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DURUY'SHISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES |
BOOK I.
THE GERMANIC INVASION.
CHAPTER I. THE ROMAN AND BARBARIAN WORLDS AT THE END
OF THE FOURTH CENTURY.
CHAPTER II. FIRST PERIOD OF INVASION (375-476).
ALARIC, RADAGAISUS, GAISERIC, AND ATTILA.
CHAPTER III .SECOND PERIOD OF INVASION: THE FRANKS,
THE OSTROGOTHS, THE LOMBARDS AND THE ANGLO-SAXONS (455-569).
CHAPTER IV. THE GREEK EMPIRE FROM 408 TO 705 ;
TEMPORARY REACTION OF THE EMPERORS OF CONSTANTINOPLE AGAINST THE GERMANIC
INVADERS.
CHAPTER V. THE RENEWAL OF THE GERMAN INVASION BY THE
FRANKS. GREATNESS OF THE MEROVINGIANS. THEIR DECADENCE (561-687).
BOOK II.
THE ARAB INVASION (622-1058).
CHAPTER VI.MOHAMMED AND THE EMPIRE OF THE ARABS
(622-732).
CHAPTER VII.DISMEMBERMENT, DECLINE AND FALL OF THE
ARABIAN EMPIRE (755-1058).
BOOK III.
THE CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE, OR THE ATTEMPT TO ORGANIZE
GERMAN AND CHRISTIAN EUROPE (687-814).
CHAPTER VIII.THE MAYORS OF AUSTRASIA AND THE PAPACY,
OR THE EFFORTS TO INFUSE UNITY INTO THE STATE AND THE CHURCH (687-768).
CHAPTER IX. CHARLEMAGNE; UNITY OF THE GERMANIC WORLD.
THE CHURCH IN THE STATE (768-814).
BOOK IV.
FALL OF THE CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE.NEW BARBARIAN INVASIONS
(814-887).
CHAPTER X. LOUIS THE PIOUS AND THE TREATY OF
VERDUN(814-843).
CHAPTER XI.FINAL DESTRUCTION OF THE CAROLINGIAN
EMPIRE(845-887).
CHAPTER XII. THE THIRD INVASION, IN THE NINTH AND
TENTH CENTURIES.
BOOK V.
FEUDALISM, OR THE HISTORY OF THE KINGDOMS FORMED FROM
THE CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE, DURING THE TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES.
CHAPTER XIII. FRANCE AND ENGLAND (888-1108) ; DECLINE
OF THE ROYAL POWER IN FRANCE. INCREASE OF THE NATIONAL POWER. NORMAN CONQUEST
OF ENGLAND (1066).
CHAPTER XIV.GERMANY AND ITALY (888-1039).REVIVAL OF
THE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE BY THE GERMAN KINGS.
CHAPTER XV.FEUDALISM.CHAPTER XVI.CIVILIZATION IN THE
NINTH AND TENTH CENTURIES.
BOOK VI.
THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE PAPACY AND THE EMPIRE
(1059-1250)
CHAPTER XVII.THE QUARREL OVER INVESTITURES
(1059-1122).
CHAPTER XVIII.STRUGGLE BETWEEN ITALY AND GERMANY
(1152-1250).
BOOK VII.-
THE CRUSADES (1095-1270)
CHAPTER XIX. The First Crusade to Jerusalem
(1095-1099).
CHAPTER XX. The Last Crusades in the East; Their
Results(1147-1270).
CHAPTER XXI. The Crusades of the West
CHAPTER XXII. Progress of the Cities.
CHAPTER XXIII. Civilization of the Twelfth and
Thirteenth Centuries
AUTHOR’S PREFACE.
THE term Middle Ages is applied to the time which
elapsed between the fall of the Roman Empire and the formation of the great
modern monarchies, between the first permanent invasion of the Germans, at the
beginning of the fifth century of our era and the last invasion, made by the
Turks, ten centuries later, in 1453.
During this interval between ancient and modern times
the pursuit of learning and of the arts was almost entirely suspended. Instead
of the republics of antiquity and the monarchies of the present day, a special
political organization was developed which was called feudalism: this consisted
in the rule of the lords. Though every country had its king, it was the
military leader who was the real ruler. The central power was unable to assert
itself and the local powers were without supervision or direction. Hence this
epoch was different in every respect from those which preceded and followed it,
and it is on account of this difference in character that we give it a special
name and place in universal history.
