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DURUY'SHISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES |
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BOOK IV
FALL OF THE CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE. NEW BARBARIAN
INVASIONS (814-887).
CHAPTER XLOUIS THE PIOUS AND THE TREATY OF VERDUN
(814-843)
Instability of Charlemagne's Work.—Louis the Pious
(814-840): His Weakness ; Division of the Empire.—Revolt of the Sons of
Louis the Pious.—Battle of Fontenay (841); Treaty of Verdun (843).
THE German race, unlike the Arabian, had passed
from a disintegrated to a united condition. But it was only a transient
union which put all Western Europe under the sway of one man, and it
perished with him who called it into existence. In the space of one
century the Carolingian empire suffered a complete dismemberment, and the
empire of Islam experienced a like fate. It was as if, instead of the
great boulders which covered the soil of Europe, Asia, and Africa, at the
end of the eighth century, nothing could be found but grains of sand
after the lapse of a hundred or a hundred and fifty years.
Of these two empires it was the Arabian which still
retained the greater unity, allowing for the vast extent of its territory.
It preserved, for a time at least, unity of government, of religion, of law and
of language, a unity which was prescribed in the Koran. Charlemagne’s
empire had unity of religion and government only and no unity of
language and laws. The Gallo-Romans and the Italians spoke
the Roman language with various modifications; the Germans, the
Teutonic languages. Charlemagne allowed the Lombards and the Saxons to keep
their own laws; the Salian Franks, the Ripuarians, the Alemanni, and the Bavarians had
also kept theirs.
Charlemagne had allowed them to retain, besides their
own laws, their nationalities, or, if that is too strong an expression for the
time, he had at least not destroyed the national characteristics and the love
of independence possessed by each of the tribes gathered together in his
empire. Thebe tribes had not mixed or merged in each other; they were simply
held together by Charlemagne's force of will and strong administration, and
this bond was their only union. When the bond was broken by Charlemagne’s
death, and his feeble successor found himself incapable of renewing it, the
union was dissolved and the nations all separated. But the revolution did not
take place without a struggle, for unity had its partisans; and, moreover, those
who demolished Charlemagne’s great structure did not know what to do with its
materials or upon what plan to build up the Europe of the future. Hence the
confusion, hesitations and divisions of
the time.
The private ambitions of the princes of the imperial
family assisted in the general dismemberment, while the ambition of the great
proprietors and imperial governors encouraged the tendency toward a minute
division.
In this conflict, the Church usually upheld the cause
of unity; nevertheless, as the ecclesiastical aristocracy had in general the
same interests as the lay aristocracy, we see the bishops also in the party
favoring division.
Of the tribes, only one demanded unity—the
Austrasians, who had triumphed with the Carolingians, and who in the hands of
Charlemagne had borne the imperial sceptre, the symbol of his power. The
others, the Gallo-Romans of the West and the Teutons of the East, demanded
independence and the abolition of the imperial unity which commemorated their
defeat. “The greatness of Charles’s glory”, said the monk of St. Gall, “had led
the Gauls, the Aquitanians, the Burgundians, the Alemanni, and the Bavarians to
boast of being called the subjects of the Franks, as if it were a great
distinction”. When Charlemagne and his glory departed, all that lent their
servitude a semblance of honor departed with him.
Charlemagne0s successor, Louis the Pious, did not
contribute anything to restore the vanishing glory. His goodness, his virtues,
the purity of his life, the efforts he made from the beginning of his reign to
banish from the court the loose morality which Charlemagne had allowed to
prevail there, and to restore discipline among the monks and the secular clergy,
were indeed worthy of praise, but he lacked the firmness necessary to sustain
his authority. From the beginning he showed a deference toward the Pope which
Charlemagne would have considered excessive. He allowed Stephen IV (816) to
have himself elected and take possession of the pontificate, without awaiting
his consent, and was satisfied with tardy excuses from the Pope; when Stephen
came to France he allowed him to consecrate him, and to pronounce the following
words, which showed the tendency of the Holy See to lay claim to the imperial
crown in order to gain uncontrolled disposal of it : “Peter is proud to bestow
this gift upon you, because you sustain him in the enjoyment of his just rights”.
The papacy was already preparing to free itself a second time; the authority of
the Western Empire was to be thrown off as that of the Eastern Empire had been.
If Charlemagne had considered it necessary to share
his power with his sons, because of the extent of the empire, there was
certainly a much greater necessity for Louis the Pious to do the same. But the
manner in which he divided his states differed in no respect from the division
of Charlemagne himself, and did not seem to call in question or to endanger the
imperial unity. Two subordinate kingdoms, Aquitania and Bavaria, were erected
for the second and third sons of the Emperor, Pippin and Louis; Lothaire, the
oldest, was admitted to a share of the empire; Pippin and Louis could neither
make war, nor conclude a treaty, nor give up a town, without his permission.
Bernhard, King of Italy and nephew of the Emperor, rebelled against this
division; but he was compelled to deliver himself into their hands; his eyes
were put out, and he died from the effects of this punishment. His kingdom was
given to Lothaire.
The tendency toward dismemberment, though to a certain
extent yielded to, was checked by this division. Louis at the same time fought
against the impending internal divisions by trying to bring the common freemen
into direct relation with the Emperor and to call them back into political
life, ground down, as they were, more and more under the power of the great
proprietors and the provincial governors. It was to this end that he exacted
the oath direct of all of them and that he ordained that all should be consulted
with regard to the new provisions added to the law.
But these efforts were at first poorly supported, and
the disturbances on the frontiers of the empire made it evident that the
restraint of Charlemagne's strong hand had been removed. The Norsemen renewed
their ravages, the Slavs crossed the Elbe, the Avars rose in rebellion; the
Croats made themselves independent; the Duke of Beneventum refused to pay
tribute; the Saracens of Africa pillaged Corsica and Sardinia, those of Spain
invaded Septimania and assisted in a revolt of the Gascons, and the Bretons
made Morvan their king and invaded Neustria. It is true that the Franks
regained the advantage they had lost at most points; especially in the case of
the Bretons, Morvan was killed, and Louis gave them another duke.
But soon the miserable weakness of the Emperor became
a well-known fact. “In 822, he convoked a general assembly at Attigny, and
there, before the bishops, abbots, and noblemen of his kingdom, made public
confession of his faults, and, of his own accord, underwent punishment for all
that he had done toward his nephew Bernhard, as well as toward others”. When
Theodosius humiliated himself before St. Ambrose at Milan, he presented a noble
spectacle to the world, and rose again stronger than he had been before, after
the public avowal of his fault. Louis left Attigny with his power diminished
and debased, because it was a political body—a rival authority to his own—that
had given him absolution. After that every one knew how far it was safe to go
with such a man.
