and vowed that if He would give him the victory, he would become a Christian. Soon after, he was baptized by Saint Remigius, Archbishop of Rheims; 3000 Franks followed his example, the others remained pagans. This conversion had great results; as he had become not only a Christian but a Catholic, as were also the Gallic bishops and all the Gallo-Roman population, he was considered as a protector throughout the country, while the Visigoths and the Burgundians were hated as Arians. This circumstance greatly helped him in subduing these two peoples.

When a quarrel broke out between Gundobad and his remaining brother Godigisel, Clotilda urged her husband to avenge her father's murder; and the bishops, too, made an urgent appeal to him as orthodox king of the Franks. He entered Burgundy, defeated Gundobad near Dijon (500), forced him to give up Vienne and Geneva to Godigisel, and made both of them pay him tribute. Thus he both divided and impoverished the kingdom of Burgundy. Hardly had he departed when Gundobad despoiled and killed Godigisel. Clovis did not return to attack him again, but sent against him from the south Theodoric, king of the Italian Ostrogoths, whom he had made his ally by giving him his sister in marriage. This custom of strengthening political alliances by family ties had hardly been known to ancient history, and it may be considered a barbarian importation. Theodoric occupied the passes of the Alps and seized the province of Marseilles. Gundobad relinquished it to him, and by this concession and by his political gentleness toward the Catholic clergy, he saved the remainder of his states.

The Visigoths had entered into alliance with the Burgundians, who were Arians like themselves, and, like them, were threatened by the ambition of Clovis. Clovis, attracted by the rich and beautiful countries of the South, made objections to this alliance; he also put forward the interests of religion, and said to his warriors: “I am much displeased that these Visigoths, who are Arians, should possess a part of Gaul. Let us go forth with the help of God, and when we have conquered them, we will take possession of their land, for it is very good”. Accordingly, he marched against the Visigoths, gained a victory over them on the plain of Vouglé, near Poitiers (507), and finished the conquest of all the country as far as the Pyrenees, except, however, Septimania, which the Visigoths retained for three centuries longer.

 

In this way all the Gauls were either subject to Clovis or paid him tribute, with the exception of the Armoricans, who, though at first allied with him, afterward resisted his ambitious pretensions and remained independent under their king Budic. The other tribes of the Frankish nation had also kept their own chiefs; Clovis put an end to this by means which show the crafty and cruel spirit of the barbarians. He caused Sigibert, king of the Ripuarian Franks, to be assassinated by his own son, and had the son killed afterwards; then presenting himself before the warriors of the tribe, he said: “I am in no way an accomplice of these doings; it would be wrong for me to spill the blood of my relations. But since this thing has happened, my advice is this; if it pleases you, follow it; turn to me, put yourselves under my protection”. The Ripuarians lifted him on their shields and proclaimed him king. The other chiefs ruling at Tournay, Cambray, and at Mans, suffered the same fate as Sigibert. “Then”, says Gregory of Tours, “Clovis, gathering his people together, spoke thus of the relatives he had killed: Unhappy am I to remain like a wayfarer among strangers! I have no kinsmen to aid me if adversity should come. But this he said, not from grief at their death, but out of cunning, if perchance he might still discover some relation whom he might kill. Having done these things he died (511)”.

Clovis was the first to unite all the elements from which the new social order was to be formed,—namely, the barbarians, whom he established in power; the Roman civilization, to which he rendered homage by receiving the insignia of Patrician and of Consul from the Emperor Anastasius; and finally, the Catholic Church, with which he formed that fruitful alliance which was continued by his successors. The Council of Orleans had sanctioned this alliance by recognizing Clovis as protector of the Church, whose immunities he confirmed in this same council. The Pope had already written to him: “The Lord has provided for the needs of the Church by giving her for defender a prince armed with the helmet of salvation : be thou always for her a crown of iron, and she will give thee victory over thine enemies”.

The sons of Clovis, following the Germanic custom, divided his states. Theodoric [Theodoric] the eldest, became king of Metz; Lothaire (Chlothacher), of Soissons; Childebert, of Paris; and Chlodomer, of Orleans. Each of them had also a part of Aquitaine.

From this time, for half a century, the history of the Franks lacks unity and continuity. Being masters of almost the whole of Gaul, they satisfied their adventurous spirit by expeditions in all directions, against the Burgundians, the Thuringians, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths. They rarely acted in accord, which resulted in a separation between the Austrasians, or eastern Franks, and the Neustrians, or western Franks, a separation which continued to increase.

In 523, the sons of Clovis attacked Sigismund, son of Gundobad, conquered him, and threw him with all his family into a well. But soon afterwards Chlodomer fell into an ambuscade and perished. He left three sons; his brothers Childebert and Lothaire stabbed two of them and divided his states; the third, Chlodobald, who became Saint Cloud, only escaped by taking refuge in a monastery. Ten years afterwards Childebert and Lothaire again attacked the Burgundians, whom they conquered, deprived of their national kings, and forced to embrace Catholicism (534); this completed the work of Clovis.

Between the two expeditions against Burgundy there was a war with the Visigoths. Their king, Amalaric, had married Clotilda, sister of the Frankish kings; as he was an Arian, and she a Catholic, he maltreated her. Outraged by this, Childebert and Lothaire entered the country of the Visigoths, defeated Amalaric near Narbonne (531), crossed the Pyrenees, and brought back Clotilda. They appeared again in that country in 542, and penetrated as far as Saragossa, but the new Visigoth king, Theudis, drove them back.

During this time Theodoric had waged war elsewhere. He subdued the Thuringians (530), thus extending the power of the Franks as far as the mountains of Bohemia. When his brothers started for Burgundy, his warriors said to him: “If you will not go against the Burgundians with your brothers, we will leave you and follow them instead”. He replied to them: “Follow me and I will lead you to the country of Auvergne, where you will get as much gold and silver as you wish, and whence you may bring back slaves, flocks and clothing. Auvergne, which was very hostile to the Franks, had revolted against them, and was now pillaged and devastated. The Austrasians brought back lines of chariots and of chained prisoners whom they sold at auction all along the road.

Under Theudibert, son of Theodoric, the Austrasians descended upon Italy, over which enticing country the Greeks and the Ostrogoths were struggling (539); they promised their aid to both sides, attacked each in turn, and gained a rich booty. But they did not all return, diseases and excesses caused the death of a great number. They made two more expeditions into Italy under the generals Leutharis and Buccelin. The latter penetrated the first time, in 546, as far as Sicily; but descending again into Italy in 554, he was defeated by Narses, near Capua, and the Franks left the peninsula, not to return for two centuries.

In the meantime, Theodoric, the son of Theudibert, died, and Lothaire I took his kingdom of Austrasia. This did not add to Lothaire’s strength, for he was vanquished by the Saxons, whom his warriors had forced him to attack against his will. He also received the inheritance of Childebert, King of Paris, and so found himself sole king of the Franks (558). But at his death (561) this transient unity was again broken.

We come now to another founder of a great kingdom, Theodoric, who was an even more remarkable man than Clovis. It is, however, not astonishing that the Goths were distinguished from the other barbarians by a singular readiness to adopt the Roman Civilization, for they had lived for a long time in immediate contact with the Empire. And in the case of Theodoric, who seems utterly different from the barbarians in his civilizing genius and in his policy, there is still less cause for surprise, as he was brought up at Constantinople, whither he was taken as a hostage when eight years old.

When at the death of Attila all the nations which had been subject to the Huns threw off their yoke, the Ostrogoths also became free. Three princes of the family of the Amals ruled over them: Walamir, Widemir, and Theodomir. Theodomir had a son Theodoric, who was born in 454, and succeeded his father in 474. His sojourn at the court of the East had attached him to the Emperor Zeno, whom he defended against a rival. When obliged by the turbulence of his subjects to undertake some warlike expedition, he diverted their attention from Constantinople, which they had planned to attack. Zeno authorized him to descend upon Italy where Odovacar was reigning, for the Emperor of Constantinople cared nothing for the Kingdom of the Heruli.

Theodoric carried his whole nation with him. Old men, women, and children followed the warriors in chariots, with the flocks and all the wealth of the tribe. There were 200,000 in all. This movement began in the autumn of 488, and in the following February he first overwhelmed in the Julian Alps an army of Gepidae and Sarmatians, and then defeated Odovacar at Aquileia and Verona (489). In spite of these three victories he was surrounded by a force from Pavia and placed in a critical situation, from which he was rescued by a relief force sent him by the Goths of Toulouse. Thanks to this aid, he conquered the whole Cisalpine region, and Odovacar took refuge in Ravenna. During the two years' siege of this city, all Italy submitted, and the Goths made the valuable acquisition of Sicily. Odovacar surrendered on the condition of dividing his kingdom, but Theodoric had him assassinated at a feast, and reigned alone (493). The new Emperor Anastasius recognized him as king in Italy.