The history of the Middle Ages is generally disliked
by those who are obliged to study it, and sometimes even by those who teach it.
It seems to them like a great Gothic cathedral, where the eye loses itself in
the infinite details of an art which is without either unity or system, or like
an immense and confused book which the reader spells out laboriously but never
understands. If, however, we are content to confine this history to the
significant facts which alone are worth remembering, and to pass over the
insignificant men and events, giving prominence and attention to the great men
and great events, we shall find this period to be as simple as it is generally
considered confusing.
In the first place, we must define its limits. The
true history of the Middle Ages does not extend beyond the ancient Roman Empire
and the provinces added to it by Charlemagne when he brought the whole of
Germany under one common civilization. Outside of these limits all was still
barbarism, of which little or nothing can be known, and whose darkness is only
occasionally relieved by a gleam from the sword of a savage conqueror, a
Tchingis-Khan, or a Timour. The events which interest us and which exerted an
active influence on the development of the modern nations took place within
these limits. And even among these events we need only remember those which
characterize the general life of Europe, not the individual, isolated life of
the thousand petty States of which the historian as well as the poet can say :
“Non ragioniam di lor ; ma guarda, e
passa.”
The Middle Ages were built on the ancient foundation
of pagan and Christian Rome. Hence our first task is to study the Roman world
and examine the mortal wounds it had suffered; to pass in review this empire,
with so many laws but no institutions, with so many subjects but no citizens,
and with an administration which was so elaborate that it became a crushing
burden ; and, finally, to conjure up before us this colossus of sand, which
crumbled at the touch of paltry foes, because, though it contained a religious
life, eager for heavenly things, it was inspired by no strong political life
such as is necessary for the mastery of the earth.
Beyond the Empire lay the barbarians, and in two currents
of invasion they rushed upon this rich and unresisting prey. The Germans seized
the provinces of the north; the Arabs those of the south. Between these mighty
streams, which flowed from the east and the west, Constantinople, the decrepit
daughter of ancient Rome, alone remained standing, and for ten centuries, like
a rocky island, defied the fury of the waves.
With one bound the Arabs reached the Pyrenees, with a
second the Himalayas, and the crescent ruled supreme over two thousand leagues
of country, a territory of great length, but narrow, impossible to defend, and
offering many points of attack. The Caliphs had to contend against a mighty
force in the geographical position of their conquests, a force which is often
fatal to new-born States, and which in this case destroyed their Empire and at
the same time brought ruin to their equally brilliant and fragile civilization.
Many chiefs among the Germans also called into being
States which were only ephemeral, because they arose in the midst of this Roman
world, which was too weak to defend itself but strong enough to Communicate to
all with whom it came in contact the poison which was working in its own veins.
To this fact we may attribute the fall of the kingdoms of Gaiseric, Theodoric,
and Aistulf; of the Vandals, the Heruli, and the eastern and western Goths.
One people alone fell heir to the many invaders who
entered the Empire by means of the Rhine and the Danube, namely, the Franks.
Like a great oak, whose roots grow deep down in the soil which bears and
nourishes it, they kept in constant communication with Germany and drew thence
a barbarian vigor which continually renewed their exhausted powers.
Though threatened with an early decline under the last
Merovingians, they revived again with the chiefs of the second dynasty, and
Charlemagne tried to bring order into chaos and throw light into darkness by
organizing his dominions around the throne of the Emperors of the west, and by
binding to it Germanic and Christian society. This was a magnificent project
and one which has made his name worthy to be placed by the side of the few
before which the world bows. But his design, which was incapable of
accomplishment, not only because geography was against it, as it was against
the permanence of the Arabian Empire, but because all the moral forces of the
times, both the instincts and the interests of the people, were opposed to its
success. Charlemagne created modern Germany, which was a great thing in itself,
but the day when he went to Rome to join the crown of the Emperors to that of
the Lombard kings, was a fatal day for Italy. From that time this beautiful
country had a foreign master, who lived far away and only visited her
accompanied by hordes of greedy and barbarous soldiers, who brought ruin in
their train. How much blood was shed during centuries in the attempt to
maintain the impossible and ill-conceived plan of Charlemagne. How many of the
cities and splendid monuments of the country were reduced to ruins, not to
mention the saddest thing of all, the ruin of the people themselves and of
Italian patriotism.