His second wife, whom he married in 819, was Judith,
the beautiful and learned daughter of a Bavarian chief; by her he had a son,
who he named Charles (823). Judith exerted over the Emperor and the Empire
an influence which she shared with her favorite, Bernard, Count of
Barcelona, who was of a clever and intriguing turn of mind. In 829 she insisted
upon her husband's giving a part of his dominion to the son she had borne him;
and, accordingly, at the assembly of Worms (829), Louis converted Alemannia,
Rhaetia, Alsace, and a part of Burgundy, into a subordinate government for his
son Charles.
This division caused ill-feeling among Louis's elder
sons, who considered themselves wronged by it, and among the partisans of
unity, who saw the basis of 817 disturbed; the nobles joined with all the
dissatisfied elements in the hope of overthrowing the influence of Judith and
of Bernard, who was trying to lessen their consideration in the State. The
revolt broke out during an expedition against the Bretons, who had regained
their independence. Lothaire, Pippin of Aquitania, and Louis of Bavaria took up
arms against their father, made him prisoner, and confined him in a monastery
at Compiegne, in the hope that the monks would induce him to embrace the
monastic life of his own accord. At the same time they sent the Empress and her
son Charles to a convent (830). The constitution of 817 was again confirmed.
Louis the Pious, however, managed to have the general assembly of the nation,
which was to legislate upon the new state of affairs, convened at Nimwegen, in
the midst of the Germans, in whom he had confidence. His confidence was
justified, for the Germans, coming to the assembly in greater numbers than the
Roman Franks (830), sustained his cause. A wily monk sowed discord among the
three brothers, and Louis the Pious, again master, confirmed the gift that he
had made to his youngest son. In 832 he did even more than that; tired of the
never-increasing intrigues of Pippin, he took Aquitaine away from him to bestow
it upon Charles.
This was the signal for a new revolt. The sons of the
Emperor marched against him, taking with them Pope Gregory IV, who had come to
France to defend the division of 817. Gregory was indeed an advocate of unity,
but of that unity offered by the act of 817; that is to say, he upheld the
cause of an emperor whose weakness would give more strength to religious unity.
The army of Louis and that of his sons met in the plain of Rothfeld, near
Colmar, in Alsace (833); his soldiers deserted' without striking a blow, and
this act of treachery gave the place its name of Lugenfeld, the Field of
Lies.
The conquerors insulted the age and dignity of their
father by subjecting him to public disgrace. He was obliged to read in public,
in the Church of St. Medard of Soissons, a long recital of his faults, in which
he accused himself of having exposed the people to perjury and the State to
murder and pillage, by making new divisions in the empire and by provoking
civil war; after which the bishops, with great solemnity, removed his military
belt and gave him the dress of a penitent.
This humiliation of the empire, in the Emperor's
person, gave Louis a party to uphold his cause. His pious resignation and the
revolting harshness of his sons excited the compassion of the people. His sons,
moreover, agreed no better than before. Louis and Pippin were not willing to be
despoiled for the sake of Charles, neither were they willing to obey Lothaire,
who aimed to maintain the unity of imperial command; and they found a sure
support in the reluctance of their people to remain in the empire. They,
therefore, released Louis from the monastery where he was held by Lothaire, and
gave him back his power (835); but he would not resume the insignia of office,
after his public penance, until he had received the permission of the bishops.
When the Emperor emerged from the cloister, for which
he was well fitted, he relapsed into his old faults. His blind preference for
his youngest-born made him forget that the cause of all his misfortunes had
been the division that he had made during his lifetime between his sons. In 837
he formed a new kingdom in the north of France for Charles. When Pippin, King
of Aquitania, died, in the following year, the children he left were robbed and
their kingdom, too, was given to Charles. Then Louis the German, and Lothaire,
whose kingdoms were reduced, the one to Bavaria, the other to Italy, took up
arms. In order to avoid fighting with them both at once, the Emperor entered
into negotiations with Lothaire (839). He gave to Lothaire all the provinces to
the east of the Meuse, the Jura mountains, and the Rhone, together with the
title of Emperor; the western provinces he allotted to Judith's son; Bavaria to
Louis the German. The latter, with all Germany to uphold him, rebelled against
the injustice of the division; and the old Emperor spent his last days in this
unrighteous warfare. He died near Mainz, on the Rhine. “I pardon him”, he said
to the bishops who were interceding for the rebel, “but let him know that he
has killed me”.
The Middle Ages were more affected by his virtues as a
man than by his faults as a prince, and they have been full of indulgence
toward the memory of the pious and good-natured Louis.
Lothaire succeeded Louis the Pious as Emperor. On his
accession he claimed the rights of imperial authority and wished to exact
the oath direct from all free men, even in the states of his two
brothers. Charles II (the Bald), joined Louis the German in resisting these
claims, and even in fighting against them, while Lothaire found an ally in
Pippin II, whose ambition it was to recover Aquitania from
Charles the Bald. After several vain attempts to come to an agreement, a
great battle was fought at Fontenay, near Auxerre, (841). All the nations
of the empire took part in this general affray except the Gascons, the Goths of
Septimania, and the Bretons. Lothaire came leading the Italians, the
Aquitanians, and the Austrasians; Louis led the Germans, and Charles, the
Neustrians and the Burgundians. Forty thousand of the army of Lothaire, who was
defeated, are said to have perished, and this great loss of life among the
freemen was felt throughout the Frankish countries, which were
thus deprived of their defenders at the very moment when they were threatened
by the Norse invasion. Several days after the council of Tauricum, which
was held near the field of battle, decided that the judgment of God had
been pronounced on the plains of Fontenay. But Lothaire still refused to accept
this judgment, and the two brothers united to force it upon him. They met
between Basel and Strassburg, and in the presence of their armies took an oath
of alliance, which Louis the "German pronounced in the Roman
language of the West Franks before the soldiers of Charles the Bald, and
Charles pronounced in the German language before those of Louis (842). Louis's
oath is the earliest monument we possess of the French language.
Finally Lothaire yielded and contented himself with a
third of the empire, with something over and above, due to his name of Emperor.
The treaty of Verdun (843) sanctioned this arrangement by ordering a division
of the Carolingian empire into three parts.
Lothaire received, with the title of Emperor, the
whole of Italy as far as the duchy of Beneventum, and the country lying between
the Alps and the North Sea along the Rhine, a long strip of territory
separating the states of his two brothers. The boundary lines of this kingdom
were complicated : the western boundary was a line following the Rhone from its
mouth as far as Ardeche, then following the Cevennes as far as the heights of
Macon, then the Saone, then the mountains of Argonne, passing to the right of
the Ardennes, and finally the Scheldt, as far as its mouth; the eastern
boundary started at Istria, skirted the eastern Alps, and followed the Rhine,
leaving on the right hand the towns and territories of Worms, Spyer, and Mainz,
in order to give some vineyard land to the King of Germany, and crossing the
river a little lower down, joined the Weser near its mouth.