Without going to war Theodoric added Illyricum, Pannonia, Noricum, and Rhaetia to Italy, and after some hostilities with the Burgundians gained also the province of Marseilles. The Bavarians paid him tribute, the Alemanni invoked his aid against Clovis, and finally, at the death of Alaric II, the Visigoths recognized him as their ruler for the time of the minority of Amalaric, grandson of Alaric. He defeated a Frankish army near Aries in 508, thus returning to the Goths of Aquitaine, who had been subdued by the Franks, the aid they had given him when conquering Odovacar. The two branches of the Gothic nation which had been separated so long, and whose territories near the Rhone were adjacent, were now united, and the dominion of Theodoric extended from the depths of Spain across Gaul and Italy as far as Sirmium on the Save. He was united by family alliance with almost all the barbaric kings; he himself had married the sister of Clovis, and he gave the hand of his own sister to the King of the Vandals, his niece to the King of the Thuringians, one of his daughters to the King of the Visigoths and the other to the King of the Burgundians. He seemed to be the chief of the barbarians who were established in the Empire of the West, and even Germany showed deference to her glorious representative, who had become the heir of the Caesars. Theodoric was really anything but a barbarian in his political ideas. He showed a consideration for the Emperor of the East which proved his respect for this ancient empire, still so imposing in its ruins, and only waged war when forced to do so. For this chief of the Goths was a pacific king, and made the best use of peace. “Let other Kings rejoice in ravaging cities and burdening themselves with huge spoils”, said he, “but I wish my dominion to be such that vanquished nations shall only regret that they were not sooner made subject to it”.

The new-comers needed lands, and as each Italian city had given up a third of its territory to be distributed to the Heruli of Odovacar, the Goths of Theodoric merely substituted themselves for the Heruli, a substitution which caused no suffering, as there were many abandoned estates. A common law was established for the two peoples, except in regard to a few of their own customs which the Goths preserved. The barbarians paid a tax for their lands like the Romans, and cases of dispute between men of the two races were decided by a mixed tribunal. Theodoric did not wish his Goths to be privileged before the law, and would perhaps have preferred to have them mingle freely with the vanquished population, but the barbarians reserved the profession of arms for themselves, and forbade their children the study of literature and the arts. The Romans alone resorted to the schools, and they held only civil offices. Nevertheless Theodoric was supreme over his kingdom, and we do not find among the Ostrogoths assemblies such as the other barbarians had, but the king governed alone with the aid of a council.

Theodoric professed a great reverence for the Roman civilization. He had asked for and obtained from the Emperor Anastasius the imperial insignia that Odovacar had disdainfully sent back to Constantinople, and he gave up the dress of the barbarians for the Roman purple. Although he lived at Ravenna he was accustomed to consult the Roman senate, to whom he wrote: “We desire, conscript fathers, that the genius of liberty may look with favor upon your assembly”. He established a consul of the West, three praetorian prefects, and three dioceses,—that of northern Italy, that of Rome, and that of Gaul. He retained the municipal government, but appointed the decurions himself. He reduced the severity of the taxes, and his palace was always open to those who wished to complain of the iniquities of the judges. Faustus, a praetorian prefect, and Theodahad, a nephew of the prince, were in this way forced to make restitution. A poor woman had been begging for years to have her process decided. Theodoric summoned the judges and they despatched the affair in a few days. He then condemned them to punishment for not having done in three years what could have been done in three days. Royal envoys armed with his full authority traversed the provinces, that the king's justice might be accessible to all, and in order to establish a vigilant police.

Thus a barbarian gave back to Italy the prosperity which she had lost under the emperors. The public buildings, aqueducts, theatres, and baths were repaired, and palaces and churches were built. The uncultivated lands were cleared and companies were formed to drain the Pontine marshes, and the marshes of Spoleto. The iron mines of Dalmatia and a gold mine in Bruttii were worked. The coasts were protected from pirates by numerous flotillas. The population increased greatly. Theodoric, though he did not know how to write, gathered around him the best literary merit of the time,—Boethius, the bishop Ennodius, and Cassiodorus. The latter, whom he made his minister, has left us twelve books of letters. Theodoric seems in many ways like a first sketch of Charlemagne.

Though himself an Arian, he respected the rights of the Catholics from the first, confirmed the immunities of their churches, and in general left the free election of their bishop to the people and the clergy of Rome. He ever protected the Jews and wrote to their rabbis: “We cannot enforce religion, for no one is obliged to believe anything in spite of himself”. When, however, the Emperor Justin I persecuted the Arians in the East, he threatened to retaliate, and as a great commotion was observed among his Italian subjects, he believed that a conspiracy was being formed against himself. He forbade the Catholics to carry any sort of arms, and accused several men of consular rank of criminal relations with the court of Constantinople. The prefect Symmachus and his son-in-law, Boethius, were implicated. Theodoric confined them in the tower of Pavia, and it was there that Boethius wrote his great work, The Consolations of Philosophy. They were both executed in 525. Theodoric, however, finally recognized their innocence, and felt such great regret that his reason is said to have been unbalanced and that remorse hastened his end (526). His tomb, of which the cupola is formed of a single stone twelve metres wide and one and a half thick, is still to be seen at Ravenna. It is the only monument raised by the Goths that we possess, and it is readily seen that this structure has nothing in common with the architecture so improperly called Gothic.

After the death of Theodoric the supremacy wielded by his nation over the barbarian world disappeared. The Ostrogoths and the Visigoths were again separated. The first recognized as king Athalaric, son of the beautiful and learned Amalasuntha, and grandson of Theodoric; the second, a son of Alaric II. The kingdom of the Ostrogoths degenerated rapidly, and survived its founder but a short time. Nevertheless, Theodoric showed too high a degree of the genius of civilization to be ranked with the barbarians who have left nothing durable behind them.

Though the Ostrogoths left few traces on the soil of Italy in spite of their great king, Theodoric, their place on the peninsula was filled, after some years of Greek dominion, by a people who planted Germanic institutions there. The Lombards, or Longobards, a people originally from the banks of the Elbe, had long wandered on the left bank of the Danube between the Theiss and Moravia, and had finally settled in Pannonia and Noricum at the invitation of Justinian. Reinforced by an army of Avars from Asia, and under the leadership of Alboin, they utterly destroyed the kingdom of the Gepidae, and forced the beautiful Rosamund, daughter of the King Cunimund, who was slain in the battle, to marry the victor (566). Two years later summoned by Narses, Alboin crossed the Julian Alps, conquered the whole valley of the Po without a combat, and had himself proclaimed king in Milan. Pavia, which he took after a long siege, became his capital. He entered Umbria and established a Lombard duke in Spoleto, but Ravenna and Rome escaped him, as well as the coasts of Liguria and Venice, and all the southern part of the peninsula and the islands. The Greek Empire retained these, and they were governed by an exarch who lived at Ravenna and was supreme over the dukes established elsewhere as subordinate governors.

Alboin was assassinated in 573 by Helmichis, his shield-bearer, at the instigation as the legend goes of Rosamund, whom he had forced at a feast to drink from her father’s skull. His successor, Klef, carried the dominion of the Lombards into the southern part of the peninsula. He took Beneventum, but did not gain Naples, Gaeta, Amalfi, Calabria, or Bruttii, which were kept by the Greeks. He died in 575 by the hands of one of his great nobles. Alboin had divided the country between thirty-six dukes, who each ruled over his territory and one great city. Following the Germanic custom the nation came together in a general assembly, and even the king was then subject to its decisions.

After the death of Klef the thirty-six dukes let the throne stand vacant and each one ruled over his own territory. This division of power encouraged the enemies of the Lombards, and after being attacked by the Greeks and the Franks they reestablished the office of king in 584. Autharis, the son of Klef, recovered the lost provinces, subdued Beneventum, which had become the seat of a powerful duchy, and by regulating the laws confirmed the Lombard conquest. He settled the conditions of the ownership of land and the rights of the victor and the vanquished; the latter sank to the condition of tributaries, and were obliged to pay to their new masters one-third of the product of the i fields they had retained. He compelled the dukes to surrender half their revenues to the king, but promised not to deprive them of their offices for anything short of felony.

The Lombards were pagans at the beginning of the conquest, and though soon converted to Arianism, they did not become Catholics till the reign of Agilulf (602), and then through the efforts of the Pope, Saint Gregory, and the queen Theudelinda.