After the ninth century the Carolingian Empire
tottered and fell through the incompetency of its chiefs, the hatred of the
people, and the blows of a new invasion led by the Norsemen, the Hungarians, and
the Saracens. It separated into kingdoms, and these kingdoms into seignories. I
he great political institutions crumbled into dust. The State was reduced to
the proportions of a fief. The horizon of the mind was equally limited ;
darkness had fallen upon the world ; it was the night of feudalism.
A few great names, however, still survived: France,
Germany and Italy; and great titles were still worn by those who were called
the kings of these countries. These men were kings in name but not in truth,
and were merely the symbols of a territorial unity which existed no longer, and
not real, active, and powerful rulers of nations. Even the ancient Roman and
Germanic custom of election had been resumed.
Of these three royal powers, one, that of Italy, soon
disappeared; the second, that of France, fell very low ; while the third, that
of Germany, flourished vigorously for two centuries after Otto I had revived
the Empire of Charlemagne, though on a small scale. Just as the sons of Pippin
had reigned over fewer peoples than Constantine and Theodosius, the Henrys,
Fredericks, and Ottos reigned over a smaller territory than Charlemagne and
with a less absolute power.
By the side of and below the kingdoms born of invasion
there arose a power of quite a different character, and one which did not
confine itself to any limits, whether of country or of law. The Church,
emerging wounded but triumphant from the catacombs and the Roman amphitheatres,
had gone out to meet the barbarians, and at her word the Sicambrian meekly
bowed his head. She only sought a spiritual kingdom; she also gained an earthly
one. Power came to her unsought, as it comes to every just and righteous cause
which aids the advance of humanity toward a better future. After establishing
the unity of her dogma and of her hierarchy, her chiefs attained the highest
eminence in the Catholic world, whence they watched, directed, and restrained
the spiritual movements inspired by them.
The Church strove to teach mildness to a violent and
lawless society, and, opposed to the feudal hierarchy, the equality of all men;
to turbulence, discipline; to slavery, liberty; and to force, justice. She
protected the slave from his arrogant master, and defended the rights of women,
children, and the family against the fickle husbands who did not draw back even
from divorce and polygamy. The only succession recognized by the States in
their public offices was succession by right of inheritance; the Church set the
example of succession by right of intellectual superiority, by the election of
her abbots, bishops, and even her pontiff, and serfs succeeded to the chair of
St. Peter, thus attaining a dignity higher than that of kings. The barbarians
had demolished the civilization of antiquity; the Church preserved its
fragments in the seclusion of her monasteries. She was not only the mother of
creeds, but was also the mother of art, science, and learning. Those great
scholars who taught the world to think again, those maîtres dès pierres vives, who gave Christianity its most wonderful
movements, were sons of the Church.
The feudal princes and lords, when freed from feudal
slavery, thought themselves above all law because they had put themselves
beyond the reach of resistance; but the Popes used the weapons of the Church
against them. They excommunicated a usurper of the throne of Norway, a king who
falsified the coinage in Aragon, the treacherous and foresworn John in England
and in France Philip Augustus, when he repudiated his wife the day after his
marriage. During the rule of force the Popes had become the sole guardians of
the moral law and they recalled these princes, who transgressed against it, to
their duty by releasing their people from their oath of fidelity. The
pontifical power spoke in the name and place of popular right.
This great moral force, however, was not always
mistress of herself. Until 726 the pontiffs had been the subjects of the
Emperors of Rome, western or eastern. Charlemagne claimed and wielded the same
authority over them. His successors, the German emperors, tried to follow his
example. Henry III deposed three Popes and in 1046 the council of Sutri once
again recognized that the election of no sovereign pontiff could be valid
without the consent of the emperor.
But after Charlemagne’s death the Church constantly
grew in power. Her possession of a large part of the soil of Christian Europe
gave her material force; while the fact that all, both great and small,
obediently received her command, gave her great moral force ; these two forces,
moreover, were increased tenfold by the addition of a third, namely, unity of
power and purpose; at the time of the Iconoclasts and the last Carolingians,
the sole aspiration of the Church had been to escape from the bonds of the
State and to live a free life of her own. When she became stronger and, of
necessity, more ambitious, she claimed the right, after the manner of all
powerful ecclesiastical bodies, to rule the lay part of society and the civil
powers.