All the territory to the west of this was given to
Charles the Bald. France thus lost for the first time her natural limits, the
Rhine and the Alps, which she has not yet entirely recovered.
All the east was given to Louis the German.
In this division, so different from the Merovingian
divisions, we see the first marking off of the two modern nationalities, France
and Germany. Lothaire's part was the only one that had a temporary existence:
the other two states soon fell to disputing over its fragments. Yet we can
readily conceive that many intelligent men of that time groaned over the fate
of the great empire of Charlemagne now fallen to earth and broken on the field
of Fontenay. “A beautiful empire”, said the deacon Florus, a Latin poet of the
day, “a beautiful empire flourished under a brilliant diadem; there was but one
prince and one people ... The Frankish nation shone with a brilliant light
before the eyes of the whole world. Foreign kingdoms, the Greeks, the
Barbarians, and the Senate of Latium, all sent their embassies thither. The
race of Romulus, Rome herself, the mother of kingdoms, had bowed down to this
nation; it was there, in Rome, that its chief, sustained by .the aid of Christ,
had received the diadem by apostolic gift. Happy, if it had only known its
happiness, was the empire which had Rome for its citadel and the bearer of the
keys of heaven for its founder. Fallen now, this great power has lost at once
its glory and the name of empire; the kingdom, once firmly united, is divided
into three portions ; there is no longer any one who can be called emperor;
instead of a king, we have only a kinglet, and instead of a kingdom, a mere
fragment of a kingdom”.
CHAPTER XI.
FINAL DESTRUCTION OF THE CAROLINGIAN
EMPIRE (845-887).
Internal Discords ; Vain effort of the Sons of Louis
the Pious to reconstitute the Empire. — Division of the royal Authority;
Heredity of Benefices and of Offices. — Louis the Stammerer (877). Louis
III, and Karlmann (879); Charles the Fat (884).
IN the year 843, we have only reached the end of
the first act of the drama of the dismemberment of the
Carolingian empire. The terms of the treaty of Verdun were
indeed sanctioned by posterity, but only after having been contested
during the forty-four years (843-887) that the Carolingian family remained
supreme on the throne; until then, in spite of weakness, the Carolingians
aspired to keep the whole of western Europe united in a single empire, and
could not make up their minds to sacrifice the cherished hopes of Charlemagne.
The final dismemberment did not take place till the downfall of their
house.
The internal struggles redoubled, in the midst of
the general breaking up that was going on; but these struggles were
rather between the sovereign and the great nobles of each country, than
between the groups of peoples. The aristocracy and the dignitaries of the
Church acted in concert, and renewed their encroachments upon the central
power which had been checked by the iron hand of the first three Carolingians.
The nobles encroached in two directions. As holders of royal lands, they
again began to dispute with the king the heredity of their benefices, and
as officers of the sovereign power they raised new pretensions, those
of making the offices which had been entrusted to them in
the provinces hereditary, and of appropriating to themselves whatever
of the royal authority had been delegated to them. The bishops, on their
side, profited by the submissive and humble piety of the family of Louis
the Pious to constitute themselves judges of the conduct of the kings, and
to keep them in a subjection which, if they had really succeeded in
establishing it, would have given rise in France to an almost theocratic rule.
In the midst of the struggle, born of the events and
the legislation of the times, the kingdoms called into being by the empire
became more and more incapable of defending themselves against attacks from
without. The Norsemen at the north and the west, the Saracens at the south in
Italy, Provence, and the Alps, and later the Hungarians at the east, ravaged
with impunity the country from which Charlemagne had so often emerged to strike
terrible blows at the barbarians, and from which Louis the Pious had still
succeeded in repulsing them, but where henceforth feeble kings allowed them to
encroach.
It would have seemed that the division of Verdun, by
limiting the authority of each sovereign to a smaller extent of territory,
would at least have made this authority stronger and more secure in all the
parts of the country where it did exist, but this was not the case.
In France, Charles the Bald did not really reign over
Brittany, Aquitaine, or Septimania. The Bretons set up a virtually independent
kingdom. William, son of Bernard, defeated the army which was sent against Septimania,
and fickle Aquitaine, over which he wished to make his son king, first
recognized Pippin II, then summoned a son of Louis the German to the throne,
then accepted the son of Charles, and finally returned to Pippin. The latter,
in order to have more strength for resistance, allied himself with the
Norsemen and adopted their religion, and united with them in all their
devastations up to 864, when he was made prisoner and tried by the council of
Pitres. Charles then succeeded in enforcing his authority and in securing the
recognition of his son, but only by placing him under the guardianship of the
great nobles, the real masters of the country.
In Germany, Louis the German suffered the same fate
which he had inflicted on his father: he passed his life in putting down the
rebellions raised by his sons. Nevertheless he also gained several victories
over the barbarians who were crowding up against his frontiers, and began the
military organization of Germany.
In Italy Lothaire struggled in vain against the dukes
of Naples and of Beneventum, who called the Moors of Africa and of Spain
to their aid, and even at the heart of the Peninsula he came into conflict with
the pretensions of the Holy See and of the Roman aristocracy. Disgusted with
the world, he retired to the abbey of Prum, in the midst of the Ardennes, where
he died. It bodes ill for the power of the crown, when the king shuts himself
up in a cloister. Lothaire had divided his states between his three sons: Louis
II, who had Italy and the title of Emperor; Charles, who had the country of
Provence, between the Alps and the Rhone; and Lothaire II, who had Lotharingia
(Lorraine), the country between the Meuse and the Rhine. The King of Provence
died in 863, and his brothers divided his states. A few years later, on the
death of Lothaire II, after the scandalous affair of his double marriage, where
the Pope interfered with such arrogance, but with such success, Charles
hastened again to Metz to seize Lotharingia. But Louis the German arrived with
a superior force, and compelled him to consent to a new division (870).
These princes, like the last Merovingians, were
short-lived. The Emperor Louis II died in 875. He had driven the Saracens from
Bari, but was taken prisoner by the Beneventins. His death left two thrones
vacant; that of the empire and that of the kingdom of Italy. Two old men, who
were each on the verge of the grave, disputed the succession. Charles the Bald
was quicker than Louis the German, and was successful in gaining the title of
Emperor.
