9 KE. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 http://www.archive.org/details/lifeofcharlernagnOOhodg CHARLEMAGNE. liiitiiit; 1)V Alln't'clil I>iirt*r. THE LIFE OF CHARLEMAGNE (CHARLES THE GREAT) By THOMAS HODGKIN, D.C.L with notes By henry KETCHAM A. L. BURT COMPANY, J- J^ J^ J- .* .?fc ot PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK Copjmght, 1909, By E. A- BRAINERD. B PREFACE. In attempting to compress the history of the great Emperor Ciiarles within the narrow limits of the present vohime, I have undertaken a difficult task, and I trust that my fellow-historians will consider, not how much has been omitted, but how much, or rather how little, it was possible to insert. It may be thought that I might have gained space •*d by proceeding at once to the beginning of Charles's h>-^ own reign instead of devoting more than eighty • pages to his predecessors, but this did not seem to me possible. The great Emperor was the last terra of an ascending series —nobles, mayors of the palace, kings ; and in order to understand the law of the series it is absolutely necessary to study some of its earlier members. A few words as to our authorities. For the period before the accession of Pippin our chief authority is the chronicle which is known by the name of Fredegarius, very meagre, and written in barbarous 1) Latin, but honest ; then a still more miserable con- . tinuation of this work by an unknown scribe ; and K/ lastly, a much better performance, from a literary --- point of view, The Lives of the Bishops of Metz^ by • Paulus Diaconus. ""^ iii ^^01 iv CHARLEMAGNE. For the reigns of Pippin and of Charles the Great we have fairly satisfactory materials in the shape of the Annals, which now began to be kept at various monasteries ; chief among them the Annates Latiris- se7ises majores, so-called from their connection, real or supposed, with the great monastery of Lorsch (in Ilesse-Darrastadt, about ten miles east of Worms). So extensive, however, is the knowledge of State affairs possessed by this writer that it is the opinion of Professor Ranke, and of most modern inquirers, that he cannot have been a mere monk writing his chronicle in a convent, but that we have here in fact the chronicles of the FrL'ukish kingdom. This view is to some extent confirmed by the fact that there is a fuller recension of them in a more literary form, which bears the nameof ^?^naZe5i^^n^a/^^, and thus professes to be the work of Charles's friend and secretary. The precious Vita Caroli, from the pen of the same writer, is described in the following pages. The writers who in modern times have treated of the life of Charles the Great number some hundreds, and I make no pretension to even a superficial ac- quaintance with the bibliography of so vast a sub- ject, but I may mention that the books which I have found most helpful in the composition of the follow- ing pages are Waltz's Deutsche Verfassungsge- echichtey Guizot's Lectures on the History of Civilisa- tion, Dahn's Urgeschichte der germanischen und ro- manischen Voll-er, and pre-eminently the series of Jahrbiicher der deutchen Oeschichte, in which Bonnell PREFACE. V has treated of The Beginnings of the CaroUngian House ; Oelsner, of The Life of Pippin, King of the Franks; and Abel and Simson, of The Life of Charles the Great. To the last work (in two vol- umes) I have been under great and continual obliga- tion THOS. HODGKm. CONTENTS. PART I. TO THE BIRTH OF CHARLEMAGNE. CHAPTER I. PAGE Introduction 1 CHAPTER II. Early Mayors of the Palace 15 CHAPTER III. Pippin op Heristal and Charles Martel 45 CHAPTER IV. Pippin, Kino of the Franks 63 PART II. FROM THE BIRTH OF CHARLEMAGNE. CHAPTER V. Fall OF the Lombard Monarchy 109 CHAPTER VI. The Conversion of the Saxons 137 Tii Viii CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. PAGS Revolts and Conspiracies , 166 CHAPTER VIII. RONCESVALLES 188 CHAPTER IX. Wars with Avars and Sclaves 204 CHAPTER X. Relations with the East 219 CHAPTER XI. Carolus Augustus 240 CHAPTER XII. Old Age 274 CHAPTER XIII. Results 308 Appendices— A. Genealogy of the Ancestors of Charles the Great. 