Rotharis gave them their first written laws. In a diet held in Pavia in 643, by "the faithful people and fortunate army of the Lombards, the law which bears his name was published, and differed from other barbarian laws in being territorial rather than personal. The only ones of his successors who are worthy to be rescued from oblivion are Grimoald (662) one of the most energetic of Lombard kings, and Luitprand (712) who united very nearly the whole peninsula under his laws. It was then that the Pope Gregory III sent a suppliant letter to Charles Martel, and instituted that policy in pursuance of which the Holy See to preserve its independence so often contended against the masters of Italy, and so often summoned against them the aid of foreigners. When Charlemagne assumed the crown of the Lombards in 774, their race, which had been supreme over a great part of Italy for 206 years, had established customs there which gave rise to Italian feudalism, the Cisalpine region even retained their name, and is still called Lombardy.

In the same period as the reigns of Clovis and Theodoric, Britain, separated by the sea from the continent, had its own particular invasion, or rather a series of successive invasions by two peoples from the shores of the lower part of the Elbe, the Angles and the Saxons. These invasions lasted a century and resulted in the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy.

Great Britain, which had been partly conquered by the Romans, had under their dominion preserved entirely distinct its three peoples,—the Caledonians (Picts and Scots) in the north, in what is now called Scotland where the Romans, had not penetrated; in the south and east the Loegrians, who had felt the influence of the Roman civilization; and at the west beyond the Severn the Cambrians or the Welsh, a people unconquerable in their mountain fastnesses.

The Picts continually descended from the highlands of Scotland and made disastrous expeditions against the South. As long as the Romans held the island they kept them in check, but when Honorius, menaced by Alaric and Radagaisus, recalled his legions, the wall of Severus and the vallum of Adrian were no longer of any use. The Loegrians and the Cambrians were harassed by these attacks and decimated by famine, and, unable to gain the assistance of Aetius “by their groans”, were reduced to defend themselves. They chose a penteyrn or pendragon, a common chief, who was to live at London and take charge of the defense of the whole country. The choice of the pendragon often proved to be an occasion of discord, as the Loegrians and Cambrians quarreled as to which people should receive the office. While Vortigern filled this office, they could think of no other means of safety than to summon against the Picts the barbarians from beyond the sea, the Saxons, the Jutes, and the Angles. These were bold pirates, who, finding the way toward the Rhine barred by the Franks, had taken the ocean for their domain, and continually set sail from the coasts of Germany and the Cimbric peninsula to scour the North Sea and the British Channel. Two Saxon chiefs, Henghist and Horsa, defeated the Picts and received as recompense the Isle of Thanet on the coast of Kent, with the promise of tribute. Such protectors soon change to masters; the white dragon of the strangers devoured the red dragon of the Britons. These were the banners of the two peoples. In 455 Henghist took possession of the country between the Thames and the Channel with the title of King of Kent, and made Canterbury his capital.

From that time it was the ambition of all the chiefs of the Saxon pirates to gain a firm footing in Great Britain as the Frankish tribes had done in Gaul. In 491, in spite of the efforts of the penteyrn Ambrosius, Aella founded at Chichester the kingdom of Sussex (Southern Saxons). In 516 Cerdic founded at Winchester that of Wessex (West Saxons). Here the Saxons came into collision with the Cambrians, who proved to be formidable adversaries. Arthur, prince of Caerleon, the hero of Gaelic legends and the Achilles of the Cambrian bards, defeated them, it is said, in twelve battles, of which the most celebrated is that of Badon-Hill (520). According to tradition he killed with his own hand in a single day 400 of his enemies. When wounded he was borne to an island formed by two rivers and died there, at what date is not known. His tomb has never been found. The Cambrians, whom he had defended so long, refused to believe in the death of their national hero, and for many centuries looked forward to his coming as the time of their deliverance. He had saved the Cambrian independence for the time being. When stopped at the west, the Saxon invaders founded in the east in 526 still another kingdom, Essex (East Saxons), with the capital of London (Londin, the city of vessels), on the Thames, which made four Saxon kingdoms.

In 547 the Angles made their appearance. Ida, or the man of fire, took possession of York and the region which is called Northumberland (land north of the Humber). In 571, Offa, chief of a tribe of Angles who were settled on the eastern coast of Great Britain, took the title of King of East Anglia, with Norwich for his capital, and in 584 Crida founded between the East Angles and the Cambrians the kingdom of Mercia (frontier, March), with Lincoln or Leicester for capital.

When these three kingdoms were added to the four Saxon kingdoms the heptarchy was complete, and the country which had been held by the Romans was divided into seven little barbarian kingdoms, which later were united into one. The new-comers formed a large element of the English population, which is still considered to have a Saxon foundation.

The invasion did not reach Scotland, which was still held by the Picts and Scots, whom the Romans had been unable to conquer, nor did it reach Ireland, which escaped the German dominion as it had the Roman, except for a few points on the coasts where the Danes had settled. The Celtic population of Ireland, which was divided into a great number of clans and little states, kept its independence till the twelfth century. Saint Patrick carried the Catholic religion there as early as the fourth century, and the Church of Ireland early became a center of light. Saint Columban, whom we shall find among the Franks, was one of her sons.

 

CHAPTER IV.

THE GREEK EMPIRE FROM 408 TO 705 ; TEMPORARY REACTION OF THE EMPERORS OF CONSTANTINOPLE AGAINST THE GERMANIC INVADERS.

 

Theodosius II, Marcian, Leo I, Zeno, Anastasius, Justin I (408-527). Justinian I (527-565).—Wars against the Persians (528-533 and 540-562).—Conquest of Africa from the Vandals (534); of Italy from the Ostrogoths (535—553) Acquisitions in Spain (552); Justinian's Administration of the Interior; Code and Digest.—Justinian II, Tiberius II, Maurice and Phocas (565-610); Heraclius(610-641) ; Decline of the Greek Empire.

 

While the tide of barbarian nations swept over almost the whole of Europe, the Greek Empire remained intact; it dragged out an existence which was for the most part miserable, though it was more glorious at times than might have been expected from so corrupt a society. Under Justinian and Heraclius it had been able to take the offensive against the invaders, to regain Italy from the Ostrogoths, Africa from the Vandals, and a part of Spain from the Visigoths, at the same time driving back the Bulgarians and Avars beyond the Danube, the Persians beyond the Euphrates, and extending its protectorate over all the Christians in Asia. But it was exhausted by this last effort, and unable to defend and keep its southern provinces when the invading barbarians from the south, the Arabs, appeared.

This Empire was governed for the most part by women and eunuchs, who swayed at their will the degenerate emperors. Thus Theodosius II., the successor of Arcadius (408-450), allowed himself to be ruled throughout his reign by his sister Pulcheria, who succeeded in keeping him in a long minority. When the Empire was attacked under this emperor, he paid tribute; he had the good fortune not to be attacked at the East and even gained half of Armenia, which King Arsaces divided with him, himself taking the lion’s share. In the reign of Theodosius a new heresy sprang up—that of Nestorius, whom he appointed bishop of Constantinople, and the Empire was long troubled by it. The Theodosian Code must be mentioned here, too, which supplemented the inadequate Gregorian and Hermogenian codes and contained the collected decrees of the Christian emperors. This code was drawn up by a commission of lawyers in 438, and was the first body of laws which was given to the Empire with the imperial sanction; it was very popular, especially in the West, among the Goths of Italy and Spain.

Marcian (450-457), whom Pulcheria married for his courage, showed more firmness toward Attila than his predecessor had done; but after his death Constantinople was given over to misfortune. The Thracian Leo I (457) received the crown at the hands of a barbarian. Zeno (474) owed it to the revolt of the Isaurian guards, who, like the old praetorian guards, made everything bow to their caprice and violence. A rival Basilicus troubled the Empire, and religious quarrels, a chronic malady at Constantinople, brought the Catholics and the partisans of Eutyches into such violent conflict that Zeno's endeavors to calm them by his Henoticon, or Edict of Union (481), were without success.

In 491 Anastasius, who had been earlier proposed for the patriarchal see at Antioch, was made Emperor through the intrigues of a woman. To protect Constantinople, he built a wall from the Euxine to the Propontis, 70 kilometers (40 miles) long, strengthened with towers and bearing his name; he mixed in the religious quarrels and only inflamed them the more—blood even flowed in the tumults. However, he freed Constantinople from the Isaurians, abolished again the chrysargyron, the detested tax, and strictly forbade the combats in the circus between men and wild beasts. These emperors were not, as a general rule, wanting in knowledge, humanity, or even good intensions; but they were petty and weak. What they, as well as the whole nation, lacked, was dignity and force of character, strength and elevation of mind, rather than mere intelligence.