Louis the German died the following year. Charles
the Bald attempted to despoil his nephews, Karlmann, Louis, and Charles the
Fat, of their three kingdoms of Bavaria, Saxony, and Swabia, and so to
reconstruct the empire of Charlemagne, though he was not even able to defend
Rouen against the Norsemen. He was defeated by Louis of Saxony, and Karlmann
invaded Italy. When preparing to repel them, he encountered opposition from the
great nobles of his own kingdom. He was therefore obliged to fly before Karlmann,
and died on his retreat (877). Karlmann of Bavaria was crowned King of Italy.
Thus the career of the King of France was ended; there
is a melancholy contrast between the grand memories and dreams of this heir of
Charlemagne, on the one hand, and on the other his complete impotence in
enforcing obedience from his nobles who, in perfect safety, refused
him even military service, the first and most essential obligation of
all vassals toward their sovereign.
This was really the result of the revolution which
was going on, and in which the noble, who had in fact
become independent of the king, stood between him and the simple
freemen, and intercepted their allegiance. During this whole period
the earlier custom of "commending" themselves to a powerful
chief had been in use among the small proprietors, who were too weak to
defend themselves from violence. This custom became general and the
earlier Carolingian kings contributed to make it so, by recognizing the
right of every freeman to choose himself a lord, but on the condition
of remaining faithful also to themselves. They may have expected in
this way to give greater security to the state, and to prevent a return of
the condition of violence and anarchy which had prevailed under the Merovingian
kings, throughout the whole of Gaul. But in working to
establish order, they were really working against their own
authority, or rather against the authority of their own successors;
for the power of the first Carolingians was unassailable. In order to
overcome the disadvantages of this method of commendation, and to reap
only good results from it, a direct oath had been exacted from all freemen
who became vassals of any lord. This practice was continued by the later
kings, but it became merely a reminder of a vanished power. The edict of Mersen
in 847 regulated these affairs: “Every free man, it said, shall be able to
choose a lord for himself, either the king or one of his vassals,
and in ordinary wars vassals may appear in the field under
the command of their lords”.
These freemen had now nothing to do with anyone
but their own lord, and no longer knew more than the name of the
royal authority, with which they never came into contact. As those freemen who
put themselves under the protection of others were generally land-owners, soon
the land, which is permanent, came to be more considered than the men
themselves, who pass away. Thus not only did the weak man look for
protection to the great noble, but also the small field to the great
domain; certain formalities symbolized this new relation, as when the small
proprietor gave into the hand of the great a clod of earth or a branch of
a tree to indicate the change of ownership. These were the earlier stages
of the growth of the feudal system.
Charlemagne once wrote to his son Louis, King of
Aquitaine, to reproach him for not having taken more pains to attach his
subjects to him by presents and grants of land, and alluding to his son0s
piety with delicate irony said: “You give nothing but your benediction,
and that only when it is asked for; this is not enough”. The King
of Aquitaine responded to him that he had nothing more to give, as
his vassals refused to give back the benefices they had once received, and
insisted on transmitting them to their heirs. Charlemagne replied that he
must not allow this usurpation of the royal domains, but must get them
back from the usurpers; however, as a prudent sovereign and kind
father, he did not wish to compromise his son0s popularity, and undertook
himself a task which would have been dangerous enough for any one else.
Agents sent in his name forced the holders to give up the domains
which they had illegally retained. This story illustrates very
well the revolution which was taking place in these times. The obstacles
which Charlemagne was able to overcome were insurmountable for his weak
successors. Under them the heredity of benefices gained the authority of
an established custom.
It was the same in the case of the heredity of the
offices and titles of duke, count, etc., to which were attached
an authority delegated by the crown, and which was all the more
extended because the kings, and Charlemagne first of all, hoped to
strengthen their own power by giving larger powers to their agents. But
Charlemagne kept as careful a watch over the encroachments on the offices
as on the benefices, and checked the growing independence of
the counts; we see him in his Capitularies continually restraining their
crafty attempts to retain their appointments, rebuking their negligence, and never
allowing them to forget that he was their master. To keep them in better
control he avoided making them too powerful, and never gave more than
one county to any one person. His successors abandoned this wise and
vigilant method. In the ordinary course of events what had been abuses
passed first into customs, then came to have the force of laws, and in
the famous Capitulary of Kiersy-sur-Oise, promulgated by Charles the
Bald in 877, to persuade his nobles to follow him across the mountains, he
implicitly recognized, at least as an established custom, the right of the
son of a beneficiary to receive the benefice, and of the son of a count
to receive the county, at his father's death.
The great nobles had powerful allies in the bishops,
who, starting with the right of interference either to correct or punish
the actions of all men, who are prone to error, came logically to claim
the right of deposing kings and disposing of their crowns.
In 858, the nobles and bishops with Wenilo,
Archbishop of Sens, prominent among them, after having
summoned Charles to respect the Capitularies signed in their
favor, resolved to depose him, and called Louis the German to
his throne. Charles fled and demanded the protection of the Pope.
Sometime later, a movement in his favor allowed him to return to his
states, and he complained to the pub lie assembly of the boldness of
Wenilo and the bishops, in the following terms : “Wenilo, according to his
own choice and that of the other bishops and the nobles of the kingdom,
consecrated me as king, following the traditions of the Church. After that
I could not be removed from the throne by any one, at least without having
been heard by the bishops who consecrated me as king, and who are
the thrones of the Divine Spirit. I have always been prompt to submit
to their paternal corrections, and am so still”. Hincmar, the great bishop
of Rheims, a defender of the royal authority and one who was concerned in
all the principal affairs of the times, wrote that “kings are subject to
no one, if they govern according to the will of God; but if they
are adulterers, homicides, or ravishers, they should be judged by the
bishopsIt was certainly right that the kings should feel under some
restraint, and should have to give an account of their actions to some moral
power here on earth. But this accountability of the royal authority
developed into servitude, and the institution of monarchy was shattered to
its foundations.
It was in this deplorable state that Charles the Bald
left the kingdom of France to his son Louis II, called the Stammerer
(877). His reign and those of his two successors, his sons
Louis III and Karlmann (879), were uneventful. The
two latter, to be sure, showed some activity against the Norsemen,
whom they defeated several times, especially at Saucourt in Vimeu. But
these victims knew no other means of holding Hastings in check than by
granting him the county of Chartres, and they were unable to prevent Boso, who
had assumed the title of King of Arles and of Provence, from being crowned
in an assembly of bishops; moreover, their reign was short; Louis died in
882, Karlmann in 884.