Two Towers, accordingly, stood face to face at the end
of the eleventh century, the Pope of Rome and the German emperor, the spiritual
and the temporal authorities, both ambitious, as they could not fail to be in
the existing state of morals, institutions, and beliefs. The great question of
the Middle Ages then came up for solution: Was the heir of St. Peter or the
heir of Augustus to remain master of the world? There lay the quarrel between
the priesthood and the empire.
This quarrel was a drama in three acts. In the first
act the Pope and the emperor disputed for the supremacy over Christian Europe;
in the Concordat of Worms (1122) they made mutual concessions and a division of
powers, which has been confirmed by the opinion of modern times; in the second
act, the main question to be solved was the liberty of Italy, which the Popes
protected in the interest of their own liberty; in the third act, the existence
of the Holy See was in peril; the death of Frederick II saved it.
The result of this great struggle and far-reaching
ambition was the decline and almost the ruin of the two adverse powers. The
papacy fell, shattered, at Avignon, and the Babylonian captivity began, while
the German Empire, mortally wounded, was at the point of disappearing during
the Great Interregnum, and only escaped destruction to drag out a miserable
existence.
During the contest the people, recovering from their
stupor, had turned to seek adventure in new directions. Religious belief, the
most powerful sentiment of the Middle Ages, had led to its natural result; it
had inspired the crusades and had sent millions of men on the road to
Jerusalem.
Though the crusade was successful in Europe against
the pagans of Prussia and the infidels of Spain, and, accompanied by terrible
cruelty, against the Albigenses of France, it failed in its principal object in
the East the Holy Sepulchre remained in the hands of infidels and Europe seemed
in vain to have poured out her blood and treasure in the conquest of a tomb
which she was not able to keep. Nevertheless, she had regained her youth; she
had shaken off a mortal torpor, to begin a new existence, and the roads were
now crowded with merchants, the country covered with fruitful fields, and the
cities filled with evidences of her growth and power. She created an art, a
literature and schools of learning, and it was France which led this movement.
The Middle Ages had come to an end when the successors of Charlemagne and of
Gregory VII became powerless, when feudalism tottered to its fall and when the
lower classes threw off their yoke; new ideas and new needs arising proclaimed
the advent of Modern times.
These new needs were represented by the two countries,
where they were most fully met, namely, France and England. The England of
today dates from the Magna Charta of King John, just as the royal power of
Louis XIV came directly from Philip Augustus and St. Louis. We find in these
two countries three similar elements: the king, the nobles, and the people, but
in different combinations. From this difference in combination resulted the
difference in their histories.
In England the Conquest had made the king so strong
that the nobles were obliged to unite with the commons in order to save their
honor, their estates, and their heads. The nobility favored popular franchises,
which they found necessary to their cause; the people were attached to their
feudal lords, who fought for them. English liberty, sprung from the
aristocracy, has never been unfaithful to its origin, and we have the curious
spectacle of a country in which the greatest freedom and the greatest social inequalities
exist side by side.
In France, it was the king and the people who were
oppressed; they were the ones to unite, in order to overthrow the power of
feudalism, their common enemy: but the rewards of victory naturally fell to the
share of the leader in battle. This twofold tendency is evident from the
fourteenth century. At the beginning of that century, Philip the Fair leveled
the castles with the ground, called peasants to participate in his councils,
and made every one, both great and small, equal in the eye of the law; at the
end of it the London parliament overthrew its king and disposed of the crown.
If these two countries had not fallen upon each other
in the violent struggle which is called the Hundred Years War, the fourteenth
century would have seen them fairly started in their new life.