Anastasius waged an unsuccessful war against Persia (502-505), which cost him Colchis. At his death (518), a dynasty began in the person of the Thracian Justin I, who had bought the throne from the Imperial guards. He was an officer of the guard, and had before that been a shepherd and a soldier. He did not know how to read, and he signed his edicts by means of a tablet, in which the first four letters of his name were cut like a stencil. Nevertheless, he was not without merit, and he reigned till 527.

At this time his nephew Justinian mounted the throne, having made his way to it by humoring all the vices which distracted Constantinople, by corrupting the soldiers and lavishing gold on the circus games, which held in the affections of this degenerate people a place equal to that of their gravest interests. If his reign was great it was not due to moral excellence, but to his wars, his works of legislation, and the monuments he erected.

Justinian carried on wars in four directions,—in the east with the Persians, in the southwest with the Vandals, in the west with the Ostrogoths, in the north with the Bulgarians.

The war against the Persians, though often interrupted, was the first to begin—in 528—and the last to end, in 562. It did not have the same character as the others; there were no countries conquered by the barbarians, to be recovered from them, like Italy and Africa, nor an invasion to be repelled, as upon the Danube; it was the sustaining of an old and equal struggle—the defense of a frontier from the regular attacks of an established people, as old as the Empire itself; who did not come rushing on, a whole people in masses, but who sent armies—which constitutes the real difference between barbarian invasions and ordinary wars.

After the hundred years of good understanding, the old hostilities between the Roman Empire and Persia had broken out again under Anastasius and Justin. King Kobad had seized several Roman towns, and had subjugated all Armenia, always an object of desire to both empires. There had also been a few quarrels during the reign of Justin on the occasion of the conversion of the Lagi, who, on becoming Christians, had renounced the protection of the Persians to put themselves under the Greek Emperor. Justinian had reigned for a year (528), when Kobad finally opened hostilities by dispersing the workmen engaged in fortifying the town of Dara in Mesopotamia. The defense of the provinces in Asia was confided to Belisarius, whose name has become inseparably connected with Justinian's and immortalized by his great deeds as well as by his misfortunes. They were associated in debauchery before they were associates in glory—a fact very characteristic of the Greek Empire. Belisarius was first victor in two battles, and then vanquished at Callinicum. Nevertheless he saved the Asiatic provinces of the Greek Empire by his skillful maneuvers, and Kobad’s successor, Chosroes Nushirvan, wishing to strengthen his position by peace before undertaking the vast designs that filled his head—consented to negotiate. Justinian paid down 11,000 pounds of gold (533). For this price they swore an eternal friendship; it lasted less than eight years.

In 540, Chosroes, uneasy at the increase of Justinian's power, and urged on by Witiges, King of the Ostrogoths, invaded and ravaged Syria, took possession of Antioch, and was stopped only by Belisarius, whom Justinian called back from Italy in all haste. The great general prevented new conquests of the Persians by his maneuvers, but he could neither conquer Armenia nor bring back the Lagi under Roman protection. They had had to suffer so much from Roman extortioners, that they no longer wished to be separated from Persia. In 545, a truce was signed after Chosroes had besieged Edessa in vain. Ten years later, the Lagi rebelled and the war began again in Colchis, whose popula­tion was in great part Christian. The treaty of 562 secured this province to the Empire. Justinian, at the same time, obtained liberty of conscience for the Christians of Persia, but agreed to pay a tribute of 30,000 pieces of gold, so that, in the East, his reign was marked by the humiliation of a material loss and by the honor of obtaining a moral advantage in the empire of his enemy.

On the other three sides, his military glory was less doubtful.

Victory had been fatal to the barbarians. Those men of the north, carried suddenly from the damp and gloomy forest of Germany to the scorching plains of Italy, Spain, and Africa, had two enemies that brought them sure death, the sun and dissipation. What happened to the English soldiers in India, happened to them too. They were enervated by the climate, and their intemperate habits, harmless on the banks of the Elbe, became fatal at the foot of Atlas. Add to this their small numbers, their intestine wars, the hatred of the populations toward their savage and political masters; finally, the sudden contact with civilization which is so often fatal to barbarians, and it will be readily seen that at the end of two or three generations nothing remained of a power which at first had seemed irresistible. In after years the crusaders established in Palestine had the same experience. Seeing this quick decline, it seemed to Justinian natural to profit by it, and he began with the Vandals.

It was after the first Persian war that the expedition against the Vandals took place. Gelimer had just assassinated Prince Hilderic—a relation of the Emperor Theodosius I by his mother. Under the pretext of avenging him Justinian decided to attack that enervated nation, which was still torn by religious conflicts. Belisarius set out for Africa with a fleet of 500 ships manned by 20,000 sailors and 15,000 soldiers. The departure was an occasion of great solemnity at Constantinople; and the success of Belisarius fully repaid the importance .of the preparations. Three months after he landed he gained the decisive victory of Tricamaron and took possession of Africa, Sardinia, and the Balearic Islands (534). Gelimer, closely besieged, sent to Belisarius for bread, which he had not tasted for three months, a sponge with which to bathe his aching eyes, and a lute wherewith to sing his woes. When led before him he burst out laughing; and when he was presented to the Emperor he cried with Ecclesiastes, "Vanity of vanities—all is vanity." He was given estates in Galatia, where he quietly spent the rest of his life.

Belisarius hardly had enjoyed his triumph at Constantinople, for the conquest of Africa, when he was sent to Italy. In Italy the Ostrogoths retained more vigor, from the fact that they had come there in greater numbers and more recently. Theodoric had kept them separated from the Italians. His daughter Amalasuntha, reigning in the place of Athalaric, wished to refine them, but the Goths, who clung to their barbaric rudeness, forced her to name her cousin Theodahad king, and soon after Theodahad assassinated her. Justinian appeared as the avenger of Amalasuntha in Italy, as he had of Hilderic in Africa. Belisarius conquered Sicily (535), and took Naples and Rome (536). In vain did Witiges, the new king of the Goths, assemble all the forces of the nation, newly inspired by his courage, take for an instant the offensive, and shut up Belisarius in Rome; he could not capture him there and was obliged to fly to Ravenna, where he suffered the same fate as Gelimer (540). But envy and the Persian war called Belisarius back; the Goths, under Totila, took advantage of that and gained a great victory at Faenza which gave them Rome (546). Belisarius came back, but with insuffi­cient forces, and only succeeded in reentering the old capital of the world. What the court refused him, it gave to the eunuch Narses. He had an army in which barbarians predominated—Huns, Persians, Herulians, Lombards and Slavs—and fought at Lentagio in the Apennines against King Totila, who died of his wounds (552). Teias, succeeding Totila, had a like fate; and the Ostrogothic monarchy ended with him. The bands of Franks, though called upon at the same time by the Goths and the Greeks, did not assist either of the two parties. Those of the Ostrogothic warriors who still remained in Italy were allowed to retire with their possessions, after promising on oath never to return.

Thus the Greek Empire seemed to have avenged the Empire of the West. When it had seized Valencia in Spain and the Eastern Baetica, which Athanagild yielded to Justinian in order to obtain his help against a rival, Agila, it seemed to have regained its sovereignty over the two basins of the Mediterranean. But the increase of power was too much for its weak condition, and lasted but a short time.

A new invasion, in the north, was repelled at the same time. The Bulgarians who are believed to be of Tartar blood, came from the region of the Volga about this time. They settled in Dacia, and while the imperial armies were fighting in Asia, Italy, and Spain, they crossed the Danube on the ice and appeared under the very walls of Constantinople. The capital of the Empire was saved by Belisarius, who expelled them with the aid of the guards of the palace and the inhabitants of the town, and drove them back beyond the Danube (559). Another Tartar people, the Avars, the remains of a great nation destroyed in Asia by the Turks and the Chinese, approached the Danube in 558. Justinian persuaded them to stop in Dacia. He hoped to make them defenders of the Empire; but they became its most terrible enemies.

Justinian's greatest claim to the memory of posterity is, however, less in his transient victories than in the works of legislation which are connected with his name. They were executed under the direction of Tribonian, a lawyer and a man of universal knowledge, but mercenary and without conscience, according to Procopius, who said: “He trafficked in laws—making and unmaking them according as it was asked of him”. With nine other lawyers for associates, Tribonian made in fourteen months (528-529) a collection of the constitutions and imperial edicts, divided into twelve books; this is the Code. Justinian brought out, sometime after, a new edition of it, in which were two hundred laws and fifty decisions delivered by himself. In the year 533 the Institutes appeared, a summary of the principles of Roman jurisprudence, which was intended for the schools of Constantinople, Berytus and Rome, and the Digest, called, as in Greek, Pandects (general collection). This is an immense compilation, made in three years’ time by seventeen lawyers, though Justinian had allowed them twelve years for the task. All the previous codes and two thousand books on jurisprudence were summarized, and three million lines were reduced to one hundred and fifty thousand. To avoid further confusion, it was forbidden to make commentaries on them, and even to interpret or cite the old laws; in a doubtful case the Emperor himself could be appealed to for an interpretation.