They left no children, and the crown was offered
to Charles the Fat, the only surviving son of Louis the German,
who by the death of his brothers (882) had united all Germany with Italy,
with the title of Emperor. When France was joined to these the empire of
Charlemagne, with the exception of the kingdom of Provence, was
again united, but only temporarily and for the last time. The master
of this vast empire was not even able to drive back the Norsemen who were
besieging Paris; this city was defended by Eudes, [Odo] Count of Paris, the son
of Robert the Strong, and by the bishop Gozlin. As for Charles the
Fat he only paid the Norsemen a sum of money on condition that they should
ravage a different part of his states, the valley of the Yonne, instead of
the banks of the Seine.
His nobles, exasperated by his weakness, deposed him
at the diet of Tribur (887).
Seven kingdoms were formed from the final and
henceforth unchallenged dismemberment of the empire : Italy, Germany,
Lorraine, France, Navarre, cisjurian Burgundy or Provence, and transjurane
Burgundy; if we count Brittany and Aquitaine, which existed in fact if not in
law, we have nine kingdoms. The power of the imperial crown declined
in Italy, where petty princes disputed its possession ; elsewhere, no one could
tell anything about it, for no real power was attached to it. National
kings were chosen everywhere : Arnulf in Germany, Eudes Duke of
France, in France. The separate existence of both these nations dates
from this time. There was a general tendency toward isolation, and a new era in
European history was about to begin.
CHAPTER XII.
THE THIRD INVASION, IN THE NINTH AND
TENTH CENTURIES.
The Norsemen in France and England —In the Polar
regions and in Russia .—The Saracens. —The Hungarians. —Difference
between the Ninth century Invasion and those preceding.
THE names of Norsemen and Saracens have
occurred frequently in the foregoing pages; it will be necessary to retrace
our steps for a moment in order to gain a correct idea of the new
invaders, who assailed the Carolingian Empire of the West and were so
instrumental in its destruction, just as, four centuries earlier, the
Germans, the first invasion, had assailed and ruined the Roman empire of
the West ; and as the second invasion, the Arabian, had in the seventh
century robbed the Empire of the East of half of its provinces.
This movement had three separate starting-points:
in the north, in the south, and in the east, gradually spreading to
the west and enveloping the whole empire. The Norsemen were the first to
appear.
After Charlemagne had restored peace and order
in Germany, the movement of invasion, which had tended toward the
Rhine for many centuries, was forced to change its direction. Instead of
keeping to the land, it took to the sea and assumed a piratical character.
The men of the North, Norsemen, left their crowded Cimbric peninsula,
and in their barks set out in little fleets upon the “pathway of the swans”,
as the old national poems express it. Sometimes they coasted along the shores
and lay in wait for their enemies in the straits, the bays and the little
harbors, a habit which gave them the name of Vikings, or Children of the
bays; sometimes they flew in pursuit across the ocean. Their frail boats
were scattered and wrecked by the fierce storms of the northern seas, and
they did not all rally again around the vessel of their chief at the
signal agreed upon; but those of them who survived their shipwrecked
companions had neither lost confidence nor grown anxious; they laughed at
the winds and the floods, which had not been able to harm them; “The force
of the tempest”, they sang, “assists the arms of our oarsmen, the hurricane is
at our command, it casts us whithersoever we wish to go”.—(Augustin
Thierry.)
It was such men as these who had conquered a part
of Ireland in the seventh century, and, under the names of Danes and
Norwegians, had at different times ruled or swayed England. Charlemagne
had seen them approaching the coasts of his empire. After his death they
grew bolder and their light craft hovered about the shores of France.
They entered the mouths of the rivers, and went far up their streams,
establishing themselves there in bands of five or six hundred, and from
these naval stations they overran the neighborhood, pillaging town and
country and carrying their booty off to sea. In this way they
seized the islands of Walcheren, at the mouth of the Scheldt;
of Betau, between the Rhine, the Wahal, and the Leek; of Ossel, near
Rouen; of Her or Noirmoutier, opposite the mouths of the Loire. In 840
they burned Rouen; in 843 they pillaged Nantes, Saintes, and Bordeaux, and
then after rounding Spain, whose coasts they ravaged, and whose
rivers they ascended, laying waste their banks, they advanced, led by
their formidable chief, Hastings, to attack Italy and to pillage Luna, which
they mistook for Rome. In 845 they pillaged the Abbey of St.
Germain des Prés, at the very gates of the Paris of that day. In the next
few years they repeatedly sacked Saintes and Bordeaux; in 851 they ascended the
Rhine and the Meuse and devastated their banks; in 853, they captured
Tours and burned the abbey of St. Martin; three years afterwards they
were seen at Orleans. In 857 they burned the churches of Paris and led
away to captivity the abbot of St. Denis. Soon Meaux and La Brie were laid
waste. In 864 they were seen at Toulouse. They usually made
the churches and abbeys the objects of their attacks, because it was
there that all took refuge, and there that everything of value was carried
for safety. In the midst of the general inertia, one man alone fought
bravely against the invaders, namely, Robert the Strong, to whom Charles
the Bald had given the country lying between the Seine and the Loire;
which came to be called the Duchy of France. Robert, who was the ancestor
of the Capetians, defeated the invaders repeatedly, and perished in an
encounter with them at Brissarthe, near Mans (866). Charles then had no other
resource but to buy the retreat of the Norsemen. They willingly accepted
his gold and went off to ravage some neighboring province, while another
band came to take their place in the province they had left.
These devastations continued until the year 911, in
the reign of Charles the Simple. They stopped then, and for the same
reason that the earlier devastations of the Burgundians, the Franks and the
Goths had ceased, because the invaders had conquered and were settling in
the new country. The Norsemen grew tired of their life of
pillage; moreover, having destroyed so much, there was nothing left
for them to seize, and at last they settled down in the places which had
become familiar to them in their raids. Finally their presence as enemies
became so disastrous that his nobles advised Charles to give up to them a
part of his territory, which they would be interested in cultivating when
they no longer regarded it as foreign land, but their own domain. Charles
accordingly caused propositions of this nature to be laid before Rolf, or
Rollo, one of the most terrible of their chiefs. They offered him
the land lying between the Andelle and the ocean, with the hand of
the king's daughter in marriage, on the condition of his establishing
himself there with the title of Duke, of rendering homage to Charles, and
of embracing Christianity. Rolf accepted this offer, and the treaty of St.
Clair-sur-Epte confirmed the establishment of the Norsemen in the country
which has taken their name (911). In the following year Rolf was baptized, and
Neustria, repeopled not only by the Norsemen, who were few in number,
no doubt, but also by a crowd of adventurers who came to have a share
in the new settlement, was placed by its dukes upon the high-road to
prosperity and power. It is difficult to believe that the Norsemen could
have treated those they had conquered with much kindness; but it is
certain that serfdom soon disappeared from the soil of Normandy; that the
life of the husbandman was happy; that agriculture prospered; that the feudal
system was more highly organized there than elsewhere; and that, in
general, under these Norman dukes, the province enjoyed a high degree
of prosperity and of civilization.