Germany and France have a common-starting point in
their histories: each arose from the ruins of the great Carolingian Empire, and
each was originally possessed of a powerful feudal system; consequently their
subsequent careers might have been the same. In one, however, the royal power
reached its apogee; in the other it declined, grew dim, and disappeared. There
was no mystery in this; it was a simple physiological fact for which no reason
can be given. The Capetian family did not die out. After the lapse of nine
centuries it still continued to exist; by this mere fact of continuance alone
the custom of election was not suffered to become established, as there was no
occasion for its use. The dynasties on the other side of the Rhine, on the
contrary, though at first abler and stronger, seemed to be cursed with
barrenness. At the end of two or three generations they became extinct;
eighteen royal houses can be counted in five centuries; that is to say, that eighteen
times the German people saw the throne left vacant, and were obliged to choose
an occupant from a new family. Succession by election, which had been one of
the customs of Germany and which the Church had retained, became a regular
system. The feudal chiefs were not slow to understand what advantages the
system had for them: at each election, to use an expression of the day, they
plucked a feather from the imperial eagle, and Germany finally counted a
thousand princes; while on the other side of her great river, the heir of Hugh
Capet could say with truth, “I am the State.”
Such were the three great modern nations, as early as
the fourteenth century: Great Britain, with its spirit of public liberty and
hereditary nobility; France, with a tendency toward civil equality and an
absolute monarchy; Germany, toward independent principalities and public
anarchy. Today, the one is virtually an aristocratic republic, the other a
democratic State, and the third was until lately a confederation of sovereign
States; this difference was the work of the Middle Ages.
In Spain, the Goths who had fled to the Asturias had
founded there a Christian kingdom; Charlemagne had marked out two more, by
forcing a passage through the Pyrenees at two points, Navarre and Catalonia.
These three States, strongly protected by the mountains at their back, had
advanced together toward the south against the Moors; but modern times had
already begun on the north of the Pyrenees, while the Spaniards, in the
peninsula, had not finished their crusade of eight centuries. They gave as yet
no sign of what was to be their subsequent career.
The other Neo-Latin people, the Italians, had not been
able to find in the Middle Ages the political unity which alone constitutes the
individuality of a great nation. There were three obstacles in the way of this:
the configuration of the country, which did not offer a geographical center;
the thousand cities which ancient civilization had scattered over its surface,
and which had not yet learned by bitter experience to surrender a part of their
municipal independence to save the common liberty; finally, the papacy, which,
owning no master, even in temporal affairs, laid down this principle, very just
from its point of view and entirely legitimate in the Middle Ages, namely, that
from the Alps to the Straits of Messina there should never be one sole power,
because such a power would certainly desire Rome for its capital. This policy
lasted for thirteen centuries. It was the papacy which, as early as the sixth century,
prevented the consolidation of the Italian kingdom of the Goths; and, in the
eighth century, the formation of that of the Lombards; which summoned Pippin
against Aistulf, Charlemagne against Desiderius, Charles of Anjou against
Manfred; as well as later the Spaniards, the Swiss, and the Imperialists
against the French; the French against the Spaniards; which finally entered
into compacts with all the foreign masters of the peninsula in order to assure,
by a balance of influences and forces, the independence of her little domain
and her authority.
Italy, having no central power, was covered with
republics, most of which, after a time, developed into principalities. The life
there was brilliant, but corrupt, and the civic virtues were forgotten. Anarchy
dwelt in her midst an infallible sign that the foreigner would again become her
master.
In the North, utter darkness: Prussia and Russia are
of yesterday. But in the East there appeared a nation, the Turks, which was
formidable since it possessed what Christian Europe no longer had, the
conquering spirit of religious proselytism, which had been the spirit of the
crusades; and also what Europe did not yet possess, a strong military
organization.
Accordingly this handful of nomad shepherds, which had
so suddenly become a people, or rather an army, accomplished without difficulty
the last invasion; Constantinople fell. But at the very moment when the last
remaining fragment of the Roman Empire disappeared, the genius of ancient
civilization arose, torch in hand, from the midst of the ruins. The Portugese
were on the road to the Cape of Good Hope, while the artists and authors were
opening the way to the Renaissance : Wycliffe and John Huss had already
prepared the road for Luther and Calvin. The changes at work in the States
corresponded to the change in thought and belief. Reform was demanded of the
Church; shaken by schism, she refused it; in a century she had to deal with a
revolution.
The important facts to be noted are:
The decline of the Roman Empire and the successful
accomplishment of two invasions; the transient brilliancy of the Arabian
civilization.
The attempted organization of a new Empire by
Charlemagne, and its dissolution.
The rise and prevalence of feudalism.
The successive Crusades.
The contest between the Pope and the Emperor for the
sovereignty of the world.
We have here the real Middle Ages, simple in their
general outline, and reaching their highest development in the thirteenth
century.
But even before this period a new phase of the Middle
Ages had appeared in England and France; which led to a new social organization
of the two countries. Soon a few brave voices were heard discussing the merits
of obedience, of faith, even, and pleading the cause of those who, until that
time, had been of no account, the peasants and the serfs.
Humanity, that tireless traveler, advances
unceasingly, over vale and hill, today on the heights, in the light of day,
tomorrow in the valley, in darkness and danger, but always advancing, and
attaining by slow degrees and weary efforts some broad plateau, where he pauses
a moment to rest and take breath.
These pauses, during which society assumes a form
which suits it for the moment, are organic periods. The intervals which
separate them may be called inorganic periods or times of transformation. On
these lines we may divide the ten centuries of the Middle Ages into three
sections : from the fifth to the tenth century, the destruction of the past and
the transition to a new form; from the tenth to the fourteenth, feudal society
with its customs, its institution, its arts, and its literature. This is one of
the organic periods in the life of the world. Then the tireless traveler starts
again: this time he again descends to depths of misery to reach, on the other
side, a country free from brambles and thorns. When the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries are crossed we already perceive from afar the glorious
forms of Raphael, Copernicus, and Christopher Columbus, in the dawn of the new
world.
BOOK I.
THE GERMANIC INVASION.
CHAPTER I.
THE ROMAN AND BARBARIAN WORLDS AT THE END OF THE
FOURTH CENTURY.
ANCIENT History ends with the Roman Empire, which
first absorbed all the peoples of antiquity and then involved them all in its
ruin. Asia, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Spain and Gaul had all been drawn into the
vast embrace of Rome, the Rome which gave to its subjects unity of government,
and to its western provinces unity of language.
This unity—the work of conquest—was maintained by a
policy which, though liberal at first, ended by becoming oppressive. Then the
chill of death crept over the great Roman society, the bonds were loosened,
and, at the first shock of the barbarians, the colossal fabric fell to pieces.
The unity of government, enforced by conquest as early
as the time of the Republic, was regulated under the Empire, by the organizing
work of a wise administration. It was incorporated in one man, who was at first
a military chieftain rather than a sovereign, who, after Diocletian and
Constantine, became an actual monarch, the head of a vast hierarchy. These
two emperors tried to give more stability to the imperial authority by a
considerable change in the character of the government. Whereas the fate of the
empire had before depended on the rival and capricious desires of the legions
or the praetorians, the Emperor was now seen to be suddenly raised to a
mysterious height, sheltering his power under the doctrine of divine right and
his person behind a pomp oriental in its magnificence and entirely unknown to
the first Caesars.
Below him, as if to keep the citizens and soldiers at
a distance, grew up an interminable series of civil and military officers—the
former held in greater esteem than the latter. At the head of this hierarchy
stood, in respect to influence, the seven great officers who formed the
ministry of the Emperor in his palace at Constantinople, the new capital of the
Empire, which displayed on the banks of the Bosphorus a precocious corruption
and a splendor born of yesterday.
The seven great officers of the court (to leave out
the consuls, the praetors, and the senate, which still existed, though only for
display), regarded less as public magistrates than as servants of the Emperor,
were:
1 : The count of the sacred chamber (comes sacri cubicula) or great
chamberlain, often influential because he was in constant attendance on the
Prince.
2 : The master of the offices (magister officiorum), a kind
of minister of state, on whom depended all the household of the Emperor, all
the police of the Empire with its 10,000 officers (curiosi), the posts, arsenals, factories and storehouses of arms;
an immense administration that comprised four departments, with directors and
sub-directors, and one hundred and forty-eight clerks.
3 : The quaestor of the palace (quaestor palatii), a kind of
chancellor, who was the mouth-piece of the Emperor and who drew up his decrees.
4: The count of the sacred largesses (comes sacrariun largitiorum), minister
of finance, on whom the provincial counts of the largesses and all
the financial officers of the Empire depended, and who acted as judge in
proceedings of a fiscal nature.
5 : The count of the private estate (comes rei privates), who administered
the estates of the Emperor through agents,
called rationales and caesariani.
6 :The count of the domestic cavalry (comes domesticorum equitum).
And finally,
7 : The count of the domestic infantry (domesticorum peditum). These
two together had under their command 3500 men, divided into seven schools, fine
looking soldiers, for the most pan Armenians, who presented an imposing
appearance, as they formed in line in the porticos of the palace.
To these officers must be added, to give a fair idea
of the court of Constantinople, an innumerable herd of doorkeepers,
pages (paedagogia), spies, servants
of all kinds and eunuchs, “more numerous”, said Libanius, “than the
swarming flies in summer”.
Leaving the central government, we now pass on to the
provinces and find there, at the head of the hierarchy, the four praetorian
prefects of the East, of Illyricum, of Italy, and of Gaul. This was the
tetrarchy of Diocletian, but it existed without danger to the unity of the
Empire or to the Emperor himself. They were no longer, in fact, those
praetorian prefects of old times, who overthrew their masters; their claws and
teeth had been drawn by taking away from them all military command. Their
office was still a desirable one and their authority so great that its
curtailment did not affect their administration. Their powers were : to publish
the decrees of the Emperor, to make assessments, to watch over the collection
of imposts, without being able, it is true, to add anything to them, to judge
civil and criminal proceedings on appeal from the chiefs of the diocese, and to
remove and punish the provincial governors at their will.
Their rich appointments, the number of people employed
in their bureaus, the luxury of their existence, made them like kings of a
second rank.
Each prefecture was divided into dioceses governed by
vice-prefects; there were sixteen of these: six in the prefecture of the East
(the East, Egypt, the vicarship of Asia,
the proconsulate of Asia, Pontus and Thrace); two in Illyricum (Dacia
and Macedonia); three in Italy (Italy, western Illyricum and western Africa);
three in Gaul (Spain, Gaul, and Britain). Rome, whose territory extended a
hundred miles from its walls, formed a diocese by itself, as did Constantinople
also.
Finally the four prefectures and the sixteen dioceses
were divided into one hundred and twenty provinces, governed by consulars,
correctors, and presidents, their degrees differing slightly in authority. By
the side of this civil hierarchy we see the military hierarchy, and at its head
the master of cavalry (magister equitum) and
the master of infantry (magister peditum),
offices which were increased in number after the division of the Empire. Under
them were the military counts and the dukes, in the provinces and on the
frontiers, who alone had control over the provincial troops, each in his own
department. We have now examined the imperial hierarchy and the whole central
government.
The despotism was of recent origin; it had existed
only two centuries and had been preceded by free institutions, which still
survived in the municipal government. Rome had scattered copies of herself
everywhere. There was no town in the Empire which did not have its little
senate, the curia, composed of proprietors or curials owning at least fifteen
acres of land, who deliberated as to the affairs of the municipium and chose magistrates from
their midst to administer them. The decemvirs recalled
the consuls by their title and powers, namely, the presidency of the curia, the
general administration of town affairs, and jurisdiction in matters of small
importance. An edile, a curator (treasurer
of the city), a collector, irenarchs (police
commissioners) scribes and notaries complete the list of
municipal officers.
The municipal government seemed to prosper, and a new
magistrate had recently been added to it—the defensor, a kind of regular tribune chosen by all the municipality,
to act in its defense before the Emperor. When the clergy were authorized by
Honorius to take part in the election for this new magistracy, it fell under
the control of the bishop.
But the prosperity of the municipal government was
more apparent than real, for local liberty lacked the securities which public
liberty alone can give. The government, whose greed equaled its infinite needs,
had turned for taxes to these municipal magistrates, these proprietors, whose
land could be seized, and had ordered them not only to collect but also to
guarantee the tax. This obligation became more and more burdensome with the
waning prosperity; the curials could
bear it no longer and took refuge in the privileged orders, the clergy and the
army. They were arrested and brought back, as the state could not bring itself
to lose its taxpayers and the guarantees of its revenues. Then followed a
struggle where the individual was easily defeated by the state. The curials were chained down to their
service. That they might be within reach, they were not allowed to live in the
country; death itself did not deprive the state of them, for their children
were devoted from birth to the same condition. Exemption from torture and from
certain ignominious penalties could not secure them from ruin and misery, which
are also forms of torture. Despair drove many of these miserable men to a wild
life in the forests, or even over to the barbarians. The number of curials showed an astonishing decrease
in all the cities.