Finally, the fourth great work includes, under the name of Novelae, the laws made by Justinian after the publication of the Code (534-565). All this legislation was the last will and testament, as it were, of Roman jurisprudence, but animated by new principles of humanity in the civil law and of despotism in the government.

For the defense of the Empire, Justinian built or restored eighty fortresses along the Danube and six hundred in Dacia, Epirus, Thessaly, Macedonia and Thrace; he rebuilt the wall of Anastasius, which had been thrown down by an earthquake and had let the Bulgarians through; he even fortified all the isthmuses of the Empire, and covered the frontier of the Euphrates with forts as he had the Danube. Other structures were for the adornment of the capital—as, for instance, the magnificent basilica of St. Sophia, which is now a mosque. The importation, in his reign, of silk­worms, by two Nestorian monks coming from China, must also be mentioned.

From every point of view that we have taken, the reign of Justinian is worthy of praise. It is contemptible, if we consider the inner factions, the bloodthirsty quarrels of the greens and the blues (the colors of the circus charioteers), the Nika sedition, which for five days gave Constantinople over to devastation—murder and conflagration. The danger was so great for the Emperor himself" that he was on the point of departing on a ship held in readiness for him, when his wife Theodora stopped him, saying: “I shall remain, and I shall console myself with that thought of the ancients, that the throne is a glorious tomb!”

Belisarius, with 3000 veterans, surrounded the rebels in the circus and killed, it is said, 30,000 of them. This brave Theodora had been only a comic actress, daughter of the keeper of the bears in the amphitheater, and notorious for every kind of licentiousness before Justinian married her. Virtue was nowhere seen, and without this strength is weakness, for it alone can give to states as well as to individuals a wholesome confidence in themselves. The innumerable fortresses proved only that the. Romans of the lower empire felt their own powerlessness, and had a lively fear of the ruin which they knew themselves unable to avert.

Justinian died in 565, after withdrawing his favor from Belisarius. He was succeeded by three emperors, the last two of fine character who form an exception to the general degradation; first his nephew, Justin II (565), then Tiberius II, and Maurice (582). The two last gained the throne by the right of adoption, which proved almost as successful in their case as when it gave the Empire to the Antonines. The splendor of Justinian's reign was continued under these three Emperors. If Italy was conquered by the Lombards (568), the Avars, on the other hand, were turned back from the East by Justin’s courageous attitude. The Persian war was waged with success by Tiberius II, and under Maurice the Greek Empire became the protector of Chosroes II, who was driven from his states by the revolt of Varahan (591). Unfortunately at the end of this reign, the Avars, led by their Khan, the terrible Baiam, raised the annual tribute to 100,000 pieces of gold, took Sirmium and Singidunum, and ravaged everything from Belgrade to the Black Sea. Maurice had nothing to oppose to these formidable troops but a degenerate army attracted, only by the hope of gold, and generals who had no more force of character than Commentiolus, who always fell sick when the barbarians arrived, and who never lost blood but by the surgeon's lancet. Maurice wished to make a reform in the discipline, but the attempt cost him his life. A revolt broke out in the European and Asiatic camps, and Phocas, who was proclaimed Emperor, had him strangled with all his children (602). Fortunately the terrible tyranny of Phocas defeated itself by its own excesses. Heraclius, the son of the exarch of Africa (610), was called upon to overthrow him.

The reign of Heraclius was a struggle against the Persians and the Avars, admirable for its courage and spirit. For a long time war had not been waged on so grand a scale as it was now in Asia. The extremities of distress to which the Emperor was first reduced only made his success thereafter the more remarkable. The Avars invaded the North, and pursued the Emperor as far as the outskirts of Constantinople (619). The Persians, led by the Satrap Shahen, invaded Syria (613), Palestine, Egypt, and even Cyrenaica, where they destroyed all the Greek towns, and returning to Asia Minor, suddenly pushed as far as Chalcedon. Here they settled for ten years in sight of Constantinople, which the loss of Egypt had reduced to starvation. The limits of the Empire at that time hardly reached beyond the walls of Constantinople and Heraclius was already thinking of transferring the capital from there to Carthage, when the patriarch Sergius restrained him and placed the possessions of the Church at Constantinople at his disposal. The war which was going on had assumed almost a religious character, Chosroes had strangled the Christian priests in Jerusalem, and had sworn that he would not make peace with Heraclius until he should “renounce his crucified Lord, and take up the worship of the Sun”. Heraclius carried the war into the enemy’s country. He attacked Asia Minor first from the south (622), landed in Cilicia, and gained a victory at Issus. He then attacked it from the north, landing at Trebizond, and enlarged his army with many auxiliaries collected from the tribes of the Caucasus—dragged Armenia into an alliance with him, and penetrated into Azerbiyan, destroying the town of Thebarmis, which is regarded as the birthplace of Zoroaster, the religious legislator of the Persians. This bold enterprise saved Asia Minor and Egypt, as formerly that of Scipio in Africa had saved Italy. The Persian armies were withdrawn across the Euphrates. The Persians allied themselves with the Avars, Heraclius with the Turkish Khazars from the Volga, who stood to Persia in the same position as did the barbarians from the Danube to the Greek Empire. While the Avars were suffering defeat in an attack on Constantinople (626), Heraclius, strengthened by 40,000 Khazars, went so far that the king of Persia himself trembled for his capital (627). The Emperor, victor in a battle near the ruins of Nineveh, pillaged the towns and palaces of Persia, and penetrating as far as Ctesiphon, which, however, he did not besiege, he regained 300 Roman flags. Chosroes was dethroned and put to death by his own son Siroes, and the treaty then concluded (628) gave back to the two empires their old boundary lines, and to the Christians the wood of the True Cross, which Heraclius bore back in triumph to Jerusalem (629).

Here the successful period of the reign of Heraclius ends, as well as the transient prosperity of the Greek Empire, which was exhausted by the attacks of the Persians and even by its own victories, overwhelmed by taxes and ruined in its commerce and industries. The Empire was in great need of repose after such disasters and exertions, but it was now overwhelmed by the sudden rush of a nation from the depths of Arabia, much more formidable than the Persians—a veritable torrent—destroying everything in its path. Ten years had hardly passed when Heraclius, after new and useless efforts, released his Syrian subjects from their oath of allegiance, and set sail crying: “Farewell, Syria, farewell forever!” (638). Before he died he saw Egypt lost, Alexandria captured (641). His dynasty continued on the throne for seventy years, unfortunately for the Empire. Blood and madness and unprecedented refinements of cruelty give an awful character to this period: Constans II (641) had his brother killed, and thought he saw him in his dreams offering a cup of blood and saying: "Drink, brother, drink." Constantine IV Pogonatos (668) had the noses of his two brothers cut off whom the troops of the Anatolic district in Asia Minor wished to force upon him as associates in the Empire, “because”, said they, “Just as there are three persons of equal power in heaven, so ought there to be—in all reason—three persons of equal power on the earth”. Justinian II (685) had two favorites, a eunuch and a monk; the first of whom is said to have had the Emperor’s mother scourged, and the second of whom caused insolvent debtors to be hanged head downwards and roasted over a slow fire. Tiberius III stained with blood was fortunately the last of this terrible lineage: he was first mutilated, and then decapitated (705).

Then it was that the Greeks of the Lower Empire sank into such extremes of vice, of folly, and low bloodthirstiness that they are quoted as one of the most deplorable types of human nature that history can show.

 

CHAPTER V.

THE RENEWAL OF THE GERMAN INVASION BY THE FRANKS. GREATNESS OF THE MEROVINGIANS. THEIR DECADENCE (561-687).

 

Power of the Merovingian Franks. New Character of their History.— Lothaire I., Fredegonda, Brunhilda.—Lothaire II. Sole King (613-628).—Dagobert I. (628-638).—Preponderance of Franks in Western Europe.—Customs and Institutions introduced by the Germans among the Conquered Peoples.—Laws of the Barbarians.—Decline of the Royal Authority : The Rois Fainéants.—Mayors of the Palace.—The Mayor Ebroin (660) and Saint Leger: Battle of Testry(687).—Heredity of Benefices.

 

The reaction of the Greek Empire against the barbarians did not go farther than Italy and Africa, in which countries it meted out justice to a people who had already yielded to the enervating effects of civilization. It did not extend to Gaul, where it would have encountered a people which had better retained its Germanic vigor. We have seen the Franks under the sons of Clovis dividing their warlike energy among a crowd of different enterprises, but none the less strengthening and extending their dominion. Again we have seen them gathering around their chiefs according to the German custom and demanding adventures and booty, though already less submissive and devoted to these chiefs, less worthy of the name of fideles, which had been given them. At one time they threatened to leave Theodoric if he would not lead them into Burgundy, at another they brutally ill-treated Lothaire I, who refused to lead them against the Saxons. Their devotion changed to antagonism. The leudes became an aristocracy hostile to the king, a class of powerful men who were united by common interests, and whose power came at once from the sword, always terrible in their vigorous hands, and from the possession of the soil which they held either through conquest or through the generosity of the king.

This aristocracy of the leudes throve especially in Austrasia, which remained less civilized than Neustria, and where there was less of the Roman element to lend its support to the king and temper the violent customs of the leudes. This distinct difference in their characters separated the two portions of the Frankish kingdom more and more, and, as we have already seen, they rarely acted in concert under the sons of Clovis. They soon became enemies, each one representing an opposing principle. This struggle between royalty and aristocracy, between Neustria and Austrasia, lasted for a century and a half, and absorbed all the activity of the Franks within their own territory and in civil war.

After three years of unity under Lothaire I.(558-561), the kingdom of the Franks became again a tetrarchy, and the four sons of Lothaire divided it between them. Charibert was King of Paris; Gunthramn, King of Orleans and Burgundy; Sigibert, King of Austrasia; and Chilperic, King of Soissons; and each had also a portion of the southern part of the territory as in the division of 511. At the death of Charibert in 567, who left no sons, his states were all divided excepting Paris, into which no one of the Frankish kings might enter without the consent of the two others.

While Chilperic, the Neustrian king, was making Latin verses and receiving a smattering of Roman education, which merely refined the cruelty of his character without softening it, Sigibert, the Austrasian king, unacquainted with this superficial culture, which is more pernicious than useful, was repelling with his warriors the last waves of barbarian invasion, which were again dashing against the Austrasian barriers, and was thus keeping alive the vigor of his people. He defeated the Avars in 562. Three or four years later he fell into their hands, but paid a ransom, and these barbarians withdrew toward the south.

Chilperic took a mean advantage of his absence and seized his city of Rheims. Sigibert as soon as he was free again conquered and pardoned him. Reasons for a more bitter hatred were soon added to this first act of rivalry. Sigibert had married Brunhilda, daughter of Athanagild, king of the Visigoths, a beautiful, learned, and ambitious woman and a friend of civilization. Chilperic wished also to have a wife of royal blood, and gained the hand of Gaileswintha, the sister of Brunhilda. This passing caprice yielded soon to the influence of his beautiful and imperious mistress Fredegonda, who completely ruled the king. One day Gaileswintha was found smothered in her bed, and Fredegonda took her place as queen (567). Brunhilda vowed to avenge her sister, and a war broke out between Neustria and Austrasia. Gunthramn then assumed the office of mediator, which he kept throughout his reign. He brought this first quarrel to an end by causing the cities which Gaileswintha had received as dowry to be restored to Brunhilda.

A second war, which was kindled by the perfidy of Chilperic, was ended through the same mediation. Finally, when a third war broke out, Sigibert, less disposed to clemency toward his treacherous brother, seized all his states and had himself proclaimed king by the Neustrians. But at the very moment when he was being raised on their shields, adherents of Fredegonda, “bewitched by her”, stabbed him on either side with poisoned knives (575). Brunhilda found herself a prisoner in Paris with her only son Childebert II, but an Austrasian noble succeeded in rescuing the young prince. As Childebert was a minor, the Austrasians were governed by a mayor of the palace. , This was the first important appearance of this office, which increased in power during the civil wars and played so great a part in the next century. Its origin is uncertain, but it either grew out of the office of steward of the king's house (major domus), whose influence increased, as is often the case for of a criminal judge (mord, murder; dom, judgment), whose powers became greatly extended. In either case the mayor of the palace became a personage of the first importance, chosen by the nobles among themselves, and in consequence devoted to their interests and powerful through their support. He ruled the royalty, especially the weaker kings, or Rois fainéants, and his authority grew so that he finally supplanted the king himself.

We shall merely indicate here the confused events of this epoch, the alliances first formed and then broken, and in the midst of all the death of Chilperic, which was possibly due to Fredegonda (584).

The incursions into Provence by the Lombards, who were at first unsuccessful and were repulsed by the Patrician Mummolus, are more worthy of our attention (572-576). We have seen the Franks victorious both in the South and the East over the invaders who were trying to wrest from them the prizes of their victory, and becoming more and more secure in the possession of the soil of their conquests. We shall particularly notice the usurpation of Gundovald in the South, because it is one of the first symptoms of the hostility of this country, which remained Roman, toward the North, which became German, and toward the Franks. This illegitimate son of Lothaire I, who had withdrawn to Constantinople, was recalled by several nobles of the South, by the Duke Gunthramn-Bozo, by Mummolus, the victor of the Lombards, and by Desiderius, Duke of Toulouse, who proclaimed him king. He fell through the treachery of the nobles, who returned to their allegiance to Gunthramn the king of Burgundy (585). But he had hardly been defeated when the royal power had to contend against a much more formidable coalition, for just as the nobles of the South had united against it, now also the great nobles and the bishops of the North were conspiring to arrest its growth.

The royal authority was indeed gaining strength and gathering up the traditions of the imperial government, which still lingered among the Gallo-Romans, and striving to model itself upon this type of despotism. For example Chilperic had established imposts in spite of the murmurs of the Franks; and being displeased with their spirit of independence, he persecuted the bishops, who had become powerful through the profound faith of the people and the rich endowment of their churches, and who, often chosen from the barbarians, were united by their interests with the great nobles. Brunhilda, the daughter of a Visigoth king, endeavored to make the Roman principles which had ruled at the court of her father prevail even among the Austrasians, a much more difficult task. The leudes and the bishops in Austrasia and in Neustria formed a plot to seize the power of these two kingdoms and of Burgundy as well. This plot was frustrated at the moment of consummation. The principal conspirators were put to death, and Aegidius, the bishop of Rheims, was judged and exiled by a council of bishops.

Gunthramn and Childebert were alarmed and hastened to put an end to their difference and renew their alliance, by the treaty of Andelot (in the Haute-Marne, 20 kilometres northeast of Chaumont). Childebert was made heir to his uncle, who had no children, but so great was the power of the nobles that at the very moment when the royal power, after a signal victory, was trying to gain strength by this alliance, they obtained the possession and the hereditary transmission of the lands which had been granted to them. In return they promised not to change their allegiance from one king to the other according to their caprice (587).

Gunthramn died in 593. His states were united with those of Childebert, but only for a short time, as the latter prince died in 596. His oldest son Theodebert II received Austrasia; his second son Theodoric II, Burgundy.

Brunhilda ruled her two grandsons. She urged them against the son of Fredegonda, the king of Neustria, who, though at first victorious at Latofao between Soissons and Laon (596), was afterwards defeated at Dormelles Seine-et-Marne (600), and again near Étampes in 604. This would have been the end of Lothaire II, if the king of Austrasia had not saved him by making a treaty with him. Brunhilda was furious at seeing a vengeance which she had pursued for thirty years escape her, and incited Theodoric to attack his brother. In a second war Theodebert was defeated and put to death with all his children (612). She then governed two-thirds of Gaul, encouraged the arts, had roads constructed, and built monasteries and destroyed what remained of the worship of idols. She gave aid to the missionaries who went to preach Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons, and Pope Gregory the Great wrote to congratulate her on this step. But all these works of civilization did not please the nobles, whom she treated with a growing rigor. The clergy also was exasperated at the persecutions suffered by Saint Columban, whom she drove from the monastery of Luxeuil, when this bold apostle of Christianity reproached her without reserve with plunging her grandson into licentiousness that she might have the more power over him. When Theodoric died in 613, the nobles of Austrasia and Burgundy approached Lothaire II secretly, and offered to recognize him as king if he would relieve them of Brunhilda. He marched against her, and, abandoned by her armies on the banks of the Aisne, she fell into the hands of the son of her rival, together with the four sons of Theodoric. Lothaire had the four princes killed, and Brunhilda was bound to the tail of a furious horse, who dashed her body to pieces in his course (613).