The Norsemen robbed France and the Netherlands
of their security and of a part of their wealth, but from England
they took her independence as well. Thus far we have spoken of this
country only in connection with the sufferings she went through
during the first invasion in the fifth century, because England, though
soon to interfere often in the affairs of the continent, was as yet
leading the isolated existence forced upon her by her insular position.
From the time when the Roman power had been broken until the moment
when William the Conqueror brought the British Isles again under continental
dominion, England’s relations with the rest of Europe were slight. Her
internal history is also void of interest. We need only mention
the conversion of Ethelberht, King of Kent, to
Christianity (596-616), whose example was gradually followed by the other
states of the Saxon heptarchy.
In 829, after a troubled existence, these states
were united under the power of one sovereign, the King of Wessex, Ecgberht
the Great, who had spent several years at the court of Charlemagne, and
had learned in the school of that great master how to reign. But England,
like France and a part of Germany, was already beset by this last band
of invaders emerging from the two Cimbric peninsulas, the Norse or
Danish and the Scandinavian pirates. It needed only three days for those
bold lords of the ocean to cross the North Sea in their ships with two
sails, and to reach the coasts of the great island which lay opposite to
their own country.
Ecgberht succeeded in repulsing them whenever
they appeared during his reign. But, under" his
successors (836-871), the Danes renewed their inroads and
sanguinary raids, and succeeded in establishing themselves in the
north of the heptarchy, where they occupied successively Northumberland,
East Anglia, and Mercia.
In 871, they encountered an unexpected
obstacle—Alfred the Great ascended the throne in that year. For
seven years, he succeeded in warding off the approach of Guthrum, the
terrible chief of the Danes, from his states, which included only the
southern and western part of the island. But at the end of that time he
could no longer call forth from his subjects the necessary zeal and
devotion to continue the hard struggle.
His extensive knowledge, acquired by study and
travel, inspired him with a disdain for his untutored people which he
could not hide; the tendency he showed toward despotism, which he as well as
the continent had derived from Roman traditions, wounded the independent
spirit of the Saxon race. It is also necessary to add that
this people seemed to have become enervated, as was the case with
almost all the peoples who made the first invasion into the Roman Empire.
Even the clergy abandoned Alfred, lest they should share his unpopularity.
After a vain appeal to arms, he fled to the depths of Somersetshire
and asked for shelter, according to tradition, without making himself
known, in the house of a poor wood-cutter, where occurred the well-known
incident of the burnt cakes.
For some months he remained concealed in the
forest. In the meantime he carefully followed the state of affairs in
the country, and noticing that the depredations of the foreigners roused
the hatred of the Saxons more and more, he watched for a favorable
opportunity to act. He had revealed his hiding-place to some of his former
companions. He agreed to meet them at the stone of Ecgberht, in
the seventh week after Easter. Guthrum and his Danes were encamped
near that place, at Ethandune. Alfred made his way as the legend relates
into the enemy's camp, disguised as a harper, and studied their position;
then he attacked and completely routed them. Guthrum consented to be
baptized and to withdraw to the north; a line was drawn between the Danish
and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, which followed Watling Street, the great highway
built by the Britons and rebuilt by the Romans, reaching from Dover
to Chester.
Alfred ruled with great wisdom. The division of
England into counties and hundreds, for administrative purposes, a division
found on the continent also, no doubt existed before his time, and was
derived from German customs, but its more precise organization is usually,
and probably correctly, attributed to him. The county or shire was
divided into hundreds, and they, in time, were divided into townships, or
sometimes tithings, that is, communities of ten families; the ten heads of
families were conjointly responsible for the misdemeanors committed
within their district. Every man had to be enrolled in a tithing. The
community itself decided on the cases brought before them. Any cases
coming up for trial between members of one township were decided by the
community itself; actions between different townships were judged in the
hundred's court by a body of twelve chosen freeholders. Superior to
the assembly of the hundred was the county assembly, which met twice in
each year, and was presided over by the sheriff, with whom sat also the
ealdorman and the bishop. The sheriff was appointed by the king, and
represented his interests before this body and collected the fines. The
general assembly, witenagemot (assembly of the wise men), was the highest
grade in this hierarchical organization. It was open at first to all
freemen, but later, as the size of the state increased, and the privilege
grew more difficult to exercise, it became naturally reserved for the most
powerful thanes or nobles alone. Finally, at the head of all stood
the king, whose office was partly hereditary and partly elective, as
among the Franks, and whose power was modified by the witenagemot.
When Alfred had restored order through these
vigorous institutions he showed himself a stern lover of justice.
He united in a single code all the ordinances of the
kings Ethelberht, Ine, and Offa, and laid very heavy penalties on
magistrates who had violated their trust. “It was possible then”, said the
chroniclers, “to hang a golden bracelet over the highway and no one would
dare touch it”. The defense of the country, also, occupied his
attention; he built a number of fortresses, and constructed vessels
on a different plan from the Danish ships—longer and with higher
decks—and he succeeded in driving away the formidable Hastings under a
promise never to return. Finally, he endeavored to diffuse knowledge among
his people and founded schools, Oxford among others. He himself
translated into Saxon the Ecclesiastical History of the Venerable Bede,
the Epitome of Universal History of Paulus Orosius, and the Consolations
of Philosophy by Boethius, and he corrected a translation of the
Dialogues of Gregory the Great. He died in 901; his name is almost as
famous among the English as Charlemagne’s among the Franks.
The Anglo-Saxon monarchy, thus restored,
continued under Alfred's successors. His son, Eadward the
Elder (901-925), conquered Mercia and East Anglia, covered the
country with fortifications, showed favor to the commoners of the towns, and founded
the school at Cambridge.
Ethelstan (925-940) overcame at Brunanburh, on
the day of the great battle, a formidable coalition of Danes, Gaels,
Scots, and nations of the Orkney Islands, armed with their terrible
claymores (937). This victory brought all of the old heptarchy under one
sceptre. Ethelstan’s renown spread afar; his sisters, Edwina (Eadgyfa)
and Edith, married the kings of France and of Germany, and his
nephew, Louis d'Outremer, found a refuge at his court. He may be said to have
been the first king of the whole of England.