333 B. Family of St. Charles the Great 333 CHARLEMAGNE. PART I. TO THE BIRTH OF CHARLEMAGNE. CHAPTER I. INTKODUCTION. In the gradual transformation of the old world of classical antiquity into the Avorld with which the statesmen of to-day must deal, no man played a greater part than Charles the Great,* King of the * In the headings of this book, the form of the name Charlemagne is used tliroughout, in preference to the English form Charles the Great, or Charles I. (which suggests Charles Stuart), or tlie Latin form Carolus Magmis, oi" the grotesque combination of the Teutonic Karl with the Latin Magnus. The editor does not overlook the difficulties of the case. The word Charlemagne is conceded to be misleading because of its French form. It is natural to infer that the man so named was peculiarly connected with the French people or race. The fact is otherwise ; for the illustrious leader of the Franks was much nearer akin to the Germanic and Teutonic peoples, than to the Gallic or French. The reader should therefore keep it in mind that Charlemagne was not a Frenchman, nor /lid he belong to the predecessors of the French, despite the 1 • — 2 CHARLEMAGNE. Franks and Emperor of Rome. The sharp lines of demarcation which we often draw between period and period, and which are useful as helps to memory, have not for the most part had any real existence in history, for in the world of men, as in the develop- ment of the material universe, it is true that uni- formity rather than cataclysm is the rule : Watura noil vadit per saltum. Still there are some great landmarks,"^ such as the foundation of Constanti- nople, Alaric's capture of Rome, the ITegira of Mo- hammed, the discovery of America, the Reformation, form of his name. He was not king of the French, but " king of the Franks" as the author says above. And " with all his wide, far-reaching schemes, he remained, it would seem, at heart a . Frank . and we may conjecture that Neu- stria was to him as little of a liomeland as Aquitaino or even Italy." (See below, p. 280.) For the extent of his kingdom, which centred about the Rliine, not the Seine, see below, pp. 11, 13. On the other hand, it may be said in favor of the form Charlemagne that it has not only obtained common usage, but it has the autliority of Milton, Scott, and otlier English writers, while in tlie United States it is to-day the common, almost exclusive form. This seems to be sufficient reason for its adoption. * The dates of these landmarks are as follows : Constantinople was founded 330, A. D. ; Alaric captured Rome 410 ; The Hegira, or Flight, of Mohammed occurred 623 ; America was discovered 1493 ; Tlie Reformation began witli Luther's nailing his 95 theses to tlu' door of tlic cliurch at Wittenberg in 1517 ; And tlie great Fren(;li Revolution occurred between 1789 and 1795, the dreadful climax being iu 1793. - INTRODUCTION. 3 and the French Revolution, which have no merely artificial existence. We can see that the thoughts of the great majority of civilized men were suddenly forced into a different channel by such events, that after they had occurred, men hoped for other bene- fits and feared other dangers than they had looked for before these events took place. And such a cnangeful moment in the history of the world was undoubtedly the life of the great ruler who is gener- ally spoken of as Charlemagne, and pre-eminently the year 800, when he was crowned as Emperor at Rome. When Charles appeared upon the scene, the Roman Empire—at least as far as Western Europe was con- cerned—had been for more than three centuries slowly dying. An event, to which allusion has just been made —the capture of Rome b}^ Alaric in 410 —had dealt the great world-empire a mortal blow, and yet so tough was its constitution, so dee])ly was the thought engraven even on the hearts of its most barbarous enemies, " Rome is the rightful mis- tress of the Avorld," that it seemed as if that world empire could not die. The Visigoth, the Ostrogoth, the Vandal, the Burgundian, the Lombard, coming forth from the immemorial solitude of their forests, streamed over the cities and the vineyards of the Mediterranean lands, and erected therein their rude 4 CHARLEMAGNE. state- systems, their barbaric sovereignties ; but even ill framiiif^ their uncouth national codes they were * forced to use the language of Rome ; in government they could not dispense with the oflBcial machinery of the Empire ; in religious affairs, above all, they found tiiemselves always face to face with men to whom the city by the Tiber was still Roma cwput mundi. Hence in all these new barbarian kingdoms that nrose on the ruins of the Empire there was a certain feeling of precariousness and unrest, a secret fear that the power which had come into being so strangely and so unexpectedly would in a moment vanish away, and that the Roman Augustus would assert himself once more as supreme over the nations ; to borrow a phrase from the controversies of a much later date, the Yisigothic and Burgundian and Lombard kings were obviously kings de facto ; but there was a latent consciousness in the minds of their subjects, perhaps in their own also, that they were not kings dejure.