We find in 614, under the name of the Council of Paris, an assembly in which 79 bishops and a great number of the laity took part. This assembly seems to mark the time when the ecclesiastical aristocracy, mixing more and more with the lay aristocracy, was admitted with it to the great political assemblies. The perpetual constitution, carried by this assembly, commemorates the victory of this double aristocracy, of which Lothaire II had been but the tool. This constitution enacted the abolition of any unusual imposts established by the four sons of Lothaire I; the restitution to the nobles and the churches of the property which had been taken from them; the giving of the election of the bishops to the clergy and to the people of the cities, the simple right of confirming them being left to the king; the extension of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction to which alone the clergy were to be subject; the regulation that the judges of the counties [the Grafen] were to be chosen from among the great proprietors of the county; and finally the penalty of death for anyone who should disturb the public peace. When they gave up Brunhilda, the mayor of the palace had made Lothaire II swear that he would not take away their powers, and that he would not interfere in the election to this office which was made by the great nobles. This perpetual constitution which completed and established the results of the treaty of Andelot, which had been partly overthrown by Brunhilda, is almost the only important event in the reign of Lothaire II. In 622 the Austrasians, tired of having the same king as the Neustrians, asked him for a king of their own. He sent them his son Dagobert, who united the whole monarchy again in 628.

The reign of Dagobert was the highest point of the Merovingian dynasty, and gave to the Franks marked preponderance in Western Europe.

Dagobert put a stop to the incursions of the Wends, a Slavic people over whom Sama, a Frankish merchant who traded among them, had become king after delivering them from the Avars. To resist the incursions of the Slavs, who were ravaging Thuringia, he made use of the Saxon tribes, remitting the tax of 500 oxen which they had been paying. He delivered Bavaria from a band of Bulgarians who had demanded his protection, and whom he caused to be put to death, not knowing what else to do with them; it was the policy of the age.

At home he was practically the master of all Gaul. At the death of his brother Charibert, to whom he had ceded Aquitaine, he left his nephews in possession of the duchy of Toulouse, but received the submission of the Gascons. The Bretons had again become entirely independent, and frequently ravaged the frontier. Their Duke, Judicael, had assumed the title of king. Dagobert sent Saint Eloi [Eligius] as ambassador to him, and invited him to come to his court, where the Duke of the Bretons was received with honor and loaded with gifts (635).

The administration of affairs was confided by Dagobert to able ministers : Pippin of Landen, mayor of the palace of Austrasia; Cunibert, bishop of Cologne, and Arnulf, bishop of Metz. He himself went through Austrasia and Burgundy giving audience alike to great and small, restraining the nobles, and trying to put a stop to abuses and to violence. He busied himself in improving the laws, and made corrections in those of the Salians, the Ripuarians, the Alamannians, and the Bavarians. Commerce prospered, favored by these extended foreign connections. Dagobert formed an alliance with the Lombards of Italy and the Visigoths of Spain; he sent two ambassadors to Heraclius. The industrial acts had illustrious representatives in the goldsmith, Saint Eloi, who became bishop of Noyon, and in his pupils. Dagobert built the Abbey of Saint Denis, to which he presented 27 estates or villages at once. He himself lived nearby, at Clichy, where he displayed the luxury of his court, and but partially concealed his debauchery. His renown was spread abroad through all Europe.

He died in 638, and with him departed the greatness of the Merovingians, who abandoned themselves to a degree of ease and inertia which proved fatal to their dynasty.

It is by the study of the laws of the barbarians that we learn to understand the new state of society which resulted from the introduction of their customs and institutions among the conquered peoples. We possess the laws of almost all the peoples who invaded the Empire, and who promptly felt the necessity of putting into writing their old customs and at the same time of adapting them to their new needs. All were at once drawn up in Latin, except the Salic law, or that of the Salian Franks, which was first written out in the German language on the other side of the Rhine ; later it was put into Latin, and amended successively by Clovis, Theodoric I, Childebert I, Lothaire I, Dagobert I, and Charlemagne. These two last editions are the only ones which we possess. The law of the Ripuarians, closely resembling that of the Salians, was published by Theodoric I, as well as those of the Alemannians and the Bavarians. The law of the Burgundians, published by Gundobad (474-516) and completed by his son Sigismund, is known by the name of the Lex Gundobada or Gombata. That of the Visigoths, begun by Euric and continued by most of his successors, was only finished in the 7th century and the final revision published in the Council of Toledo, in 693, under the name of Forum Judicum, the Fuero Juzgo of the Spaniards.

These laws are more barbarous in proportion as the people who formed them were more distant from the countries of the South and the center of Roman civilization. Thus Theodoric the Great, by his edict, made his people subject to the almost unaltered Roman law. Next to this the law of the Visigoths is that which borrows the most from Roman legislation, traces of which are to be found on every page; then come those of the Burgundians, etc. The least Roman is that of the Anglo-Saxons, who were also the people most cruel to the conquered.

These laws are in no sense political constitutions, for of these the barbarians had no idea, but civil and above all criminal codes, especially aimed at punishing personal violence, thefts of domestic animals, etc., and which well show the state of society of the times. Far the larger part of the Salic law is concerned with penalties.

The barbarians who occupied Italy (the Heruli and the Ostrogoths) took but a third part of the lands. The Burgundians who occupied the eastern part of Gaul, and the Visigoths who held the middle, took two-thirds of the land. The Anglo-Saxons took the whole. It is not known what course the Franks, the Vandals, and the Suevi took in this respect. It is probable that they took possession of vacant domains and of those which pleased their fancy, without any fixed rule, feeling that they had not conquered the country in order to be restrained by conscientious scruples from taking any fine domain which suited them. It is probable that among themselves they drew lots for these domains.

All the grants made by the Merovingian kings up to the eighth century seem to have been grants of land in full ownership and to have constituted what was called allodial land (allod., freehold land). The king did not till the eighth century give temporary grants, which were limited either to a certain number of years or more frequently to the life of the donee or donor. These grants, which were made in imitation of the ecclesiastical precaria (usufructs for five years), to which certain conditions and pecuniary dues were sometimes attached, came gradually to be called benefices, and this custom extended from the kings to private individuals as well as to the churches. Lands which were called tributary, subject to a tribute in money or in kind, had generally been granted to men of an inferior rank, bordering on servitude. The class distinctions were as follows :

1. The free men, who owed nothing to anyone, but were under obligation to the king, to make him certain gifts and to perform military service in the national wars. All classes of freemen were called leudes, but this name was soon used with special reference to the men who were richest and of the highest rank among the free men. The king chose from them the dukes and the counts whom he sent to command the armies or to govern the provinces and cities. These royal leudes, who, living in intimacy with the king, had obtained great domains from him, and the chiefs who had had enough lands to allow them to distribute some among their own followers, formed an aristocracy whose pretensions were continually increasing.

2. The litus, who, like the Roman colonus, could not be torn capriciously from the land that he cultivated as farmer, and for which he paid a fixed rent to the proprietor.

3. The slave, who no longer possessed the personal liberty which the litus and the colonus still retained.

The fine or wergeld for murder, if not taken too literally, gives an approximate idea of the value placed by the barbarian law on the different classes. In most cases the murder of a barbarian was taxed double the amount of the murder of a Roman; the murder of a noble double that of a simple free man; the murder of a Roman proprietor, double that of a Roman colonus, etc.

The political status, like the social status of the Germans, remained after the conquest for the most part as it had been before, but was modified to suit the new circumstances. The monarchy still existed, and the king continued to be chosen from a family which was higher in rank than all the others; reges ex nobilitate sumunt, says Tacitus. But there was still attached to this hereditary principle a sort of popular confirmation in the ceremony of the shield, the King being lifted on a buckler and proclaimed in the great assembly of the free men.

This assembly always met to decide the great state questions. It was called in France the Champ de mars or de mai [Maifeld] in England the Witenagemot (meeting of the wise men); in Spain, the council of Toledo. Little by little it ceased to include all the free men, who being dispersed over the country often feared the expense and difficulty of a long journey; then the great nobles and the bishops assembled alone. In the local administration the barbarians still kept the provinces and the cities, and also established divisions into counties, and hundreds, perhaps a hundred families, from which comes canton. The counts [Grafen] held in their counties inferior courts where all the freemen were supposed to meet to judge offenses; later they were assisted by a committee of free men.

We have said that the barbarian laws were personal and not territorial,—that is, that each barbarian carried his law about with him, and that, for example, the Salian Frank who found himself among the Visigoths was judged by the Salic law and not by the Visigothic. This was important, for there were grave differences between the procedure and penalties of the different laws : for instance, among the more civilized barbarians, we find written evidence from the beginning regarded as important, while among the less civilized such proofs were less sought for than other kinds of evidence.

These other kinds of evidence were the witnesses who had some notion of the facts, and the conjurators, who affirmed by oath not the innocence of the accused, but the confidence they had in his words, and finally the judicial tests or ordeals, and among the latter the trials by fire, by water, and by the cross, and the judicial combat, which, by the way, was not in the Salic law, but which was generally used. The penalties were death, which is also not mentioned in the Salic law, the compositio or wergeld paid to the injured party or his family, and the fredum [Friedensgeld] a fine paid for having disturbed the public peace.

The army remained on nearly the same footing as the earliest times. When the country was attacked, when the landwehr was needed, the king published his ban or proclamation, and all the freemen were obliged to come, under the leadership of their respective counts, to render him gratuitous military service.

This kind of organization spared the treasury of the king the only possible expense at a time when the civil administration cost little or nothing to the central power, and in this way the revenues of the royal domains and the presents from the free men, together with the imposts of the Roman cities, which were the only resources of the king, were sufficient for its needs. Nevertheless, when the needs of a rather more complicated government and the luxury of a less primitive court increased the expenses, we find the kings, as Chilperic and Dagobert, trying to establish a system of taxation.

These taxes were perhaps what most wounded the pride of the barbarians. These leudes, accustomed to lead a free and irresponsible life in the forests near which they loved to dwell, and to bind themselves only by the ties of an entirely voluntary devotion, and to consider their chief as a man, not as a power, could not understand why this man, who possessed the largest, the most beautiful, and the most numerous domains, should still demand something from them; they could not make up their minds to submit to demands made without their consent to pay imposts which seemed to them strangely to resemble the tributes which were exacted from conquered peoples; in a word, they had no conception of the state, that abstraction of which they made so little and of which modern societies have made so great a thing. Much time must elapse before the first notions of political metaphysics could find a way into these stubborn minds, that is to say, before society could be changed from its foundations, a work which meant nothing less than the initiation of the barbarians into the Roman ideas.

After Dagobert the Merovingian race fell into decay. We no longer distinguish the periods of the confused history of the Franks by the names of their kings, but by those of the Mayors of the Palace, who were formerly the judges of the disputes which arose in the royal dwelling, but who now directed public affairs. In their hands the long-haired princes became only tools whom they used to give authority to their acts. The Mayors kept the young kings strangers to the affairs of the kingdom and relegated them to the country, to the depths of some estate whence they brought them once a year to show them, poor phantoms of authority that they were, to the public assemblies. Nevertheless they hesitated to despoil entirely this Merovingian family, which was protected at the same time by popular prestige and by jealous rivalries. Woe to the Mayor of the Palace who should touch this crown, protected by an ancient nimbus of respect!

The two sons of Dagobert, Sigibert and Clovis II, reigned, the first over Austrasia and the second over Neustria and Burgundy, each of the kingdoms having a Mayor of the Palace. When in 656 Sigibert died, Grimoald the Mayor of Austrasia tried to place his own son upon the throne. The nobles of Austrasia, not wishing to give themselves new kings more powerful than) the old, united with those of Neustria and put to death the usurper and his father. This lesson was understood by the mayors who succeeded Grimoald, and before his attempt was renewed a century elapsed, during which they rendered great services, gained brilliant victories, and produced a series of eminent men whom the Franks became accustomed to see standing from father to son at the head of affairs. Meanwhile they remained the chiefs of the Austrasian aristocracy in its struggle with the Neustrian monarchy.

This monarchy found an able and energetic defender in Ebroin who succeeded Erchinoald (660) in the mayoralty of Neustria and Burgundy. In these two countries, Ebroin ruled the nobility with a rod of iron and when Lothaire died he did not consult them in the choice of his successor: by his own authority he placed upon the throne Theodoric III, a son of Clovis II. As it had always been the part of the nation to confirm the hereditary succession of the sovereign by a show of election, the nobles saw in the action of Ebroin a blow aimed against their traditional rights. They combined in the three kingdoms under the leadership of Wulfoald, Mayor of Austrasia, and of Saint Leger, bishop of Autun, overthrew the audacious Mayor, and imprisoned him in the abbey of Luxeuil.

Childeric II, King of Austrasia, was recognized in the three kingdoms, with Wulfoald and Saint Leger as his mayors of the palace. He was not so easily resigned to the diminution of his authority as the other kings, and, not content with the way in which Saint Leger favored the nobles, he sent him to join Ebroin in the prison at Luxeuil. He even dared to have the noble Bodilo whipped with rods like a common slave. This outrage cost him his life. He was assassinated by Bodilo in the forest of Chelles (673).

Ebroin and Saint Leger at once came out of the common captivity which had brought them together, and again took their places as the heads of two opposite parties. Ebroin had lost his king, Theodoric III, to whose assistance the Neustrian nobles had rallied; he set up another, an alleged son of Lothaire III. He had an army of mercenaries, with which he overcame Theodoric, who in his flight lost the royal treasure, which was of great assistance to the conqueror. This army, entirely foreign to the military system of the Franks, and dependent upon the man who paid it, made the triumph of Ebroin over the nobles certain; he became absolute master of the kingdom under Theodoric III, whom he had again taken up for king. Under the pretext of punishing the murderers of Childeric II he had a great number of his adversaries put to death, and among them Saint Leger. He gave their lands, as well as much property, which he took from the church, to his soldiers. Never, even under Brunhilda, had the nobles been pursued with such virulence. Many left Neustria and took refuge among the Austrasians; some went as far as to the Gascons.

The Austrasian nobles, persecuted in the name of the royal authority, which acted sometimes by itself, as under Childeric II and sometimes by its defender Ebroin, boldly protested by abolishing this dignity in their country. They murdered their king Dagobert II, and did not replace him (678). They entrusted the government to Martin and Pippin of Heristal, whom they called princes or dukes of the Franks. These two men were descendants of Pippin the Elder of Landen and of Arnulf, Bishop of Metz, and were thus connected with all the great Austrasian families. Enormous domains situated on the banks of the Rhine added to the influence which they owed to their inherited position.

The skill of Ebroin triumphed once more near Laon; but when he perished by the hand of an assassin in 681, the triumph of Austrasia and of its chief was assured. The battle of Testry, won in 687 by Pippin of Heristal, proclaimed this triumph.

The principal cause of this stubborn contest with the nobles was the question of the right of inheritance in land, a fundamental question, on which depended the political and social status of the Franks in the future. According as the right of inheritance lost or gained, the present status would be maintained or changed. For we find here already the principle of appropriating the royal grants, and encroaching on monarchical power, which, after spreading later to other objects, gave birth to the feudal regime. This solution was far off and did not come till the end of two centuries, after internal conflicts which were long in proportion to the importance of the question which was under dispute.

When before a conquest a barbarian chief distributed to his companions in arms, the horses, or the “bloody and victorious javelin”, as Tacitus says, the gift of these as well as of every personal object of this kind was certainly made without any reservation, and whoever received it kept it as long as it lasted, even if he left his chief, and bequeathed it at his death to whomsoever he pleased. But when after the conquest the chief gave lands, unforeseen difficulties arose from the entirely different nature of the gift. If a supply of horses and javelins gave out, others could be found on a new expedition, but when the lands at the disposal of a chief were once given away, it was not so easy to obtain others. The kings soon recognized the necessity of limiting their gifts of lands, if they wished to preserve means of rewarding their subjects and of keeping them with them. They then attached as a condition to their grants the loyalty of the grantee, and generally limited them o the length of his life. The holder quite naturally tended to break away from this condition and this limit. When unfaithful they tried to retain their lands, and when dying to transmit them to their heirs. In the disorder of the times which followed the invasion they often succeeded, but as often the kings opposed it. They established imposts to supply the insufficiency of the resources from their diminished domains. But though the Franks accepted the obligation of military service, which conformed to the barbarian customs, they entirely rejected that of the imposts, which were totally foreign to these customs. Thus on both sides there were motives which explain the violence of the struggle; on the one cupidity and the desire of assuring a durable position for themselves and their families, on the other the needs which grew with the progress of the government and forced the royalty to resist, at the risk of seeing its whole power destroyed. In the treaty of Andelot the tenants prevailed, but Brunhilda soon regained all the ground that Gunthramn and Chilperic had abandoned. In the perpetual constitution the tenants gained a second and more important victory, but Dagobert and Ebroin drove them back with violence, contested their encroachments, and strove to reestablish the ancient principles of territorial rule. We read in a diploma of a grant made by Theodoric III (676), that is, under the rule of Ebroin: “All who are convicted of unfaithfulness toward those from whom they hold their lands, appear justly (merito) to lose such lands”. This struggle was going on at the epoch which we are considering. The right of inheritance was contested with vigor and sometimes gained and sometimes lost ground, but finally was introduced imperceptibly, though its victory was not complete for two centuries longer.