But this prosperity declined after his death, hastened
by discords and crime in the royal family. The influence of the
bishops is conspicuous in this period, and especially that of their chief,
St. Dunstan, also the attempts on the part of the provincial governors to
free themselves from royal authority. Then the Danes came back to renew
the attack on England in its feeble condition. Ethelred II believed
that he had sent them away when, on the advice of the bishops, he gave
them 10,000 pounds of silver; it was, however, the surest way to bring
them back that could be devised. Olaf, king of Norway, and Swein or
Swegen, king of Denmark, continued their attacks until the end of the
century. A second and third ransom had no effect in driving them off; Ethelred
then formed a vast conspiracy against them; all the invaders who had
established themselves in England were massacred on the day of St. Brice
(1002). The Saxon men and women took a terrible revenge on their conquerors
for the oppression they had suffered. It was but a
transient deliverance ; for Swein made invasion upon invasion,
and finally in 1013 assumed the title pf King of England. Ethelred
fled to the court of the Duke of Normandy, whose daughter, Emma, he had
married. His son, Eadmund II, Ironsides, fought with wonderful heroism,
but without permanent success, against Cnut, son and successor of Swein,
with whom he was forced to divide England, as Alfred had done before him.
Eadmund died in 1016, and Cnut the Great established the Danish
power throughout the country.
His reign began in cruelty. He set to work with
barbarian ferocity to rid himself of any obstacles in his path. But when
his power was well secured he ruled more leniently and showed himself a great
king. He became the representative and chief of the Scandinavian invasion,
as Charlemagne had been that of the German invasion. By marrying
Emma, the widow of Ethelred, he paved the way to a union of the conquerors
and the conquered. He even had leisure to extend his power over Sweden and
Norway and his supremacy over Scotland. He made wise laws
and modified some of the severities of those of Alfred the Great, and
took care that the Danes should not oppress the English; he sent Saxon
missionaries to Scandinavia charged with the task of hastening the fall of
paganism and with tempering the savage customs of its population.
Finally, he strove to reform his own character, as many stories inform us.
Having killed a soldier, in an access of fury, he gathered the men of his
army together, acknowledged his crime, and demanded punishment. All were
silent. He then promised that whoever would express his
opinion should do so with impunity. His guards referred the decision to
his own wisdom. He condemned himself to pay nine times the amount of the
usual penalty. On another occasion his courtiers were extolling him as the
greatest of monarchs, he whose will was law for six powerful
nations, the English, Scotch, Gaelic, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian; he
was then at Southampton, sitting by the shore of the sea. The tide was
coming in; he commanded it to stop and to respect the sovereign of six
kingdoms; the tide still rose and forced him to withdraw. “You see”, he
said to his flatterers,—“you see the weakness of earthly kings; no
one is strong but the Supreme Being who rules the elements”. And on his
return to Winchester, he took his crown from off his head, placed it upon
the great crucifix in the cathedral, and never wore it again except on the occasion
of public ceremonies.
In 1027, he made a pilgrimage to Rome and visited
the most famous churches on his road. He was so prodigal of gifts
that, according to a German chronicler, all those who lived upon the paths
he traveled cried with reason: “May the blessing of the Lord be upon Cnut,
King of the English”. England’s well-merited reputation for wealth
dates far back, for the Knytlinga Saga, speaking of the countries whence
Cnut derived his riches, mentions the British isle as the richest of all
the northern countries. After spending some time in the Holy City, where
he happened to be at the same time with the Emperor Conrad II,
the Scandinavian monarch went directly to Denmark. He wrote from that
country a letter to his English subjects, in which he gave them an account
of his travels, and closed by recommending them to pay promptly each year
their tithes and Peter’s pence. This was a tax of one farthing on
each hearth which he had imposed in behalf of the Holy See. Cnut ended his
glorious reign at Shaftesbury on the 12th of November, 1035.
We have just seen how the Norsemen gained a footing
in Norsemen in France and England; we must now follow them on
their less famous but more remarkable expeditions, and see them, on the
one hand, discovering America, and on the other founding what
afterwards became the empire of Russia,
The Anglo-Saxon king, Alfred the Great, preserved
and handed down to us an account of the routes taken by two Norse
adventurers; of Wulfstan, who sailed to the furthermost parts of the Baltic
Sea, a long journey in those days, and of Othere, who rounded the North
Cape and reached Biarmia, that is to say, the regions lying on the White
Sea and near the mouth of the Dwina. These hardy mariners were not
daunted by the long voyage to the polar seas, nor even by the dangers
there encountered. Accordingly it is not surprising to find that they
reached the Faroe Islands in 861, and in 870 came upon Iceland, which owes
to them its three or four centuries of prosperity; or that, carried by the
currents, tempests, or the spirit of adventure, they should have found
Greenland, in 981, 200 miles to the west. It was while they were skirting
along these shores that they discovered Labrador, covered in those days
with vines, and they called it Vinland; they were then in America.
About the same time they discovered the Shetland Islands, which were unknown to
the Romans; occupied the Orkneys, which Agricola had only seen from
afar, and founded at the northern extremity of Scotland the kingdom
of Caithness, which they held till the end of the twelfth century. They
founded another kingdom in the Hebrides and on the peninsula of Cantire,
which "remained in their possession until 1266.
They spread to the east as well as to the west,
though not in such large numbers, because that region, which Roman
civilization had not reached, had less to offer. In the middle of the
eighth century a few adventurous Norsemen, who are called by Russian writers
Varangians, a name of doubtful origin, had made their way into the midst
of the Slav settlements around Lake Ilmen, where they occupied the town of
Novgorod. Though they were driven away at first, they were soon called
back. In 862 three brothers, named Rurik, Sineus and Truwor, who had
gone there with a number of warlike companions, were recognized by these
powerful cities as their leaders in war. Rurik, who inherited the power of
his two brothers, is regarded as the founder of the Russian empire,
whose capital was first Novgorod and later Kief.
Thus the Scandinavians, like the Arabs, had come
forth from their sterile peninsula and had gone to the east and the
west, and, like them, had spread along an immense belt of land from
America to the Volga, narrow, except in Russia, and always keeping to the
northern regions, as the Arabs had always kept to the south. Some Norse
chiefs, it is true, came down into the South. We have seen how they
pillaged Spain, and ventured into the Mediterranean through the Straits of
Gibraltar. But that place was already occupied by other ravagers, namely,
the Saracens.