Thus the last trace of free institutions had become an
instrument of oppression in the hands of a government which exacted rigorous
payment of its imposts without caring for the happiness or
unhappiness of its subjects—on whom these taxes fell with a crushing weight.
There was, first, the indiction, a
land tax which did not affect the property of the Imperial domain, and the rate
of which the Emperor determined each year for each diocese by an edict signed
by his own hand and in purple ink, which was posted up in the principal cities
of each diocese in the month of July. The sums exacted were assessed according
to the property accredited to each one in the census, which was made every
fifteen years. This period of fifteen years, established in 312 by Constantine,
is the so-called period of the indiction.
To make matters worse, superindictions were often added to the indictions.
The other branches of the public revenue were : the
capitation, paid by the country people; the follis senatorius, exacted from all the senators,
the aurum coronarium, paid
by the towns under certain circumstances, the chrysargyroti (lustralis collatio) levied
on industry and commerce, and finally indirect taxes, duties on sales and
revenues of toll-gates, mines, race-courses, salt-works, and imperial manufacturers.
It was a terrible moment when the swarm of fiscal agents spread over the whole
Empire. To understand fully this tyrannical oppression, we must add to the
taxes the furnishing of the food donations, the duty of harboring soldiers and
magistrates in their circuits, and of keeping the posts and public roads in
order, etc., etc. These overpowering burdens weighed the more heavily on the
poor and the men of moderate means, from the fact that the Empire had created
privileged orders, which were necessarily made up, in greater part, of the
rich. A hierarchy of titles had been established, often blending with the
hierarchy of offices, and comprising numerous degrees: the nobilissimi, the patricii, the illustres, the spectabiles,
the clarissimi, perfectissimi, egregii, equites, ducenarii,
not to mention the title of count and those of magistrates, acting or
non-acting (ex-consul, ex-prefect). In this way the Empire had tried to
make a nobility, but even these titles, distributed at the caprice of
despotism, were but masks of servitude.
The second class consisted of the curials, whose
wretched condition we have already described.
The third class—that of common free men—included
those who owned less than fifteen acres, and the merchants and artisans. Free
labor was theirs by right, but free labor was already becoming a thing of the
past. It had hardly existed in antiquity—the slaves were almost the only men
who worked. Different circumstances had assisted to develop it for a time, and
then new changes had brought back almost hopeless conditions. The artisans had
formed themselves into corporations—especially since the time of Alexander
Severus, in order to sustain each other, and to be able better to bear
the chrysargyron and the competition of the imperial manufacturers;
but the Empire soon treated them as it had the curials. Alarmed by the decrease
in production, it thought to obviate it by forbidding the members of
corporations to leave them, and by obliging them to make their children members
of the same. After that the corporations were no longer a benefit, but a
servitude, very hurtful to industry. In the country, the lower classes of free
men were no longer happy. They were despoiled of their little property by the
violence or cunning of the great land-owners, or by barbarian invasions, and
were reduced to the necessity of becoming coloni of the rich—a
service which held them down to a limited piece of land, and deprived them, if
not of the title, at least of most of the rights of a free man. By this
subjection and this "immobilizing", so to speak, the moral life of
the free man was destroyed.
The last class—that of the slaves, had gained a great
deal, it is true. Stoic philosophy, and, after that, Christianity, had spread
abroad new ideas on slavery, and had profoundly modified the spirit of the law
in regard to the slave. He was at last regarded as a man; he was allowed to
dispose of his peculium more freely; his murderer was treated as a
homicide; he also was “immobilized”, and that which was a loss to the free man
was an advantage to the slave, who, engaged in the cultivation of the soil,
could not be sold to a distance or separated from his family.
Thus by lowering the free men and raising
the slaves, the two classes were brought into an almost common condition. This
may be regarded as the beginning of serfdom, and it was the general condition
of the country people during the Middle Ages.
There was some good in this, but, also, much that was
bad. The free man no longer had the heart to work or to fight. Laborers were
lacking everywhere. The population diminished, and as life became more and more
miserable, the idea of maintaining a family was given up. The government had
recourse to the barbarians, and many of the emperors established colonies of
them in the depopulated provinces, in this way making an opening for invasion.
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 t 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—what 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 hi.
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 any
one, 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.
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