The Saracens were to Italy what the Norsemen were
to France. Like them, they long pillaged the coasts, and, like them,
they settled down in certain places. They came from Africa, from
Kairowan, which the Arabs had merged in the province of Tunis, and
which had been made the capital of a flourishing kingdom by the Aglabites. On
this Punic land they had found relics of naval grandeur, and had
turned the maritime habits of the nations they found there to
their own profit. They equipped some ships, and for the third time—in
succession to Carthage and Gaiseric—this point of Africa sent out tyrants
to rule over the Mediterranean. As pirates at first, they devastated
Malta, Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia, and gave way only for an instant to
the fleets of Charlemagne; when he died their incursions began again,
and the corsairs became invincible. In 831 they subdued Sicily, and
then passed over to the Great Land, as they called Italy. The rivalry
existing between the Greek and Lombard chiefs enabled them to take Brindisi,
Bari, and Tarentum, and to build a fortress at the mouths of the
Garigliano. They burned Ostia, Civita-Vecchia, the suburbs of
Rome, and the rich abbey of Monte-Cassino, and pursuing
their disastrous course as far as Venice, they repeatedly threatened
Naples, Salerno, Gaeta, and Amalfi, the last of which finally consented to
negotiate with them. Malta, Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearic Islands
were in their possession. Their domain extended over all the western
Mediterranean, and their power, re-established by Khair-ed-deen Barbarossa
in the sixteenth century, has continued down to the present day.
They were not afraid even to risk themselves in the
very midst of the Christian nations. They landed on the coast
of Provence; pillaged Arles and Marseilles, and in 889, they founded
a military colony at Fraxinet, near St. Tropez in Provence. By means of
outposts they commanded from this camp the passes of the Alps, and thus
were safe during the whole of the tenth century to pillage Italy and
France it their will. The terror inspired by these infidels
reached such a point that one of them alone, says Luitprand,
could put a thousand and two of them could put ten thousand
to flight. From Provence they proceeded to the Dauphiné, Valais, and
Switzerland, and there they met the other invaders coming from the east, the
Hungarians.
The movement of invasion from the point from which
the Hungarians came had never once ceased since Attila's time. Masses
of men had pushed their way in like the waves of a storm-tossed ocean, rising
and receding, continually asserting themselves and then giving way to
others.
After Attila’s Huns, many of whom remained by
the banks of the Danube in the neighborhood of their chief's favorite
places of abode, came the Slavs, “those who can speak”, who had recovered
their independence after the fall of the Gothic kingdom and after the
destruction of Attila's monarchy; following them came the
Bulgarians, “the cursed of God”; the Avars, another horde of
Huns, who were the terror of Constantinople for two centuries, and
who fell beneath the sword of Charlemagne; and finally the Khazars, a
cross between Huns and Turks, whose chagan dwelt in the Crimea. Among the
subjects of the Khazars, in the ninth century, was found a tribe
who were also of the Hunnic race, and whom the Latins and Greeks
called Hungarians. After living many years between the Ural and the Volga, they
had advanced at the beginning of the ninth century as far as the country
between the Don and the Dnieper. In 888 a new stream of invaders
overwhelmed both masters and subjects. The Hungarians were forced back to
the Danube and Transylvania, and were about to perish there with their
leader Arpad, when a fragment of the Khazar nation, the tribe of
Magyars, joined fortunes with them, revived their strength and courage,
and were rewarded for the services they rendered, by the honor of giving
their name to the whole nation. Those whom we still call Hungarians
call themselves Magyars.
Arnulf, the king of Germany, induced them by means
of gold to attack his enemies, the Moravian Slavs, who held dominion
from the mountains of Bohemia to those of Transylvania. The Hungarians
overpowered them, but seized upon the greater part of their country. There
they found a population whose basis was of Hunnic and Avar stock,
to whom they quickly assimilated themselves. As the wind of the
desert piles up the sand into mountains in a moment’s time, so victory among
unsettled peoples brings a host of tribes to the conqueror's standard and
gives him irresistible strength. Though they had just come down from
the Carpathian mountains, the Hungarians, borne away by their enthusiasm,
carried war into the plains of the Theiss and into Pannonia and gained
complete mastery over them in the space of a few years' time. In 899
they were already at the gates of Italy and ravaging Carinthia and
Friuli; in the year 900 they made their way into Bavaria, and the new king of
Germany paid them tribute. The ease with which they acquired booty
encouraged them to extend their raids. Their bold horsemen rushed
down both sides of the Alps into the great plains of Lombardy and
into the valley of the Danube. They even crossed the Rhine, and provinces
like Alsace, Lorraine, and Burgundy, which up to that time had only looked
with terror to the north and west, whence the Norsemen came, found
out now by cruel experience that the east, too, could pour barbarians down
upon them. The Hungarians spread such terror through these nations that in
France their name was long remembered and used to express the utmost
ferocity.
The destructive inroads of the Magyars had the
same results as those of the Norsemen. As in France the country districts
bristled with chateaus, so in Italy walls were built about the towns as a
protection against them, and the city soldiery was reorganized, thus
enabling them later to regain their municipal independence. In Germany
fortresses were built, which were occupied by men who first used them to
defend the country and then appropriated them to their own use. The two
greatest powers, Austria and Prussia, were originally two marches (marks)
organized on a military basis to cover Germany against the attacks of the
invaders from the east.
If we now compare the invasion of the ninth
century with those that preceded it, we shall find this
difference, that but for the double attack of the northern and the
southern barbarians, the Roman Empire might have had a prolonged
though not a happy existence, as there was nothing
to necessitate its fall nor even to make it desirable; while, on the
other hand, the new Carolingian Empire carried within itself the causes of
dissolution, which, though assisted by the invasion, were in themselves sufficient
to destroy its existence as a united empire.
Another point of difference was the manner in which
the Norsemen and Saracens carried on the invasion by little bands;
the invasion did not mean with them the removal of whole nations in a
body, as was the case with the barbarians of the earlier invasion, nor, as
with the Arabs in the seventh century, did it mean a religious
conquest. They were in search of booty rather than lands, and their
raids resulted in a great deal of pillage, local destruction,
and sufferings among the people, but they did not cause a general upheaval
nor the substitution of a new social state for the old. The Hungarians
alone, in the valleys of the Theiss and of the Danube, formed a permanent
settlement, like those of the Franks, the Burgundians, and the
Goths, but they did not attempt to extend their occupation to
any great distance. What especially distinguished the ninth century
invasions from others was the fact that it promoted but did not create the
general confusion; that it hastened the fall of the Carolingian Empire,
that is, the breaking up of political unity—though it was not the sole
cause of this: in a word, the invasion was one of the forces which
impelled society of that day to assume the form it did : namely, feudal
anarchy, taking the last of the words in its etymological meaning, that
is, the absence of a supreme power; feudalism, as we shall see, was, in
fact, the preponderance of local powers over the central authority.
BOOK IV.
FALL OF THE CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE.NEW BARBARIAN INVASIONS
(814-887).
BOOK V.
FEUDALISM, OR THE HISTORY OF THE KINGDOMS FORMED FROM
THE CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE, DURING THE TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES.
BOOK VI.
THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE PAPACY AND THE EMPIRE
(1059-1250)
BOOK VII.
THE CRUSADES (1095-1270)
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DURUY'SHISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES |
