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Presented to the

LIBRARY of the

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

by

CHARITY GRANT

PERIODS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY

PERIOD I., 476-918

y

Periods of European History

General Editor, ARTHUR H ASS ALL, M.A.,

Student of Christ Church, Oxford,

Crown ^vo. With Maps and Plans.

The object of this series is to present in separate Volumes a
comprehensive and trustworthy account of the general develop-
ment of European History, and to deal fully and carefully with the
more prominent events in each century.

It is believed that no such attempt to place the History of
Europe before the English Public has yet been made, and it is
hoped that the Series will form a valuable continuous History of
Mediaeval and Modern Europe.

Period I . —The Dark Ages. a. d. 476-9 1 8. By C. W. C. Oman, M. A. ,

Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Js. 6d. {^Already published.

Period IL — The Empire and the Papacy, a.d. 918-1273.

By T. F. Tout, M.A., Professor of History at the Owens College,
Victoria University, Manchester, "js. 6d. {Already published.

Period IIL — The Close of the Middle Ages. a.d. 1272-1494.

By R. Lodge, M.A., Professor of History at the University of
Glasgow. [In preparation.

Period IV. — Europe in the i6th Century, a.d. 1494-1598.

By A. H. Johnson, M.A., Historical Lecturer to Merton, Trinity,
and University Colleges, Oxford, ^js. 6d. {Already published.

Period V. — The Ascendancy of France, a.d. 1598- 17 15.

By H. O. Wakeman, M.A., Fellow of All Souls College,
and Tutor of Keble College, Oxford. 6s. {Already published.

Period VL— The Balance of Power, a.d. 17 15- 1789.

By A. Hassall, M.A., Student of Christ Church, Oxford. 6s.

{Already published.

Period VIL— Revolutionary Europe, a.d. 1789-1815.

By H. Morse Stephens, M.A., Professor of History at Cornell
University, Ithaca, U.S.A. 6^-. {Already published.

PeriodVIII. — Modern Europe. A.D.1815-1878. By G. W. Prothero,

Litt.D. , Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh.

{In preparation.

THE DARK AGES

476-918

BY

CHARLES OMAN, M.A, F.S.A.

FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE
AND LECTURER AT NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD

AUTHOR OF ' A HISTORY OF GREECE,'
'the art of WAR IN THE MIDDLE AGES,' ETC.

PERIOD I

RIVINGTONS

KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN

LONDON

1898

Thii'd Edition

All rights reso-ved

AUTHOR^S PREFACE

In spite of the very modest scale on which this book
has been written, I trust that it may be of some use
to students of European History. Though there are
several excellent monographs in existence dealing with
various sections of the period 476-918, there is no con-
tinuous general sketch in English which covers the whole
of it. Gibbon's immortal work is popularly supposed
to do so, but those who have read it most carefully
are best aware that it does not. I am not acquainted
with any modern English book where the inquirer
can find an account of the Lombard kings, or of the
Mohammedan invasions of Italy and Sicily in the ninth
century, or of several other not unimportant chapters in
the early history of Europe. I am in hopes, therefore,
that my attempt to cover the whole field between 476
and 918 may not be entirely useless to the reading
public.

I must acknowledge my indebtedness to two living
authors, whose works have been of the greatest possible
help to me in dealing with two great sections of
this period, Doctor Gustav Richter, whose admirable
collection of original authorities in his Annalen des
Frdnkischen Reichs makes such an excellent intro-
duction to the study of Merovingian and Carolingian

vi Preface

times, and Professor Bury of Dublin, whose History of
the Later Roman Empire has done so much for the
knowledge of East- Roman affairs between 476 and 800.
Nor must I omit to express my indebtedness to the
kindly and diligent hands which spent so many summer
hours in the laborious task of compiling my index.

A word ought, perhaps, to be added on the vexed
question of the spelling of proper names. I have
always chosen the most modern form in speaking of
places, but in speaking of individuals I have employed
that used by contemporary authorities, save in the case
of a few very well known names, such as Charles,
Henry, Gregory, Lewis, where archaism would savour
of pedantry.

Oxford, November 1893.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

The author has to acknowledge much kind help in the
revision of this second edition given him by the Rev.
Dr. Bright, Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History ;
by Mr. C. H. Turner, Fellow of Magdalen College ; by
the Rev. F. E. Brightman, of University College ; and
by the unwearied compiler of the index. They have
materially improved the accuracy of the book by their
suggestions.

October 30, 1894.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Odoacer and Theodoric, 476-493, . . .1

II. Theodoric King of Italy, 493-526, . . .19

III. The Emperors at Constantinople, 476-527, . . 33

IV. Chlodovech and the Franks in Gaul, 481-5 ii, . 55
V. Justinian and his Wars, 528-540, . . ' ^S

VI. Justinian — {continued)^ 540-565, . . .89

VII. The Earlier Frankish Kings and their Organisa-
tion of Gaul, 511-561, . . . .Ill
VIII. The Visigoths IN Spain, 531-603, . . .128
IX. The Successors of Justinian, 565-610, . . 145
X. Decline and Decay of the Merovingians, 561-656, 158
XI. The Lombards in Italy and the Rise of the

Papacy, 568-653, . . . . .181

XII. Heraclius AND Mohammed, 610-641, . . . 204

XIII. The Decline and Fall of the Visigoths, a.d. 603-

711, ....... 220

XIV. The Contest of the Eastern Empire and the

Caliphate, 641-717, ..... 234

XV. The History of the Great Mayors of the Palace,

656-720, ....... 256

XVI. The Lombards and the Papacy, 653-743, . . 272

XVII. Charles Martel and HIS Wars, 720-41, . . 289

XVIII. The Iconoclast Emperors — state of the Eastern

Empire in the Eighth Century, 717-802, . . 300

XIX. Pippin the Short — Wars of the Franks and Lom-
bards, 741-768, ...... 322

XX. Charles the Great — early years 768-785 — Con-
quest OF Lombardy and Saxony, . . . 335
XXI. The later Wars and Conquests of Charles the

Great, 785-814, 357

XXII. Charles the Great and the Empire, . . 369

XXIII. Lewis the Pious, 814-840, .... 383

VIU

CHAPTER

XXIV.

C 071 tents

PAGE

Disruption of the Frankish Empire— the coming
OF THE Vikings, 840-855, .... 405

XXV. The Darkest hour, 855-887. From the Death
OF Lothair I. to the Deposition of Charles the
Fat, . . . . . . .424

XXVI. Italy and Sicily in the Ninth Century, 827-924, . 446

XXVII. Germany, 888-918, 468

XXVIII. The Eastern Empire in the Ninth Century, 802-

912, 478

XXIX. The end of the Ninth Century in Western Europe.

Conclusion, . . .... 496

MAPS

NO.

1. The Perso-Roman Frontier under Justiniai

2. The Frankish Kingdoms in 511

3. The Frankish Kingdoms in 575,

4. Italy in 590,

5. The Asiatic Themes,

6. Saxony in the Ninth Century,

7. The Partition Treaty of Verdun, 853,

8. Western Europe in 890,

page

91
112
160
189
243
350

410
444

GENEALOGICAL TABLES

1. The Vandal Kings,

2. The Eastern Emperors, 457-51!

3. The House of the Merovings,

4. The Lombard Kings,

5. The House of Heraclius,

6. The Mayors of the Palace of the House of St.

7. The Descendants of Charles the Great,

Arnulf,

12

39
166
183
236
260
413

APPENDIX.

Names and Dates of the Emperors at Constantinople, the Ostrogothic

and Visigothic Kings, the Popes, and the Cal phs, . . S^S-Si?

a

CHAPTER I

ODOACER AND THEODORIC

6 476-493

Importance of the year 476— The Emperor Zeno recognises Odoacer as
Patrician in Italy — Odoacer's position — Divisions of Europe in 476 —
The Vandals in Africa and King Gaiseric — Rule of Odoacer in Italy — His
war with Theodoric, and fall.

In the summer of 477 a.d. a band of ambassadors, who
claimed to speak the will of the decayed body which still
called itself the Roman senate, appeared before the judgment-
seat of the emperor Zeno, the ruler of Constantinople and
the Eastern Empire. They came to announce to him that
the army of the West had slain the patrician Orestes, and
deposed from his throne the son of Orestes, the boy-emperoi
Romulus. But they did not then proceed to inform Zeno
that another Caesar had been duly elected to replace their
late sovereign. Embassies with such news had been common
of late years, but this particular deputation, unlike any other
which had yet visited the Bosphorus, came to announce to
the Eastern emperor that his own mighty name sufficed for
the protection of both East and West. They laid at his feet
the diadem and purple robe of Romulus, and professed to
transfer their homage and loyalty to his august person. Then,
as if by way of supplement and addendum, they informed
Zeno that they had chosen Flavius Odoacer for their governor,
and trusted that their august master would deign to ratify
the choice, and confer on Odoacer the title of Patrician.

PERIOD I. A

2 European History, 476-918

It has often been repeated of late years that this date, 476
A.D., does not form a very notable landmark in the history of
the world, that its sole event was the transfer of the nominal
supremacy of the Western World from a powerless Caesar who
lived at Ravenna to a powerless Caesar who lived at Con-
stantinople. We are reminded that the patrician Odoacer
and the deputies of the Roman Senate assured the Eastern
Emperor not that they had cast off allegiance to the imperial
name, but that Italy no longer needed a separate Augustus,
and that a single ruler might once more rule East and West,
Odoacer Pat- ^s in the days of Constantine and Theodosius.
rician in Italy. And if the representatives of the western realm
then proceeded to recommend Zeno to appoint as his vice-
gerent among them ' Odoacer, a mighty man of war, and a
person well skilled in political matters, whom they had
selected to defend their interests,' they were, in truth, making
no new or startling proposition; for similar embassies had
often arrived at Constantinople to announce, not the choice
of a mere patrician, but the election of an independent
emperor.

In a purely formal way all this is true enough, and we must
concede that the permanent establishment of a Teutonic
ruler in Italy v»'as only another instance of what had already
occurred in Spain and Africa. As yet nobody in either of
the three countries had asserted that the Roman Empire had
died out and been replaced for all purposes by a Teutonic
kingship. Documents were still dated and coins still struck
with the name of a Roman Emperor upon them alike in Spain,
Africa, and Italy. After 476 the subjects of the Visigoth
Euric, no less than those of the Scyrrian Odoacer, proceeded
to grave a rude portrait of Zeno on their moneys, just as they
had done a few years earlier with a rude portrait of Valen-
tinian in. What mattered it to them that the one dwelt east
of the Adriatic and the other west ?

But if the historians of the last century were too neglectful
of the constitutional and theoretical aspect of affairs, when

Odoacer and Theodoric 3

they bluntly asserted that the Roman Empire ceased in the
West in 476, there is a danger that our own generation may
become too much imbued with the formal aspect of things,
and too little conscious of the real change which took place
in that obscure year. The disappearance of the Roman
Empire of the West was, in truth, a long process, which
began as early as 411 when Britain — first of all the Occidental
'dioceses' — was abandoned to the barbarian, and did not,
perhaps, end till Francis 11. of Austria laid down the title of
Emperor in the year 1806. Yet if we must choose a point
at which, rather than at any other, we are to put the breach
between the old and the new, if we must select any year as
the dividing-line between ancient history and the Middle
Ages, it is impossible to choose a better date than 476.

Down to the day on which Flavins Odoacer deposed
Augustulus there was always at Rome or Ravenna a prince
who represented in clear heritage the imperial succession that
descended from Octavian and Trajan and Constantino. His
crown might be fragile, his life in constant danger ; his word
might be less powerful in Italy than that of some barbarian
Ricimer or Gundobad who stood behind the throne. Never-
theless, he was brought into real contact with his subjects,
and was a visible, tangible personage whose will and character
still made some difference in the governance of the state.
The weakest Glycerius or Olybrius never sank into being a
mere puppet, like an eighth century king of the Franks, or a
seventeenth century Mikado. Moreover, there was till the
last a possibility — even, perchance, a probability — that there
would arise some strong emperor who would free himself
from the power of his German prime minister. Majorian
nearly succeeded in doing so ; and the stories of the falls of
the Goths, Gainas and Aspar, in the East show that such an
attempt was not a hopeless undertaking.

But when Odoacer seized the throne from the boy Augus-
tulus, and became with the consent, if not the good-will, of
the Constantinopolitan Caesar, the sole representative in the

4 European History, 476-918

West of the imperial system, a very grave change took place
in the status of the empire. Flavins Odoacer was something
Practical far more than a patrician ruling as the repre-
Odoacef's°^ scntativc of an absentee emperor. He was not
position. only the successor of Ricimer, but the predecessor
of Theodoric and Alboin. For, beside being a Roman
official, he was a German king, raised on the shield and
hailed as * Thiudans ' by the whole Teutonic horde who now
represented the old legions of the West. If he never took
the title of ' king of Italy,' it was because territorial appella-
tions of the kind were not yet known. Euric and Gaiseric,
his contemporaries, called themselves Kings of the Visigoths
and Vandals, not of Spain and Africa. And so Odoacer
being king of a land and an array, but not of a nation, may
have been somewhat at a loss how to set forth his royal
appellation. He would not have deigned to call himself
'king of the Italians;' to call himself king of the Scyrri or
Turcilingi, or any other of the tribes who furnished part of
his host, would have been to assume an inadequate name.
Puzzled contemporary chroniclers sometimes called him king
of the Goths, though he himself never used such a title.

Still he was a king, and a king with a settled territory and
an organised host ; not a migratory invader of Italy, as Alaric
had been, but a permanent ruler of the land. In this way
he was undoubtedly the forerunner of the Ostrogoths and
Lombards who took his place, and, though the title would
have sounded strange in his own ears, we may fairly style
him king of Italy, as we so style Theodoric, or Berengar, or
Victor Emmanuel. For it was the will of Odoacer that was
obeyed in the land, and not the will of his titular superior
at Constantinople. It was Odoacer who appointed taxes and
chose officials, and interfered in the election of bishops of
Rome, and declared war on the Rugians or the Vandals. In
the few documents of his time that have survived, the name
of Zeno is seldom mentioned, and in signing grants he
styles himself Odovacar Rex, and not Odovacar Patricius, as

Odoacer and Theodoric 5

strict Roman usage should have prescribed. Similarly, an
Italian official acknowledges his regia largitas^ not \ivs, patricia
magnitudo. It is, then, in every way correct, as well as
convenient, to style him the first German king of Italy, and
to treat his reign as the commencement of a new era. If we
hesitate to do this, we are logically bound to refuse to recog-
nise the Visigothic or Frankish kings in Spain and Gaul as
independent sovereigns till the middle of the sixth century,
and to protract the Roman Empire of the West till Leovigild
and Theudebert formally disclaimed the imperial supremacy
(540-70).

In the year 476 the greater parts of the lands which had
formerly composed the Roman Empire of the West had
taken new forms in the shape of six large Teutonic kingdoms.
Italy and Noricum formed the kingdom of Odoacer ; North
Africa the dominions of the Vandal Gaiseric. The Visigothic
realm of Euric extended from the Loire to the Straits of
Gibraltar. King Gundobad the Burgundian occupied the
valleys of the Rhone and Saone, as far as their extreme
head-waters. The Princes of the Franks reigned on the
Meuse, Moselle, and lower Rhine. Last and smallest of the
six Teutonic States was the kingdom of the Suevi in what
would now be called north Portugal and Galicia. Inter-
spersed among these German kingdoms were three or four
remnants of the old Roman Empire, which had not yet been
submerged by the rising flood of Teutonism, though they
were destined ere long to disappear beneath its surface. The
province of Britain had become a group of small state of West-
and unhappy Celtic kingdoms, on whose borders ern Europe in
the Angle and Saxon had not yet made any ^^^'
appreciable encroachment. Armorica, the modern Brittany,
was also a rough confederacy of Celtic states. The Seine
valley and the middle Loire formed a Romano-Gallic kingdom
under Syagrius, the last governor who had acknowledged the
supremacy of the empire beyond the Alps. The Cantabrians
and Basques in their hills above the Bay of Biscay had

6 European History, 476-918

preserved their independence against the Visigoths, just as
their ancestors, five centuries before, had held out against the
Roman conquerors of Spain. Lastly, there was still a frag-
ment of territory on the Adriatic which claimed to represent
the legitimate Empire of the West. The emperor Julius
Nepos, when driven from Rome and Ravenna, had fled to
Dalmatia, where he contrived to keep together a small
kingdom around his capital of Salona. Of these five scattered
remnants of territory which had not yet fallen into the hands
of the Germans, there were two, the kingdoms of Syagrius
and Nepos, which were doomed to a speedy fall ; for the other
three a longer and more chequered career was reserved.

Around the solid block of land, which had once formed
the Western Empire, were lying a ring of German tribes, who
had worked forward from the North and East into the deserted
dwellings of the races who had already passed on within the
Roman border. The Frisians lay about the mouths of the
Waal and Lech, north of the land lately won by the Franks.
The Alamanni, a confederacy of Suevian tribes, had possession
of the valleys of the Main and Neckar, the Black Forest, and
the banks of the upper Danube. East of them again lay the
Thuringians and Rugians, in the lands which we should now
call northern Bavaria and Bohemia. Beyond them came the
Lombards in Moravia and northern Hungary, and the Herules
and Gepidae on the middle Danube and the Theiss. All these
tribes, like their brethren who had gone before them, were
showing a general tendency to press West and South, and take
their share in the plunder of the dismembered Empire.

The history of the Teutonic kingdoms of the later fifth
and earlier sixth century falls into two distinct halves. The
tale of the doings of Frank, Visigoth, Burgundian, and Suevian
in the West forms one. Very slightly connected with it do
we find the other, the story of the doings of Odoacer in Italy,
and of the Vandal kings in Africa, whose connections and
interests are far more with the Eastern Empire than with the
Transalpine khigdoms. It is with these two states that we

Odoacer and Theodoric 7

shall first have to deal^ leaving the discussion of the affairs of
the Teutons of Gaul and Spain for another chapter.

Gaiseric, or Genseric as the Romans sometimes called him,
first of the Vandal kings of Africa, was still reigning at Car-
thage in the year when Odoacer became ruler of Italy. For
forty-eight years did this first of the Teutonic sea-kings bear
sway in the land which he had won, and hold the naval
supremacy in the central Mediterranean. The creation of
the Vandal kingdom had been one of the most extraordinary
feats of the time of the great migrations, and must be attri-
buted entirely to the personal energy of their long-Hved king.
His tribe was one of the least numerous of the many wan-
dering hordes which had trespassed within the bounds of
the empire, no more than 80,000 souls, men, women, and
children all counted, when they first invaded ^j^^ vandais
Africa. That such a small army should have in Africa,
overrun a province a thousand miles long, and '^^^'^^^
should have become the terror of the whole seaboard of the
Western Empire was the triumph of Gaiseric's ability. He
was not one of the stalwart, hard-fighting, brainless chiefs who
were generally to be found at the head of a German horde,
but a man of very moderate stature, limping all his life through
from a kick that he got from a horse in early youth. His
mental powers alone made him formidable, for he was not only
a general of note, but a wily politician, faithless not with the
light and heady fickleness of a savage, but with the deliberate
and malicious treachery of a professional intriguer. He was
one of those not uncommon instances of a Teuton, who, when
brought into contact with the empire, picked up all the vices
of its decaying civilisation without losing those of his original
barbarism. It is not without some reason that the doings of
Gaiseric have left their mark on the history of language in
the shape of the modern word ' Vandalism.' The sufferings
of Italy and Africa at his hands were felt more deeply than the
woes they had endured at the hands of other invaders, because
of the treachery and malice which inspired them. Compared

8 European History, 476-918

with Gaiseric, Alaric the Goth seemed a model of knightly
courtesy, and Attila the Hun a straightforward, if a brutal,
enemy. The Vandal king's special foibles were the conclusion
of treaties and armistices which he did not intend to keep, and
a large piratical disregard for the need of any pretext or
justification for his raids, save indeed the single plea that the
city or district that he attacked was at that particular moment
not in a good position to defend itself.

From his contact with the empire, Gaiseric had picked up
the characteristics of the two most odious types of the day —
the tax-collector and the persecuting ecclesiastical bigot.
There was more systematic financial oppression in Africa
than in any of the other new Germanic kingdoms, and far
more spiteful persecution of religious enemies.

The system on which the Vandal organised his realm was
not the comparatively merciful ' thirding of the land ' that
Odoacer and Theodoric introduced into Italy. He confiscated
all the large estates of the great African landowners, and turned
them into royal domains, worked by his bailiffs. Of the
smaller estates, tilled by the provincials who owned them, he
made two parts ; those in the province of Africa proper and
the best of those beyond it, were appropriated and made into
Vandal military fiefs for his Teutonic followers. These

Oppression, sortes Vandalorum, as they were called, were
hereditary and free from all manner of taxation. The royal
revenue was raised entirely from those of the poorer and
more remote provincial proprietors, who had not been ex-
propriated, and from them Gaiseric, by pitiless taxation, drew
a very large revenue.

But it was for his persecution, far more than his fiscal oppres-
sion, that Gaiseric was hated. The Vandals, like most of
the other Teutons, had embraced Arianism when they were
converted, and Gaiseric — evil-liver as he was — had set his
mind on forcing his subjects to conform to the religion of
their masters. He confiscated all the Catholic churches in
Africa, and either handed them over to the Arians or destroyed

Odoacer and Theodoric g

them. He forbade the consecration of new Catholic bishops,
and banished or imprisoned all whom he found already exist-
ing in his dominions. Occasionally he put to death, and
frequently he imprisoned or sold as slaves, prominent supporters
of the orthodox faith. If martyrdoms were few, ' Dragonnades '
were many, and, by their systematic cruelty, the Vandal king
and people have gained for themselves an ill name for ever in
the pages of history.

Their hateful oppression of the provincials made the Vandals'
power in Africa very precarious. They were far too few for
the mighty land they had conquered, even when Gaiseric had
attracted adventurers of all sorts to his banner, and had even
enlisted the savage Moors of Atlas to serve on his fleet. The
fanatical Africans, the race who had produced the turbulent
Donatist sectaries and the wild Circumcelliones, were not likely
to submit with meekness to their new masters. They only
waited for a deliverer in order to rise against the Vandals, and
twice, during the reign of Gaiseric, it seemed as if the deliverer
were at hand. On each occasion, the Vandal snatched a
success by his cunning and promptitude, when all the pro-
babilities of success were against him. In 460, the Emperor
Majorian had collected a fleet of overwhelming strength at
Carthagena, and was already gathering the army that was to
be conveyed in it. But warned and helped by traitors, Gaiseric
came down on the ships before they were manned or equipped,
and carried ofl" or burnt them all. In 468, a Gaiseric in
still greater danger had threatened the Vandal ; the danger.
Emperors of East and West, Leo and Anthemius, had joined
their forces to crush the nest of pirates at Carthage. They
actually sent to Africa an army that is said to have amounted
to nearly 100,000 men, and overran the whole country from
Tripoli to the gates of Carthage. In the hour of danger
Gaiseric's courage and treachery were both conspicuous.
After deluding the imbecile Roman general Basiliscus, by
asking and gaining a five days' truce for settling terms of sub-
mission, he sent fire-ships by night against the hostile fleet,

10 European History^ 476-918

and, while the Roman troops were endeavouring to save their
vessels, attacked their unguarded camp. After suffering a
defeat, the coward Basiliscus drew off his armament, and the
Vandal, saved as by a miracle, could breathe again.

The last ten years of Gaiseric's reign were filled with count-
less pirate raids on Italy and Sicily, unopposed by the five
puppet-emperors who ruled at Rome and Ravenna in those
evil days. Gaiseric survived the fall of Romulus Augustulus
just long enough to enable him to make a treaty with Odoacer.
By this agreement the Vandal, always more greedy for money
than for land, gave up his not inconsiderable conquests in
Sicily in return for an annual payment from the newly-enthroned
king of Italy.

Gaiseric died in 477, and with him the greatness of the
Vandals, though their kingdom was to endure fifty years more.
He left behind him a fine fleet and a full treasury, and a palace
resplendent with the spoils taken at the great sack of Rome
in 455. But the dominion of his handful of Vandal followers
in Africa was still as precarious as ever; their one security
had been the cunning and courage of their aged king, and
when he was gone there was no defence left to prevent the
Vandal dominion from falling, the moment that it should be
attacked. Dreading rebellion among the provincials, Gaiseric
had dismantled the walls and gates of every African town save
Carthage. One battle lost would place the whole country-side
in the hands of an assailant, and at no very distant day the
assailant was to come, to avenge the sufferings of three unhappy
generations of the oppressed subjects of the Vandals.

Gaiseric was succeeded by his son, Hunneric, a man already
Hunneric, advanced in years, who w^as, like his father, an
477-84. Arian and a bitter persecutor. He was married

to Eudocia, the daughter of the emperor Valentinian iii., a
prisoner of the sack of Rome in 455. But his wife did not
much influence him ; he drew from her no tincture of Roman
civilisation, nor did her persistent orthodoxy wean him from
his Arianism. After living with him for sixteen unhappy years

Odoacer and Theodoric 1 1

and bearing him two sons, she at last contrived to escape
secretly from Carthage, fled to Jerusalem, and died there
enjoying once more the Catholic communion of which she
had been so long deprived.

Hunneric was a tyrant of the worst type. His dealings with
his family are a sufficient proof of his character. Gaiseric, to
avoid the danger of a minority — a contingency which would
have been fatal to his precarious monarchy— had prescribed
that each Vandal king should be succeeded, not by his next-of-
kin, but by his eldest relative. Such successions were very usual
among the Teutonic tribes, though they had never before been
formally made into a rule. Now Hunneric had a grown-up
son, Hildecat, whom he destined for his successor ; but the
prince was, of course, younger than the king's own brothers.
Instead of cancelling his father's law, Hunneric set to work to
exterminate his brothers, and slew them with all their children,
save two youths, the sons of his next brother, Genzo, who
saved themselves by timely flight.

During the seven years of his reign (477-484) Hunneric
waged no wars ; his fleet could no longer prey on the dying
carcase of the Western Empire. The two formidable king-
doms of the Visigoth Euric and the Scyrrian Odoacer could
not be ravaged like the realm of a Maximus or a Glycerins.
They were left alone, while the energies of Hunneric were de-
voted to persecution of the Catholics in his own realm. The
orthodox declared that he from first to last caused the death
of 40,000 persons, a hyperbolical exaggeration which half
causes us to doubt the reality of what was in truth a very cruel
and severe persecution. Hunneric delighted more in muti-
lation of hands and eyes and tongues than in death given by
the sword and the rope, but there is no doubt that, in a
considerable number of cases, he punished Catholics with the
extreme penalty.

While Hunneric was thus employed it is not strange to hear
that he was vexed by rebellions. The Moors of Mount Atlas
rose against him, and, by no means to the grief of the Latin

12

European History, 476-918

speaking provincials, encroached on the Southern border of
the Vandal kingdom, and pushed their incursions as far as the
Mons Aurasius in Numidia. While preparing to attack them
the king died, smitten, if the Catholic chroniclers are to be
believed, by the same horrid disease which made an end of
Herod Agrippa. His eldest and only grown-up son, Hildecat,
had died before him, and the Vandals at once placed on the
throne Gunthamund, the eldest of his two surviving nephews,
a prince who showed great forbearance, when the circum-
stances are considered, in imprisoning instead of murdering
Hunneric's two younger children.

While we turn from the Vandal kingdom in Africa to the
dominions of Odoacer in Italy, we are struck at once by the
Internal contrast between the methods of government em-
ployed in the two countries. While Gaiseric and
Hunneric ruled as mere barbarians, and cast away
all the ancient Roman machinery of administration, king
Odoacer kept up the whole system as he found it. He

Government
of Odoacer
in Italy.

THE VANDAL KINGS, 427-530.

[The names of kings in Capital letters.]

GAISERIC,

King, 427 ; reigned at

Carthage, 439-477-

Eudocia, == HUNNERIC, Genzo.

daughter
of Valen-
tinian in.

477-484.

Theodoric.

HILDERIC,

523-530.

GUNTHAMUND,
484-496.

THRASAMUND,
496-523.

Gelaris.

GEILAMIR, Ammatas. Tzaza
530-534-

Odoacer and Theodoric 1 5

appointed praetorian prsefects, and magisiri militum^ and counts
of the sacred largesses, just as the Emperors before him had
done. The senate still sat at Rome and passed otiose decrees,
the consuls still gave their names to the year. But his great
scheme of expropriation, by which one-third of the land of
each of the richer proprietors of Italy was confiscated for the
benefit of his mercenary troops, must have caused much
trouble and heart-burning. It is curious that we find so little
complaint made about it in the historians of the time. Pro-
bably Odoacer's wisdom in letting the smaller proprietors
alone has preserved his name from the abuse which still
clings to the reputations of many of the Teutonic conquerors
of the empire.

On the whole the provincials of Italy must have felt
comparatively little change, when they began to be governed
by a barbarian king, instead of by a barbarian patrician, such
as Ricimer or Gundobad had been. Odoacer appears to have
been one of those wise men who can let well alone. Though
an Arian himself, he refrained from all religious persecution ;
and, if he firmly asserted his right to confirm the election of
bishops of Rome, we do not find that he ever forced his own
nominees on the clergy and people. Indeed, he was noted
as a repressor of the alienation of church lands and of
simony.

Odoacer's foreign policy seems to have been limited in its
scope to the design of keeping together the old ' Diocese of
Italy,' that is, the peninsula with its mainland appendages of
Noricum and north Illyria. He ceded to the Visigoth
Euric the coastland of Provence, which he had found still in
Roman hands, and made no attempt to establish relations with
the Romano-Gallic governor Syagrius, who held Mid-Gaul,
pressed in between Visigoth and Frank. On the other hand,
he pursued a firm policy on his north-east frontier. When
Julius Nepos was murdered by rebels in 480, Odoacer at
once invaded and subdued the Dalmatian kingdom, which
the ex-emperor had till the last contrived to retain. Further

14 European History^ 476-918

north, in Noricum, the Rugians had for many years been
molesting the Roman provincials and pushing across the
Danube. Odoacer sent against them his brother Hunwulf,
who drove them back over the river, and took prisoner Feva
their king. But, when freed for a moment from their
Rugian oppressors, the Roman provincials took the oppor-
tunity, not of repairing their ruined cities, but of migrating
Evacuation ^^ massc to Italy. Protected by the army of
of Noricum Hunwulf, the whole population of Noricum,
^^'^' bearing all their goods and chattels, their

treasures, and even the exhumed bodies of their saints,
poured southward over the Alps, and obtained from Odoacer
a settlement on the waste lands of Italy, which the Vandals
had ruined. Only in the Rhaetian valleys did some remnants
of the Latin-speaking population linger behind. Hence it
comes that south Bavaria and archducal Austria are not at
this day speaking Roumansh, like the Engadine, but the
German tongue of the Rugians and Herules who passed into
the deserted province of Noricum, when it was abandoned a
few years later by the armies of Odoacer.

For thirteen years, 476-489, the Scyrrian king bore rule
over Italy, Noricum, and Dalmatia with very considerable
success. As the years rolled on without any disaster, with
the army in good temper, and the Italians fairly content at
being at last freed from Vandal and Gothic raids, Odoacer
must have begun to believe that he had established a king-
dom as well founded as those of his Burgundian or Visigothic
neighbours. But there was one fatal weakness in his position :
he depended not on the loyalty of a single compact tribe, but
on the fidelity of a purely mercenary army, made up of the
remnants of a dozen broken Teutonic clans, which looked
upon him as a general and a paymaster, and not as a legiti-
mate hereditary prince, descended from the gods and heroes.
The regiments of Foederati, who had proclaimed him king,
were in no sense a nation ; it would have taken many gene-
rations to weld them into one, and the fabric of the new

Odoacer and Theodoric 1 5

kingdom was to be tried by the roughest of shocks before
it was even half a generation old.

In 489 there came against Odoacer from the Danube and
the Illyrian Alps, Theodoric, son of Theodemir, the king of
the Ostrogoths, with all the people of his race behind him — a
vast host with their wives and children, their slaves and their
cattle, blocking all the mountain-passes of the north-east with
the twenty thousand ox-waggons that bore their worldly
goods.

Theodoric, the king of that half of the Gothic race which
had lingered behind in the Balkan peninsula, when Alaric
led the other half westward, was just at the end of a long
series of rebellions and ravages by which he had reduced
Thrace and Moesia to a condition even more miserable than
that in which they had been left by the hordes of Attila.^
Having failed, like all his forerunners, to take Constantinople,
and having concluded his fourth peace with the emperor
Zeno, he found himself left with a half-starved army in a land
which had been harried quite bare. He had tried his best
to reduce the Eastern empire to the condition to which Rici-
mer had brought the Western, but the impregnable walls ot
Byzantium had foiled him. Young, capable, and ambitious,
he was yearning for new and more profitable fields to conquer ;
while, at the same time, the emperor of the East was casting
about for all possible means to get the Goths as far away from
his gates as could be managed. Both Zeno and Theodoric
had their reasons for wishing ill to Odoacer: the emperor
beheved him to have fostered or favoured a late rebellion in
Asia which had shaken his throne ; ^ the Ostrogothic king
was being stirred up by Rugian exiles who had fled before
the conquering arm of the king of Italy.

Neither party then needed much persuasion when a scheme

was broached for an invasion of Odoacer's realm by the

Ostrogoths. Zeno, taking the formal ground that, by the

admission of Odoacer and the Italians, he was emperor as

* See pp. 40-3. 2 See p. 44.

1 6 European History, 476-918

well of West as ot East, proceeded to decree the deposition of
the patrician who now ruled at Rome, and his supersession
by a new patrician, the king of the Ostrogoths. Theodoric,
in return for his investiture with his new title, and the grant
of the dominion of Italy, made a loosely-worded promise to
hold his future conquests as the emperor's representative.
How far such homage would extend neither party much
cared ; the emperor only wanted to get rid of the king of
the Goths ; the king of the Goths knew that once master of
Italy he could pay the emperor just as much or as little
deference as he might choose.

In the autumn of 488 Theodoric called together the whole
Ostrogothic people to a camp on the middle Danube, and
bade them prepare for instant migration. The inclement
season of the year that he chose for this march seems to have
been dictated by fear of famine, for the war had so ravaged
Moesia that the Goths had not provisions enough to last till
next spring. So, in the October of 488, the Ostrogoths, a
great multitude of 200,000 or 300,000 souls, followed the
Roman road along the Danube, crossed at Singidunum and
set out to march across Pannonia. But they soon met with
opposition; Traustila, king of the Gepidae, who now occupied
both banks of the mid-Danube, came out against them with
his host to prevent them from passing through his land.
Theodoric defeated him, but found such difficulty in pressing
on through the hostile country that he had to winter on the
Save, supporting all his host on the plunder of the farms of
Theodoric ^^ Gepidac. In the spring of 489 he moved on,
invades Italy, and pressing through the passes of the Julian
^^' Alps, without meeting any opposition from the

troops of the king of Italy, came out at last to the spot where
the gorge of Schonpass leads down into the plain of Venetia.
Here, on the banks of the Isonzo, Odoacer was waiting for
him with all his host of Foederati, and there was a mighty
battle. The result was not doubtful ; the Ostrogoths, a single
people, fighting for their wives and families, who lay behind

Odoacer and Theodoric \J

them in the crowded pass, led by their hereditary king, the
heaven-born Amal, and knowing that defeat meant destruc-
tion, were too desperately fierce to be stopped by the mixed
multitude of mercenaries that followed Odoacer. The king
of Italy was routed, his camp stormed, his army scattered.
It was only beneath the walls of Verona that he could rally
it for a second stand. Just a month after the battle of the
Isonzo, Theodoric appeared again in front of his enemy, and
again won a prompt victory. Here perished most of the old
regiments of Foederati that had been wont to defend Italy, for
Odoacer had fought with the rapid Adige behind him, and
the greater part of his army was rolled back into the fierce
stream.

Abandoning north Italy Odoacer now fell back on the
marsh-girt fortress of Ravenna, which had baffled so many
invaders of the peninsula. Theodoric meanwhile pressed
forward and occupied Milan and all the valley of the Po ; his
triumph was apparently made complete by the surrender of
Tufa, the 'Magisfer militum of Odoacer's host, who submitted
to the Ostrogoth with the wreck of the Italian army.
(Autumn, 489.)

But the war was destined to endure for three years more :
Ravenna was impregnable and Theodoric was thrice diverted
from its siege by disturbances from outside. First Tufa, with
the remnant of the Foederati, broke faith and rejoined his old
master Odoacer. Then, in the next year, Gundobad, king of
the Burgundians, came over the Alps and had to be turned
back. Last Frederic, king of the Rugians, the first of the
many Frederics of German history, took arms in favour of
Odoacer, though Theodoric had sheltered him three years
before, when he had fled from the armies of the king of Italy.
It was not till July 491 that Odoacer was for
the last time driven back within the shelter of Ravenna,
the marshes of Ravenna. For twenty months 491-93.
more he maintained himself within its impregnable walls, till
sheer famine drove him to ask for peace in February 493.

PERIOD I. B

1 8 European History^ 476-918

Theodoric proffered his vanquished enemy far better terms
than he could have expected — that he should retain his
kingly title and a share in the rule of Italy. But, when
Odoacer had laid down his arms and came to his conqueror's
camp, he was treacherously slain at a banquet, only ten days
after Ravenna fell. This was almost the only base and mean
crime in Theodoric's long and otherwise glorious career : his
whole conduct at the time of the surrender seems to prove
that he deliberately lured his rival to visit him, with the fixed
intention of putting him to death. (March, 493.)

So died Odoacer in the sixtieth year of his age ; seventeen
years after he had slain Orestes, he met the same fate that he
had inflicted on his predecessor.

CHAPTER II

THEODORIC KING OF ITALY

493-526

The Ostrogothic race — Character of Theodoric — His Adniinislration of Italy —
Theodoric in Rome — Foreign Policy of Theodoric — His wars with the
Franks and Burgundians — His supremacy ifl Western Europe— Misfor-
tunes of his later years — Death of Boethius— Failure of Theodoric's great
schemes.

From the formal and constitutional point of view the substi-
tution of king Theodoric for king Odoacer, as ruler in Italy,
made no change in the position of affairs. From the practical
point of view the change was important, for the new Teutonic
kingdom was very much stronger than the old. Its ruler was
a younger and a far abler man^ the wisest and most far-sighted
of all the Germans of the fifth and sixth centuries. Moreover,
the military power of the Ostrogoths was far greater than that
of the mixed multitude of Foederati who had followed
Odoacer. They were a numerous tribe, confident of their
own valour after a century of successful war, and devotedly
attached to the king, who, for the last twenty years, had never
failed to lead them to victory. While they preserved their
ancient courage, they had acquired, by a stay of three genera-
tions within the bounds of the empire, a higher level of
civilisation than any other of the Teutonic tribes. Their
dress, their armour, their manner of life, showed traces of
their intercourse with Rome; they had been Christians for
a century, and had forgotten many of the old heathen and

20 European History^ 476-918

barbarous customs of their ancestors. They possessed, too,
first of all Teutonic peoples, the germ of a written literature
in the famous Gothic Bible of Ulfilas. There are documents
surviving, written in the character which Ulfilas had devised
for his people, which show that there were Gothic clergy and
even laymen who could commit their contracts to paper in
their own tongue. Theodoric himself never learnt to write,
but there must have been many among his subjects who could
do so. Though the king actually discouraged the Goths from
giving themselves up to book-learnings yet in the generation
which followed him there were Goths skilled both in Roman
and Greek literature, — some even who called themselves
philosophers and claimed to follow Plato.

Of all the German nations it seemed that the Ostrogoths
were the most suited to form the nucleus for a new kingdom,
which should grow up a young and strong yet civilised state
on the ruins of the Roman empire. And if any one man could
have brought such a consummation to pass, Theodoric was
certainly the most fitted for the task. Ten years spent as a
hostage at Constantinople had shown him the strong and the
weak points in the Roman system of administration ; twenty
Character of ycars Spent in the field at the head of his tribes-
Theodoric. j^icu had won him an experience in war, both
with Roman and barbarian, that made him unequalled as a
general. Italian statesmen found him a master-mind who
could comprehend all difficulties of the administration of an
empire. Gothic warriors looked up to him not only as the
most skilful marshaller of a host, but also as the stoutest lance
in his own army. Alike when he smote the Gepidae by the
Danube, and when he drove the Foederati of Odoacer into the
Adige, the king had himself headed the final and decisive
charge that broke the shield-wall of the enemy. But Theo-
doric was even more than a great statesman and warrior : he
was a man of wide mind and deep thought. His practical
wisdom took shape in numerous proverbs which his subjects
long treasured. And, in spite of one or two deep stains on his

Theodoric king of Italy 2 1

character, we may say that his brain was inspired by a sound
and righteous heart. The essential justice and fairness of his
mind shines out in his official correspondence, even when
enveloped in the obscure and grandiloquent verbiage of his
secretary Cassiodorus. Among all the Teutonic kings he was
the justissimus unus et servantissimus aeqiii^ who set him-
self to curb the violence of the Goth, no less than the
chicanery of the Roman, and taught both that he was no
respecter of persons, but a judge set upon the throne to deal
out even-handed justice. Alone among all rulers, Roman or
German, in his day, he was a believer without tending in the
least to become a persecutor. No monarch for a thousand
years to come could have been found to echo Theodoric's
magnificent declaration that 'religion is a thing which the
king cannot command, because no man can be compelled to
believe against his will.' Though an Arian himself he
employed Catholics, Gothic and Roman, as freely Theodoric's
as those of his own sect. Even the Jews got religious
strict justice from him, when every other state in ^^^^^'
the world dealt hardly with them. The abuse which he won
from fanatical Christians for resenting the mobbing of a
Rabbi, or the profanation of a synagogue, is one of the
highest testimonies in his praise. 'The benefits of justice,' he
said, 'must not be denied even to those who err from the
faith.' Yet he was not, as were some others who tolerated Jews,
a semi-pagan or an agnostic ; the very rescripts which grant
temporal justice to the oppressed Hebrews end with an
appeal to them to leave their hard-heartedness and flee from
the wrath to come.

In managing the settlement of his victorious tribesmen on
the soil of Italy, Theodoric showed much ability. The third
of the land, which Odoacer had confiscated seventeen years
before, seems to have sufficed for their estabhshment. The
greater part of the Foederati who had been holding this third,
had fallen in battle, and those who escaped the Gothic sword
seem paostly to have perished in a simultaneous outbreak of

22 European History, 476-918

riot and murder, by which the Italians celebrated the down-
fall of Odoacer, when they heard that he had finally been shut
Settlement of ^P ^^ Ravenna. Hence Theodoric was able to
the Ostro- provide for his countrymen without further spolia-
^°^ ^* tion of the native proprietors. He threatened

indeed for a moment to deprive of their lands and rights those
Italians who adhered too long to Odoacer, but better counsel
prevailed, and even those men were spared. So the Goths
settled down with little friction among their new subjects :
they lay thickly along the valley of the Po, and in Picenum,
more sparsely scattered in Tuscany and central Italy; into
the south few seem to have penetrated. Nearly all settled
down to farm the country-side; only in the royal towns of
Ravenna, Pavia, and Verona did the Goths become an
appreciable element in the urban population.

Theodoric's plan for dealing with the government of con-
quered Italy deserves careful study. He did not abolish the
remains of the Roman administrative system which he found
still existing, nor did he, on the other hand, endeavour to
subject the Goths to Roman law. He was content that, for a
time, two systems of administration should go on side by side.
The Goths were to be ruled and judged by his ' counts,' the
Gothic governors whom he set over each Italian province, his
ealdormen, as an Anglo-Saxon would have called them,
according to the traditional folk-right of their tribe. The
Romans looked for justice to magistrates of their own race.
If a Goth and a Roman went to law, the case was heard before
the count and the Italian judge, sitting together on the same
bench.

In the central administration the same mixture of systems
was seen. Theodoric's court was like that of another German
king in many ways ; he had about him his personal retinue of
military retainers, the king's men, whom the Goths called by
the name of Saiones, but whom, in writing our own English
history we should call thegns or gesiths. The Saiones went
on the king's errands, served him in bower and hall, and

Theodoric king of Italy 23

acted as his body-guard on the battle-field. Above their
rank and file rose two or three more prominent followers
who seem to represent the great officers of the central
household of the later Middle Ages ; such were Government,
the chamberlain, regiae praepositus domus, and the great cap-
tains who in Roman usage were styled magistri militum^ and
the king's high-butler and steward.

But beside his Teutonic court — ' the hounds of the royal
hall,' as Boethius called them — Theodoric kept up a full
establishment of Roman officials, bearing the old titles that
had been used under the empire — praetorian praefects, masters
of the offices, quaestors, and notaries. He showed great skill and
discretion in choosing the most honest among his Italian subjects
for these posts, so that his courtiers never became an oppressive
official clique, as had habitually been the case under the later
emperors. He even chose as his praetorian praefect Liberius,
who had adhered to Odoacer to the last, and told him that he
esteemed him all the more for his fidelity to his first master.
The best men in Italy were undoubtedly set to administer the
central government ; but it was Theodoric's misfortune that
the better the man the more likely he was to indulge in vain
dreams of old Roman glory, and to resent in his heart the
wise rule of the Ostrogoth. Boethius, the last of the Romans
as he may be called, served Theodoric all his life without
learning true loyalty to him.

We have not space to notice half of Theodoric's reforms in
the administration of Italy. Most wise among them was the
careful restoration of the old roads, aqueducts, and drainage
canals, which had been the glory of the early empire. He
was himself a great builder, and erected royal palaces at
Verona and Ravenna, of which, alas ! only the smallest frag-
ments survive. But he spent even greater care in keeping up
ancient edifices. In Rome he set apart every year two hun-
dred pounds weight of gold pieces for the repair of palaces
and public buildings. He took under his protection even
statues and monuments, and added representations of himself

24 European History^ 476-918

to the crowd of effigies which adorned Rome. So thoroughly
did he put himself in the place of the Caesars that he even
took care to celebrate games in the circus, and harangued the
Theodoric assembled people in the Forum. He attended
in Rome. ^.xvA took part in the debates of the Senate, and
endeavoured to strengthen it by the appointment of a few
Gothic senators. If he showed some unwisdom in arranging
for the resumption of the bread-dole, which had been such a
curse to Rome, he atoned for it by a liberal scheme for the
rearrangement of taxes, which at once relieved the people and
filled the treasury. At his death the royal hoard at Ravenna
amounted to no less than 40,000 pounds weight of gold,
;,£'i, 600,000 in hard cash.

Theodoric's wise administration at home was accompanied
by an equally firm and able foreign policy. His first care was
to establish friendly relations with the Eastern Empire. Even
before Odoacer had met his death, he despatched an embassy
to report to Zeno that he had carried out his commission of
conquering Italy, and claimed an imperial confirmation of his
title. But the embassy found Zeno just dead, and his suc-
cessor, Anastasius, engrossed in the suppression of riots and
rebellions. It was not till 497 that the emperor recognised
the king of the Goths as ruler in Italy. Then, however,
Anastasius made up for his tardy recognition by sending to
Theodoric the regalia which Odoacer had forwarded to Zeno
twenty years before, the robes and palace ornaments, which
had last been used by the boy Romulus Augustulus.

During the thirty-three years of the Amal's reign in Italy he
had only one dispute with the emperor : this was a frontier
quarrel in 505, caused by troubles in Illyricum. Theodoric
had taken in hand the restoration of the bounds of the
Western Empire towards the East, and his generals, having sub-
dued Pannonia as far as Sirmium and Singidunum, trespassed
on to Moesian soil, and came into contact with the East-
Roman armies. There was some trouble for three years, but
no great war, though in 508 two of Anastasius' generals made

Theodoric king of Italy 25

a destructive raid on Apulia. But peace was ultimately made
on the terms that the boundary should be drawn, as in the
days of the Western Empire, at the Save and Danube.

Much more important were Theodoric's dealings with his
neighbours to west and north. He took over the task of
Odoacer in guarding the old Roman districts beyond the Alps,
which had once composed the provinces of Rhaetia and
Noricum. Both were now becoming Teutonic rather than
Latin-speaking lands. Into Rhaetia had fled many of the
Alamanni, or Suabians, when Chlodovech the Frank in 496
drove them out of their lands on the Main and Neckar.
This people gladly acknowledged Theodoric as over-lord, in
return for his protection against the pursuing Franks, whom
the Ostrogoth bade halt at the line of the upper Rhine,
between Basel and Constanz. Farther east, in Noricum, the
place of the emigrant Roman provincials had now been
taken by a mixed Teutonic population, the remnant of the
broken clans of the Rugians, Scyrri, and Turcilingi, who were
just beginning to call themselves by the common name of
Bavarians, under which we know them so well a few years
later. They, too, like the Alamanni, were glad to acknowledge
Theodoric as suzerain, and pay him tribute.

To the west, Theodoric at his accession found his kingdom
bounded by the Alps, for Odoacer had given up to the Visi-
goths Marseilles, and the other towns which had obeyed the
emperor down to the year 476. Beyond the Alps, Alaric the
Visigoth now held the mouths of the Rhone and the Provengal
Coast, while Gundobad the Burgundian ruled on the middle
and upper Rhone, from Avignon as far as Besangon and
Langres. North of both Burgundian and Visigoth, and far
from the Alpine borders of Theodoric, lay the new Frankish
kingdom of Chlodovech, now reaching as far as the Loire and
the upper Seine.

With all these three monarchs the king of the Ostrogoths
had many dealings. At the very beginning of his reign he
asked for the hand of Augofleda, the sister of Chlodovech,

26 European History, 476-918

and hoped that by this alHance he had bound the clever and
unscrupulous Frank to himself. By Augofleda he became the
father of Amalaswintha, the only child born to him in lawful
wedlock, though he had two elder daughters by a concubine
ere he came to Italy. Soon after his own marriage with the
Marriages of ^^'^'^'^kish princcss, Thcodoric wedded one of
Theodoric's thesc natural children to Sigismund, the son and
family. j^^-j. ^^ ^^ Burgundian Gundobad, and the other

to Alaric the Visigoth. Thus all his neighbours became his
relatives.

But this did not secure peace between the new kinsmen of
Theodoric. In 499 Chlodovech fell on Gundobad, to strip him
of his realm, routed him, and shut him up in Avignon, the
southernmost of his strongholds; but after many successes the
Frank lost all that he had gained, and turned instead to
attack the king of the Visigoths. Theodoric strove unsuc-
cessfully to prevent both wars, and was not a little displeased
when, in 507, his brother-in-law Chlodovech overran southern
Gaul, and slew his son-in-law Alaric in battle. Burgundian
and Frank then united to destroy the Visigoths, and might
have done so had not Theodoric intervened. The heir of the
Visigothic throne was now Amalric, the son of Alaric and of
the king of Italy's daughter. To defend his grandson's
realm Theodoric declared war both on Chlodovech and on
Gundobad, and sent his armies over the Alps to save the
remnants of the Visigothic possessions in Gaul. One host
crossed the Cottian Alps, and fell on Burgundy; another
entered Provence, and smote the Frank and Burgundian
besiegers of Aries. With his usual good fortune, Theodoric
recovered all Gaul south of the Durance and the Cevennes
(509), so that the conquests of Chlodovech were confined to
Aquitaine. The way was now clear for the Ostrogothic armies
to march into Spain, to support the claims of the child
Amalric against Gesalic, a bastard son of Alaric 11., who had
been proclaimed king of the Visigoths at Barcelona. After
two years of guerilla fighting, the pretender was hunted down

Theodoric king of Italy 27

and slain, though he had sought and obtained some help from
the Vandal king Thrasamund (511).

For the next fourteen years, till Amalric reached manhood,
Theodoric ruled Spain in his grandson's behalf. He was
recognised as king of the Visigoths, in common theodoric
with Amalric, and ruled both halves of the Gothic king of the
race — reunited after an interval of two hundred Visigoths,
years — with equal authority, and his royal mandates ran in
Spain as well as in Italy. His delegate was Count Theudis,
an Ostrogothic noble, who was made regent, and ruled at
Narbonne over all the Visigothic realm west of the Rhone ;
while the Roman Liberius, named praetorian praefect of
Gaul, administered Visigothic Provence from the ancient city
of Aries.

Theodoric's power was now supreme from Sirmium to
Cadiz, and from the upper Danube to Sicily. He ruled the
larger half of the old Roman Empire of the West, and exer-
cised much influence in Gaul and Africa, the two parts of it
that were not absolutely in his hands. After the war of 507-10
Clodovech the Frank had died, and his four sons, who parted
his realm, made peace with the Ostrogoth ; while Gundobad,
the Burgundian king, had been fain to follow their example
even earlier.

Twelve years of peace followed (511-523) before Theodoric,
now in extreme old age, had occasion to interfere in Gaul.
Sigismund, the husband of Theodoric's elder natural daughter,
was now king of the Burgundians. He was a gloomy and
suspicious tyrant, and drew down the wrath of Theodoric by
murdering his own heir, Sigeric, who was the Gothic king's
eldest grandson. To punish this crime Theodoric leagued
himself with the Franks, and attacked Burgundy. He con-
quered, and took as his share of the spoil the lands between
Durance and Drome, with the cities of Avignon, Orange, and
Viviers, the farthest extension to the north-west of the Ostro-
gothic empire.

The circle of family alliances which Theodoric had made

28 European History, 476-918

with his European neighbours was extended even beyond the
Mediterranean. He married his sister, Amalafrida, a widowed
princess, no longer in her first youth, to Thrasamund, the old
king of the Vandals. In virtue of this connection he seems
to have treated Thrasamund as a younger brother, if not as a
vassal. When the Vandal dared to help the usurper Gesalic
in Spain, Theodoric imposed a tribute on him, and bade
him for the future do nothing without the counsel of his wife
Amalafrida. Thrasamund did not resent this treatment, and
for the future did all he could to propitiate his brother-in-law.
The Vandal state, indeed, was not in a condition to risk a
quarrel with Theodoric. Ever since the death of Hunneric it
had been steadily on the decline. In the reigns of Guntha-
mund (484-496) and Thrasamund himself (496-523) it was
continually losing ground to the insurgent Moors of Atlas.
Gunthamund, who was not a persecutor like his predecessor
Hunneric, had endeavoured to win the favour of the Catholics
by allowing them to recall their exiled bishops and open their
churches. But these boons did not check the falling away
of his subjects, and during his reign the Moors conquered
from him the whole sea-coast from Tangiers to the gates of
Caesarea. His brother Thrasamund tried the opposite policy,
Vandal Per- ^^sumed the persecutions, deported two hundred
secutions in CathoHc bishops to Sardinia, and renewed the
Africa. horrors of the days of Hunneric. Naturally, he

was no more fortunate in dealing with the native rebels than
his brother had been. A quarrel with Theodoric would have
meant ruin, so he kept himself from all foreign war. He
died in 523 at a great age, killed, it is said, by the news of a
great defeat which his armies had suffered at the hands of the
Moors. His successor was his cousin Hilderic, the son of
Hunneric and the Roman princess Eudocia, the last scion of
the house of Theodosius the Great. Educated by a Catholic
mother, Hilderic was himself the first orthodox Vandal king,
and ended the long African persecutions. But his reign was
not happier than those of his two cousins. His enthusiastic

Theodoric king of Italy 29

championship of the CathoHc cause brought him into colHsion
with the bulk of his Vandal subjects, and he was attacked by
a rebelHous party, headed by Theodoric's sister, the queen-
dowager Amalafrida, who wished to proclaim as king of Africa
one of her late liusband's nephews. Hilderic had the better
of the fighting, defeated the rebels, and captured Amalafrida,
whom he consigned to a dungeon, to the great wrath of her
brother, the king of the Goths (523). As long as Theodoric
lived he merely kept her in close confinement, but the moment
he heard of the old man's death, in 526, he had the cruelty to
slay the aged queen, a deed which alienated for ever the
Vandals and the Ostrogoths.

The captivity of his sister was not the only sorrow which
clouded the last few years of Theodoric s long life. He was
left in some trouble as to the succession to his crown. He
had married his only legitimate child, Amalaswintha, to a
Visigothic prince named Eutharic, of whose prudence and
valour much was expected. Theodoric intended him to
reign with his daughter as colleague and king-consort, but in
522 Eutharic died, leaving as his heir a boy of only five years
of age. Theodoric could not but see that on his death the
accession of a woman and a child to the throne would be
fraught with the gravest danger, more especially as his nephew
Theodahat, the nearest male heir of the Amal house, was
known to be an unscrupulous intriguer.

It was perhaps owing to a temper embittered by these
family troubles that Theodoric was led, during the last few
years of his life, into an unhappy quarrel with some of the
best of his Itahan subjects. Rightly or wrongly, he had
imbibed a notion that the Italians would take advantage of
his death to stir up the emperor at Constantinople against
his infant heir. The idea was very justifiable ; for, in spite of
all Theodoric's wisdom and goodness, most of his Roman
subjects never learnt to look kindly upon a ruler who was at
once an Arian and a Goth, and it seems that some, at least,
of the Senaie were secretly corresponding with the emperor

30 European History, 476-918

Justin. That monarch, the first Eastern Emperor for fifty
years who was undisputedly orthodox, had fired the enthu-
siasm of Catholics all over the world by his attempts to
suppress Arianism, and the faithful in Italy were undoubtedly
contrasting his action with the strict impartiality of Theodoric,
to the latter's disadvantage. In 524 the patrician Albinus
was accused by Cyprian, the magister officiorum, of sending
The Misfor- ^^^^loyal letters to Constantinople. At his trial he
tunes of was defended by the Consular Boethius, at once a

Boethius. gj.g^^ official and the best-known author of the
day, noted as philosopher, theologian, astronomer, and me-
chanist— in short, the chief representative of the intellect of
Italy. Boethius resented the impeachment of Albinus in the
most fiery terms. ' If this man is guilty,' he cried, ' then both
I and all the Senate are guilty too.' The accuser, Cyprian,
proceeded to take him at his word, and brought forward
further evidence to prove that Boethius himself had been
one of the senators in correspondence with Justin, or had, at
least, done his best to suppress evidence against those who
actually were so engaged.^ Such an accusation, even if not fully
proved, seems to have fired the anger of the old king. He
could not tolerate disloyalty in a man whom he had always
distinguished by his favour, and preferred to the highest
offices. By his orders Boethius was put on his trial before
the Senate, and there condemned. For a year Theodoric
kept him in prison — a year invaluable to future ages, for in
it the captive composed his Consolation of Philosophy , a work
which was to be the comfort of many a noble but unhappy
soul in the Middle Ages, and to find countless readers from
King Alfred down to Sir Thomas More. At the end of a
year's confinement Boethius was tortured and put to death.
Possibly he was altogether innocent of the charge laid to his
account, that of secret correspondence with Constantinople ;

^ This would seem to have been the charge which Boethius himself
expressed by saying that he was accused of ' having endeavoured to pre-
serve Ih-j sen:\tors.'

Theodoric king of Italy 3 1

but more probably he had actually written harmless letters
into which a treasonable purpose was read by the malice of
his accusers and the fears of the king.

The death of Boethius was followed by another execution,
that of his aged father-in-law, Symmachus, the chief of the
senate, whom Theodoric put to death on the mere suspicion
that he resented his son-in-law's cruel end. There seems to
have been no further charge laid against him, and no formal
trial, so that this action ranks with the murder of Odoacer as
the second unpardonable sin of Theodoric's Ufe (525),

Others also suffered during the last two years of the old
king's reign. In anger at Justin's persecution of the Arians, he
threatened reprisals against the Catholics of Italy, and charged
John the bishop of Rome to sail at once to Constantinople,
and inform the emperor that further persecution would mean
war with the Goths, and involve an attack on the orthodox
throughout the Ostrogothic dominions. Moved by these
threats, Justin suspended his harrying of the Arians, and
treated the Pope with such respect and distinction that he
roused the suspicions of the king of Italy. Theodoric
thought that John had been too friendly with the emperor,
and suspected that the honours and reverence shown him at
Constantinople were part of a plan for seducing away the
allegiance of his Roman subjects. When the Pope returned
he was thrown into prison, where, being already in ill-health,
he soon died. He was at once hailed as a martyr by all the
Western Church (526).

The Italians thought that the execution of Symmachus and
the imprisonment of Pope John foreboded a general persecu-
tion throughout Italy. It was rumoured that the Arians had
won from the king his consent to an edict closing the
Cathohc Churches, and that the Goths were to take arras
against their fellow-subjects. Considering the tenor of the
whole of Theodoric's previous life, it is most improbable that
he had any such wild scheme of intolerance in hand. But he
had certainly grown gloomy, suspicious, and hard in hi«5

32 European History, 476-918

declining days, and it was well for his own fame, as well as

De th of ^^^ ^^^ subjects, that he was carried off by dysen-

Theodoric, tcry HOt long after the death of Pope John. It

5=^^- would have been still better, both for king and

people, had the end come three years earlier, before his first

harsh dealings with Boethius. His unpopularity at the

moment of his death is shown by the survival of several

curious legends, which tell how holy hermits saw his soul

dragged down to hell by the injured ghosts of John and

Symmachus, or carried off by the fiend himself

So, after reigning thirty-three years over Italy, and twelve
years over Spain, Theodoric died, aged seventy-two, and was
buried by the Goths in the round mausoleum outside the gate
of Ravenna, which he had built for himself many years before.
His body has long disappeared, but his empty tomb still sur-
vives, well-nigh the only perfect and unbroken monument
that recalls the sixty years of Gothic dominion in Italy.

CHAPTER III

THE EMPERORS AT CONSTANTINOPLE

476-527

Contrast between the fates of the Eastern and Western Empires — The East
recovers its strength — Leo I. and the Isaurians — The Emperor Zeno and
the rebelHon against him — Wars of Zeno with the two Theodorics, 478-
483— The ' Henoticon ' — Character of the Emperor Anastasius — RebeUion
of the Isaurians — War with Persia, 503-5 — The ' Bhie and Green '
Factions — RebeUion of Vitalian— Accession of Justin i.

At Rome the emperors of the third quarter of the fifth
century — all the ephemeral Caesars whose blood-stained
annals fill the space between the death of Valentinian 111. and
the usurpation of Odoacer — had been the mere creatures of
the barbarian, or semi-barbarian, ' patricians ' and ' masters
of the soldiers,' to whom they owed alike their elevations
and their untimely ends. The history of those troubled years
would be more logically arranged under the names of the
Caesar-makers, Ricimer, Gundobad, Orestes, than under those
of the unhappy puppets whom they manipulated.

But, when we turn our eyes eastward to Constantinople,
we are surprised to find how entirely different was the aspect
of affairs. The Western Empire was rapidly falling to pieces,
province after province dropping out of the power of the
emperor, and becoming part of the realm of some Gothic,
Burgundian, or Vandal prince, who paid the most shadowy
homage, or no homage at all, to the ephemeral Caesar at

PERIOD I. c

34 European History, 476-918

Rome. The Eastern Empire, on the other hand, maintained
Contrast be- its boundaries intact, and was slowly building
I^d wfstem " ^P ^^^ Strength for renewed activity in the next
Empires. ccntury. While nine emperors' reigns filled no

more than twenty-one years at Rome (455-476), two emperors
were reigning for thirty-four years (457-491) on the Bosphorus.
And the character of the rulers of East and West was as
different as their fates : the short-lived Roman Caesars were
either impotent nobodies raised to the throne by the caprice
of the barbarian, or ambitious young soldiers who vainly
dreamed that they might yet redeem the evil day, and save
the State. Their contemporaries in the East, Leo, Zeno, and
Anastasius, were three elderly officials, men of experience,
if not of great ability, who followed each other in peaceable
succession, and devoted their declining years to a cautious
defensive policy, with the result that they left a full treasury,
a strong and loyal army, and an intact realm behind them.

At the beginning of the fifth century the eastern half of the
Empire had seemed no less likely than the western to fall
under the dominion of the barbarian, and crumble to pieces.
The Goths were cantoned all over Thrace, Moesia, and Asia
Minor, and the Gothic general Gainas had taken possession
of the person and authority of the Emperor Arcadius. Had
he been a man of greater ability he might have made and
unmade emperors, as Ricimer afterwards did in the West.
But the schemes of Gainas were wrecked, and the Empire
saved by the great riot at Constantinople in 401, when the
Qo\k\\Q, foederati v^^xQ massacred, and their leader chased away
by the infuriated populace, who thus saved not only their
own homes, but the whole East, from the danger of Gothic
domination.

Though the European provinces of the Eastern Empire
suffered grievously from Teutonic ravages during the first
eighty years of the century, there was never again any danger
that the barbarians would get hold of the machinery of
government, and subvert the Empire from within. In the

The Emperors at Constantinople, 476-527 35

long reign of Theodosius 11. (406-450), if no progress was
made in strengthening the realm, at least no ground was lost.

Two external causes were, during this time, operating in
favour of the Eastern Empire. The first was the absolute
impregnability of Constantinople against any invader who
could only assault it from the land side : the town could not
be starved out, — as Rome was starved by Alaric, — and its
walls could laugh to scorn all such siege appliances as that
age knew. Though Goth and Hun pushed their ravages far
and wide in the Balkan peninsula, they never seriously
attempted to molest the great central place of arms on which
the East-Roman power based itself. The Western Empire
had no such stronghold— capital, arsenal, har- importance of
bour, and centre of commerce all in one. Constanti-
Ravenna, where the Western Caesars took refuge "°^ ^'
in times of storm and stress, was in every way inferior to
Constantinople as a base of armed resistance to the invader.
Though its marshes made it strong, it did not cover or protect
any considerable tract of country, and it was just far enough
from its harbour to allow of an enemy cutting off its supplies.

The second great factor in the vitality of the Eastern
Empire was the prolonged freedom from foreign war enjoyed
by its Asiatic provinces. After the revolt of Gainas in 401,
the Goths disappeared from Asia Minor, and no other
invaders made any serious breach into that peninsula, into
Syria, or into Egypt, for a hundred and forty years. Two
short Persian wars, in 420-421 and 502-505, led to nothing
worse than partial ravages on the Mesopotamian frontier. It
is true that the Asiatic provinces of the empire were not
altogether spared by the sword in the fifth century, but such
troubles as they suffered were due to native revolts, chiefly
of the Isaurians among the mountains of southern Asia
Minor. These risings were local, and led to no very wide-
spread damage, nor was the fighting caused by the revolts of
the rebel-emperors Basiliscus and Leontius, in the reign of
Zeno, much more destructive. On the whole, the four oriental

36 European History, 476-918

'dioceses' of the Eastern Empire must have enjoyed in the
Prosperity of fifth century a far greater measure of peace and
the East. prosperity than they had known, or were to know,
in the previous and the succeeding ages. It was their wealth,
duly garnered into the imperial treasury, that made the
emperors strong to defend their European possessions. We
shall soon see that their military resources also were to count
in a most effective way in the reorganisation of the East-
Roman army.

But the strength of Constantinople and the wealth of Asia
might have proved of no avail had they fallen into the hands
of a series of emperors like Honorius or Valentinian in. We
must in common fairness grant that the personal characters of
the Emperors Leo i., Zeno, and Anastasius i. had also the
most important influence on the empire. These three cautious,
persistent, and careful princes, who neither endangered the
empire by over-great enterprise and ambition, nor let it fall
to pieces by want of energy, were exactly the men most fitted
to tide over a time of transition.

Leo, the first of these three emperors, was already dead
when Romulus Augustulus was deposed in the West. He had
left his mark on Constantinopolitan history by his summary
execution of Aspar, the last of the great barbarian ' masters
of the soldiers,' who rose to a dangerous height of power in
the East; and still more by his very important scheme for
reorganising the army, by enrolling a large proportion of
native-born subjects of the empire in its ranks. Recognising
the peril of trusting entirely to Teutonic mercenaries, — the
fatal error that had ruined the Western Empire, — Leo had
enlisted, in as great numbers as he could obtain, the hardy
Leo and the mountaiucers of Asia Minor, more especially the
isaurians. Isaurians. His predecessors had distrusted their
unruly and predatory habits, but Leo saw that they supplied
good and trustworthy fighting material, and dealt with them
as the elder Pitt dealt with the Highlanders after the rebellion
of 1745, teaching them to use in the service of the govern-

The Emperors at Constantinople^ 476-527 37

ment the wild courage that had so often been turned against
it. Leo had indeed done all that he could for the Isaurians,
and had at last married his elder daughter Ariadne to Zeno,
an Isaurian by birth, and one of the chief officers of his court.

It was this Zeno who was seated on the throne of the
Eastern realm at the moment that Odoacer made himself
ruler of Italy, and to him was addressed the celebrated petition
of the Roman Senate which besought him to allow East and
West alike to repose under the shadow of his name, but to
confide the practical governance of Italy to the patrician
Odoacer. Zeno was neither so able nor so respectable a
sovereign as his father-in-law : two faults, a caution which
verged on actual cowardice and a taste for low debauchery,
have blasted his reputation. His enemies were never tired of
taunting him with his Isaurian birth, and recalling The Emperor
to memory that his real name was Tarakodissa, Zeno, 475-491.
the son of Rusumbladeotus, for he had only taken the Greek
appellation of Zeno when he came to court. But though he
was by birth an obscure provincial, and by nature something
of a coward and a free liver, Zeno had his merits. He was a
mild and not an extortionate administrator, had a liberal
hand, a good eye for picking out able servants, was sanguine
and persevering in all that he undertook, and pursued in
Church matters a policy of moderation and conciliation,
which may bring him credit now, though in his own time it
provoked many strictures from the orthodox. The worst
charges that can be laid to his account were acts that were
prompted by his timidity rather than by any other motive, —
two or three arbitrary executions of officers whom he rightly
or wrongly suspected of plotting against his life. After three
rebellions which came within an ace of success, it is not
unnatural that he grew somewhat nervous about his own safety.

Zeno's reign was more troubled in this way than those of
his predecessor and successor. His well-known lack of daring
tempted men to conspire against him, but they reckoned
without his cunning and his perseverance, and in every case

3 8 Eu ropean History, 476-918

came to an evil end. Zeno could count on the active support
of his countrymen the Isaurians, who now formed the most
trustworthy part of the army, and on the passive obedience,
or at worst the neutraUty, of the mercantile classes and the
bureaucracy, who disliked all change and disorder. Hence it
came to pass that court conspiracies, or local revolts of
divisions of the army, were not enough to shake his throne.

The first half of Zeno's reign may be divided into three
parts by these three conspiracies. The emperor had hardly
ascended the throne when the first of them broke out : it was
a palace intrigue hatched by the Empress-Dowager Verina,
who detested her son-in-law. The conspirators took Zeno
quite by surprise, they failed to catch him, for he fled from
Constantinople at the first alarm, but they got possession of
the capital, and proclaimed Basiliscus, the brother of Verina,
as Augustus. The mob of the city, with whom Zeno was very
unpopular, joined the rising, and massacred the Isaurian troops
who were within the walls ; their leader's absence seems to
Revolt of Basi- havc paralysed the resistance of the soldiery,
liscus, 475-477- Zcuo mcauwhile escaped to his native country,
and raised an Isaurian army : Syria and the greater part of
Asia Minor remained faithful to him, and he prepared to
make a fight for his throne. Luckily for him, Basiliscus was
a despicable creature, — it was he who had wrecked the great
expedition against the Vandals which Leo i. had sent out
seven years before. He soon became far more hated by the
Constantinopolitans than Zeno had ever been; it is doubtful
whether his arrogance, his financial extortions, or his addiction
to the Monophysite heresy made him most detested. The
army which he sent out against Zeno was intrusted — very
unwisely — to a general of Isaurian birth, the magister 7nilitum
Illus, who allowed himself to be moved by the prayers and
bribes of the legitimate emperor, and finally went over to him.
Having recovered all Asia Minor, Zeno then stirred up in
Europe Theodoric the Amal against his rival, and induced
the Goth to beset Constantinople from the West, while he

The Emperors at Constantinople, 476-527 39

himself blockaded it on the Eastern side. The town threw
open its gates, and Basiliscus, after a reign of twenty months,
was dragged from sanctuary and brought before his nephew's
tribunal. Zeno promised him that his blood should not
be shed, but sent him and his sons to a desolate castle in
Cappadocia among the mountain-snows, where they were given
such scanty food and raiment in their solitary confinement,
that ere long they died of privation (477).

It was just after his triumph over Basiliscus that Zeno
received the ambassadors of Odoacer, and was saluted as
Emperor of West and East alike, in spite of his advice to the
Romans to take back as their Caesar their old ruler, Julius
Nepos, who was still in possession of part of Dalmatia, though
he had lost Italy three years before. Perhaps Zeno might
have been tempted to interfere with something more than
advice in the affairs of the West, if his second batch of troubles
had not fallen upon him, in the form of his long Gothic

THE EASTERN EMPERORS, 457-518,

WITH THEIR FAMILIES.

[Names of Emperors in Capitals.]

Rusumbladeotus
the Isaurian.

LEO I.,

457-474-

I.
=Verina.

Basiliscus,
usurper, 475-477-

Flavius of Dyrrhachium.

ANTHE-

MIUS,
Emperor of

the West,
467-472.

Longinus, Arcadia=ZENO,=Ariadne=ANASTASIUS I., Caesaria=Secun- Leontia=Marci

rebel in
492.

491-518.

Zeno, LEO,
d. 480. d. 474.

dinus.

Hypatius, Pompeius,
rebels in 532

anus,
rebel
in 479

40 European History, 476-918

war with the two Theodorics — the sons of Theodemir and
Triarius — which began in the year following his restoration.

The Ostrogoths had never gone westward, like their
kinsmen the Visigoths. They had lingered on the Danube,
first as members of the vast empire of Attila the Hun, then
as occupying Pannonia in their own right. But, in the reign
of Leo I., they had moved across the Save into the territory of
the Eastern Emperors, and had permanently established them-
selves in Moesia. There they had settled down and made
terms with the Constantinopolitan Governmient. But they
were most unruly vassals, and, even in full time of peace,
could never be trusted to refrain from raids into Thrace and
Macedonia. The main body of their tribe now acknowledged
as its chief Theodoric the son of Theodemir, the representative
Early life of of the heavcn-bom race of the Amals, the kings
Theodoric. Qf |-j^g Goths from time immemorial. Theodoric
was now a young man of twenty-three, stirring and ambitious,
who had already v/on a great military reputation by victories
over the Bulgarians, the Sarmatians, and other tribes who
dwelt across the Danube. He had spent ten years of his
boyhood as a hostage at Constantinople, where he had learnt
only too well the weak as well as the strong points of the
P2ast-Roman Empire. His after-life showed that he had there
imbibed a deep respect for Roman law, order, and adminis-
trative unity ; but he had also come to entertain a contempt
for the timid Zeno, and a conviction that his bold tribesmen
vvere more than a match for the motley mercenary army of
the emperor, of which so large a proportion was still com-
posed of Goths and other Teutons, who could not be trusted
to fight with a good heart against their Ostrogothic kinsmen.

But Theodoric the Amal was not the only chief of his race
in the Balkan peninsula. He had a namesake, Theodoric the
son of Triarius, better known as Theodoric the One-eyed, who
had long served as a mercenary captain in the imperial army,
and had headed the Teutonic auxiliaries in the camp of the
usurper Basiliscus. When Basiliscus fell, Theodoric the One-

The Emperors at Constantinople^ 476-527 41

eyed collected the wrecks of the rebel forces, strengthened
them with broken bands of various races, many of whom were
Ostrogoths, and kept the field against Zeno. He retired into
the Balkans, and occasionally descended to ravage the Thracian
plains ; but meanwhile he sent an embassy to Zeno, offering
to submit if he were given the title of magister militum^
which he had held under Basiliscus, and taken with all his
army into the imperial pay.

Zeno indignantly refused to entertain such terms, and
resolved to take in hand the destruction of the rebel. He
sent an Asiatic army into Thrace to beset the son of Triarius
from the south, and bade his warlike vassal the The two
son of Theodemir to attack his namesake from the Theodoncs.
north, on the Moesian side. The younger Theodoric
Tagerly consented, for he grudged to see any other Gothic
chief than himself powerful in the peninsula, and looked
down on the son of Triarius as a low-born upstart, because he
did not come like himself from the royal blood of the Amals.^

The campaign against Theodoric the One-eyed turned out
disastrously for the imperial forces. The Roman army in the
south missed the track of the rebel, whether by accident or
design, while Theodoric the Amal with his forces got entangled
in the defiles of the Balkans, and surrounded by the army
of his rival. He had been promised the co-operation of the
army of Thrace, but no Romans appeared, and his projects
began to look dark. His one-eyed rival, riding to within ear-
shot of his camp, taunted him with his folly in listening to the
orders and promises of the emperor. * Madman,' he cried,
' betrayer of your own race, do you not see that the Roman
plan is always to destroy Goths by Goths ? Whichever of us
falls, they, not we, will be the stronger. They never will give
you real help, but send you out against me to perish here

1 By his name (Triarius) the father of Theodoric the One-eyed must have
been a Roman or a Romanised Goth, but the One-eyed had himself
married a wife who was close akin to Theodoric the Amal, for his son
Recitach is called the Amal's cousin.

42 European History^ 476-918

in the desert.' Then all the warriors of the Amal shouted
that the One-eyed was right, and that they would not fight
against their brethren in the other camp. The son of Theo-
demir bowed to their will and joined himself to the son of
Triarius. Uniting their armies, they moved down into the
valley of the Hebrus, and advanced toward Constantinople.
They sent Zeno an ultimatum, in which the Amal demanded
more territory for his tribe, and a supply of corn and money,
while the One-eyed stipulated for the post of magistermilitum^
and an annual payment of 2000 pounds of gold. Zeno, who
was very anxious to keep the younger Theodoric on his side,
proffered him a great sum of money, and the hand of the
daughter of the patrician Olybrius, if he would abandon his
namesake the rebel. But the Amal refused to break the
oath that he had sworn to his ally, and marched westward to
ravage Macedonia up to the very gates of Thessalonica. Zeno
sent his troops into winter-quarters, as the season was late,
and made one final attempt to stave off the impending danger
by offering terms to Theodoric the One-eyed. Less true to
his word than the Amal, the elder Theodoric listened to the
emperor's offer, and, on being promised the title of magister
viilitiun and all the revenues that he had enjoyed under
Basiliscus, led his troops over into the imperial camp (479).

For the next two years the son of Theodemir ranged over the
whole Balkan peninsula from Dyrrhachium to the gates of Con-
stantinople, plundering and burning those parts of Macedonia
and Thrace which had hitherto escaped the ravages of the Huns
of Attila and the Ostrogoths of the previous generation. The
generals of Zeno met with little good fortune in their attempts
to check him, the only success they obtained being a victory
- won bv a certain Sabinianus in 480, who cut off

Wars of ' . .

Zeno and the rear-guard of Theodoric as it was crossing the
'h^^Amir Albanian mountains, and captured 2000 waggons
and 5000 Gothic warriors. But Sabinianus made
himself too much feared by Zeno, who, on a suspicion of
treachery, had him executed in the following year. It was not

The Emperors at Constantinople^ 476-527 43

till 483 that the Amal, having wasted Thrace and Macedon
so fiercely that even his own army could no longer find food,
at last came to terms with Zeno, on being made magister
militum^ and granted additional lands in Moesia and Dacia for
his tribesmen. The son of Triarius had died a year earlier :
he had again burst out into insurrection against the emperor,
and was mustering an army on the Thracian coast when he
was slain in a strange manner. A restive horse threw him
against a spear which was standing by the door of his tent,
and he was pierced to the heart. His son Recitach continued
his rebellion, but Theodoric the Amal, who wished to see no
other Gothic chief but himself in the Balkan peninsula, slew
the young man, and incorporated his warriors with the main
body of the Ostrogoths.

The utter helplessness which Zeno showed in dealing with
the two Theodorics may be attributed in a large measure to
his troubles at home. In 479, the year when he had failed
to support Theodoric the Amal in the Balkans, his throne
had nearly been overturned by a rising in Constantinople.
Marcianus and Procopius, the two sons of Anthemius, the
late emperor of the West, who were popular with the citizens
of the capital, formed a plot for overthrowing the emperor,
in which they enlisted many men of importance. They
surprised the palace and massacred the body-guard, but Zeno
escaped, brought over his faithful Isaurians from Asia, and
crushed the rebellion after a vigorous street fight. In 482-3
he had a prolonged misunderstanding with his commander-
in-chief Illus, the Isaurian general who had put down the
rebellion of Basiliscus five years before. Zeno neither
banished nor fully trusted him. He left him in office, but
was nervously on his guard, and always thwarting his Minister.
It is said that, with or without his consent, the Empress
Ariadne endeavoured to procure the assassination of Illus.

In 483, the year in which Theodoric the Amal made his
peace with Zeno, a certain Leontius raised a rebellion in
Syria. Illus, who was sent to put him down, had grown tired

44 European History, 476-918

of serving his suspicious and ungrateful master, and joined in

the revolt. He and Leontius seized Antioch, where the

latter was proclaimed emperor, and got posses-

Revoltof . r r^ ^ ' ^-t • j .u o • t«.

Leontius, 483. sion of Cappadocia, Cilicia, and north byria. It
is said that they designed to re-establish paganism,
a project which seems absolutely incredible in the very end
of the fifth century, when the heathen were no more than a for-
lorn remnant scattered among a zealous Christian population.
The empress-dowager Verina, who was living in exile in
Cappadocia, joined herself to them, and adopted Leontius as her
son. But the rebels took more practical measures to support
their cause when they applied for aid to Odoacer the king
in Italy, and to the Persian monarch Balas. Both promised
aid, but, before they could send it, Zeno had put the rebellion
down. He induced his late enemy Theodoric to join his
army, and the Goths and Isaurians combined easily got the
better of Leontius. Syria submitted, and the rebel emperor
and Illus, after a long and desperate defence in a castle in
Cappadocia, were taken and slain. ^

Zeno enjoyed comparative peace after Leontius' rebellion
had been crushed, and was still more fortunate when, in 488,
he induced Theodoric the Amal to move his Ostrogoths out
of Moesia and go forth to conquer Italy. How Theodoric
fared in Italy we have already related. His departure was of
enormous benefit to the empire, and, for the first time since
his accession, Zeno was now able to exercise a real authority
over his European provinces. They were left to him in a
most fearful state of desolation : ten years of war, ranging
over the whole tract south of the Danube and north of Mount
Olympus, had reduced the land to a wilderness. Whole dis-
tricts were stripped bare of their inhabitants, and great gaps
of waste territory were inviting new enemies to enter the
Balkan peninsula, and occupy the deserted country-side.

1 This fort — it was called Castellum Papirii — is said to have held out
for the incredibly long period of four years after all the rest of the
rebellious districts had been subdued, and only to have fallen by treachery.

The Emperors at Constantinople, 476-527 45

North of the Balkans the whole provincial population seems
to have been well-nigh exterminated. When the Ostrogoths
abandoned the country there was nothing left state of the
between the mountains and the Danube but a Balkan
few military posts and their garrisons, nor was Peninsula,
the country replenished with inhabitants till the vSlavs spread
over the land in the succeeding age. lUyria and Macedonia
had not fared so badly, but the net result of the century
of Gothic occupation in the Balkan peninsula had been to
thin down to a fearful extent the Latin-speaking population of
the Eastern Empire. All the inland of Thrace, Moesia, and
Illyricum had hitherto employed the Latin tongue : with the
thinning out of its inhabitants the empire became far more
Asiatic and Greek than it had before been.

When the Ostrogoths migrated to Italy, the empire acquired
a new set of neighbours on its northern frontier, the nomad
Ugrian horde of the Bulgarians on the lower Danube, and
the Teutonic tribes of the Gepidae, Heruli, and Lombards on
the middle Danube and the Theiss and Save. Contrary to
what might have been expected, none of these races pushed
past the barrier of Roman forts along the river to occupy
Moesia. They vexed the empire with nothing worse than
occasional raids, and did not come to settle within its
limits.

Zeno's ecclesiastical policy demands a word of notice. He
was himself orthodox, but not fanatical : the Church being at
the moment grievously divided by the Monophysite schism,
to which the Churches of Egypt and Palestine had attached
themselves, he thought it would be possible and expedient to
lure the heretics back within the fold by slightly modifying the
Catholic statement of. doctrine. In 482, though he was in
the midst of his struggle with Theodoric the Amal, he found
time to draft his ' Henoticon,' or Edict of Comprehension.
The Monophysites held that there was but one nature in our
Lord, as opposed to the orthodox view, that both the human
and the divine element were fully present in His person.

46 European History, 476-918

Zeno put into his ' Henoticon ' a distinct statement that
Christ was both God and man, but did not insert the words
' two natures,' which formed the orthodox shibboleth. But
his well-meant scheme fell utterly flat. The heretics were not
satisfied, and refused to conform, while the Catholics held that
zeno's it was a weak concession to heterodoxy, and con-

Henoticon. dcmncd Zcno for playing with schism. The
patriarch, Acacius, who had assisted him to draft the 'Heno-
ticon,' was excommunicated by the Bishop of Rome, and the
churches of Italy and Constantinople were out of communion
for more than thirty years, owing to an edict that had been
intended to unite and not to divide.

The last years of Zeno's reign were far more undisturbed
by war and rebellion than its earlier part. He survived till
491, when he died of epilepsy, leaving no heir to inherit his
throne. He had had two sons, named Leo and Zeno : the
first had died, while still a child, in 474 ; the second killed
himself by evil hving, when on the threshold of manhood, long
ere his father's death.

The right of choosing Zeno's successor fell nominally into
the hands of the Senate and people, really into those of the
widowed Empress Ariadne and the Imperial Guard. The
daughter of Leo made a wise choice in recommending to the
suffrages of the army and people Anastasius of Dyrrhachium,
an officer of the sileiitiarii} who was universally esteemed for
his piety and virtue.

Anastasius was a man of fifty-two or fifty-three, who had
spent most of his life in official work in the capital, and was
specially well known as an able and economical financier. He
was sincerely religious, and spent many of his leisure hours as a
lay preacher in the church of St. Sophia, till he was inhibited
from giving instruction by the Patriarch Euphemius, who de-
tected Monophysitism in his sermons. He had once proposed
to take orders, and had been spoken of as a candidate for the

^ A body-guard, whose duly it was to preserve silence around the
emperor's private apartments.

The Emperors at Constantinople, 476-527 47

bishopric of Antioch. Yet, in spite of his religious fervour,
he was never accused of being unworldly or unpractical.
Anastasius was a man of blameless life, learned character of
and laborious, slow to anger, a kind and liberal Anastasius.
master, and absolutely just in all his dealings. ' Reign as you
have lived,' was the cry of the people when he first presented
himself to them clad in the imperial purple. Only two ob-
jections were ever made to him — the first, that he leaned
towards the Monophysite heresy ; the second, that his court
was too staid and puritanical for the taste of the multitude,
who had loved the pomp and orgies of the dissolute Zeno.
He earned unpopularity by suppressing gladiatorial combats
with wild beasts, and licentious dances.

Six weeks after his accession the new emperor married the
Empress-Dowager Ariadne, who had been the chief instru-
ment in his election. She was a princess of blameless life,
and had done much in the previous reign to redeem the ill-
repute of her first husband. It was a great misfortune for the
empire that she bore her second spouse no heir to inherit his
throne.

The commencement of the reign of Anastasius was troubled
by a rebellion of the Isaurians. Zeno had not only formed
an Imperial Guard of his countrymen, but had filled the civil
service with them, and encouraged them to settle as mer-
chants and traders in Constantinople. They had been much
vexed when the sceptre passed to the Illyrian Anastasius, and
entered into a conspiracy to seize his person, and proclaim
Zeno's brother, Longinus, as emperor. A few months after
his accession they rose in the capital and obtained possession
of part of the city near the palace, but the majority of the
people and array were against them, and they were put down
after a sharp street fight, in which the great Hippodrome was
burnt. Longinus was captured, and compelled to take
orders. He died long after as a priest in Egypt. Anastasius,
after this riot, dismissed all the Isaurian officers from the
public service. They returned to their homes in Asia Minor,

48 European History, 476-918

and organised a rebellion in their native hills. A second
Longinus, who had been magister 7nilitum in Thrace, put
himself at the head of the insurrection, which lingered on for
five years (491-496), but was never a serious danger to the
empire. The rebels were beaten whenever they ventured into
Rebellions ^^ plains, and only maintained themselves so
in isauria, long by the aid of the mountain-castles with which
492-496. their rugged land was studded. In 496 their last

fastnesses were stormed, and their chief, the ex-inagtster, taken
and executed. Anastasius punished the communities which
had been most obstinate in the rebellion by transferring them
to Thrace, and settling them on the wasted lands under the
Balkans, where he trusted that these fearless mountaineers
would prove an efficient guard to keep the passes against the
barbarians from beyond the Danube.

The Asiatic provinces of the empire had no further troubles
till 502, when a war broke out between Anastasius and Kobad
king of Persia. The Mesopotamian frontier had been singu-
larly quiet for the last century ; there had been no serious war
with the great Oriental monarchy to the East since Julian's
unfortunate expedition in 362. The same age which had seen
the Teutonic migrations in Europe had been marked in inner
Asia by a great stirring of the Huns and other Turanian
tribes beyond the Caspian, and while the Roman emperors
had been busy on the Danube, the Sassanian kings had been
hard at work defending the frontier of the Oxus. In a respite
from his Eastern troubles Kobad made some demands for
money on Anastasius, which the emperor refused, and war
soon followed. It began with several disasters for the
Romans, and Amida, the chief fortress of Mesopotamia, was
stormed in 503. Nisibis fell later in the same year, and when
War with Anastasius sent reinforcements to the East he
Persia, appointed so many generals with independent

503-505- authority that the whole Roman army could never

be united, and the commanders allowed themselves to be
taken in detail and defeated in succession. In 504, however,

The Emperors at Constantinople^ 476-527 49

the fortune of war turned, when the supreme authority in the
field was bestowed on Celer, the magister officiorum ; he re-
covered Amida after a long siege, and began to press forward
beyond the Persian frontier. Kobad was at the same time
assailed by the Huns from beyond the Oxus, and gladly made
peace, on terms which restored the frontier of both parties to
the line it had occupied in 502. Anastasius provided against
future wars by building two new fortresses of the first class
on the Persian frontier, Daras in Mesopotamia, and Theo-
dosiopolis farther north on- the borders of Armenia. These
places served to break the force of the Persian attack thirty
years later, when the successors of Kobad and Anastasius
again fell to blows. The Persian war, like the Isaurian, had
only afflicted a very limited district, — the province beyond the
Euphrates, — and no raids had penetrated so far as Syria.
Indeed, during the whole reign of Anastasius, the only serious
trouble to which the Asiatic half of the empire was exposed
was a Hunnish raid from beyond the Caucasus, which in 515
caused grave damage in Pontus^, Cappadocia, and Lycaonia.
This invasion, however, was an isolated misfortune, followed
by no further incursions of the nomads of the Northern
Steppes.

The European provinces — now as in the time of Zeno — had
a far harder lot. The Slavs and Bulgarians repeatedly crossed
the Danube and pressed over the desolated plains of Moesia
to assail Thrace. More than once the Bulgarians defeated a
Roman army in the field, and their ravages were at last pushed
so far southward that Anastasius built in 512 the celebrated
wall which bears his name, running from the Black Sea to
Propontis, thirty-five miles west of Constantinople. These
lines, extending for more than fifty miles across the eastern
projection of Thrace, served to defend at least the immediate
neighbourhood of the capital against the restless horsemen
from beyond the Danube. Macedonia and Illyricum seem to
have suffered much less than Thrace during this period ; the
Slavs who bordered on them were as yet not nearly such a

PERIOD I. D

50 European History, 476-918

dangerous enemy as the Bulgarians, while the Ostrogoths of
Italy, on reconquering Pannonia, proved more restful neigh-
bours to the north-western provinces of the empire than they
had been in the previous century.

It was in the reign of Anastasius that one of the most char-
acteristic features in the social life of Constantinople is brought
forward into prominence for the first time. This was the grow-
ing turbulence of the ' Blues and Greens,' the factions of the
Circus. From the very beginning of the Roman Empire these
clubs had existed, but it was only at Constantinople that
they became institutions of high political importance. There
the rivalry of the Blues and Greens was not confined to
the races of the Circus, but was carried into every sphere
of life. Nor was it any longer only the young men of sporting
and fashionable proclivities that joined the 'factions.' They
served as clubs or political associations for all classes, from
the ministers of state down to the poorest mechanics, and
formed bonds of union between bodies of churchmen or
supporters of dynastic claims. It is hard for an Englishman
The Blues to realise this extraordinary development of what
and Greens. [^^^ Qx\zQ been a mere rivalry of the Hippodrome.
To make a parallel to it we should have to suppose that all
who mount the light or the dark blue on the day of the
Oxford and Cambridge boat race were bitterly jealous of each
other — let us say, for example, that all Dark Blues were Con-
servatives and Anglicans, and all Light Blues were Radicals
and Dissenters. If this were so, we can imagine that in times
of political stress every boat race might be followed by a
gigantic free-fight. This, however, was exactly what occurred
at Constantinople ; the ' Blue ' faction had become identified
with Orthodoxy, and with a dislike for the family of Anastasius.
The ' Green ' faction included all the Monophysites and other
heterodox sects, and was devoted to the person and dynasty
of Anastasius. In any time of trouble the celebration of
games in the Hippodrome ended with a fierce riot of the two
factions. No wonder that the just and peaceable emperor

The Emperors at Constantinople y 476-527 51

strove to suppress shows of all sorts, and in especial showed a
dislike for the disloyal ' Blue ' faction.

The worst of Anastasius' domestic troubles were due to the
suspicion of heterodoxy that clung to him. In 511 when he
added to the hymn called the Trisagion the line 6 a-rav/ow^ei's
Zi Yjiia^ in a context which seemed to refer to the whole Trinity,
the orthodox populace of Constantinople headed by the Blue
faction burst out into sedition. It was only quelled by the
old Emperor presenting himself before the people in the Hippo-
drome, without crown or robe, and announcing his intention
of abdicating. So great was the confidence which his justice
and moderation had inspired in all ranks and classes, that
the proposal filled the whole multitude with dismay, and they
rose unanimously to bid him resume his diadem.

But the grievance against the Monophysite tendencies of
Anastasius was not destined to be forgotten. In 514 an
ambitious general named Vitalian, who held a Rebellion of
command in Moesia, rose in arms, alleging as vitaiian, 514.
the cause of his rebellion, not only certain misdeeds com-
mitted in that province by the emperor's nephew Hypatius,
but also the dangerous heterodoxy of Anastasius' religious
opinions. When Hypatius was removed from his office the
greater part of Vitalian's army returned to its allegiance, and
the rebel then shewed how much importance was to be
attached to his religious scruples, by calling in the heathen
Bulgarians and Huns to his aid. At the head of an army
composed of these barbarians he maintained himself in Moesia
for some time. The emperor, somewhat unwisely, replaced
his nephew Hypatius in command, and sent him with a large
army to put down the rebel ; but, while the Romans lay en-
camped on the sea-shore near Varna, they were surprised by a
night attack of the enemy and completely scattered. Many
thousand men were driven over the cliffs into the sea and
crushed or drowned, while Hypatius himself was taken
prisoner (514). The old emperor was driven, by concern for
his nephew's life, to make peace. He ransomed Hypatius for

52 European History, 476-918

15,000 lbs. of gold, and granted Vitalian the post of magister
viilitum in Thrace. The pardoned rebel for the remainder of
Anastasius' reign occupied himself in strengthening his posi-
tion on the Danube, being determined to make a bold stroke
for the imperial throne when old age should remove the
octogenarian ruler of Constantinople.

In spite of all his troubles with the two Longini, king
Kobad and Vitalian, Anastasius may be called a successful
and prosperous ruler. All these rebellions had been of mere
local import, and for the whole twenty-seven years of his reign
the greater part of the empire had enjoyed peace and plenty.
The best testimony to his good administration is the fact that
at his accession he found the treasury emptied by the waste-
ful Zeno, and that at his death he left it filled with 320,000
lbs. weight of gold, or ^15,000,000 in hard cash. This was
in spite of the fact that he was a merciful and lenient adminis-
trator, and had actually abolished several imports including
the odious Chrysargyron or income-tax. Nor was the money
collected at the cost of neglecting proper expenditure. Ana-
stasius had erected many military works, — in especial his
great wall in Thrace, and the strong fortress of Daras — and
restored many ruined cities. ' He never sent away petitioners
empty, whether they represented a city, a fortress, or a sea-
port.' He left an army of 150,000 men in a good state
of discipline and composed for its larger half of native
troops, with a frontier intact alike on east and west and
north.

The good old man died in 518 ; his wife Ariadne had pre-
ceded him to the grave three years before. He had refrained
from appointing as his colleague his nephew Hypatius, whom
many had expected him to adopt, and the empire was left
absolutely masterless. The great State officials, the Imperial
Guard, and the Senate had the election of a new Caesar thrown
upon their hands. The most obvious candidates for the throne
were Hypatius, whom the Green faction should have supported,
and the magister miliiuni Vitalian, who at once to okarms to

The Emperors at Constantinople, 476-527 53

march on the capital. But neither of them was destined to
succeed. The sinews of war lay in the hands of the treasurer
Amantius ; he himself could not hope to reign, for he was a
eunuch, but he had a friend whom he wished to crown.
Accordingly he sent for Justinus, the commander Accession of
of the Imperial Guard, and made over to him a Justin i., 518.
great sum to buy the aid of the soldiery. Justinus, an elderly
and respectable personage whom no one suspected of ambi-
tion, quietly took the gold, distributed it in his own name, and
was saluted as Augustus by his delighted guardsmen. The
Senate acquiesced in the nomination, and he mounted the
throne without a blow being struck.

Justinus was an Illyrian by birth, and had spent fifty years
in the imperial army ; he had won his promotion by good ser-
vice in the Isaurian and Persian wars. He was very illiterate —
we are told that he could barely sign his own name — and knew
nothing outside his tactics and his drill-book. He had the
reputation of being quiet, well-behaved, and upright ; no one
had anything to say against him, and he was rigidly orthodox
in matters of faith. He was sixty-eight years of age, fifteen
years older than even the elderly Anastasius had been at the
moment of his accession.

Justinus seated himself firmly on the throne ; he executed
the treasurer Amantius, but made terms with the two men
who might have been his rivals. Hypatius remained a simple
senator ; Vitalian was confirmed in his command in Moesia
and given a consulship. While holding this office and dwell-
ing in the capital he was assassinated ; rumour ascribed the
crime to the emperor's nephew Justinian, who thought the
turbulent magister too near the throne.

There is very little to record of the nine years of Justinus'
reign, save that he healed the forty years' schism which had
separated the churches of Rome and Constantinople since the
publication of Zeno's 'Henoticon.' Being undisputedly ortho-
dox, he withdrew that document, and the schism disappeared
with its cause. The only real importance of Justinus is that

54 European History, /\y6-gi^

he prepared the way for his famous nephew and successor,
Justinian, whom he adopted as colleague, and intrusted with
those matters of civil administration with which he was him-
self incompetent to deal. He died and left the throne to
Justinian in a.d. 528.

CHAPTER IV

CHLODOVECH AND THE FRANKS IN GAUL

481-511

The Franks in Northern Gaul— Their early conquests— State of Gaul in 481—
Chlodovech conquers Northern Gaul, 486 — He subdues the Alamanni,
495-6 — Conversion of Chlodovech, 496 — He conquers Aquitaine from the
Visigoths, 507 — He unites all the Frankish Kingdoms, 511.

While Odoacer was still reigning in Italy, and Theodoric the
Amal had not yet left the Balkans, or the banks of the Danube,
the foundations of a great kingdom were being laid upon the
Scheldt and the Meuse. Early in the fifth century the con-
federacy of marsh-tribes on the Yssel and Lech who had
taken the common name of Franks, had moved southward
into the territory of the Empire, and found themselves new
homes in the provinces which the Romans called Belgica and
Germania Inferior. For many years the hold of the legions
on this land had been growing weaker ; and, long ere it became
a Frankish kingdom, it had been largely sprinkled with Frankish
colonists, whom the emperors had admitted as military settlers
on the waste lands within their border. In the lowlands of
Toxandria, which after-ages called Brabant and Guelders,
there were no large cities to be protected, no great fortresses
to be maintained, and, while the Romans still exerted them-
selves to hold Treveri and Colonia Agrippina and Moguntia-
cum,^ they allowed the plains more to the north and west to
1 Trier, Koln, and Mainz.

56 European History ^ 476-918

slip out of their hands. By the second quarter of the fifth
century the Franks were firmly established on the Scheldt
The Franks ^^^ Meuse and lowcr Rhine, where the Roman
in Lower garrisons never reappeared after the usurper
Germany. Constantinc had carried off the northern frontier
legions to aid him in his attack on Italy (406). By this time,
too, Colonia Agrippina, first of the great Roman cities of the
Rhineland, seems to have already fallen into the hands of the
Franks. Between 430 and 450 they continued to push
forward as far as the Somme and the Moselle, and when,
at the time of Attila's great invasion of Gaul, the last imperial
garrisons in the Rhineland were exterminated; and the last
governors driven forth by the Huns from Treveri and
Moguntiacum and Mettis, it was the Franks who profited.
After the Huns had rolled back again to the East, Frankish
kings, not Roman officials, took possession of the ravaged
land along the Moselle and Rhine, and the surviving provin-
cials had for the future to obey a Teutonic master near home,
not a governor despatched from distant Ravenna.

The Franks were now divided into two main hordes ; the
Salians — who took their name from Sala, the old name of the
river Yssel — dwelt from the Scheldt-mouth to the Somme, and
from the Straits of Dover to the Meuse. The Ripuarians,
whose name is drawn from the fact that they inhabited the
bank {ripa) of the Rhine, lay along both sides of the great
river from its junction with the Lippe to its junction with
the Lahn, and extended as far east as the Meuse. Each
of these two tribes was ruled by many kings, all of whom
claimed to descend from the house of the Merovings, a line
lost in obscurity, whose original head may, perhaps, have been
the chief who in the third century first taught union to the
various tribes who formed the Frankish confederacy.

The Franks were one of the more backward of the Teutonic
races, in spite of their long contact with Roman civilisation
along the Rhine. Kings and people were still heathens. They
had not learnt like the Goths to wear armour or fight on

Chlodovech and the Franks m Gaul 57

horseback, but went to war half-naked, armed only with a
barbed javelin, a sword, and a casting-axe or tomahawk,
called the Francisca after the name of its users. Unlike Goth
and Vandal they had not learnt the advantages of political
union, but obeyed many petty princes instead of one great
lord. All Roman writers reproach them for a perfidy which
exceeded that of the other barbarians. The Saxons, we are
told, were cruel, the Alamanni drunken, the Alans rapacious,
the Huns unchaste, but the special sin of the Frank was
treachery and perjury.

At the time of the deposition of Romulus Augustulus by
Odoacer, the Salian Franks held the old Roman towns of
Cambrai, Arras, Tournay, and Tongern, while the Ripuarians
occupied Koln, Trier, Mainz, and Metz. South of the
Ripuarians lay the new Burgundian kingdom Divisions of
which Gundobad had founded in the valleys of Gauiin48i.
the Rhone and Saone. South of the Salians was a district
of Roman Gaul which had to the last acknowledged the
supremacy of the ephemeral emperors of the West, and kept
itself free from barbarian invaders under the patrician
^gidius. After his death in 463 his son Syagrius succeeded
to his power, and ruled at Suessiones (Soissons) over the
whole Seine valley, and the plain of central Gaul as far as
Troyes and Orleans. After the disappearance of the last
Western Emperor, Syagrius had no over-lord, but was so much
his own master that the Franks called him 'king of the
Romans,' though he himself took no title but that of patrician.
South of the realm of Syagrius lay the Visigothic kingdom of
Euric, a vast state extending from the Loire to Gibraltar, and
from the Bay of Biscay to the Maritime Alps. Its king dwelt
at Toulouse, and the Gaulish rather than the Spanish half of
his dominion was considered the more important. Indeed
his rule in Spain was still incomplete, as the Suevi held its
north-western corner, the land which we now call Galicia and
north Portugal, and the Basques maintained their indepen-
dence in the western Pvrenees.

58 European History^ 476-918

In the third quarter of the fifth century the most important
of the Frankish chiefs of the Merovingian line was a prince of
the Sahans, named Childerich, who dwelt at Tournay, and
ruled in the valley of the upper Scheldt. He died in 481,
leaving his throne to his sixteen-year-old son and heir, a
prince named Chlodovech or Chlodwig, who was destined to
found the great Frankish kingdom, by extinguishing the other
Frankish principalities, and conquering southern and central
Gaul.

Such an event seemed most unlikely at the time of Chlo-
dovech's accession, when the dominant power in the land was
that of the fierce and able king Euric the Visigoth. It was
Euric who had brought the Visigothic kingdom up to its
largest extent, by driving the Sueves into a corner of Spain,
conquering the last Roman provinces in central Gaul, and
receiving Provence from the hands of Odoacer, king of Italy.
He was the first Visigothic king to publish a code of laws,
and would have left a good name in history but for his assas-
sination of his brother Theodoric, and his persecutions of the
Catholics. Though not such an oppressor as the Vandals
Gaiseric and Hunneric, he had made himself hated by refus-
ing to allow the election of Catholic bishops, and by closing
or handing over to his favourites, the Arians, many of the
churches of the orthodox. Euric died in 485, just as Chlo-
dovech was about to commence his conquering career in
northern Gaul, a career which the Visigoth would probably
have checked if a longer life had been granted him. He was
succeeded by his son Alaric, a boy of only sixteen or seven-
teen years.

It was in the very year of Euric's death that Chlodovech, now
aged twenty-one, set out on the first of his warlike expeditions.
In company with his kinsman Ragnachar, king of Cambrai, he
invaded the realm of the Roman patrician Syagrius. The
Gaulish troops were unable to resist the onset of the Franks,
and their leader, after a short struggle, abandoned his home,
and fled for safety to the court of Alaric the Visigoth. The

Chlodovech and the Franks in Gaul 59

councillors of Alaric, either wishing to gratify their Teutonic
neighbours, or fearing the event of a war while their king
was yet so young, threw the patrician into bonds, cwodovech
and sent him back to Chlodovech, who promptly syagrfus,
put him to death. The Seine valley and the 486.
great towns of Soissons, Paris, Rouen, and Rheims now fell
into the hands of the Frankish king, and, in the course of the
next three years, he extended his power up to the Loire and
boundary of Armorica, where the Romano-Celts of the extreme
west still succeeded in holding out. Chlodovech took all the
spoils for himself, none fell to his neighbours, the other kings
of the Salian Franks. It was these princes who were next
to feel the force of his arm. He picked quarrels with his
kinsmen the kings of Cambrai and Terouanne, the one for
not helping him against Syagrius, the other for claiming part
of the spoil of the Roman, and slew them both, the one by
treachery, the other in open battle. The remaining Merovin-
gian princes of the Belgic plains soon shared their fate ; then
Chlodovech pressed eastward against the Ripuarian Franks,
and conquered the Thoringi, their chief tribe, in the year 491
In a short time he had won all the Frankish kingdoms save
that of his ally Sigebert the Lame, king of Koln. He
remorselessly slew every prince of Meroving blood who fell
into his hands, and did his best to exterminate all the rival
lines. When he could find no more to kill, he is said to have
made open lamentation that he was left alone in the world,
and that the royal house of the Franks was threatened with
extinction ; he then bade any kinsman who might yet survive
come to him without fear. But it was cruelty, not remorse,
that moved him, for his only object was to catch and slay any
Meroving who might yet survive.

His conquests in Ripuaria brought Chlodovech into touch
with new neighbours, the Burgundians to the south, and the
confederacy of the Alamanni to the east, along the Main and
Neckar. With the first named he entered into friendly
relations, and married Chrotechildis (Clotilde), niece of King

6o European History, 476-918

Gundobad, in 492. The princess, unlike her uncle and most
of her tribe, was a devout Catholic, and much was destined to
chiodovech's fo^low from her alliance with the pagan Frank,
wars with the With the Alamanni the relations of Chlodovech
Aiamanni ^^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^j^^ ^^^^ hostile; in fact, when he brought
his frontier up to the middle Rhine, he was constrained to
take up an already existing feud between the Ripuarians and
their eastern neighbours. For several years he was engaged
in a struggle with this confederacy, who held the east bank
of the Rhine from Coblenz upwards, the valleys of the Main
and Neckar, and all the Black Forest. At last, in 496, he got
the better of them in a decisive battle — apparently near
Strasburg — and forced the main body of the confederacy to
do him homage and acknowledge him as over-lord. An
obstinate remnant retired over the Rhine, and took refuge in
Rhaetia under the protection of the great Theodoric, but all
the rest became Frankish vassals. As a result of this war
the Alamanni were driven southward out of the Main valley,
which was seized and settled by Ripuarian settlers, and be-
came a Frankish country under the name of East Francia, or
Franconia.

A suggestive legend and an important fact are connected
with these campaigns of Chlodovech against the Alamanni.
The ecclesiastic writers of the next century state that, in his
decisive battle with the confederates, Chlodovech was driven
back and almost routed. Then, recalling the words of his
wife Chrotechildis, ' who never ceased to persuade him that
he should serve the true God.' that the Lord was the Lord of
Hosts and the arbiter of battles, he cried aloud, ' O Christ
Jesu, I crave as a suppliant Thy glorious aid ; and if Thou
grantest me victory over these enemies I will believe in Thee,
and be baptized in Thy name.' At once the Alamanni began
to give back, and the king obtained a complete triumph.

Whether this was the manner of his conversion or not, it is
at any rate certain that Chlodovech, on returning from his
Alamannic campaign, had himself baptized at Rheims on

Chlodovech and the Franks i7t Gaul 6i

Christmas Day, 496. His sister and 3000 of his warriors
followed him to the font. Every reader of history knows the
famous tale how Archbishop Remigius hailed the king with the
words, ' Bow thy neck Sigambrian, adore that which thou hast
burnt, and burn that which thou hast adored.' First among
the converted Teutonic kings Chlodovech was received into
the Catholic Church, and did not become an Arian like his
neighbours. In this we may, no doubt, trace the influence of
his orthodox queen Chrotechildis. The conse- conversion
quences of his conversion to the orthodox ofchio-
faith were most important ; he was the only ^°^^'^^' ^96-
Teutonic king who adopted the faith of his Roman subjects,
and was therefore served by them, and more especially by
their clergy, with a loyalty which no Goth, Vandal, or Bur-
gundian prince could ever win. Not least among the causes
of Chlodovech's easy triumphs and of the permanence of his
kingdom may be reckoned his adherence to Catholicism.

It cannot be said that the king's conversion made any
favourable change in his character or his conduct. He still
remained the cruel, unscrupulous, treacherous tyrant that he
had always been. It will be seen that his last recorded action
was an elaborate incitement to parricide followed by a horrid
murder. Yet he was granted a measure of success that was
refused to kings of far better disposition and far stronger intel-
lect, such as Theodoric the Ostrogoth, or Ataulf the Visigoth.

After their king's conversion the Franks, both Salian and
Ripuarian, hastened to follow him to the fold of the Church,
and in a single generation the old Frankish paganism disap-
peared. But, as with king so with people, the change was
almost entirely superficial j it is long before we trace the
influence of any Christian graces on the ungodly and per-
fidious race of the Franks.

After subduing the Alamanni, Chlodovech's next war was
with the people of his wife's uncle, Gundobad, the king of
Burgundy. He made a secret agreement with Godegisl,
Gundobad's younger brother, to invade and divide the Bur-

62 European History^ 476-918

gundian realm. While the treacherous brother raised war in
Helvetia, where he possessed an appanage, the king of the
Franks attacked Gundobad from the front, and invaded the
valley of the Saone. It appeared as if here, as well as in the
lands farther north, Chlodovech would sweep all before him.
The Burgundian king was beaten and driven out of Dijon,
Lyons, and Valence into Avignon, the southernmost fortress
of his realm, while his brother was made king by the Frank,
and became his vassal. But, in the next year, Gundobad
recovered all he had lost, slew Godegisl at Vienne, and drove
the Franks out of Burgundy with such success that Chlo-
dovech ere long made peace with him (501).

But the next campaign of the Frankish king was one of far
greater importance and success. He was set on trying his
fortune against the young king of the Visigoths, whose
personal weakness and unpopularity with his Roman subjects
tempted him to an invasion of Aquitaine. It would seem
that Chlodovech carefully chose as a casus belli the Arian
persecutions of Alaric, who, like his father Euric, was a bad
Chlodovech master to his Catholic subjects. A first quarrel
conquers -^^ ^^^ ^^g composcd by the great Theodoric,
507. ' who, as father-in-law of the Visigoth and brother-

in-law of the Frank, could appeal with authority to each of
the rivals. But in 507 Chlodovech declared war on the
Visigoths. ' I cannot bear,' he said, ' that those Arians
should hold any part of Gaul. With God's aid we will go
against them, and subdue their land beneath our sway.'
Knowing the strength of the Visigothic realm, Chlodovech
allied to himself for the struggle his old enemy Gundobad
the Burgundian, and Sigebert of Koln, the last surviving
Ripuarian king.

Advancing from Paris Chlodovech crossed the Loire, and
met the Visigoths and their king on the Campus Vocladensis,
the plain of Vougle, near Poictiers. Whether from cowardice,
or from distrust of his own generalship, Alaric held back from
fighting, but his army forced him to give battle. He attacked

Chlodovech and the Franks in Gaul 63

the Franks, was utterly defeated, and fell with the greater
part of his men. So crushed were the Visigoths by the dis-
aster that Chlodovech was able to overrun all the provinces
between the Loire and the Garonne without striking another
blow. He entered Bordeaux in triumph, and there spent the
winter. Next spring he marched against Toulouse, the Gothic
capital, and took it, and with it the great hoard of the Visi-
gothic kings, including many of the Roman trophies that
Alaric and Ataulf had carried off from Italy a hundred years
before. Meanwhile, Chlodovech's Burgundian allies overran
Provence, and captured all its cities save Aries. To add to
the troubles of the Visigoths they were distracted by civil
strife ; one party recognised as king Amalric, the infant son
of Alaric, by Theodoric's daughter, his lawful queen ; the
other elected Gesalic, a bastard son of Alaric, who had
fortified himself in Narbonne and Barcelona. But the Franks
and Burgundians drove Gesalic over the Pyrenees, and it
appeared as if there was about to be an end of all Visigothic
power north of those mountains.

Meanwhile, Chlodovech returned from Toulouse to Tours,
where he found awaiting him ambassadors from the Emperor
Anastasius, who saluted him by their master's command with
the titles of proconsul and patrician, and presented him with
a diadem and purple robe. Anastasius sought by these honours
to win an ally against Theodoric the Ostrogoth, with whom
he had lately quarrelled. Chlodovech accepted them with
alacrity, because of the prestige they gave him in the eyes of
his Roman subjects, who saw his power over them formally
legalised by the grant of the Emperor.

This was the culminating scene of Chlodovech's life ; for, in
the next year, fortune turned somewhat against him. The great
Theodoric interfered in the Gothic War as the guardian and
protector of his grandson, Amalric. His armies routed the
united Franks and Burgundians near Aries, where they are
said to have slain 30,000 men. They then reconquered
Narbonne and all the Mediterranean coast as far as Spain.

64 European History, ^^^-(^xZ

Chlodovech's conquests were thus restricted to the land west of
the Cevennes, but still comprised the greater bulk of Visi-
gothic Gaul, with the three great cities of Poictiers, Bordeaux,
and Toulouse (510). Only the Narbonensis and Provence
were saved from him by Theodoric, who now chased away the
usurper Gesalic, and ruled all Spain and south Gaul till his
grandson Amalric came of age.

Checked on the south by the great Ostrogoth, Chlodovech
turned north to round off his dominions by the acquisition of
the last independent Frankish state. Sigebert of Koln was
now very old, and his ambitious son Chloderich was per-
suaded by Chlodovech not only to dethrone, but to slay his
father. When he had seized the kingdom Chlodovech affected
great wrath and indignation against him, procured his death
at the hands of assassins, and then annexed his kingdom. All
the Frankish states were now united under one hand, but
Chlodovech Chlodovcch did not long survive this last success,
theVranks though, according to the strange words of his
510. admirer, Bishop Gregory of Tours, 'The Lord

cast his enemies under his power day after day, and increased
his kingdom, because he walked with a right heart before
Him, and did that which was pleasing in His sight ! '

In 511 this sanguinary ruffian, murderer, and traitor died,
just after he had presided at Orleans over a synod of thirty-two
Gaulish bishops who were anxious to repress Arianism, and
gladly called in the secular arm of their orthodox lord to
their aid. Chlodovech was morally far the worst of all the
Teutonic founders of kingdoms : even Gaiseric the Vandal
compares favourably with him. Yet his work alone was
destined to stand, not so much from his own abilities, though
these were considerable enough, as from the happy chance
which put his successors in religious sympathy with their sub-
jects, and preserved the young kingdom, during the following
generation, from any conflict with such powerful foes as those
who were destined to overthrow the monarchies of the Ostro-
goths, the Visigoths, and the Vandals.

CHAPTER V

JUSTINIAN AND HIS WARS
A.D. 528-540

Character of Justinian — His marriage with Theodora— His first War with
Persia, 528-31 — Rise of Belisarius— Justinian suppresses the ' Nika ' sedi-
tion, 532 — His foreign policy — BeHsarius conquers the Vandals, 533-4 —
Decay of the Ostrogoths in Italy — Justinian attacks Theodahat — Belisarius
conquers Sicily, Naples, and Rome— Siege of Rome by the Ostrogoths
[537-8] — Belisarius defeats the Ostrogoths and captures Ravenna [540].

For three quarters of a century, during the reigns of the
four cautious and elderly Caesars, whose annals fill the space
between 457 and 527, the East-Roman Empire had been
recovering its strength, and storing up new energy for a
sudden outburst of vigour under the able, restless, and
ambitious sovereign who followed the aged Justinus i.
Justinian — the son of Sabatius the brother of Justinus — was
nearly forty years old when he became, by his uncle's death,
sole ruler of the empire. He was no mere uncultured soldier
like his predecessor; when he obtained promotion in the
army, Justinus sent for his nephew from the Dardanian village
where his family dwelt, and had him reared in the capital in
all the accomphshments which befitted the heir of a great
fortune. By the acknowledarment of his bitterest

T -^ . . , , ,. r Character of

enemies Justmian had an extraordmary power of justinian.
assimilating knowledge of all kinds : he took a
keen interest alike in statecraft and architecture, in theology
and law, in finance and music. When his uncle came to the

PERIOD I. E

66 European history, 476-918

throne, the student soon developed into the practical adminis-
trator, for Justinus trusted him with all those details of civil
government which he himself was unable to understand or
to manage. It soon became known that the heir of Justinus
was a man of extraordinary ability and untiring thirst for work.
At an age when most young men would have been tempted
by their sudden elevation to plunge into the enjoyments that
lay open to an imperial prince, Justinian applied himself to
mastering all the tiresome details of the administration of the
empire. Men noted with surprise that he never seemed happy
save when he was in his cabinet, surrounded by his secretaries,
his registers, his files of reports, and despatches. He was like
the Aristotelian character who was ' too indifferent to things
pleasurable,' for nothing save work appeared to have any
attraction for him. He rose early, spent his day in adminis-
trative duties, and his night in reading and writing. As he
grew older he seemed to dispense with sleep altogether, as if
he had become free from the common necessities of man's
nature. There was something strange and horrible in his
cold-blooded, untiring energy ; superstitious men whispered
that he was inspired by a restless demon who gave him no
peace, or that he was actually a demon himself Had not a
belated courtier met him after midnight pacing the dark
corridors of the palace with a fearful and changed countenance
that was no longer human, or even — as the story grew —
with no face at all, a shapeless monstrous shadow ?

But that Justinian was a man, with all a man's waywardness
and recklessness, was proved ere long. To the surprise of the
whole population of the empire, and the utter horror and
confusion of all respectable persons, it was suddenly noised
abroad that the heir of the empire had announced his intention
of marrying Theodora the dancer, the chief star of the Byzan-
tine comic stage. The staid passionless bureaucrat was con-
templating a step from which Nero or Heliogabalus would
have shrunk with dismay.

We have elaborate but untrustworthy details of the scandalous

J'tistinian and his Wars 67

early life of Theodora in a book — the 'Secret History' —
which bears the name of the historian Procopius, but was
in all probability no work of his.^ She was the daughter of
Acacius the Cypriot, an employe of the * Green Faction ' at
the Hippodrome, and had for some years appeared on the
stage as an actress and dancer. So much we may take for truth ;
knowing the general character of Roman actresses we may
assume that there was some foundation for the stories over
which the ' Secret History ' gloats. As to the particular facts
alleged, we may conclude that they are untrust- Theodora
worthy — among those which the ' Secret History '
gives as most certain are the statements that she was a vampire,
and often held intercourse with evil spirits ; the rest is written
in the same spirit of silly and superstitious malignity. But we
may fairly conclude that the marriage of Justinian was a
scandal and a wonder. His mother and his aunt the Empress
Euphemia, as we know, set their faces against it; but he
went on in his usual steady persistence, gradually warred down
the will of his old uncle Justinus, and formally took Theodora
to wife. The emperor was even induced to bestow upon her
the high title of Patrician.

In brains and power of will Theodora was a fit enough
occupant for the imperial throne, whatever her past history
may have been. She was as ambitious, restless, and capable
as her husband, and acted as much as his colleague as his
consort. We shall see how on one occasion of crisis she stood
boldly forward and interposed between him and destruction.
Her worst enemies do not suggest that she was an unfaithful
or profitless spouse to him ; the ' Secret History ' itself calls
her after her marriage luxurious, cruel, capricious, arrogant, but
does not accuse her of evil-living or folly. Against this we
may set the well-ascertained facts that she was devoted to the
exercises of religion, and founded many charitable institutions.

^ For a discussion of this print see Mr. Bury's Later Roman Empire^
vol. i. p. 359, where he concludes — with Ranke — that the work is the
forged compilation of a personal enemy.

68 European History, 4; 6-91 8

Remembering the dangers of her own youth, she built a
great institution for the reclaiming of fallen women— the first
of the kind known in Christendom. She was zealous in buying
and freeing slaves, and in caring for the bringing up of
orphans and the marriage of dowerless girls.

Theodora was by all accounts the most beautiful woman
of her age. Even the ' Secret History ' allows this, adding only
that she was rather below the middle stature, that her com-
plexion was somewhat pale, and that she devoted untold hours
to the mysteries of the toilet. Two portraits of her have
survived, one at the monastery on Mount Sinai, the other in the
Church of San Vitale at Ravenna — two spots so far apart as to
call up vividly to our memory the wide extent of her influence.
Unfortunately the hieratic style of art into which Roman
portraiture had long sunk, and the intractable nature of
mosaic as a material do not allow us to judge from these
representations what was her actual appearance.

Justinian has left behind him an almost unparalleled repu-
tation as a conqueror, a builder, and a lawgiver, besides a less
happy record of theological activity. It is mainly, however,
with his foreign policy that we shall have to concern our-
selves : the other spheres of his labour are better fitted for
another work. But his dealings with Africa, Italy, and Spain
form a great landmark and turning-point in the history of
southern Europe, and their results were not entirely ex-
hausted till the eleventh century. His long struggles with
Persia are less interesting and less important, but they filled
a great space in the view of contemporary observers, and
were not without their moment.

Justinian's reign opened with a fierce war with the old Persian
king Kobad. The struggle which this monarch had waged
with Anastasius, twenty-five years before, had been so indecisive
that the Sassanian longed for a new trial of arms. Almost
immediately on Justinian's accession he issued his declaration
of war, using as a pretext the erection of some fortifications
near Nisibis, which were being constructed by Belisarius,

Justinian and his Wars 69

governor of Daras, a young officer whose name was destined
to be intimately associated with the whole history of Justinian's
reign. The war opened with a defeat in the open ^.^^^ ^^^
field, suffered by the Roman army of Mesopo- with Persia,
tamia; but when reinforcements came up the ^^^2^*
Persians retreated beyond their frontier. After the winter of
528-29 was over neither side advanced in force, and all that
occurred was a flying Roman raid into Assyria, and an equally
hasty Persian incursion into Syria, both of which did some
harm, but had no practical result on the fate of the war.
Things went far otherwise in the next year, 530: the Persians
crossed the frontier in full force, and marched on Daras, where
they were met by Belisarius, who had lately been appointed
commander-in-chief in the East. Under the walls of Daras
the decisive battle of the war was fought, in which Belisarius,
with 25,000 men, defeated 40,000 Persians by means of his
tactical skill. The plan which he worked was to draw back
his centre, containing all the Roman infantry, and when the
Persians followed it, to launch against their exposed flanks
all his cavalry, a miscellaneous gathering of Hunnish light
horse, Teutonic Heruli from the Danube, and Roman Cata-
phracii or cuirassiers. This plan, much resembling Hannibal's
manoeuvre at Cannae, and perhaps consciously copied from
it, resulted in the complete rout of the Sassanian host.

After this defeat Kobad commenced abortive negotiations
for peace, but the war was protracted into the next year, and
Belisarius did not fare so well in 531. In stopping a Persian
raiding force on the middle Euphrates, which aimed at
Syria, and had turned the southern flank of the Mesopotamian
fortresses, he suffered serious loss at the affair of Callinicum.
Though he was defeated, his resistance had yet turned and
frustrated the Persian expedition. Four months later king
Kobad died, and his successor Chosroes i. made peace on the
base of the sfahis quo ante, fearing to continue the Roman
war while his throne was insecure. (September, 531.)

The end of the Persian war left Justinian free to cast his

yo European History, 476-918

eyes on the affairs of his neighbours to the West. Though so
indecisive, it had not been without its uses, for it had permitted
him to test the solidity of his army, and to discover several
officers of merit, and one general of commanding ability —
the young victor of Daras. Belisarius was now twenty-six years
of age : he was, like his master, a native of the borderland
between Thrace and Illyricum, bred at an unknown
village named Germania, but not, as the name of
his birthplace might seem to suggest, of Teutonic but of
Thracian blood.^ He had entered the army at a very early
age, and had fought his way up to the post of governor of the
great fortress of Daras before he was twenty-four. His favour
with Justinian had been confirmed by his marriage with
Antonina, the friend and confidante of the empress Theodora.
She was a clever, unscrupulous, domineering woman, several
years older than her husband, and exercised over him a
domestic tyranny which any man less easy tempered than
the young general would have found unbearable. The posi-
tion of Belisarius and Antonina at the Court of Justinian has
been not unaptly compared to that of Marlborough and his
imperious wife at the court of Queen Anne ; but it is only
fair to the East-Roman to say that he was in every way a
better man than the Englishman, while his wife had all the
faults of Duchess Sarah, without her one redeeming virtue of
fidelity to her spouse.

Before he was able to turn his attention to the West, and
just after the crisis of the Persian war had passed, Justinian
was exposed to a sharp and sudden danger, the most perilous
experience of his whole career. We have already spoken at
some length of the rivalries of the Blue and Green factions,^
and explained how, in the early sixth century, the Greens were
reckoned heterodox and supporters of the house of Anastasius,
while the Blues were orthodox and favoured Justinus and his

1 There seems no reason to make him a Slav, as some have done on
accomit of his rather Slavonic-looking name.
^ See page 50.

Justinian and his Wars 7 1

nephew. Accident conspired with the innate turbulence of
the factions to stir them up into fierce disorder in the year
532, and brought about the celebrated 'Nika' sedition. To
provide for the expenses of the Persian war, Justinian had not
only drawn upon the hoarded wealth of Anastasius, but had
imposed heavy additional taxation. This act made his in-
struments the Quaestor Tribonian and the Praetorian Prefect
John of Cappadocia very unpopular. Both of them were
suspected — and not incorrectly — of having used the opportunity
to fill their pockets at the expense of the public, and John the
Cappadocian had made himself particularly odious by his
cruel treatment of defaulting debtors. In January 532 there
were riotous scenes in the circus, caused by the protests of
the Greens against the oppression they were suffering. There
soon followed tumults in the streets, and the factions settled
their grievances with bludgeon and knife. Justinian ^he « Nika •
often allowed the Blues a free hand in dealing with sedition, 532.
their adversaries, but, on this occasion, his supporters had gone
too far. The police seized many ring-leaders of both factions,
and seven of the chiefs were condemned to the axe or the
cord. While an angry crowd stood round, five of the rioters
were put to death, but when the last two, a Blue and a Green,
were being hung, the cord slipped twice, owing to the nervous-
ness of the executioner, and the criminals fell to the ground.
The populace then burst through the police and hurried off
the men to sanctuary in a neighbouring monastery. This
incident proved the beginning of a fearful uproar. Instead of
dispersing, the mobs paraded the place shouting for the dis-
missal of the unpopular ministers John and Tribonian. Blues
and Greens united in the cry, the whole city poured out into
the streets, and the police were trampled down and driven
away.

Frightened by the storm Justinian had the weakness to
yield ; instead of sending out the imperial guard to clear the
streets, he announced that he had determined to remove the
obnoxious Quaestor and Prefect. This only made matters

72 European History, 476-918

worse; after burning the official residence of the prefect of
the city, the mob mustered in a most threatening attitude out-
side the palace. This constrained the emperor to use force,
but he happened to be very short of soldiery at the moment.
All the garrison of Constantinople save 3500 of the scholarii,
or imperial guard, had been sent off to the Persian war. Only
two regiments had as yet returned, a corps of 500 cuirassiers
under Belisarius, and a body of Heruli of about the same
number. Five thousand men were hardly enough to cope
with an angry populace of half-a-million souls in the narrow
streets of the capital.

When attacked by the troops the rioters set fire to the city,
and an awful conflagration ensued. The great church of St.
Sophia perished among the flames, together with all the houses
and public buildings to the north and east of it. Blood having
once flowed, the mob were set upon something more than a
riot — a revolution was in the air, and the Greens, who took
the lead in the struggle, sought about for their favourite the
Hypatius patrician Hypatius, the nephew of their old patron
proclaimed Auastasius I. But Hypatius was a prudent and
mperor. cautious pcrson, with no ambition to risk his head ;
he had entered the palace and put himself in Justinian's hands
to keep out of harm's way. It was not till the emperor, w4io
feared traitors about him, ordered all senators to retire to their
homes that Hypatius fell into the hands of his own partisans.
The unhappy rebel in spite of himself was at once hurried off
to the Hippodrome, placed on the imperial seat, and crowned
with a diadem extemporised from his wife's gold necklace.

It was in vain that Justinian issued from the palace next
day, and proclaimed an amnesty ; he was chased back with
insulting cries. Losing heart he summoned the chief of his
The Counsel courticrs and guards, and proposed to them to
of Theodora, abandon Constantinople and take refuge in Asia,
as Zeno had done in a similar time of trouble. John of
Cappadocia and many of the ministers advised him to fly ;
but the intrepid Theodora stepped forward to save her

Justinian and his Wars 73

husband from destruction. ' It has been said,' she cried,
' that the voice of a woman should not be heard among the
councils of men. But those whose interests are most con-
cerned have the best right to speak. To death the inevitable
we must all submit, but to survive dignity and honour, to
descend from empire to exile, to such shame there is no
compulsion. Never shall the day come when I put off this
purple robe and am no more hailed as sovereign lady. If you
wish to protract your life, O Emperor, flight is easy ; there are
your ships and there is the sea. But consider whether, if you
escape to exile, you will not wish every day that you were dead.
As for me, I hold with the ancient saying that the imperial
purple is a glorious shroud.'

Spurred on by the fiery words of his wife Justinian tried the
fortune of war once more. A few reinforcements had arrived ;
with these, and the harassed troops who had already faced
five days' street-fighting, Belisarius once more sallied forth from
the palace. The rebels were off their guard, for a false rumour
had got about that Justinian was already fled. At this moment
the mob was crowding the Hippodrome and saluting their
creature with shouts of Hypatie Auguste tu vincas. After
a vain attempt to break in by the imperial stair- suppression
case, Belisarius assaulted the main side gate of the of the
circus, and burst in at a point where the con- ^^'^^*^°"'
flagration had three days before made a breach in the wall.
Penned into the great amphitheatre, and taken by surprise, the
rebels made a weak resistance. Soon they turned to fly, but
all the issues were choked, and the victims of the sword of
Belisarius were numbered by the ten thousand. Hypatius and
his brother were caught alive and brought to Justinian, who
ordered them to be beheaded. The next day he heard of all
the facts concerning the unwillingness of Hypatius, and gave
his body honourable burial. It was many years before the
Blues and Greens ever vexed him by another riot. The awful
carnage in the circus kept the city quiet for a whole generation.

Justinian was now free from trouble at home and abroad,

74 European History^ 476-918

and turned to those ambitious schemes of foreign policy which
were to occupy the rest of his reign. The dream of his heart
was to reunite the Roman Empire, by bringing once more
under his sceptre all those western provinces which were
occupied by Teutonic kings, and paid only the shadow of
homage to the imperial name. A few years before, the dream
would have seemed fantastically overweening, but of late
matters had been growing more and more promising. Justinian
was, compared with his four predecessors, young and vigor-
ous; he had an immense store of treasure, all the hoard of
Anastasius, a large and efficient army, and at least one general
of first-rate ability. His throne was firmly rooted ; his eastern
frontier secure ; nothing now prevented him from undertaking
wars of aggression.

Meanwhile, everything in the West favoured his projects.
In Italy the great Theodoric was dead, and, since his death,
the Ostrogothic kingdom had been faring ill. The old hero
had left his realm to his grandson Athalaric, a boy of eight
years old, under the guardianship of his mother Amalaswintha,
the widow of Eutharic. The daughter of Theodoric was a
clever and masterful woman, but she had a difficult task in
teaching the turbulent Ostrogoths to obey a female regent.
Minority of They murmurcd at all her doings, and most espe-
Athaiaric, cially at her taste for Roman and Greek letters, and
526-34- j^gj. frequent promotions of Roman officials. She

strove to bring up her son, it was said, more as an Italian than
a Goth, placing him under Roman tutors and keeping him
tight to the desk, in spite of the saying of Theodoric that ' he
who has trembled before the pedagogue's rod will not face
the spear willingly.' It was as much as Amalaswintha could
do to keep the Goths in their obedience while her son was
young, but when he had attained the age of twelve or thirteen,
and began to show some will of his own, the murmurs of the
people grew louder. At last, when he had one day been
chastised by his mother, he burst into the guard-room, and
bade his subjects take note how a king of the Goths was

Justinian and his Wars 75

treated worse than a slave. This scene produced a tumult,
and the chiefs of the Goths took the education of the boy out
of his mother's hands, though they left her the regency.
Handed over to unsuitable companions Athalaric grew idle,
drunken, and reckless; he was of a weakly habit of body,
and, before he reached manhood, had developed the symptoms
of consumption. Meanwhile, Amalaswintha was contending
for power with the chiefs of the Goths, and had earned much
unpopularity by putting to death, without form of trial, the
three heads of the party which opposed her. So uncertain
was her position that she sent secretly to Justinian in 533 to
beg him to give her refuge at Dyrrhachium if she should be
forced to fly. The emperor soon grasped the position — a
divided people, an unpopular regent, a boy-king sinking into
his grave invited him to active interference in Italy.

In Africa the condition of affairs was equally tempting. We
have already mentioned how, on the death of king Thrasamund,
the Vandal throne had fallen to his kinsman Hiideric's
Hilderic, the son of king Hunneric and the Reign, 523-30.
Roman princess, Eudocia. Hilderic was elderly, unversed
in affairs of state, and a conscientious Catholic, inheriting from
his Roman mother that orthodoxy which his Arian subjects
detested. He had but a short reign of seven years, but in it
he succeeded in alienating the affections of the Vandals in
every way. He incurred great odium for putting to death
his predecessor's widow Amalafrida, the sister of the great
Theodoric, because he found her conspiring against him. His
wars were uniformly unsuccessful, the Moors of Atlas cut to
pieces a whole army, and pushed their incursions close to the
gates of Carthage. Probably his open confession of Catholi-
cism, and promotion of Catholics to high office, were even
greater sources of wrath. In 530 his cousin Geilamir organ-
ised a conspiracy against him, overthrew him with ease, and
plunged him into a dungeon. Justinian professed great indig-
nation at this dethroning of an orthodox and friendly sovereign,
and resolved to make use of it as a grievance against the new

j6 European History^ 476-918

king of the Vandals. Just before the ' Nika ' sedition broke
out he had sent an embassy to Carthage to bid Geilamir
replace his cousin on the throne, and be contented with the
place of regent. The usurper answered rudely enough: 'King
Geilamir wishes to point out to king Justinian that it is a
good thing for rulers to mind their own business. '^ He
trusted to the remoteness of his situation and the domestic
troubles of Justinian, and little thought that he was drawing
down the storm on his head.

For Justinian had fully made up his mind to begin his
attack on the West by subduing the Vandals. All things were
in his favour, notably the facts that an Arian king was once
more making life miserable to the African Catholics, and that
Vandal and Ostrogoth had been completely estranged by
the murder of Amalafrida nine years before. Amalaswintha
favoured rather than discouraged the emperor's attack on
her nearest Teutonic neighbours. There was yet one more
piece of good fortune : king Geilamir had just sent off the
flower of the Vandal troops to an expedition against Sar-
dinia.

Encouraged by these considerations, Justinian prepared an
army for the invasion of Africa in the summer of 533, though
some of his ministers, and above all the financier, John of
Cappadocia, warned him against * attacking the ends of the
earth, from which a message would hardly reach Byzantium in
a year,' a ridiculous plea to any one who remembered the
ancient organisation of the empire. The army was not very
large : it consisted of 10,000 foot and 5000 horse, half regular
troops from the Asiatic provinces, half Hunnish and Herulian
„ ,. . auxiliaries. But its commander, BeHsarius, was a

Belisanus '

invades host in himsclf, and confidence in him buoyed

Africa, 533. ^jp i^-iany who would otherwise have despaired.
The voyage was protracted by contrary winds to the unpre-
cedented length of eighty days, but at last the armament cast

^ There was deliberate insult in the use of the word /3a<rtXei5s for both
monarchs, as if they were equal and bore the same \S.\\o

Justinian and his Waj'S 77

anchor at Caput Vada, on the cape which faces Sicily, in the
beginning of September. The Vandals were caught wholly
unprepared : their king was absent in Numidia, their best
troops were in Sardinia, their fleet had not been even
launched. A blind confidence in their remoteness from Con-
stantinople had led them to despise all Justinian's threats, and
no preparation whatever had been made against an invasion.
Geilamir hurried down to the coast, put his prisoner Hilderic
to death, and summoned in his warriors from every side ; but
it was eleven days before he mustered in sufficient force to
attack the Romans, and meanwhile Belisarius had advanced
unopposed to within ten miles of the gates of Carthage. The
provincials received him everywhere with joy; for he pro-
claimed that be came to deliver them from Arian oppression,
and kept his soldiery in such good order that not a field or a
cottage was plundered.

Belisarius had reached the posting-station of Ad Decimum,
and was advancing cautiously with strong corps of observation
securing his flank and front, when suddenly he was assailed
by the whole force of the Vandals, who outnumbered him in
at least the proportion of two to one. He was beset on three
sides at once ; one corps of Vandals under the king's brother
Ammatas issued from Carthage to attack him in front ; another
body beset his left flank; the main army under Geilamir
himself assailed the rear of his long column of march. But
the Vandals mismanaged their tactics, and failed to combine
the three attacks. First the troops from Carthage came out,
and were beaten off with the loss of their leader; then the
turning corps was driven back by the Hunnish cavalry, whom
Belisarius had kept lying out on his flank. When the main
Vandal army came up there was more serious fighting with
the centre and rear of the Roman column. Geilamir furiously
burst through the line of march, and cleft the Roman army
in twain, but he did not know how to use his advantage.
Instead of improving his first success, he halted his troops,
and allowed Belisarius to rally and re-form his men. It is

yS European History^ 476-918

said that he was so transported with grief at finding the corpse
of his brother, who had fallen in the earlier engagement, that
he gave no more orders, and cast himself weeping on the
ground. Presently, the Romans were in good array again ;
their victorious vanguard had returned to aid the centre, and
they fell once more, as the evening closed in, on the stationary
masses of the Vandals. The conquerors of Africa must have
forgotten their ancient valour, for, after a very paltry resistance,
they turned and fled westward under cover of the night.

Carthage at once threw open its gates, and Belisarius dined
next day in the royal palace on the meal that had been pre-

Carthage p^rcd for the Vandal king. Geilamir reaped now
taken. \^q reward for the hundred years of persecution
to which his forefathers had subjected the Africans. Every
town that was not garrisoned opened its gates to the
Romans, and the provincials hastened to place everything
they possessed at the disposal of Belisarius. His entry into
Carthage was like the triumph of a home-coming king, and
the order and discipline of his troops was so great that none
even of the Vandal and Arian citizens suffered loss.

Geilamir meanwhile retired into the Numidian hills, with
an army that had suffered more loss of morale than loss of
numbers. He was soon joined by the troops whom he had
sent to Sardinia ; having subdued that island they returned,
and raised his forces to nearly 50,000 men. Finding that
Belisarius was repairing the walls of Carthage before marching
out to finish the campaign, Geilamir resolved to take the
offensive himself. Descending from the hills he marched on
Carthage, and met the Roman army at Tricameron, twenty
miles westward of the city.

Here Belisarius won a pitched battle after a struggle far
more severe than that he had gone through at Ad Decimum.
Thrice the Romans were beaten back, but their gallant leader
rallied them, and at last his cuirassiers burst through the
Vandal ranks and slew Tzazo, the king's brother. Geilamir
turned to fly, though his men fought on until their retreat was

Justinian and his Wars 79

cut off. Almost the whole Vandal race perished in this fight
and the bloody pursuit which followed. Geilamir himself
took refuge in the heights of Mount Atlas among the Moors,
and dwelt among them miserably enough for a few months.

Discovering that he could not raise a third army, and that
life was unendurable among the filthy barbarians, End of the
he determined to surrender, and yielded himself Vandai
and his family to Belisarius, on the assurance that *"^ °*"'
he should receive honourable treatment, in spite of the fact
that he had murdered the emperor's friend Hilderic.

In the spring of 534 BeHsarius was able to return in
triumph to Constantinople, bringing with him the king and
most of the surviving Vandals as captives. His ships were
loaded with all the plunder of the palace of Carthage, the
trophies of a century of successful pirate raids, including the
plate and ornaments which Gaiseric had carried off from
Rome in 455. It is said that the emperor recognised among
this store the seven-branched candlestick and golden vessels
of the temple of Jerusalem, which Titus Caesar had taken
to Rome when he conquered Judea four hundred years
back. He sent them to be placed in the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre, in the Holy City where they had been first conse-
crated. Belisarius was allowed the honours of an ancient
Roman triumph, a privilege denied to a subject for four
centuries ; he entered the Hippodrome in state, and laid his
prisoners and his booty at Justinian's feet, while senate and
people saluted him as the new Scipio Africanus, a title which
he had fairly earned. Next year he was promoted to the
consulship, and given every honour that the emperor could
devise. His captive, king Geilamir, was kindly treated, and
presented with a great estate in Phrygia, where he and his
family long dwelt in ease.

The year of the triumph of Belisarius saw new opportunities
arising for him and for his master. In the autumn of 534 died
the sickly and debauched youth who held the title of king
of the Ostrogoths; he had not yet attained his eighteenth

8o European History, 476-918

birthday. His mother, Amalaswintha, was now left face to
face with the wild Goths, stripped of the protection of the
royal name, and exposed to the enmity of the families of the
chiefs whom she had executed. In despair of inducing the
Goths to endure the rule of a queen-regnant, she determined
to choose a colleague, and confer on him the title of king.
Theodoric's next male heir after Athalaric was a certain Theo-
dahat, the son of his sister Amalaberga. This prince had
been excluded by his uncle from all affairs of state for his
Amaia- notorious cowardicc, covetousness, and duplicity,

swintha and He was a Romaniscd Teuton of the worst type,
Theodahat. ^^^^ ^^ ^^g ^^^^^ g^-j^ y^^^ Gothus ifnitatur

Romafmm ; he had pronounced literary tastes, called himself
a Platonic philosopher, and showed some care for the arts,
but was wholly mean and corrupt. Amalaswintha thought to
presume on the cowardice of her cousin, and to force him to
become her tool ; she forgot that even a coward may be
ambitious. At the queen's behest the assembly of the warriors
of Italy hailed Theodahat and Amalaswintha joint rulers of
the Ostrogoths, But in less than six months the intriguing
king had suborned his partisans to seize and imprison his
unfortunate cousin. She was cast into a castle on the lake of
Bolsena, and shortly afterwards murdered, with Theodahat's
connivance, by some of the kinsfolk of the nobles whom she
executed five years before. (May, 535.)

Justinian had now an even better casus belli in Italy than
he had possessed in Africa. His ally had been dethroned
and murdered, and her crown was possessed by a creature far
inferior to Geilamir, who was at least a warrior if an unfortu-
nate one. The miserable Theodahat grovelled with fear when
he received the angry ultimatum of Justinian. He even made
secret proposals to the emperor's ambassadors to the effect
that he would abandon his crown and betray his people, if
only he were granted his life and a suitable maintenance.
When even this did not avail, he took to consulting sooth-
sayers and magicians. We are told that a Jewish seer

Justinian and kis Wars 8 1

bade him pen up thirty pigs — to represent unclean Gentiles,
we must suppose — in three sties, calling ten * Goths,' ten
* Italians,' and ten * Imperialists.' He was to leave them
ten days without food or water, and then take augury from
their condition. When Theodahat looked in at the appointed
hour, he found all the * Goth ' pigs dead save two, and half of
the 'Italians,' but the 'Imperialists,' though gaunt and wasted,
were all, or almost all, alive. This the Jew told the downcast
king would portend a war in which the Gothic race was to
be well-nigh exterminated, and the Italians to be terribly cut
down, while the Imperial armies would conquer after much
toil and privation !

While Theodahat was vainly busy with his soothsayers, the
Roman armies had already attacked the Gothic province in
Dalmatia. The wretched usurper had to face war, whether
he willed it or no. Justinian had determined, as was but
natural, to intrust the Ostrogothic war to the conqueror of
Africa, and, in the autumn of the year of his consulship,
Belisarius sailed for the West with a small army of 7500 men,
of whom 3000 were Isaurians, and the rest equally divided
between Roman regulars and Hunnish and Herule auxiliaries.
It was a small force with which to attack a king who com-
manded the swords of a hundred thousand gallant Germans,
but reinforcements were to follow, and Theodahat's cowardice
and incapacity were well known.

In September 535 Belisarius fell on Sicily ; here as in Africa
the provincials hastened to throw open the gates of their
cities to the invader. There were few Goths in Sicily ; they
garrisoned Palermo, but Belisarius took the place by a sudden
assault, after lying only a few days before its walls. By the
approach of winter the whole island was in his Belisarius
hands. He would have hastened on to attack conquers
Italy, but for a mutiny which broke out in Africa ^*^*^y' 535-
and compelled him to cross the sea and spend some time in
the neighbourhood of Carthage.

Meanwhile the poor craven Theodahat did nothing but

PERIOD I. F

82 European History^ 476-918

besiege the ears of Justinian with more fruitless proposals for
peace. He was as unprepared as ever for resistance when
Belisarius crossed over the straits of Messina, in April 536,
and overran Bruttium and Lucania. So greatly were the Goths
of the south discouraged by his helplessness, that Ebermund,
the Count of Lucania, surrendered to Belisarius, and entered
the imperial service with all his followers. It was not till he
had pushed on to Naples that Belisarius met with any opposi-
tion ; all through southern Italy the city gates swung open the
moment that he touched them with his spear. The old Greek
city of Naples, however, held by a strong Gothic garrison,
made a very obstinate defence, and held out for many weeks,
awaiting the arrival of a relieving army. King Theodahat had
gathered a great army at Rome, but the coward dared not
close, and kept 50,000 men idle, while 7000 Romans were
beleaguering Naples. At last the city fell, a party of Isaurian
soldiers having found their way up a disused aqueduct, and
stormed one of the gates from within. The news of the fall
of Naples raised the wrath of the Goths against their wretched
king to boiling point. At a great folkmoot at Regeta in
the Pomptine Marshes the army solemnly deposed Theodahat,
and, as no male Amal was left, raised on the shield Witiges,
an elderly warrior of respectable character, who had won
credit in the old wars of Theodoric. The dethroned king fled
away to seek refuge at Ravenna, but a private enemy pursued
him and cut his throat ' like a sheep ' long ere he had reached
the City of the Marshes.

The choice of Witiges was a fearful error on the part of the
Goths ; they had mistaken respectability for talent, and paid
the penalty in seeing the stupid veteran wreck all their hopes.
The first blunder on the part of the new king was to draw his
army northward on the news that the Franks were crossing
the Alps to ravage the valley of Po. He left only 4000 men
in Rome, and marched on Ravenna with all the rest. The
moment that he was departed Belisarius moved northward to
attack the imperial city. It fell into his hands without a blow ;

Justinian and his Wars S3

the Gothic garrison felt that they were left deserted among a
populace ready to betray them to the enemy; indeed Pope
Silverius and the Senate had already written to Beiisarius
pray Beiisarius to deliver them. When the Im- takes Rome,
perialists appeared before the southern gate, the ^^ "
Goths fled out of the northern, in a panic that was inexcus-
able, for they were well-nigh as numerous as the 5000 men
that Beiisarius brought with him. (December 9, 536.)

Beiisarius was now master of Rome, but he knew that his
hold on it was precarious. Witiges had settled matters with
the Franks by paying them 130,000 gold solidi and ceding his
Transalpine dominions in Provence. After marrying Mata-
swintha, the sister of the late king Athalaric, and the last
scion of the house of the Amals, he resolved to return and
deliver Rome, All north Italy had sent him its Gothic
warriors, and 100,000 men marched under his banner to
besiege Rome in the spring of 537.

The defence of Rome is the greatest of all the titles to glory
that Beiisarius won. The walls of Aurelian were strong, but
there were only 5000 men to defend their vast circuit, and
within was an unruly mass of cowardly citizens, liable to all
sorts of panic fears — mouths to be fed without hands to strike,
for hardly a Roman took arms to aid the imperial troops. In
the middle of March the Goths appeared before the walls, and
pitched seven camps opposite the northern and eastern gates
of the city. They then cut all the aqueducts which supplied
Rome with water, and commenced the construction of siege-
engines for a great assault. With the want of thoroughness
that he always displayed, king Witiges made no adequate
preparation for blockading the southern side of the city, or for
stopping its communications with Ostia and Naples. All
through the siege convoys of provisions and reinforcements
were frequently able to creep into Rome by night, eluding the
outposts which were all that Witiges placed on the side of the
Tiber and the Campagna.

A fortnight after arriving in front of the walls Witiges had

84 European History, 476-918

his engines ready, and delivered his great assault on the
northern and north-eastern fronts of the city. Everywhere the
attack failed ; the towers and rams which the Goths had
drawn forward never reached the walls ; the oxen which drew
them were shot down before they neared the ditch. But
thousands of wild warriors with scaling-ladders delivered
assaults against innumerable portions of the enceinte. In
most cases they failed entirely ; the walls of Aurelian were too
strong; but at two points, at opposite ends of the city, they
nearly won success. At the Praenestine gate a battering-ram
broke in the outer bulwarks, and a swarm of Goths was only
held back by an inner entrenchment till the reinforcements of
Belisarius arrived. But greater danger still was encountered
at the Mausoleum of Hadrian (castle of St. Angelo), just
Belisarius bcyond the ^lian Bridge. There the Goths
defends filled the ditch, overwhelmed the defenders with
°"^^'^^ "^'^' arrows, and were fitting their ladders to the
embrasures, when they were at last checked by a strange
expedient. The walls of the mausoleum were lined with
dozens of splendid statues, some of them figures of emperors,
others the ancient spoils of Greece. At the supreme moment
the desperate garrison flung these colossal figures on the
besiegers below, and drove them off by the hail of marble
fragments.

At the end of the day Belisarius was everywhere suc-
cessful ; 20,000 Goths had fallen, and the self-confidence of
Witiges was so broken that he never again tried a general
assault. He relied instead on a blockade, but, though he
inflicted great misery on the garrison, and still more on the
populace, he never closed the roads or the river sufficiently
to exclude occasional convoys of provisions. He did not
prevent Belisarius from transferring to Campania the greater
part of the women, aged men, and slaves in the city. Mean-
while the summer drew on, and the Gothic hosts began to
suffer from malaria, and from the filthy state of the crowded
camps. On the other hand, Belisarius at last began to receive

Jusfiyiian and his Wars 85

reinforcements from Constantinople, and was able to make
sallies, in which his horsemen handled the Gothic outposts
very roughly.

When both assault and blockade had been proved in-
effectual, and when an attempt to creep into the city through
the empty aqueducts had been foiled, Witiges would probably
have done well to raise the siege, and throw on Belisarius, whose
army was still very small, the burden of taking the offensive.
Instead of doing this he lay obstinately in his camp for a year
and nine days, watching his army melt away under the scourge
of pestilence, and allowing the numbers and boldness of the
Imperialists to increase. At last Belisarius had been so
strongly reinforced that he was able, while still holding Rome,
to put a second force in the field. This he sent, under an
officer named John the Bloody, through the Sabine hills to
make a dash into Picenum and menace Ravenna. John, a
very able officer, seized the important town of g.^ ^^^
Rimini, only thirty-three miles from Ravenna, in Rome raised,
February 538. The news that his capital was ^'^^'
being threatened, and that the enemy was in his rear, at last
forced the sluggish king of the Goths to move. He set his
seven camps on fire, and retired up the Flaminian Way into
Picenum. Thus the prudence and valour of Belisarius were
at last vindicated, and the Romans, after a siege of 374 days,
could once more breathe freely.

Middle Italy was now lost to the Goths, and the scene of
operations shifted into Picenum, north Etruria, and the valley
of the Po, where the war was to endure for two years more
(538-40). It resolved itself into a struggle for the coast towns
between Ravenna and Ancona, and for the command of the
passes of the Apennines. One half of the Roman army was
concentrated at Rimini and Ancona, while Belisarius himself
with the. other was occupied in clearing the Gothic garrisons
out of northern Etruria. Two Gothic armies at Ravenna and
Auximum penned the northern Roman force into the narrow
sea-coast plain, and at last laid siege to both Rimini and

86 European History^ 476-918

Ancona. Here Witiges seemed for once likely to succeed,
but, when the garrisons had been brought to the last
extremity, they were relieved by new forces from Constanti-
nople commanded by the eunuch Narses iho. praepositiis sacri
aibiculi.

Thrown on the defensive Witiges drew back to Ravenna,
and allowed the Romans to overrun the province of Emilia,
and even to cross the Po, and raise an insurrection in the
great city of Milan. There now followed a long pause :
Jiehsarius found that Narses was set on asserting an inde-
pendent authority over the newly-arrived army, and had to
send to the emperor to beg him to recall the eunuch. Mean-
while he laid siege to the last two Gothic fortresses south
of Ravenna, the towns of Fiesole in Etruria and Auximum
(Osimo) in Picenum. Both cities made a gallant resistance,
and wliile Belisarius was at a standstill Uraias, the warlike
nephew of Witiges, stormed and sacked Milan, and restored
the Gothic dominion north of the Po (539). Meanwhile the
king took the only wise step which occurred to him during
the whole war : he sent ambassadors to the East to inform
Chosroes, king of Persia, that well-nigh the whole Roman
army was occupied in Italy, and that he might overrun Syria
and Mesopotamia with ease. Taken two years earlier, this
step might have saved the Goths, but now it was too late :
Chosroes moved, but moved only in time to hear that Witiges
was dethroned and a captive.

After holding out seven months, Auximum surrendered to
Belisarius at mid-winter, 539-40. Witiges had done nothing
to save the gallant garrison, alleging that a Frankish raid into
the valley of the Po prevented him from moving. The excuse
was true but insufficient, for when the Franks of Theudebert,
thinned by disease, turned home again, the Gothic king did
not stir any the more.

At last, in the spring of 540, Narses had been recalled, and
Belisarius had full possession of all Picenum and Etruria, and
could safely advance on Ravenna. After posting a covering

Justinian and his Wars 87

force to ward off any attempt to relieve the town by the Goths
of northern Italy, he drew his main army round the great
fortress in the marshland, the chosen home of Theodoric, the
storehouse of the hoarded wealth of the Amals. The defence
was weak, far weaker than that of the smaller stronghold of Auxi-
mum. Witiges seemed to have the power of communicating
his sloth and hesitation to all who came near him. He listened
first to offers fromTheudebert the Frank, then to proposals for
surrender sent in by Belisarius. At last he determined to close
with the terms offered by Justinian, that he should resign all Italy
south of the Po, give up half the royal hoard, and reign in the
Transpadane as the emperor's vassal. The terms were not
hard, for Justinian had just been attacked by Persia, and
wished to end his Italian war at once. It would have been
well for all parties if they had been carried out ; but two wills
intervened : the Gothic nobles were wildly indignant at their
master's cowardice : Belisarius, looking at his military advan-
tages, thought the terms too liberal. From this .
discontent came an extraordinary result : the renders
Teutonic chiefs boldly proposed to the imperial ^^^enna, 540.
general that he should reign over them, — whether as king of
the Goths or Roman Caesar they cared not, — but their swords
should be his, and the craven Witiges should be cast away,
if he would take them as his vassals and administer Italy.
Belisarius temporised, and the simple Goths, believing that no
man could resist such an offer, threw open the gates. But
the great general was loyal to the core : instead of proclaiming
himself emperor, he took over the town in Justinian's name,
bade the Gothic warriors disperse each to his own home, and
shipped all the golden stores of Ravenna off to Constantinople.
It seemed as if the monarchy of the Goths was ended :
nothing remained to them save Pavia, Verona, and a few
more north Italian cities. Justinian resolved to recall Belisarius
before these places should fall ; meaner generals would suffice
to take them. Two motives stirred the emperor: his great
captain was wanted on the eastern frontier to keep back

88 European History, 476-918

the advancing Persian ; but suspicion also played its part :
Justinian was not too well pleased that Belisarius had over-
ruled his project of making peace with Witiges, and he had
been somewhat frightened by the Gothic proposal to make
Belisarius emperor. It had been declined, it is true, but might
not the seeds of disloyalty have sunk into the heart of the
general? It would be safer to bring him away from the
temptation.

So, by the imperial mandate, Belisarius sailed for the
Bosphorus, taking with him the captive Witiges, and all the
gold and gems of the great hoard of the Amals. He was
denied a formal triumph such as he had won by his Vandal
victory, but none the less his reception was magnificent. His
personal body-guard of 7000 chosen men had followed him
to the capital, and, as they passed through the streets, the
populace exclaimed ' the household of one man has destroyed
the kingdom of the Goths.' Happy would it have been for the
great general if he had died at the moment of this his grandest
success. He was reserved for lesser wars and years of
chequered fortune (540).

CHAPTER VI

J U S T I N I A ^—{continued)

540-565 A.D.

Justinian as builder — His ruinous financial policy — His second Persian war —
Chosroes takes Antioch, 540— Campaigns of Belisarius and Chosroes—
The Great Plague of 542— Peace with Persia— Baduila restores the
Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy— His campaign against Belisarius— Two
sieges of Rome — Success and greatness of Baduila — Narses invades
Italy — Baduila slain at Taginae, 552 — End of the Ostrogothic kingdom—
Narses defeats the Franks— Justinian attacks Southern Spain— Third
Persian War, 549-55 — Justinian as Theologian — Belisarius defeats the
Huns — Later years of Justinian — His legal reforms.

The year 540 was the last of Justinian's years of unbroken
good fortune. For the rest of his long life he was to experience
many vicissitudes, and see some of his dearest schemes frus-
trated, though, on the whole, the dogged perseverance which
was his most notable characteristic brought him safely through
to the end.

The first difficulty which was destined to trouble him, in the
latter half of his reign, was a financial one. He had now
come to the end of the hoarded wealth of Anastasius ; the
military budget of his increased empire required more money,
for Africa and Italy did not pay their way, and now a new
Persian war was upon his hands. In addition, his
magnificent court and his insatiable thirst for Justinian

° . as builder.

buildmg called for huge sums year after year. It
is impossible to exaggerate Justinian's expenditure on bricks
and mortar : not only did he rebuild in his capital, on a more
magnificent scale, all the public edifices that had been burnt
in the * Nika ' riot, but he filled every corner of his empire,

90 European History, 476-918

from newly-conquered Ravenna to the Armenian frontier,
with splendid forts, churches, monasteries, hospitals, and
aqueducts. Whenever a Byzantine ruin is found in the wilds
of Syria or Asia Minor it turns out, in one case out of every
two, to be of Justinian's date. In the Balkan peninsula alone
we learn to our surprise that he erected more than 300 forts
and castles to defend the line of the Danube and the Haemus,
the side of the empire which had been found most open to
attacks of the barbarian during the last century. The build-
ing of his enormous cathedral of St. Sophia alone cost several
milHons, an expenditure whose magnificent result quite justifies
itself, but one which must have seemed heartrending to the
financiers who had to find the money at a moment when the
emperor was involved in two desperate wars.

Justinian poured forth his treasures with unstinting hand
in the arts both of war and of peace. But to replenish his
treasury — that jar of the Danaides — he had to impose a
crushing taxation on the empire. His finance minister, John
of Cappadocia, was the most unscrupulous of men, one who
never shrank from plying extortion of every kind upon the
wretched tax-payers : as long as he kept the exchequer full
Justinian winked at his iniquitous and often illegal proceed-
ings. It was only when he chanced to quarrel with the empress
Theodora that John was finally disgraced. His successors
were less capable, but no less extortionate : ere ten years had
passed the Africans and Italians, groaning under the yoke of
Ruinous ^^^ Greek Logofhetes, were cursing their stars that
finance of ever they had aided Belisarius to drive out the
Justinian. ^^.-^^ q^^j^ ^^^ Vandal. As Justinian's reign

went on the state of matters grew worse and worse ; for a
crushing taxation tends to drain the resources of the land, and
at last renders it unable to bear even a burden that would
have once been light. Historians recapitulate twenty new
taxes that Justinian laid upon the empire, yet at the end of
his reign they were bringing in far less than the old and
simpler imposts of Anastasius and Justin had produced.

Justinian

91

This ruinous draining of the vital power of the empire only
began to be seriously felt after 540, when, for the first time,
Justinian was compelled to wage war at once in East and West,
and yet refused to slacken from his building. The Gothic
war — contrary to all probability and expectation — was still
destined to run on for thirteen years more ; the Persian lasted
for sixteen, and, when they were over, the emperor and the
empire alike were but the shadow of their former selves : they
were unconquered, but drained of all their strength and marrow.

We have already mentioned that the young king Chosroes of
Persia, stirred up by the embassy of Witiges, and dreading lest
the power which had subdued Carthage and Rome should ere

THE PEESO-EOMAK
FRONTIER

UNDER

JUSTINIAN.

ANTIOCH

Beroea°

o Chalcis

S \Y R I

p^^ tPApamea

TyyoEtching Co.Sc

long stretch out its hand to Ctesiphon, had found a casus
belli, and crossed the Mesopotamian frontier. Some blood-
feuds between Arab hordes respectively subject to Persia and

92 European History, 476-918

Constantinople, and a dispute about the suzerainty of some
tribes in the Armenian highlands formed a good enough ex-
cuse for renewing the war at a moment when Justinian's best
general and 50,000 of the flower of his troops were absent
in Italy and Africa.

In the spring of 540, at the very moment when Belisarius
Second ^^^^ reducing Ravenna, Chosroes marched up the

Persian war, Euphrates, leaving the frontier fortresses of Daras
540-545- and Edessa on his flank, and launched a sudden

attack on north Syria. He had been expected not there but
in Mesopotamia, and all preparations for defence were out of
gear. Before any resistance was organised Chosroes had
crossed the Euphrates, sacked Beroea, and ransomed Hierapohs
for 2000. lbs. of gold. But it was at Antioch, the third city
of the Roman Empire, and the seat of the Praetorian Prefect
of the East that the Persian monarch was aiming. It was
more than two centuries and a half since the city of the
Orontes had seen a foreign foe, and its walls were old and
dilapidated. A garrison of 6000 men was thrown in, and the
Blues and Greens of the city armed themselves to guard the
ramparts. But there was no Roman army in the field to
protect the city from the approach of the Persian :
An'tioch 540. Buzes, the general of the East, refused to risk his
small army in a general engagement, and had
retired no one knew whither. The siege of Antioch was
short, for the defence was ill-managed : the garrison cut its
way out when the walls were forced, but the town, with all its
wealth, and a great number of its inhabitants who had not
found time to fly, became the prize of Chosroes. The
Persian plundered the churches, burnt the private houses, and
drove away a herd of captives, whom he took to his home,
and established in a new city near Ctesiphon, which he called
Chosroantiocheia.

The great king then ransomed the neighbouring cities of
Chalcis and Apamea, and recrossed the Euphrates into
Mesopotamia. Here, where strong and well-armed fortresses

Justinian 93

blocked his way, Chosroes found that he could effect nothing ;
after looking at Edessa he found it too strong, and made his
way to Daras. To this town he laid siege, but was beaten off
without much difficulty, and then returned home for the
winter (540).

The Persians were never destined to win again such
successes as had fallen to them in this the first year of thg
war. By the next spring Justinian had reinforced the eastern
frontier with all his disposable troops, and the mighty Belisarius
himself had arrived to take command of the army of Meso-
potamia. But it was not fated that the great king and the
great captain should ever measure themselves against each
other. Hearing that the frontier to the south was now well
guarded, the Persian had resolved to make a dash at a new
point of the Roman line of defence. While expected on the
Euphrates he quietly marched north through the Median
and Iberian mountains, crossed many obscure passes, and
appeared on the Black Sea coast by the river Phasis. The
Romans here held the shore by their great castle of Petra,
while the Lazi, the tribes of inland Colchis, were Roman
vassals. Chosroes overran the land, constrained the Lazi to
do him homage, and, after a short siege, took Petra.

Meanwhile Behsarius, on finding the Persian invasion of
Mesopotamia delayed, had crossed the frontier in the far
south, beaten a small Persian force in the field, and ravaged
Assyria from end to end, though he could not take the great
fortress of Nisibis. On hearing of this raid Chosroes returned
from Colchis with his main army, whereupon Belisarius
retired behind the ramparts of Daras. The campaign had
not been eventful, but the balance of gain lay on the side of
the Persians, whose frontier now touched the Black Sea.

Nor was the next year (542) destined to see any decisive
fighting. Belisarius had concentrated his army at Europus
on the Euphrates and waited to be attacked, but save one raid
no attack came, though Chosroes had brought the full force
of his empire up to Nisibis. The Roman chronicles ascribe

94 European History, 476-918

his sluggishness to a fear of the reputation of Belisarius, but
another cause seems to have been more operative. The great
plague of 542 had just broken out in Persia, and its ravages
were probably the real cause of the retreat and disbanding of
the army of Chosroes, much as in 1348 the 'black death'
caused English and French to drop for a time their mutual
liostiHties.

This awful scourge merits a word of notice. It broke out
in Egypt early in the year, and spread like wildfire over Syria,
the lands of the Euphrates valley, and Asia Minor, thence
making its way to Constantinople and the West. It is impos-
sible to make out its exact nature, but we know that it was
accompanied by ulcers, and by a horrible swelling of the groin.
Few whom it struck down ever recovered, but of
Plague of 542. these few was Justinian himself, who rose from his
bed when the rumour of his death was already
abroad and a fight for the succession imminent. At Constanti-
nople the plague raged with such violence that 5000, and even
10,000 persons are said to have died in a single day. The
historian Procopius marvelled at its universal spread. 'A
man might climb to the top of a hill, and it was there, or
retire to the depths of a cavern, but it was there also. It
took no note of north or south, Greek or Persian, washed or
unwashed, winter or summer : in all alike it was deadly.' This
awful scourge, which is thought to have carried off a third of
the population of the empire, was not the least of the causes
of that general decay which is found in the later years of
Justinian's reign. It swept away tax-payers, brought commerce
to a standstill, and seems to have left the emperor himself an
old man before his time.

The plague then sufficiently accounts for the stagnation of
the war in 542. Perhaps we may also allow something for the
personal troubles of Belisarius, who, in the previous winter,
had fallen on evil times. He had detected his intriguing
wife Antonina in unfaithfulness, and, for throwing her into
a dungeon, and kidnapping her paramour, had incurred the

Justinian 95

wrath of Theodora, which seriously handicapped him in the
rest of his career, so great was her influence with her imperial
spouse. He was no longer supported from Constantinople
as he had once been, and was at last compelled to disarm
Theodora's displeasure by liberating his wife. The imperial
ill-humour may, perhaps, have stinted his resources during
the summer that followed his domestic misfortune.

In 543, the plague having somewhat abated, Chosroes once
more assumed the offensive, and moved towards Roman
Armenia, following the valley of the upper Euphrates ; but a
fresh outbreak of pestilence forced him to turn back, and the
Romans were consequently enabled to invade Persarmenia.
Belisarius was not with them, and they suffered a serious
defeat from an inferior force, and returned with discredit to
their old cantonments. The great general had been recalled
with ignominy to Constantinople. Justinian had heard that,
when the news of his supposed death had reached the army
of the Euphrates, Belisarius had shown some signs of arrang-
ing for a military pronunciamento. He did not make this his
pretext for recall, but dwelt on some unsettled charges of
money lost from the Vandal and Gothic treasures, for which
there was some foundation, for Belisarius, like Marlborough,
had an unhappy taste for hoarding. For some months the
general was in disgrace : his body-guard was dispersed — 7000
men was too large a comitatus for even the most loyal of
men — and much of his wealth confiscated, but, on his consent-
ing to be reconciled to his wife, and to depart for Italy, the
empress Theodora consented to forget her displeasure and
allow Justinian to give Belisarius the charge of a new war (543).

But, before relating the doings of the humbled and heart-
broken Belisarius in the West, we must finish the Persian war.
In 544 Chosroes, freed alike from the plague and from the
fear of Belisarius, invaded Mesopotamia and laid siege to its
capital Edessa. After a siege of many months, in which the
gallant garrison beat off every effort both of open force and
of military engineerings, — mounds, mines, rams, and towers

g6 European History, 476-918

availed nothing against them, — Chosroes withdrew humbled to
Nisibis, and began to negotiate for a truce ; it was successfully
made on the terms that the Persians should retain the homage
of their conquests in Colchis, and receive 2000 lbs. of gold on
evacuating their other conquests — which were of small value.
On the all-important Mesopotamian frontier the great fortresses
had held good, and there was nothing of importance for the
king to restore. This truce was concluded for five years, at
the end of which the war was renewed (545-550).

Meanwhile all Italy was once more aflame with war. After
Ravenna surrendered, and Witiges was led captive to Byzan-
tium, all the Gothic fortresses surrendered save tv/o, Verona
and Pavia, the only towns of northern Italy in which the
Teutonic element seems to have outnumbered the Roman.
The remnant of the Ostrogoths in Pavia, though they did not
Hiidibad number 2000 men, took the bold step of proclaim-
kingofthe ing a new king, a warrior named Hiidibad, who
Goths, 540-41. ^^g ^i^g nephew of Theudis, king of Spain, and
who promised his uncle's help to his followers. Hildibad's
resistance might have been crushed if he had been promptly
attacked, but the Roman commanders were occupied in taking
over the towns that made no resistance, and in quelling some
disorders among their own men. After Belisarius left, there
were five generals in the peninsula of whom none was trusted
with supreme authority over the rest. Each left to another
the task of treading out the last sparks of Gothic resistance,
and gradually Hiidibad grew stronger as the scattered remnants
of the army of Witiges made their way to his camp. When
he recovered most of Venetia, the Romans thought him
worthy of notice, but he won a battle near Treviso over the
army that came against him. The Italians were now far from
showing the devotion to the imperial cause that they had once
displayed. The Logothetes from Constantinople were harass-
ing them with new imposts, and most especially with the
preposterous attempt to gather the arrears of taxation for
the years during which i-he war had raged, a time at which

Justinian 97

the emperor had, as a matter of fact, no firm hold on the
country.

In 541 Hildibad was murdered by a private enemy ere yet
he had succeeded in freeing all the land north of the Po.
But this hero of the darkest hour, who had saved the Goths
from extinction when salvation seemed impossible, found a
still worthier successor. After a few months, during which
a certain Rugian, named Eraric, ruled at Pavia, Hildibad's
nephew, Baduila, was raised on the shield and saluted as king.
Baduila ^ was, after Theodoric, the greatest of all the Goths of
East or West : he showed a moral elevation, a single-hearted
purity of purpose, a chivalrous courtesy, a justice and piety
worthy of the best of the knights of the Middle Ages. As a
warrior his feats were astonishing : he out-generalled even the
great Belisarius himself. The only stain on his character,
during eleven years of rule, are one or two unjustifiable execu-
tions of prisoners of war who had roused his wrath, and caused
the old Gothic fury to blaze forth.

From the first moment of his accession Baduila went forth
conquering and to conquer. The Roman generals frightened
by his first successes were at last induced to combine: he
foiled them at Verona, followed them across the Baduila
Po, and inflicted on them at Faenza in Emilia king of the
a decisive defeat in the open field, though they °°^^S' 541-53-
had 12,000 men to his 5000. Then crossing the Apennines
he won all Tuscany by a second battle on the Mugello near
Florence. By these two victories all Italy north of Rome, save
the great fortresses, fell into his hands : Rome and Ravenna,
with Piacenza in the valley of the Po, and Ancona and Perugia
in the centre, were left as isolated garrisons, rising above the
returning tide of Gothic conquest. All the surviving Goths had
rallied under Baduila's banner, and many of the imperial
mercenaries of Teutonic blood took service with him when
the cities which they garrisoned were subdued. After conquer-

^ This, as his coins show, was his real name, but the Constantino-
politan historians call him Totila.

PERIOD I. G

98 European History, 476-918

ing Tuscany and Picennm, Baduila left Rome to itself for a
space — the memories of its last siege were too discouraging
— and spent the year 542 in overrunning Campania and
Apulia. The Italians kept apathetically quiet, while the
imperial garrisons were few and scattered. In six months
south Italy was once more Gothic up to the gates of Otranto,
Reggio, and Naples. The siege of the last-named town was
Baduila's first exercise in poliorcetics : the place was very
gallantly defended, and only surrendered when famine had
done its work, and after an armament sent from Constanti-
nople to its relief had been shattered by a storm almost in sight
of the walls, along the rocks of Capri and Sorrento. In spite
of this desperate resistance, it was noted with surprise that
Baduila treated both garrison and people vvith kindness, send-
ing the one away unharmed, and preserving the other from
plunder. It was at the time of the fall of Naples that an
event occurred which was long remembered as a token of the
justice of Baduila. A Gothic warrior had violated the
daughter of a Calabrian : the king cast the man into bonds
and ordered his death. But many of the Goths besought
him not to slay a brave warrior for such an offence. Baduila
heard them out, and replied that they must choose that day
whether they preferred to save one man's life, or to save the
whole Gothic nation. At the beginning of the war they would
remember how they had great hosts, famous generals, vast
treasure, splendid arms, and all the castles of Italy. But under
king Theodahat^ a man who loved gold better than justice,
they had so moved God's anger by their unrighteous lives
that everything had been taken from them. But the divine
grace had given the Goths one more chance of working out
their salvation : God had opened a new account with them,
and so must they do with him, by following justice and
righteousness. The ravisher must die, and as to being a
brave warrior, they should remember that the cruel and unjust
were never finally successful in war, for as was a man's life,
such was his fortune in battle. The officers caught their

Justinian 99

sovereign's meaning and withdrew, and the criminal was duly
executed.

In 542, the year of the plague, Justinian had been able to
do little for Italy, but in that which followed, when he heard
that Naples had fallen, he determined to send the newly-
pardoned Belisarius back to the scene of his former glories.
Denied the services of his own body-guard the great general
recruited 4000 raw troops in Thrace, and made ready to
return. Baduila meanwhile was besieging Otranto, and clear-
ing Apulia of the Imperialists.

In the next year the Gothic king and the Roman general
came for the first time into contact ; contrary to expectation
it was not Belisarius who had the better of the struggle :
broken in spirit, badly served by his raw recruits, and by the
demoralised army of Italy, and unaided by Justinian, who was
straining every nerve to keep up the Persian War, he accom-
plished little or nothing. Based on the impreg- campaign of
nable fortress of Ravenna he was able to seize Belisarius
Pesaro, and to relieve the garrisons of Osimo and
of Otranto, but that was all. Baduila ravaged Italy unmo-
lested, and began to make preparations for the siege of Rome :
if he was to be checked — as Belisarius wrote to his master —
more men and money to pay them were urgently needed.

Justinian could not, or would not, send either men or
money in adequate quantity, and Baduila was able to invest
Rome. Unlike Witiges, he succeeded in barring all the roads,
and in blocking the Tiber by a boom of spars. Famine was
soon within the walls, but the Goths made no attempt at a
storm, leaving hunger to do its work. Bessas, the governor
of Rome, sought for aid from all sides, and corn ships were
sent him from Sicily, but Baduila seized them all as they were
tacking up the Tiber channel. Then Belisarius came round to
Portus, at the mouth of the river, with all the men he could
muster, a very few thousands, and endeavoured to force his
way to Rome by breaking Baduila's boom, and bringing his
lighter war-vessels up the Tiber. He left his wife, his stores,

100 European History ^ 476-918

and his reserves at Portus, sailed up the river, and succeeded,
after a hot engagement, in burning the towers which guarded
the boom. But, in the moment of success, news came to him
that the Goths were attacking Portus in his rear, and that his
wife and camp were in danger. He turned back, found that
the fighting at Portus was only an insignificant skirmish
brought on by the rashness of the ofificer in command there,
and so missed his chance of forcing the boom. Disappoint-
ment, or the malarial fever of the marshy Tiber-mouth, laid
him on a bed of sickness next day, and, before he was re-
covered, Rome had fallen. Some of the famished garrison threw
open the Asinarian Gate at midnight, and admitted the
Goths, after the siege had lasted thirteen months (545-546).
The blame of the fall of the city rested mainly on the governor
Bessas, who doled out his stores with a sparing hand to
soldiery and people alike, while he was secretly selling the
corn at exorbitant prices to the richer citizens. The troops
were starving, yet vast quantities of provisions were found
concealed in the general's praetorium.

Baduila gave up the plunder of the city to his long-tried
troops, but sternly prohibited murder, rape, or violence. By
Baduila takes ^^ confession of his cnemics themselves only
Rome, 546. twenty-six Romans lost their lives, though
20,000 war-worn troops had poured into the city at mid-
night, wald for plunder and revenge. The king made the
churches into sanctuaries, and the multitudes that gathered
in them suffered no harm.

Baduila looked upon Rome as the chief lair of his enemies,
the home of a faithless people, and the snare of the Goths.
He resolved neither to make it his capital nor to garrison it,
but to make a desert of it. The people were driven out, the
gates burnt, and great breaches were made all round the walls
of Aurelian. Then he harangued his army, bidding them
remember how, in the days of Witiges, 7000 Imperialists had
robbed of power and wealth and liberty 100,000 rich and well-
armed Goths. But now that the Goths were become poor, and

Justinian lOl

few, and war-worn, they had discomfited more than 20,000
Greeks. The reason was that in the old days they had
angered God by their pride and evil living ; now they were
humbled and chastened in spirit, and therefore they were vic-
torious. For the future they must remember that if just they
would have God with them ; but, if they fell back into their
former ways, the hand of Heaven would work their down-
fall.

This done, he drew off with his army, leaving Rome deso-
late, and without a living soul within its walls. For forty days
the imperial city was given up to the wolf and the owl, but at
last Belisarius, who still lay at Portus with his small army,
marched within the walls, hurriedly barricaded the breaches
and the gateless portals, and prepared to hold Rome for a
third siege. The Goths had been too slack in casting down
the walls, and the hasty repairs of Belisarius made the city
once more tenable against any coiip-de-rnain. In Belisarius re-
great disgust Baduila rushed back from Cam- covers Rome,
pania, and tried to force the barricades. After three assaults
he recognised that they were too strong, and retired to central
Italy, leaving, however, a strong corps of observation at Tivoli,
to keep Belisarius from issuing out of the city for further oper-
ations.

For two years more Belisarius and Baduila fought up and
down the peninsula, but the Goth kept the superiority ; though
sometimes foiled, he had, on the whole, the advantage. Beli-
sarius, like Hannibal during the later years of his sojourn in
Italy, flitted from point to point with his small army, looking
for opportunities to strike a blow, but seldom finding them.
Justinian, though now freed from the Persian War, sent no
adequate supplies or reinforcements, and seemed content that
his general should hold no more than Rome and Ravenna.
In 548 Belisarius was recalled on his own or his wife's re-
quest. He felt that he could do no more with his inadequate
resources, he had outlived the desire of glory, and his old
age was at hand. Justinian received him with kindness, made

102 European History, d^']6-(^\Z

him inagisier militum and chief of the Imperial Guard, and
bade him Hve in peace in Constantinople.

The sole check on Baduila was now removed, and, in the
four years that followed, the gallant Goth cleared the whole
country, save Ravenna, of the presence of the imperialist
soldiery. He retook Rome in 549, and captured or slew
the whole garrison. This time, instead of dismantling the city,
he determined to make it his capital. He reorganised the
Successes of Senate, bade the palace be repaired, and celebrated
Baduila. gamcs in the circus as his great predecessor,
Theodoric, had done. It would seem that he now felt him-
self so strong that he feared no return of the imperialist
armies, and lost his old dread of walled towns. He sent
embassies to Justinian, bidding the emperor recognise accom-
plished facts, and return to the old relations that had subsisted
between the Goths and the emperor in the happy days of
Anastasius and Theodoric. But the stern ruler of the East
was immovable. He quietly persisted in the war, and merely
began to collect once more an army for the invasion of Italy.
The first expedition he placed under count Germanus, his own
nephew, who was looked upon as the destined heir to the
empire. But a sudden invasion of Macedonia by the Slavs
drew aside Germanus to Thessalonica. He achieved a success
over the invaders, but died soon after, and his army never
crossed the Adriatic. Baduila meanwhile was in full posses-
sion of Italy. When he found that the armament of Germanus
had dispersed, he built a fleet, conquered Sardinia, and then
crossed into Sicily, and ravaged that island, against whose
people the Goths bore an especial grudge for their rebellion
and eager reception of Belisarius fifteen years before.

It was not till 552 that Baduila was forced to fight on the

defensive once more, and protect Italy from the last of the

armies of Justinian. This time the emperor had

Narses in- -' ^

vades Italy, choscn a Strange commander-in-chief, the eunuch
552- Narses, his chamberlain, or praepositus sacri

ciibiciili^ who had once before been seen in Italy, in 538, when

Justinian I03

he had intrigued against Belisarius. Narses was known as
clever, pushing, and persistent, but his choice as a general-in-
chief was one of those strange appointments of Justinian's
which looked like freaks of folly, but turned out to have been
guided by the deepest knowledge of character. Being better
trusted than Belisarius, he was better equipped for war. Be-
sides a large detachment of the regular troops of the East, he
was allowed to hire no less than 10,000 German auxiliaries
from the Danube — Herules, Lombards, and Gepidae. His
whole force must have been more than 20,000 strong, thrice
the size of the army that had followed Belisarius. Narses had
resolved to turn the head of the Adriatic and advance through
Venetia, but, while he was executing this long march, he sent
a fleet to threaten the east coast of Italy. Off Ancona his
armada met and defeated the Gothic ships, which Baduila
had brought round to watch the Adriatic. This engagement
seems to have induced the Goths to expect a Roman landing
in Picenum, and only a small portion of Baduila's army was
sent into Venetia, under count Tela, to watch the passes of
the Carnic Alps. Narses succeeded in eluding this force by
hugging the sea-coast, and using his ships to ferry him over
the Po-mouth. He reached Ravenna without striking a blow,
and there was joined by such Roman troops as were already
in Italy.

Then, neglecting all the Gothic fortresses, he marched
straight on Rome : not by the Flaminian Way, the great road
between north and south — for that was held by the Goths —
but by following a minor pass up the valley of the river Sena.
He had just crossed the Apennines when Baduila met him at
Taginae, in Umbria, under the very shadow of the mountains.
The Gothic king had called up all his forces from central
Italy, and was joined by Teia and the northern army on the
eve of the fight, but he was still inferior in numbers to the
Imperialists. Narses showed himself an able general. Know-
ing that the Goths mainly trusted to the wild rush of their
heavy cavalry, he dismounted all his barbarian auxiliaries,

104 European History, 476-918

and formed them in a serried mass in his centre ; 8000 Roman
archers flanked them, and 1500 chosen Roman cavalry were
teld in reserve on his left wing. Baduila bade his men use
the lance alone, and himself led the horsemen of his comitatus
in a gallant charge on the enemy's centre. From noon till
dusk the Gothic knights dashed again and again at the
Battle of phalanx in the middle of the Roman line : they
Taginae. could not break it, and meanwhile they were
shot down in hundreds by the archers on the wings. The
battle, in fact, was much like the English fight at Cressy ; at
both the archery and dismounted horsemen beat back the
unsupported cavalry of the assailant. At last, towards dusk,
the wrecks of the Gothic cavalry reeled back in disorder upon
their infantry, and Narses bade the 1500 cuirassiers of his
reserve to strike at the hostile flank.

All was over with the Goths. Their line broke and fled,
their gallant king was mortally wounded in the pursuit, and
darkness alone saved the army from annihilation. So perished
Baduila, last Ostrogothic king of Italy, and 'first of the
Knights of the Middle Ages,' as he has been not inaptly
styled. There was still, however, fighting to be done. The
warriors who had escaped from Taginae proclaimed count
Teia king, and though most of the Italian towns accepted the
death of Baduila as ending the war, a few still held out.
Rome, manned by an inadequate garrison, was stormed with
ease, and its keys sent, now for the third time, to Justinian.
King Teia, after ranging up and down the land in a vain
attempt to keep up the war, was brought to bay in Campania.
His little army, penned up in the hills above Sorrento, made
a sudden dash to catch the eunuch-general unprepared. But
Narses was ready for them, and on the banks of the Sarno the
The Goths ^^^^ ^^ ^^ Goths wcrc Overwhelmed with numbers,
leave Italy, and saw their king slain in the forefront of the
5^3' battle. Then the poor remnants of the rulers of

Italy sent to offer submission. They would leave the penin-
sula, with bag and baggage, wife and child, and betake them-

Justinian 105

selves beyond the Alps, if only a free passage were granted to
them. So, in the autumn of 553, the few remaining Gothic
garrisons laid down their arms, gathered together, and disap-
peared over the passes of the Alps into the northern darkness.
We have no tidings of the fate of these last survivors of the
great Ostrogothic race. Whether they became the vassals of
the Frank, or mingled with the Bavarians, or sought their
kinsmen, the Visigoths of Spain, no man can tell.

So perished the Gothic kingdom, which had been erected
by the genius of Theodoric, by the same fate which had
smitten the pirate-realm of the Vandals seventeen years
before. Both fell because the ruling race was too small
to hold down the vast territory that it had overrun, unless
it could combine frankly and freely with the conquered
Roman population. But the fatal bar of Arianism
lay m each case between masters and servants, Gothic
and when the orthodox armies of Constantinople ^^i^asters.
appeared, nothing could restrain the Africans and Italians
from opening their gates to the invader. The Ostrogoths had
been wise and tolerant, the Vandals cruel and persecuting,
but the end was the same in each kingdom. It was only in
the measure of the resistance that the difference between Goth
and Vandal appeared. Sunk in coarse luxury, and enervated
by the African sun, the Vandals fell in one year before a
single army. The Ostrogoths, the noblest of the Teutons,
made a splendid fight for seventeen years, beat off the great
Belisarius himself, and only succumbed because the incessant
fighting had drained off the whole manhood of the tribe. If
Baduila could have mustered at Taginae the 100,000 men that
Witiges had once led against Rome, he would never have been
beaten. It is one of the saddest scenes in history when we see
the well-ordered realm of Theodoric vanish away, and Italy is
left an unpeopled desert, to be disputed between the savage
Lombard, the faithless Frank, and the exarchs of distant
Byzantium.

The conquest of Italy by Narses was destined to have one

io6 European History^ 476-918

further episode ere it was yet complete. When Teia's fate
was known, the ministers of the young Frankish king Theude-
bald of Metz launched a great army into the peninsula, under
two Suabian dukes Chlothar and Buccelin. Their hosts pressed
down the peninsula, following the one the western coast, the
other the eastern. But Chlothar's army was destroyed by
famine and pestilence, and Buccelin's was annihilated at
Casilinum, in Campania, by Narses, Against the mass of
Frankish foot-soldiers, with spear and battle-axe, Narses em-
ployed the same tactics as against the Gothic horse. A solid
centre of dismounted Teutons, Lombards, and Heruli, kept the
Frankish column in check, while wings of Roman archers and
cuirassiers swung round the flanks of the invader, enveloped
him, and destroyed him. Of 40,000 of Buccelin's men it is
said that not a hundred escaped, so far worse did they fare
than the Goths had fared at Taginae in the previous year.
The Frankish ravages put the last finishing touch to the
Desolation misery of Italy. Alike in the northern plain, in
in Italy. Picenum and Emilia, and in the neighbourhood
of Rome, the whole population had disappeared. Justinian
and Narses had restored peace, but it was the best example
ever seen of the adage, solitudinem f admit pacem appellant.

To these same years belongs the story of Justinian's invasion
of southern Spain, an episode which will be found narrated at
full length in the chapter dealing with the Visigoths.

We must now turn back to Justinian's fortunes in the East.
It will be remembered that his Second Persian War had been
ended by a five years' truce in 545, after the great plague and
gallant defence of Edessa. The five years of peace that fol-
lowed were not very notable in the history of the empire save
for one important event. Theodora, the colleague and other
self of Justinian, died of cancer in 548, and with her death
much of her husband's vigour, if not of his persistence, seems
to have vanished. Deprived of his councillor and helpmate
the emperor became gloomy and morbid. His midnight
studies took the direction of theology alone, and he launched

Justinian^ s Later Years 107

out into a futile ecclesiastical controversy on ' The Three Chap-
ters.' This was a wholly unnecessary dispute as to whether
three documents of three patristic writers, Theodore, Ibas, and
Theodoret — all long dead — contained heretical matter or not.
But it succeeded in convulsing the whole Eastern Church, and
led Justinian into a quarrel with the Roman see, which refused
to condemn the 'Three Chapters.' He seized Pope Vigilius, and
brought him to Constantinople, to compel him to fall in with
his own views. After detaining the unfortunate justinian and
pontiff in the East for six years, and even drag- Pope vigiiius.
ging him from sanctuary and imprisoning him in an island, the
emperor succeeded in inducing him to declare that Theodore
and the two other theologians had indeed fallen into grievous
heresy (a.d. 553). Justinian was triumphant, but Vigilius found
that he had thereby introduced schism into Italy and Africa,
where many bishops stood by the 'Three Chapters.' An
African council went so far as to excommunicate Vigilius, and
for a century some of the north Italian churches were out of
communion with the Roman see.

But long ere Vigilius had yielded Justinian was once more at
war with Persia. When the five years' truce ran out at the end
of 549, the imperial troops advanced to recover the suzerainty
of Colchis, the one point that had been yielded to Chosroes in
the treaty of 545. But strangely enough, while the war was
renewed on the Black Sea, it did not recommence on the
Mesopotamian frontier. Both parties concurred Third Persian
to renew the truce for everything except Colchis, ^^^' 549-55-
and on that limited arena alone the hostilities proceeded.
The struggle recalls, in this curious feature, the way in which
the French and English fought in India in the eighteenth
century, while in Europe they were at peace. The conditions
of the war were favourable to Justinian, whose armies had
free access by sea to the Colchian coast, while the Persians
had to reach it by the wild passes over the Armenian and
Iberian mountains. The dreary but very bloody Colchic or
Lazic war went on for six years, draining alike the Persian

io8 European History^ 476-918

and the imperial treasuries; but at last the Romans had the
better in the struggle, secured the homage of the Lazic king,
and drove the Persians far back into the interior (555).
Finally, after interminable negotiations Chosroes made peace,
surrendering his claim on Colchis in consideration of an
indemnity of 30,000 solidi (;£"i 8,000) per annum.

This was the last of Justinian's great wars \ but the end of
his reign was far from being peaceful or prosperous. It was
especially noteworthy for the repeated inroads of the Huns
and Slavs into the Balkan peninsula. The greatest raid was
in 558, when the Cotrigur Huns under their khan Zabergan
eluded the garrisons on the Danube, crossed the Balkans, and
rode at large over the whole of Thrace. One body of 4000
Beiisarius borse pushcd their incursions up to the very gates
defeats the of Constantinople, and so alarmed Justinian that

""^' he bade the aged Beiisarius to buckle on his arms

once more, and save the capital. The military resources of
the empire were so scattered that Beiisarius could only count
on 300 of his own veterans, on the * Scholarian Guards ' ^ and
a levy of half-armed Thracian rustics. By skilfully posting this
small force, and inducing the Huns to attack his line exactly
where it was strongest, he routed the barbarians, and returned
in triumph from this his last campaign.

After this final feat of the old general it is sad to learn that
his master had not even yet learned to trust him. Four years
later there was a futile conspiracy against Justinian, and
Beiisarius was accused of having known of it. He was dis-
graced, and put under ward for eight months, before the
emperor convinced himself that the charge was false. Re-
stored at last to favour, he lived two years more in possession
of his riches and honours,^ and died in March 565. His

^ A body of local troops raised in the city, who formed part of the
imperial guard.

2 It is now fully recognised, as Finlay and Bury have proved, that there
is no truth in the legend that Beiisarius was blinded, and became a beggar
crying to the people, Date obolum Belisario.

Justinian's Later Years 109

thankless master followed him to the grave before the end of
the same year. On the i ith of December 565, Justinian, after
living more than seventy years, and reigning for thirty-eight,
descended to the tomb.

We have spoken of Justinian's wars, of his buildings, of his
financial policy, of his ecclesiastical controversies. But for
none of these is he so well remembered as for his activity in
yet another sphere. It is by his great work of codifying the
Roman law, and leaving it in a complete and Legal reforms
orderly form as a heritage to the jurists of the of Justinian,
modern world that he earned his greatest title to immortality.
This was an achievement of the first half of his reign, carried
out with the aid of the best lawyers of Constantinople, headed
by Tribonian, the able but greedy quaestor against whom the
rioters in the ' Nika ' sedition had raged so furiously.

Roman law had hitherto consisted of two elements — the
constitutions and edicts of the emperors, and the decisions of
the great lawyers of the past. Both these elements were
somewhat chaotic. Five centuries of imperial edicts over-
ruled and contradicted each other in the most hopeless con-
fusion ; Pagan and Christian ideas were intermixed in them,
many had gone completely out of date, and new conditions of
society had made others impossible to work. Nor were the
responsa prudentum or decisions of the ancient jurisconsults
any less chaotic ; in modern England the difficulties of ' case
made law,' as it has been happily called, are perplexing enough
to enable us to understand the troubles of a Constantinopolitan
judge, confronted with a dozen precedents of contradictory
import.

Justinian removed all this confusion by producing three
great works. His Code collected the imperial constitutions
into a manageable shape, striking out all the obsolete edicts,
and bringing the rest up to the requirements of a Christian
state of the sixth century. His Digest or Pandects did the
same for the decisions of the ancient lawyers, laying down the
balance of authority, and specifying the precedents which

no European History, ^^6-^1^

were to be accepted. Lastly, the Institutes gave a general
sketch of Roman law in the form of a commentary on its
principles for the use of students. These volumes were
destined to be the foundation of all systematic jurisprudence
in modern Europe ; their compilation was the last, and not the
least, of the works of the ancient Roman spirit of law and
order, incarnate in the last great emperor of Roman speech,
for none of Justinian's successors could say, as could he him-
self, that Latin was his native tongue. After-ages remembered
him, above all things, as the compiler of the Code^ and it was
as its framer that he is set by Dante in one of the starry
thrones of the Christian paradise.

In spite of all his great achievements it cannot be disputed
that Justinian left the empire weaker than he found it. Its
territorial expansion in Italy, Africa, and Spain did not com-
pensate for the exhaustion of the Eastern provinces. By his
ruthless taxation Justinian had drained off their vital energies,
and left them poorer and weaker than they had ever been
before. Even his armies felt the reaction ; at the end of his
reign we read that they were sinking both in numbers and
efficiency ; the new and extended frontiers were more than
they could guard, and the old race of generals who had fol-
lowed Belisarius was dead. Justinian himself is said to have
neglected their pay and maintenance, while he set his aged
brains to wrestle with the problem of the ' Three Chapters ' or
the heresy of Aphthartodocetism. Like Louis xiv. of France,
whom he resembles in many other respects, Justinian closed a
reign of unparalleled magnificence as a gloomy pietist, whose
despotism drained and crushed a people who had grown to
abhor his very name.

CHAPTER VII

THE EARLIER PRANKISH KINGS
AND THEIR ORGANISATION OF GAUL

511-561.

The Sons of Cblodovech — Theuderich conquers Thuringia, 531— Childebeit
and Chlothar conquer Burgundy, 532 — Their war with the Visigoths —
Theudebert invades Italy — Chlothar reunites the Frankish kingdoms, 558
— Organisation of the Frankish realm — The great officials — Mayors of
the Palace — Counts and Dukes— Local government, the Mallus — Legal
and financial arrangement.

Chlodovech left four sons : one, Theuderich, borne to him by
a Frankish wife in early youth ; three, Chlodomer, Childebert,
and Chlothar, the offspring of his Burgundian spouse, Chro-
techildis. In accordance with the old Teutonic custom of
heritage-partition, the four young men divided among them-
selves their father's newly-won realms, though the division
threatened to wreck the Frankish power in its earliest youth.
Theuderich, the eldest son, took the most compact and most
Teutonic of the parts of Chlodovech's realm, the old kingdom
of the Ripuarian Franks along the Rhine bank from Koln as
far south as Basle, with the new Frankish settle- The sons of
ments east of the Rhine in the valley of the Main, chiodovech.
He fixed his residence, however, not at Koln, the old Ripu-
arian capital, but in the more southerly town of Metz on the
Moselle, an ancient Roman city, though one less hitherto
famous than its greater neighbour Trier. In addition to

Ripuaria Theuderich took a half share of the newly-conquered

111

112

European History, 476-918

Aquitaine, its eastern half from Clermont and Limoges to
Albi.

THE

PRANKISH

KINGDOMS. 511

yTHURIN-

\gians

BAVARIANS

VISIGOTHS

While Ripuaria was given to Theuderich, his brother Chlothar
obtained the other old Frankish realm, the ancient territory of
the Salian Franks from the Scheldt-mouth to the Somme,
together with his father's first conquests from the Gallo-
Romans in the valley of the Aisne. His capital was Soissons,
the old stronghold of Syagrius, in the extreme southern angle
of his realm. The remaining two brothers, Chlodomer and
Childebert, reigned respectively at Orleans and Paris, and
ruled the lands on the Seine, Loire, and Garonne which
Chlodovech had won from Syagrius and Alaric. Their king-
doms must have been far less strong, because far less thickly
settled by the Franks, than those of Theuderich and Chlothar.

The Early Prankish Kings 113

Chlodomer's dominion comprised the whole valley of the
middle and lower Loire, and Western Aquitaine, including
Bordeaux and Toulouse. Childebert had a smaller share—
the Seine valley and the coasts of the Channel from the mouth
of the Somme westward.

The four brother kings were all worthy sons of their wicked
father — daring unscrupulous men of war, destitute of natural
affection, cruel, lustful, and treacherous. But they were emi-
nently suited to extend, by the same means that Chlodovech
had used, the realms that he had left them. The times, too,
were propitious, for during their lives was removed the single
bar that hindered the progress of the Franks, the power of
the strong Gothic realm that obeyed Theodoric the Great.

Although the sons of Chlodovech not unfrequently plotted
each other's deposition or murder, yet they generally turned
their arms against external enemies, and even on occasion
joined to aid each other. The object which each set before
himself was the subjection of the nearest independent state.
Theuderich therefore looked towards inner Germany and the
kingdom of the Thuringians, on the Saal and upper Weser ;
Childebert and Chlodomer turned their attention towards
their southern neighbours the Burgundians.

Both these states were destined to fall before the sons of
Chlodovech, but neither of them without a hardly fought
struggle. Theuderich was distracted from his first attempts
against Thuringia by a great piratical invasion of the Lower
Rhineland by predatory bands from Scandinavia, led by
the Danish king Hygelac (Chrocholaicus), who is mainly
remembered as the brother of that Beowulf whom the earliest
Anglo-Saxon epic celebrates (515). The son of Theuderich
the king of the Ripuarians slew the pirate, and conquers
next year the Thuringian war began. It did not "^^"""S'^-
terminate till 531, when Theuderich, calling in the aid of his
brother Chlothar, utterly destroyed the Thuringian realm, and
made it tributary to himself. The Frank celebrated his
victory first by an unsuccessful attempt to murder his brother

PERIOD I. H

114 European History^ 476-918

and helper Chlothar, who was fain to fly home in haste, and
next by the treacherous murder of Hermanfrid, the vanquished
Thuringian king, who had surrendered on promise of hfe.
Theuderich led him in conversation around the walls of the
city of Zulpich, and suddenly bade his servants push him over
the rampart, so that his neck was broken. Southern Thur-
ingia, the region on the Werra and Unstrut, was for the future
a tributary province of the Franks. Northern Thuringia,
between Elbe and Werra, was overrun by the Saxons, and
never came under Theuderich's power.

While the king of Ripuaria was warring in Germany, his
younger brothers had assaulted Burgundy. In 523 Childebert
and Chlodomer attacked the unpopular king Sigismund, the
slayer of his own son, as we have elsewhere related.^ They
beat him in battle, took him prisoner, and threw him with his
wife and son down a well. But Gondomar, brother of Sigis-
Frankish mund, restored the fortune of war in the next year,
invasion of and routcd the Franks at Veseronce, in a battle
Burgundy, ^y^gj-g Chlodomer was slain (524). Before pur-
suing the Burgundian war the brothers of the dead man
resolved to plunder his realm. The king of Orleans had
only left infant children, so Childebert and Chlothar found
no difficulty in overrunning his lands on the Loire. The
three young boys, to whom the realm should have fallen, were
captured and brought before their uncles. Childebert, the
ruffian who was of a milder mood, proposed to spare their
lives, but Chlothar actually dragged them away while they
clung to his brother's knees, and cut the throats of the two
eldest with his own hands. The youngest was snatched
up arid hidden by a faithful servant, and lived to become a
monk, and leave his name to the * monastery of Chlodovald '
(St. Cloud).

Of Chlodomer's realm Childebert took the lands on the
upper Loire and the capital city Orleans, Chlothar the Loire-
mouth and the part of Aquitaine south of it. Hearing a false
^ See p. 27.

The Early Prankish Kings 115

report that his eldest brother, Theuderich had fallen in battle
with the Thuringians, Childebert now invaded East Aquitaine,
a part of his brother's heritage. But Theuderich returned in
wrath, and the king of Paris and Orleans resolved to go
instead against the Visigoths, and to drive them from the
land between the Cevennes and the Pyrenees. The great
Theodoric was just dead, so no help from Italy could be
expected by the Visigothic king Amalric, the grandson of the
departed hero. Childebert found his pretext in the complaint
that his sister Chrotechildis, the wife of Amalric, had been
debarred from the exercise of the Catholic religion and cruelly
ill treated by her Arian husband. With this holy plea as his
casus belli he marched against Narbonne, defeated war with the
Amalric in battle, and drove him over the Pyrenees visigoths.sai.
to the gates of Barcelona. There he was slain, either by the
sword of the pursuing Franks, or by the Visigothic army,
enraged at the cowardice which he had displayed in the
struggle. On his death the Goths raised on the shield and
saluted as king the aged count Theudis, the regent who had
ruled Spain for Theodoric the Great during the minority of
Amalric. Thus ended the race of the Baitings as rulers of
the Visigoths; their succeeding kings were not of the old
royal house. Theudis, who was suspected of having had
some hand in his late pupil's murder, soon justified the choice
of the Goths, by recovering Narbonne and the other cities of
Septimania from the Franks. Childebert had turned off to
another quest, and the old Visigothic possessions north of the
Pyrenees were retaken without much trouble (531).

The enterprise which had called away Childebert was a new
attempt to conquer Burgundy, in which his brother Chlothar
had promised to join him. In the spring of 532 Burgundy
the kings of Paris and Soissons united their forces, conquered,
and marched up the valley of the Yonne. They ^^^*
laid siege to Autun, and when Gondomar the Burgundian
monarch came to its relief, beat him with such decisive results
that he fled into Italy and abandoned his kingdom. A few

1 1 6 European History, 476-9 1 8

sieges put the victorious Frankish brethren in possession of
the whole Burgundian realm as far as the borders of the
Ostrogoths on the Alps and the Drome.

When Burgundy had been conquered, the Franks began to
prepare for a new campaign against the Visigoths, in which
Theuderich intended to share no less than his brothers. But
this scheme was frustrated by the death of the king of
Ripuaria early in the year 533. He left a son, Theudebert,
already a grown man and a good warrior, but in true Mero-
vingian fashion the uncles of the heir made a vigorous attempt
to seize and divide his realm. It was only the prompt and
enthusiastic way in which the Ripuarians rallied around their
young king that saved him from the fate of his cousins, the
princes of Orleans. Not merely, however, did Theudebert
hold his own, but he compelled his uncles to give him a
share of the newly-conquered Burgundy, v/hen the partition
of that country was finally made.

Theudebert was, in fact, well able to take care of himself,
and soon showed that he was as unscrupulous and enterpris-
ing, if not quite so bloodthirsty, as his father and uncles. Yet
he was, for a Meroving, not an unfavourable specimen of a
monarch, and the chroniclers tell us that he ruled his kingdom
with justice, venerated the clergy, built churches, and gave
much alms to the poor. That as a politician he was shifty
and treacherous was soon to be shown by his dealings with
Theudebert ^^^^^y* ^" 535 the cmpcror Justinian, on the eve
invades of his invasiou of the Ostrogothic kingdom, bribed

Italy, 535. ^^ three Frankish monarchs, by a gift of 50,000
solidi, to attack Italy from the rear. Uncles and nephew
alike were ready to take the money and join in the plunder of
the peninsula. But in the next year the Gothic king Witiges,
eager to free himself from a second war, offered to cede
Provence and Rhaetia to the Franks if they would make peace
with him, and grant him the aid of their arms. The three
kings gladly agreed, and lent him an auxiliary force of 10,000
men, who joined the Goths in recovering Milan. Theudebert

The Early Prankish Kings 117

and Childebert are said to have cheated Chlothar of his third
of the gains, the former having got the money and the latter
the land which Witiges made over.

In 539 Witiges and Belisarius were locked in such deadly
conflict that the Franks thought it a good opportunity to en-
deavour to invade Italy on their own behalf. Theudebert
came over the Alps in person, with an army of 100,000
men, all footmen armed with lance and axe, save 300
nobles who rode around the king with shield and spear.
First falling on his friends the Goths, then attacking the
East-Romans in turn, Theudebert drove across the north of
Italy, sacking Genoa, and wasting all the valley of the Po as
far as Venetia. All the open country was in his hands, and
the Goths and Romans had to shut themselves up in their
fortresses. But a disease brought on by foul living fell upon
the Franks, and so thinned their ranks that Theudebert had
to retire homeward, relinquishing all he had gained save the
possession of the passes of the Cottian Alps. It was, how-
ever, with his Italian plunder that he struck the first gold
money which any barbarian king coined in his own name.
Instead of placing the head of the emperor on his solidi, as
had hitherto been the practice of Goth, Frank, and Bur-
gundian, he represented his own image with shield and
buckler, and the inscription Domimis Noster Theudebertus
Victor^ without any reference to Justinian as emperor or over-
lord. Some of the pieces make him assume the more start-
ling .title of Doniinus Theudebertus Augustus, as if he had
aimed at uniting Gaul and Italy, and taking the style of
Western Emperor ; and, strange as this design may appear, it
receives some countenance from a chronicler who declares
that, after his Italian conquests, Theudebert was so uplifted in
spirit that he designed to march against Constantinople, and
make himself lord of the world (539).

When in the next year the faithless Theudebert planned
another expedition to reconquer north Italy, and had the
effrontery to offer his alliance once more to king Witiges, we

1 1 8 European History, 476-9 1 8

need not marvel that the Ostrogoth refused to listen for a
moment to the overture, and chose rather to open negotiation
with his East-Roman foes. The surrender of Ravenna and
the triumph of Belisarius followed, and Theudebert found that,
in invading the peninsula, he would have the emperor as his
foe rather than the king of the Goths. He refrained for the
time from following up his first successes, but it is strange to
find that when the Gothic cause had again triumphed in
the hands of king Baduila, and north Italy was once more
torn asunder between Roman and Teuton, the Frank did not
take advantage of the renewed troubles to make a second
expedition. It is probable that in these years, 541-45, he was
Conquest of occupied in another conquest, that of the land
Bavaria. between the Danube and the Noric Alps, which
now bore the name of Bavaria. The German tribes in the
ancient Noricum, who had been subject to Theodoric in the
great days of the Gothic Empire, the remnant of the Rugians,
Scyrri, Turcilingi, and Herules, had lately formed themselves
into a federation under the name of Bavarians, and had chosen
a duke Garibald as their prince.^ We have no details of
Theudebert's wars against them, but merely know that by the
end of his reign he had made the Bavarians tributary to the
Franks. Their conquest in all probability fills the unrecorded
time between Theudebert's expedition to Italy and his death
in 548. For some years at the end of this period we know
that he was sick and bedridden, so that it is fair to put the
subjection of Bavaria somewhere about 543, five years before
the death-date of the Ripuarian king. Theudebert left his
kingdom to his young son, Theudebald, a weak and sickly
boy, whose accession, knowing the character of his great-
uncles, we are surprised to hear was not troubled by any
opposition.

While Theudebert had been busied in Italy, the other two

^ This seems the best way of accounting for the obscure beginnings of
the Bavarian duchy. The derivation of the word Bavaria is hard to
fathom.

The Early Prankish Kings 119

Frankish kings, Childebert and Chlothar, though now they
were both advanced in years, had made a second expedition
against the Visigoths, and in 542 overran the Gothic province
north of the Pyrenees, and then crossed into the valley of the
Ebro. They took Pampeluna, and advanced as far as Sara-
gossa, to which they laid siege, but in front of that city they
received a crushing defeat from Theudigisel, the g'eneral of the
old Gothic king, Theudis, and were driven back into Gaul
without retaining one foot of their conquests. Narbonne and
the Mediterranean shore still remained an appendage of the
kingdom of Spain.

A similar fate to that which attended the armies of his
great-uncles in Spain was destined to befall the first expedi-
tion which Theudebald of Ripuaria despatched to Italy. The
boy-king was too young to head the army, but the Eastern
Frankish magnates who governed in his name had resolved
to renew the enterprise of king Theudebert. Two dukes of
Alamannian race, Buccelin and Chlothar, who seemed to have
possessed the chief influence at the court of Metz, set out in
551, while King Baduila was engaged in his last desperate
struggle with the East-Romans, and overran part of Venetia.
Holding to the alliance of neither Roman nor Goth, they
threatened to attack both; but Narses, when he marched
into Italy from Illyria, left them alone, and proceeded to
assault king Baduila, without paying attention to the northern
invaders. It was only in the next year, when Baduila and his
successor Teia had both been slain, that the Battle of
armies of the Franks broke up from their en- Casiiinum,553.
campments in northern Italy, and marched down to chal-
lenge the supremacy of the victorious Narses in the desolated
peninsula. How they fared we have had to relate in the pre-
ceding chapter. Chlothar and his division perished of want,
or plague, in Apulia. Buccelin and the main body were
defeated and exterminated by Narses at the battle of Casi-
linum. By the end of 553 all the gains of the Franks in Italy
were gone, and 75,000 Frankish corpses had been buried in
Italian soil or left to the Italian vultures.

120 European History^ 476-918

Less than two years after the armies of his generals had
been exterminated by Narses the weakly Theudebald died,
and, as he left no brother or uncle, the East-Frankish realm
was heirless. It fell by the choice of the Ripuarian folk-moot
to Theudebald's great-uncle, the aged Chlothar, king of
Soissons, who thus became possessed of three-fourths of the
Frankish Empire. As his brother, the still older Childebert,
king of Paris, was childless, it was now certain that after fifty
years of division the empire of Chlodovech was about to be
once more reunited (555).

Though verging on his seventieth year, Chlothar was still
energetic enough to go forth to war. When the dominions of
Theudebald passed into his hands, he took up the scheme
which his brother Theuderich, now twenty years dead, had
once entertained, of subduing all the nations of inner Ger-
many. Beyond the vassal Thuringians lay the independent
Saxons, and against them Chlothar led out, in 555, the full
force of both the Ripuarian and the Salian Franks. The
Saxons, on the other hand, induced many of the Thuringians
to rise in rebellion, and endeavour to shake off the Frankish
yoke. The fortune of war was at first favourable to Chlothar,
who put down the Thuringian insurrection without much
difficulty, but when, in the next year, he led his host into the
unexplored woods and moors of Saxony, he suffered such a
terrible defeat that he was fain to flee behind the Rhine, and
cover himself by the walls of Koln. The pursuing Saxons
devastated the Trans-Rhenane possessions of the Franks up
to the gates of Deutz. They were not destined to become
the vassals of their western neighbours for another two hun-
dred years.

The news of Chlothar's disaster in Germany, and the false
report of his death, which rumour added to the news, brought
on trouble in Gaul. Chramn, the eldest son of Chlothar, and
Childebert of Paris, his aged brother, at once took arms to
divide his kingdom. Nor when the news came that he still
lived did they desist from their attempt. They sent to stir

The Early Prankish Kings I2T

up the Saxons, and persisted in the war. But, before they
had actually crossed swords with Chlothar, the old king of
Paris died, and Chramn, reduced to his own resources, was
fain to throw himself on his father's mercy (558).

Thus Chlothar, by Childebert's death, gathered in the last
independent fragment of his father's vast heritage, and reigned
for three years (558-561) over the realm of Chlo- chiotharsoie
dovech, swelled by the conquests of Burgundy, ^^^"&' 558.
Thuringia, Provence, and Bavaria, made since the division of
the Frankish Empire.

Chlothar was the worst of his house. It will be remem-
bered how his career had begun by the brutal murder of his
nephews. It was destined to end by an even greater atrocity.
His undutiful son, Chramn, though pardoned in 558, rebelled
again in 560, with the aid of the Bretons of Armorica.
Chlothar pursued, defeated, and caught the rebellious prince.
Then he bound him, with his wife and his young sons, to
pillars of a wooden house, and burnt them alive by firing the
building. This shocking deed roused even the brutal Franks
to horror, and it was noted as the judgment of heaven that
the king died exactly a year after he had given his heir to the
flames. The wicked old man's body, however, was buried in
great state in the church of St. Medard, as though he had
been the best of sovereigns (561). His kingdom fell to his
four sons, destined to a new division just fifty years after its
first partition among the sons of Chlodovech.

The realm of the Merovings having now attained to its full
growth, and assumed the shape which it was to keep till the
fall of the dynasty, we may proceed to give the chief facts
concerning its social and political organisation.

Like all the other Teutonic stafes which were erected on

the ruins of the western provinces of the Roman ^ ,. , .

^ Despotic king-

Empire, it possessed a political constitution which ship of the

had advanced very far beyond the simple state of Merovings.

things described in the Germania of Tacitus. The conquests

of the Franks had resulted in the increase of the kingly

122 European History, 476-918

power to a height which it had never reached in earlier
days. As the permanent war-chief, in a time when war was
incessant, the king had gradually extended his power from
supreme command in the field into supreme command in all
things. He and his war-band of sworn followers had borne
the brunt of the fighting, and naturally reaped the greater part
of the profit. The check exercised by popular assemblies on
the royal power seems almost to have disappeared after the
first days of the conquest. In the time of Chlodovech him-
self we find some traces of them still remaining. Once or twice
the army, in the capacity of public assembly of the manhood
of all the Franks, seems to assert itself against the king, but
even this check gradually disappeared. The Frankish Empire
grew too broad for any public folk-moot of the nation to be
able to meet, and the king only took counsel of such magnates
— high officers of the household, bishops, and provincial
governors — as he chose to summon to his presence. Two
additional factors gave increased strength to the monarch.
The first was the high respect paid to the supreme power by
the conquered Gallic provincials, men long habituated to the
despotic government of Rome — a respect far greater than any
that the Franks had been accustomed to give their kings.
The habit of obedience of the Gallo-Roman was soon copied
by the Frank. The second factor was the enriching of the
king by the vast extent of the old imperial domain land in
Gaul, which was transferred at the conquest to the Frankish
king, and became his private property, placing a vast store
both of land and money at his disposal.

The Merovings, then, were despotic rulers, little controlled
by any constitutional checks, and only liable to be deposed by
their subjects if their conduct became absolutely unbearable.
Their worst danger was always from their ambitious relatives,
not from their people.

The Frankish king was distinguished from his followers by
the regal privilege of wearing long hair, — to shear a king's
head was the best token of deposing him, — by his royal

The Early Prankish Kings 123

diadem, and kingly spear. Occasionally he borrowed trap-
pings from the Romans, as when, for example, Chlodovech
was invested with the robes of Patrician after his Gothic War.^
But the national dress was generally adhered to.

The government of the realm was managed by two groups
of ministers — the royal household, or palatium^ and the pro-
vincial governors. The household followed the The Royal
person of the king in all his movements. It Household,
was mainly composed of personal companions, bound by
the oath of fidelity, the comites of earlier days, who had
once formed the king's war-band, but now constituted his
ministers and officials. These personal adherents were called
by the Franks antrustions. We have already seen that the
Goths called the same class saiojies, and the English gesiths.

The chief of the royal household, or palaftum, was the
official whom later generations usually called the Major Falatii,
or * Mayor of the Palace.' He was the king's first servant,
charged with the overseeing of the rest of the household
officials, and ready to act at need as the king's other self in
matters of war, justice, or administration. In the days of the
first warlike Frankish kings the Mayor of the Palace was kept
in his place by the activity of his master, and was no more
than an important official. But, as the Merovings decayed in
personal vigour, their mayors grew more and more important,
till at last we shall see them taking the place of regent and
practical substitute for the king. The old English monarchies
had no officials who can be compared in importance to them,
but, under the Anglo-Normans, the position of the Justiciar
was much like that occupied by the Frankish Major
Palatii.

After the Mayor of the Palace, the chief ministers of the
royal household were the Marshall {comes stabuli\ charged with
the oversight of the royal stables ; the Comes Palatii^ who
acted as legal adviser and assessor to the king; the Trea-
surer; and the Refer endarius^ or royal secretary. Though
^ See p. 63.

124 European History y 476-918

primarily household officials, all these are occasionally found
detached from the court on external business, commanding
armies, or sent on embassies.

At first all the posts were given to Franks, save that of the
Referendarius, to fill which it would have been hard to find an
educated man of Teutonic blood. But, by the end of the
sixth century, men of Gallo-Roman origin were occasionally
found in occupation of them, and in the seventh century
this became quite common. In 605 we find even the office of
Major Falatii, the most important of them all, in the hands
of the Gallo-Roman Protadius.

The provincial, as distinguished from the central, govern-
ment of the Frankish realm was exercised by officers who bore
the names of Count and Duke {cojnes, dux, Graf, Herzog),
The whole realm was divided into countships. In the purely
Teutonic half the unit was the old tribal district, which the
The Counts Roman called Pagiis and the Frank Gau. A
and Dukes. count was appointed to each of these tribal units.
In the Romano-Gallic half of the kingdom the countship was
composed of the civitas, or city with its dependent district,
which had survived from the times of the Western Empire,
and often represented the original Celtic tribe. The count
was both a military and civil official. He administered
justice, led the armed levy of his district, and saw to the
raising of taxes.

Several countships were often united and placed under a
single official of higher rank, the dux, when the counts had to
follow and obey. These unions of countships were most
common on the frontier, where a strong and united defence
against foreign enemies would be needed, and where it would
have been unsafe to leave the charge of the border to half a
dozen counts, who might or might not co-operate willingly with
each other. In Provence and Burgundy the dux was also
known by the Roman title of Patrician.

The provincial no less than the household officials of the
Frankish kings were originally all of Teutonic birth. But, in

The Early Prankish Kings 125

the sixth century Gallo-Romans are found intrusted with both
the lesser and the greater charges. We shall have to make
mention of one of these native dukes, the Burgundian Eunius
Mummolus, more than once, when recounting the history of
the last years of the sixth century.

The provincial governor, count or duke, was assisted by a
deputy, or vicarius, whom he nominated to fill his place during
his absence at the court or the wars, or while he Local
was engaged in some specially absorbing task at Government,
home. The minor administration of the countship was carried
out by centenarii^ or hundred-men, called also on occasion
tribuni. The countship was divided into hundreds, and over
each of these there presided a hundred-man, who was ap-
pointed by the count to act as a police magistrate in time of
peace, and to head the men of his district in time of war. Petty
law cases came before him, but at stated periods the count
went round all the hundreds in his countship, and administered
justice at a public assembly of the inhabitants.

The count's tribunal was called the Mallus. He sat in
company with a few assessors, chosen from the chief men of
the district. These magnates were called Rachimburgi, or
Boni Homines. They were summoned by the count, and had
no authority independent of his, but by ancient custom — both
Roman and Teutonic — assessors had always been called in to
aid the chief judge. The system is found alike at the tribunal
of the Roman provincial magistrate presiding in his conventus^
and in the primitive German law courts described by Tacitus.
The count, sitting in his Mallus^ had full power of life and
death, and authority in all cases, save where the persons con-
cerned were so great that the case might be called before
the King's High Court, and tried by the king himself and the
Comes Palatinus.

The Franks not unfrequently enforced the death penalty
for murder, arson, brigandage, and other great crimes. But
they used also the system of weregeld, like our own Anglo-
Saxon forefathers. With the consent of the family of the

126 European History ^ 476-918

victim, almost every murder could be condoned on the pay-
ment of sums varying from 30 gold solidi for a slave to t8oo
for a freeman of high rank. In cases when the
proof of a crime was difficult on the evidence pro-
duced, the Franks often made use of oaths and compurga-
tions. The accused for himself, or a body of his supporters
in his behalf, made a solemn oath that he was innocent, and
this sufficed to acquit him if no further evidence was pro-
duced. Judicial combats were also not unfrequent. They
appear among the Burgundians, however, before they were
taken up by the Franks. Nor was the custom unknown of
submitting criminals whose conviction was difficult to the
ordeal : that by boiling water, where the accused plunged his
hand into a caldron, was the one most frequently used.

It will be noticed that there was no trace of popular
government in this Frankish administration. The king chose
the count and the count the hundred-man. The king was not
controlled or checked by any popular assembly of the nation,
nor the count or hundred-man by any meeting of the people
of his district. The king promulgated edicts and laws on his
own responsibility, and similarly the count administered his
countship without any thought of rendering account to any
one save the king. Such assemblies as took place were sum-
moned to hear the decisions of king or count, not to debate
upon them, or recommend their modification. The ancient
German freedom had disappeared, to give place to an auto-
cracy as well defined as that of the vanished Roman empire.

Besides dukes and counts, the king kept other officials in
the provinces. These were the domestici, who were charged
with the control of the royal domain-land throughout the king-
dom. They were the king's private bailiffs for his own pos-
sessions, acting much as the ' Procurators of the Fiscus ' had
once acted for the Roman emperors in the ancient provinces.
There were other domestici in the palace, whose offices were
also financial, and who must apparently have served as under-
lings to the high treasurer.

The Early Prankish Kings 1 27

The revenue of the Merovings seems chiefly to have fallen
under four heads. The first was the profits of the royal
domain, worked by the domestici. The second was the pro-
duce of custom dues, levied both on the land and

/- • /■ 1 • rrii 1 • -1 Revenue.

the sea-frontier of the empire. The third was the
produce of fines and compositions in the law courts, of which
one-third always went to the king. But the fourth, and most
important, was the regular annual tribute of the countships.
Each district was assessed in the king's books for a defined
sum, and this the count had to raise and send in, on his own
responsibility. It seems that at first only the Gallo-Roman
districts were charged with tribute. Theudebert, the grandson
of Chlodovech, we are told, first subjected the native Prankish
districts to the impost, a grievance so deeply felt that, when
he died, the Austrasians rose, and slew Parthenius, the minister
who had suggested to the king this method of increasing his
revenue.

From this short sketch of the constitution of the Frankish
realm it will be seen that its organisation lay half-way between
the almost purely Teutonic forms of the government of early
England and the almost purely Roman methods employed by
Theodoric the Great in Italy. This is what might have been
expected. The Frankish kingdom was by no means a primi-
tive Teutonic state, but it was far more so than the Ostro-
gothic realm in Italy.

CHAPTER VIII

THE VISIGOTHS IN SPAIN

531-603

Weakness of the Visigothic kingdom— Civil wars and murders of Kings —
The Romans invade Andalusia, 554 — Reign of Leovigild — He restores the
power of the Visigoths — His conquests — Rebellion and death of his son
Hermenegild — Reign of Reccared — He converts the Goths to Catholicism
— Consequences of this conversion.

We have already, while dealing with the fortunes of Chlodo-
vech the Frank and Theodoric the Great, related the story of
the expulsion of the Visigoths from Aquitaine, and of the
extinction of their royal house — the heaven-born Baits — by
the deaths of Alaric 11. and Amalric, both slain by the sword
of the Franks.

In 531 the Visigoths, deprived of all their dominions north
of the Pyrenees, and followed into the Iberian peninsula by
the victorious Franks, found themselves without any prince of
the old royal line who could be raised to the throne, and
Election of deliver them from their enemies. The host pro-
Theudis, 531. cecdcd, according to Teutonic custom, to elect a
king, and chose the old count Theudis, the Ostrogothic noble
who had acted as regent for Amalric during the long years of
his minority. The veteran justified their choice by recovering
part of the lost lands beyond the Pyrenees — the rich province
of Septimania, with its cities of Narbonne, Nismes, and Car-
cassonne. Ten years later Theudis had to face another
Prankish invasion, and again succeeded in repelling his

128

The Visigoths in Spain 129

adversaries, after a bloody battle in front of Saragossa

(542).^

Preserved from the danger of Frankish conquest, the Visi-
gothic nation had to face the problem of reorganising its con-
stitution under the new conditions of its existence. It had
previously looked on Gaul rather than on Spain as its home.
Toulouse had been the favourite abode of its kings, not Bar-
celona or Toledo. Gaul was now lost, save one province, and
it was in Spain alone that the Visigothic name was to survive.
But even worse than the loss of its ancient home was the loss
of its ancient royal house. Nothing could be more ruinous to
a Teutonic tribe in those days than the extinction of the line
of its old heaven-descended kings. When it had become
necessary to choose a ruler from among the ranks of the
nobility, every ambitious count and duke could aspire to the
throne. Each election was bitterly contested, and the candi-
dates who had failed to win the favour of the host retired to
plot and intrigue against their more fortunate rival. When
no one had any prescriptive hereditary right to the succession
on the reigning king's death, the temptation to make away
with him by violence, and endeavour to seize his heritage, was
irresistible. Hence it came to pass that of the twenty-three
Visigothic kings of Spain — from Theudis to Roderic — no less
than nine were deposed, and of these seven were murdered by
their successors. The average length of their reigns was less
than eight years, and only in eight instances did a son succeed
a father on the throne. There was but one single case of
grandfather, father, and son following each other in undisputed
succession.

In relating the history of the Franks in Gaul, we have had
occasion to point out the comparative ease with which the Frank
and the Roman provincial coalesced to form a new weakness of
nation. We have seen how from the first the Gaulish *^^ Visigoths,
bishops were employed as ministers and confidants by the
Merovings, and how, in a short time, Gallo-Roman counts and

^ See p. 133.
PERIOD I. I

130 European History^ 476-918

dukes were preferred to high places in the Frankish palace
and army. In Spain no such easy union between the
Teutonic conquerors and the provincials was possible, because
the great bar of religion lay between them. Unlike the Franks,
the Visigoths were Arians, having preserved the heretical
form of Christianity which their forefathers had learnt beyond
the Danube in the fourth century. The Spanish provincials,
on the other hand, were almost to a man fanatically orthodox.
The Goths formed a religious community of their own, quite
apart from the Spaniards, with Arian bishops and priests to
minister to them : and their kings could not acknowledge or
utilise the native bishops as the Merovings had done in Gaul.
The provincials hated their rulers as heretics as well as bar-
barians, and never acquiesced willingly in their domination.
They were not indisposed to favour the advance of the
orthodox Frank, and welcomed the coming of the troops of
the East-Roman emperors to their shores in the sixth century.
While the Visigoths remained Arian they raised no Spaniard
to power or ofhce ; it was not till they became Catholic, in the
very end of the sixth century, that the first Roman names are
found among the servants of the king.^ For the first seventy
years of their rule in Spain the Visigoths were completely
estranged from their subjects (511-587).

The masters of Spain, then, were a not very numerous
tribe, scattered thinly among masses of an oppressed subject
population. They were masters by the power of the sword
alone, but their military force was crippled by the weakness
of their elective kings, who were too much occupied in main-
taining their precarious authority over the discontented chiefs
to allow of their making their arms felt abroad. Nearly all
the wars of the Visigoths were either civil broils between rival
kings, or defensive campaigns against the intrusive Frank from
beyond the Pyrenees.

^ The earliest notable case is duke Claudius, the general of king
Reccared i., the first orthodox ruler of Spain. He commanded vic-
toriously against the Franks of Guntram of Burgundy in 589.

The Visigoths in Spain 131

There is yet one more point to add to this picture of ihe
distracted realm of the Visigoths ; they were not even masters
of the whole of the Iberian peninsula, but had to contend
with fierce and watchful enemies within its limits. In the
western Pyrenees, and on the shores of the Gulf of Biscay,
the Basques preserved a precarious independence, and
descended from their fastnesses to plunder the valley of the
Ebro, whenever the Goths were engaged in civil discords.
Farther to the west there still subsisted in the ancient Ga-
Hcia and Lusitania the kingdom of the Suevi — the original
Teutonic conquerors of Spain. The early Visigothic kings
had driven them into the mountains of the West, but had
never followed them into their last retreats, to compel them
to make complete submission. Suevic kings reigned at Braga
over the country north of the Tagus and west of the Esla
and Tormes till the last years of the sixth century. When-
ever a favourable opportunity occurred, they took part in the
civil wars of the Visigoths, and harried the valley of the upper
Douro and the lower Tagus.

The inner organisation of the Visigothic realm presents a
very different picture from the centraHsed despotism, with
everything depending on the king, which we have described
as existing among the early Franks in Gaul. Like the Franks
the Visigoths had divided their conquest into districts, go-
verned by counts or dukes, generally using as the unit of
division the old Roman boundaries of provinces and civitates.
But the Visigothic governors were far less under the control
of their elective kings than were the Frankish counts under
the hand of the despotic Merovingians. Each of them kept
a bodyguard of personal dependants called — as among the
Ostrogoths — saiones^ or sometimes bucellarii^ whom he could
trust to follow him even against the king. It was the pos-
session of this armed following among a helpless, ^^^ g .
weaponless mass of provincials which enabled any
count or duke who was popular and ambitious to dare an at-
tempt at rebellion, whenever his master was weak or unfortunate.

132 European History, 476-918

There seems to have been a comparatively small body of lesser
freeholders — ceorls as they would have been called in England
— among the Visigoths. There is little trace of any intermediate
class between the nobles — whether official nobles, palatini, or
nobles of birth — and their sworn followers the saiones. In
fact, the kingdom might fairly be called feudal in its organisa-
tion, consisting as it did of a servile population of Hispano-
Roman blood, held down by a sprinkling of Gothic men-at-
arms, each bound by oath to follow some great noble, who
considered himself the equal of his king, and vouchsafed him
only the barest homage. As yet the king had no opportunity
of supporting himself by calling in to his aid either the Church
or the subject Roman population; his Arianism prevented
him from having recourse to any such expedient.

The difference between Roman and Goth was indeed ac-
centuated in every way. There were different codes of law
for subject and master, the former using a local adaptation of
the Theodosian code known as the Breviarium Alarici, while
the latter was judged by old Gothic customary law not yet
reduced into written form.^ Even marriage between the two
races was illegal, till about 570 king Leovigild broke the
prohibition by taking to wife Theodosia, the daughter of
Severianus. Spain sadly needed some ruler like Theodoric
the Great, to act as a mediator and redresser of wrongs be-
tween the two nations who dwelt within its borders.

An evil end fell upon all the first three Visigothic kings
who ruled in Spain. The aged Theudis enjoyed seventeen
years of power, and, as we have already related, was successful
in beating off three successive attacks of the Franks on
the peninsula. But the end of his reign was clouded by
disaster \ frightened by the rapidity with which the armies of
Justinian had crushed Vandal and Goth, he resolved to create
a diversion in favour of his own Italian kinsmen, by attacking
the newly-created imperial province of Africa. But his army
was almost annihilated in front of the fortress of Septa (Ceuta),
^ The Gothic law was probably written down about 587 by Reccared.

The Visigoths in Spain 133

the westernmost bulwark of the African province, and he
himself returned to Spain with his military reputation wrecked
in his extreme old age. Four years later he was murdered at
Seville by an unknown assassin, who either was, or feigned to
be, insane (548).

The Visigothic chiefs then elected as their king, Theudigisel,
the general who had beaten the Franks at Saragossa in 542,
and had ever since been reckoned the best warrior of their
race. But the new king was brutal and debauched; his
excesses provoked the anger of the nobles, and only seventeen
months after his accession he was murdered. * While he sat
at supper with his friends, and waxed merry over the wine, the
lamps were extinguished, and he was slain on his couch by
the sword of his enemies.'

The majority of the Visigoths then chose Agila as their
ruler, but, though he was acknowledged as king at Toledo and
Barcelona, the counts of the South refused to recognise him.
When he invaded Andalusia he suffered a fearful defeat in
front of Cordova, and saw his son and heir slain before his
eyes. But he still held all Spain north of the Sierra Morena,
and seemed so strong that the chief of the rebels, count
Athanagild, resolved to call in to his aid the arms of the
East-Romans. Justinian embraced with joy this opportunity
of getting a footing in Spain, and by his orders Liberius,
governor of Africa, crossed the Straits, and landed at Cadiz.
Many towns at once opened their gates to the Roman troops,
for the oppressed provincials thought that Liberius would
deliver them for ever from the Goths, and restore the imperial
authority in the whole peninsula. Roused to desperation,
Agila summoned up all his forces, crossed the The Romans
Sierra Morena for a second time, and engaged ^^"^ ^" Spain,
the armies of Athanagild and Liberius in front of Seville.
Again he suffered a disastrous defeat, and was constrained to
fly to Merida. Then his soldiery, seeing that the Gothic race
was ruining itself by fratricidal strife, while the Romans were
occupying town after town, suddenly ended the civil war by

134 European History, 476-918

murdering their chief, and saluting the rebel Athanagild as
king of the Visigoths. For, as a Frankish chronicler ob-
served, * the Goths have long had the evil custom of slaying
with the sword any king who does not please them, and of
choosing in his stead some one who better suits their incHna-
tion.' The Franks, on the other hand, boasted of their
unshaken fidelity to the house of Chlodovech, outside whose
limits they never looked when a king had to be chosen.

Athanagild was now king of Spain, but he soon found that
by calHng in the Romans he had raised up a demon whom he
was not strong enough to control. The generals of Justinian
utterly refused to evacuate the towns they had seized during
the civil war. They were in possession of the majority of the
harbours of the south coast of the peninsula, on both sides of
the Strait of Gibraltar, from the promontory of St. Vincent on
the Atlantic to the mouth of the Sucre on the Mediterranean.
x\nd not only were Cadiz, Malaga, and Carthagena in their
hands, but also many of the inland towns of Andalusia,
including the great city of Cordova. Athanagild never
succeeded in evicting them from these conquests; for thirty
years the Constantinopolitan Caesars were acknowledged as
rulers at Cordova and Granada, and it was fully sixty years
before the sea-coast towns were all won back by the Goths.
Although defeated in the open field by Athanagild, the
generals of Justinian clung successfully to their walled towns,
till at last the Gothic king was forced to make a truce with
them, and leave them unsubdued.

Although Athanagild maintained himself on the throne for
thirteen years, and died a natural death — unlike his five pre-
decessors on the Visigothic throne — he does not seem to
Athanagild, havc been a very powerful or successful monarch.
555-568. Tphe scanty annals of the century preserve few

facts about him, and he is best remembered as the father of
the two unhappy sisters, Brunhildis and Galswintha, * the
pearls of Spain,' whom he gave in marriage to the Frankish
kings, Sigibert and Chilperich. These alliances were founded

The Visigoths in Spain 13:5

on political needs ; the marriage of Brunhildis — the first wed
of the two princesses — was destined to secure the aid of the
king of Austrasia against any attempts of his brothers of Paris,
Soissons, and Burgundy against Spain. The fame of the
beauty and wealth of Brunhildis then led the wicked Chil-
perich of Soissons to ask and obtain her sister's hand, which
Athanagild granted in order to secure another ally. Luckily
for himself the old Gothic king died soon after, before he had
time to hear of Galswintha's troubled wedlock and miserable
end (568).

The death of Athanagild was followed by five months of
anarchy; the Visigothic nobles could not agree to choose
^ny king; each took arms, assaulted his neighbours, and did
Ml that was right in his own eyes, for the * king's peace ' died
with the king. At last the governors of Septimania agreed
to elect Leova, duke of Narbonne, as their ruler; but the
counts who dwelt south of the Pyrenees refused to accept the
nominee of the Gallic province. After some fighting, how-
ever, Leova proposed to them to take as his colleague his
brother Leovigild, who was well known and popular in the
south, and the majority of the nobles of Spain agreed to
accept him. Leova retained his kingly title and his own
Septimanian realm, while Leovigild reigned in the peninsula as
king of Spain. The division of the kingdom, however, only
lasted four years, as Leova died without issue in 572, and his
brother then united Septimania to Spain.

Leovigild was the first man of mark who had reigned over
the Visigoths for a hundred years; he may be styled the
second founder of the Visigothic kingdom, for he dragged it
out of the depths of anarchy and weakness, gave it a new
organisation, and smote down its enemies to east and west.
Without his strong hand it seems possible that the realm
would have gone to pieces, and become the prey of the
Franks and the East-Romans.

For the first eight years of his reign Leovigild was forced to
fight hard with enemies on all sides, before he could win a

136 European History, 476-918

moment for repose. His first blows were struck against the
Imperialists, who had gone forth from Cordova and Cadiz
Wars of ^^^ conquered the whole of Andalusia. After
Leovigiid, winning several battles in the open field, and
^^°" °' storming Baza and Assidonia, he drove the

Romans within the walls of Cordova. This great city, de-
fended by a strong garrison and a fanatically Catholic popula-
tion, kept the king at bay for a whole year ; but in 571 it was
betrayed to him by its Gothic inhabitants and fell, after having
been more than twenty years in the hands of the Imperialists.
The East-Roman power now shrank back behind the Sierra
Nevada, and comprised nothing more than the coast-strip
from Lagos to Carthagena.

Leovigiid then turned against the Suevi, who had seized the
valley of the middle Douro, and were pushing into the very
heart of the peninsula. They had lately been converted to
Catholicism, and were welcomed by the provincials of central
Spain, who hoped to gain an orthodox instead of an Arian
master. But Leovigiid beat the Suevic king Theodemir in
the field, stormed his fortress of Senabria, and compelled him
to do homage.

For two years more Leovigiid was occupied in putting down
sporadic rebellions of the Roman provincials in all the more
remote and mountainous corners of Spain — especially in Can-
tabria, on the shores of the Gulf of Biscay, and among the
Murcian mountains in the South. He captured and put to
death Aspidius and Abundantius, the chief leaders of these
revolts, and punished their followers by wholesale executions.
At last, after eight years of war, the whole of the ancient Visi-
gothic dominions, save the towns on the Andalusian coast,
were once more subdued and under control (576).

The hand of Leovigiid was no less hard upon the factious
nobility of his own nation than upon the foreign enemies of
Spain. He sought out and executed, one after another, all
the more unruly of the Visigothic chiefs — 'all the race of
men who had been wont to slay their kings,' as a Frankish

The Visigoths in Spain 1 37

chronicler styled them. In their stead he appointed counts and
dukes from among his own comitatus, whom he thought that
he could trust. At last the king's mandate was obeyed through
all the realm, from Nismes to Seville, as it had never been obeyed
before, and it seemed likely that a strong autocratic royalty
would prevail among the Visigoths as it did among the Franks.
Leovigild now fixed his court permanently at Toledo, and
assumed all the splendour and state of the ancient Roman
Caesars — the diadem, the sceptre, the purple robe, and golden
throne. Before him the kings of the Visigoths had been in-
distinguishable in manners and apparel from their own nobles ;
they only differed from them by bearing the royal name,
and keeping up a larger body of oath-bound saiones. At the
same tim'e that he fixed his seat at Toledo, Leovigild took
another opportunity of asserting his power and independence.
The coinage of the Visigoths had hitherto been a mere bar-
barous imitation of the imperial currency of Rome and Con-
stantinople, but from henceforth the name of the Gothic king
was placed upon all the gold /remisses of Spain. For a few
years Leovigild added the name of Justin 11. to his own, but
he soon cast away the last sign of the old dependence on the
empire, and the inscription, livigildvs inclitvs rex, was the
sign of the disavowal of the last nominal connection of Spain
with the heirs of Constantine.

The troubles of Leovigild, however, had not yet come to an
end. His worst enemies were to be those of his own house.
Before his accession to the throne he had married, contrary to
Gothic custom, a noble Roman lady** named Theodosia,
daughter of Severianus, sometime governor of Carthagena.
By her he had two sons, Hermenegild and Reccared. When
she died he endeavoured to strengthen his position by marrying
Godiswintha, the widow of his predecessor Athanagild ; and
some years later, when his son Hermenegild reached manhood,
he determined to seek for him another bride from the family of
Athanagild. Accordingly he asked for, and obtained the hand
of his wife's granddaughter, Ingunthis, the daughter of Sigibert

1 3 8 European History, 476-9 1 8

of Austrasia and Brunhildis. At the age of thirteen she was
wedded to Hermenegild. This marriage was destined to have
the most unhappy results. The daughter of Brunhildis was
fated to be as much the cause of woe to Spain as her mother
had been to Gaul. She had been reared in Austrasia as a
Catholic, and, in spite of her tender age, refused to conform
to the Arian creed of the Visigoths. If the Frankish chronicles
are to be believed, she was subjected to the most violent
treatment by her grandmother Godiswintha, to force her to
abandon the orthodox faith. But though beaten, starved, and
flung into a fish-pond, she still refused to renounce the faith
of her childhood. At last Leovigild, tired of the perpetual
disputes between his wife and his daughter-in-law, which made
his palace unbearable, sent off Hermenegild to Seville to
govern part of Andalusia.

This step proved most unfortunate. The young prince fell en-
tirely under the influence of his wife and of his mother's brother,
Leander bishop of Seville. Won over by their pleadings, he
Rebellion of declared himself a Catholic, and was rebaptized,
Hermenegild, and received into the orthodox church. He
^^°" knew that his conversion would bring on him

his father's wrath, and the loss of his prospect of succeeding
to the Visigothic crown. But he v/as unwilling to suffer
degradation meekly, and promptly proclaimed himself king,
allied himself with the Suevi and the East-Romans, and
called the orthodox to arms all over Spain.

Leovigild had never had to face a more dangerous crisis.
The rebellion of his son had called out against him all the
elements of disorder in the peninsula. The Suevi swarmed
down the Douro; the Imperialists reoccupied Cordova;
Merida, Seville, and Evora hailed Hermenegild as king;
and the discontented provincials, headed by their bishops,
began to stir all over the country. It is the greatest testi-
monial to Leovigild's abilities that he knew how to deal
with all these dangers. First, he turned against the incipient
rebellion in the north, and put it down by banishing or

The Visigoths i?i Spain 139

imprisoning some dozen bishops, and by defeating in battle
the Basques, who had come down from their hills to join
in the struggle. After beating them, he founded on their
border the town of Vittoria as a memorial of his success —
a town destined to be better remernbered for the great Eng-
lish victory of 181 3 than for this ancient triumph.

Hermenegild was nearly two years in possession of the valley
of the Guadalquivir, but in 582 his father suddenly descended
upon him, and drove him within the walls of Seville. The
Suevi came up to raise the siege, but Leovigild routed their king
Miro, and returned to resume his leaguer. After many months
of blockade he stormed the town, but Hermenegild and his
wife escaped to the Romans. The rebel prince took refuge in
the castle of Osset, whither the king followed him, and, by the
huge bribe of 30,000 solidi, induced the Imperialist Govern-
ment to sell the town. Hermenegild was dragged from sanc-
tuary, and brought before his father, who pardoned his rebel-
lion, but stripped him of his princely insignia, and sent him
to live in honourable confinement at Valencia as a private
person.

Leovigild then turned against the Suevi, overran their whole
country, and captured their last king, Andica, whom he interned
in a monastery. Thus the rebellion of Hermenegild had
not only failed to ruin the Gothic state, but had actually led
to the subjection of the troublesome neighbour-kingdom in
the north-west, which had hitherto escaped the Visigothic
sword.

Hermenegild's fate was destined to be a sad one. His
father promised to restore him to his former place if he
would abandon the orthodox faith, but he steadfastly refused,
and was presently cast into prison. But chains had no more
effect on his constancy than prayers and promises. His father
grew angry, and bade him expect the worst if he persisted in
his obstinacy. On Easter Day 585, he sent an Arian bishop
to administer the sacrament to the prisoner. Hermenegild
drove the heretical prelate from his cell with cries and

140 European History^ 476-918

imprecations. The news was brought to his father, who, in
a moment of ungovernable rage, hke that which induced our
Execution of °^^ Henry II. to order the death of Becket, bade
Hermenegiid, his guards seize and behead his inflexible son.
5^5" So perished Hermenegiid, whom after-genera-

tions, forgetting his undutiful rebellion, and remembering only
his constancy in the orthodox faith, saluted as a saint. His
wife and infant son were sent to Constantinople by the Roman
governor of Malaga. Ingunthis died on the voyage, but the
boy, Athanagild, lived and died obscurely at the court of the
emperor Maurice.

Leovigild had now to face the wrath of the Franks. Gun-
tram, the uncle, and Theudebert, the brother of Ingunthis, took
arms to avenge her husband's execution. They sent a fleet to
land a force in Galicia, and raise the newly-conquered Suevi,
while a Burgundian army entered Septimania, and attacked
Nismes and Carcassonne. But Leovigild's military skill and
constant good fortune in war did not fail him. While he
himself cut to pieces the army which had landed in Galicia,
his son, Reccared, drove the Burgundians out of Septimania,
with the loss of their general and half their army. Father and
son met in triumph at Toledo, but the hardships of a winter
campaign had been too much for Leovigild, who died soon
after his return to his capital, on the 13th of April 586, a year
to the very day from the date of his eldest son's execution, a
coincidence which the orthodox did not fail to point out as
marking the wrath of heaven.

Leovigild, some time before his death, had induced the
Visigoths to elect his second son, Reccared, as his colleague,
and to salute him as king. There was, therefore, no tumultuous
election or civil war when the old king died, and his heir
quietly took his place. Reccared was destined to set his
mark on the history of the Visigothic kingdom no less firmly
than his father had done. If Leovigild saved the state from
anarchy by his strong arm, Reccared set it on a new and
altered course of existence, and introduced a new element

The Visigoths in Spain 141

into its political and religious life by the great change which
is connected with his name — the conversion of the Visigoths
to the orthodox faith. Reccared was the son Reccared,
of a Roman mother, but, unlike his brother 586-601.
Hermenegild, he never showed any discontent with Arianism
in his father's lifetime. No sooner, however, was the old
man dead than his successor began to take steps which threw
the Arians into a state of excitement and apprehension. He
summoned Catholic and Arian bishops before him, and many
times bade them dispute in his presence on the mysteries of
the Trinity. This he did more to prepare the people for the
coming change than because he was himself in any doubt as
to his future conduct.

Reccared thoroughly grasped the fact that the Visigothic
state would never be established on a really firm basis as long
as the governing caste were separated from the bulk of their
subjects by the fatal barrier of religion. The Goths were too
few to amalgamate the provincials with themselves, and had
shown no signs of wishing to do so. But if no such amal-
gamation took place, the Gothic monarchy was doomed to
disappear some day in a political convulsion, when the
moment should come that found no strong and capable
ruler on the throne. Leovigild had only staved off such a
crisis by prodigies of activity and courage. Now Reccared
had made up his mind that the Arianism of the Goths was
more a matter of conservative adherence to ancestral pre-
judices and of race-pride, than of real conviction or fanatical
faith. He thought that if the king led the way, and if mild
and cautious changes were made, without any sudden blow
or attempt at enforced conformity, his countrymen might in-
sensibly be led within the pale of the Catholic church. The
course of events proved that he was entirely right ; and the
conversion of the nation was managed all the more surely
because it was carried out by a cautious and unemotional
statesman, and not by an enthusiastic saint.

The completion of Reccared's scheme occupied the years

142 European History, 476-918

586-88. When he declared himself a Catholic, and accepted
the solemn blessing of his uncle, the Metropolitan of Seville,
the greater part of his comitatus followed his example. In
quick succession many Gothic counts, and a large portion of
The Goths ^^ Arian episcopate conformed to orthodoxy,
turn Catholic, The Church on its side made the change easy,
5^7" by not insisting on any new baptism of the con-

verts. It was enough if they attended a Catholic place of
worship, and received the blessing of an orthodox priest.

It was not to be expected, however, that so momentous a
change would pass over the country without provoking trouble.
There were many Goths, both clergy and laymen, who viewed
Arianism as the sacred religion of their ancestors, and the
badge of their conquering race. Three rebellions broke out
in quick succession, in regions as far apart as Septimania and
Lusitania, while the king's step-mother Godiswintha and
bishop Athaloc, the chief of the Arian clergy, placed them-
selves at the head of the rising. But the greater part of the
Visigoths looked on in apathy, and allowed a small body of
fanatics to fight out the question of religion with the king.
The Arians were put down, and gave no further trouble.
The whole sect seems to have melfeed away in a few years,
and ere long the Visigoths were as proud of their Catholicism
as they had once been of their heterodoxy.

While Reccared was busy with the suppression of the Arian
rebels, the Frankish king Guntram of Burgundy thought that
a good opportunity had arisen for conquering Septimania. He
sent a great army down the Rhone, but near Narbonne it was
completely defeated by Reccared's general, duke Claudius,
the first man of Roman blood who had ever been promoted
to high rank by a Visigothic king. This was the last time
that a Frankish conquest of Septimania was ever seriously
attempted (589).

Reccared reigned for twelve years more, with great good
fortune both at home and abroad. He subdued the Basques,
kept the Imperialists penned in to their line of harbours along

The Visigoths in Spain 143

the south coast, and repressed several minor tumults raised by
discontented Gothic nobles. In every crisis he found the
Catholic bishops his best support, and must have constantly
congratulated himself on having turned his most dangerous
enemies into the strongest bulwark of his throne. But by
placing himself in their hands he had begun to expose Gothic
royalty to a new danger, that of too great dependence on the
Church. The National Council — the Witan as it would have
been called in England — was completely swamped by the
churchmen. There were more than sixty bishops in Spain,
while the number of dukes and counts who were usually sum-
moned to the Assembly was considerably less. The bishops
— men more clever, more wise, and better organised than their
lay colleagues — soon came to exercise a dominating influence
in the council. The spiritual pressure which they could bring
to bear on the king was too great to be disregarded. Hence
it came to pass that ere the end of his reign Reccared, though
peaceful and tolerant himself, was urged into acts of persecu-
tion, not only against his old co-religionists, the Arians, but
against the Jews — a race who had hitherto prospered in
Spain, and who had gathered in a very considerable por-
tion of its wealth and commerce. Formerly the Visigothic
kings, like the great Theodoric in Italy, had been very
tolerant, and had not seldom employed Jews as collectors of
revenue and in minor official posts. All this came to an end
with the conversion of Reccared, though in his day the dis-
couragement alike of Arian and Jew went no further than
making them incapable of holding any office, and prohibiting
the public exercise of their worship.

After a reign of fifteen years, king Reccared died in 601,
leaving the throne to his son, Leova 11., the only instance in
Gothic Spain of a succession of three generations of the same
house on the throne. The new monarch was just twenty. He
was a devoted admirer and follower of the Catholic bishops,
and, by all accounts, showed more piety than capacity. The
accession of a weak and inexperienced youth was the

144 European History, 476-918

opportunity for which the unruly Visigothic nobles, crushed
for thirty years under the strong hands of Leovigild and Rec-
cared, had been long waiting. In the second year of his
reign Leova was surprised and murdered by conspirators
under the guidance of a certain count Witterich, who had
headed an Arian rising in 588, but had been spared on con-
forming to Catholicism. He now repaid Reccared's clemency
by murdering his son (603).

After thirty-three years of strong government, Spain once
more fell back into the state of civil strife from which it had
been rescued by Leovigild. But the character of the struggle
was now changed ; for the future it was a contest between the
Catholic hierarchy and the Visigothic nobles, as to which
should appoint and control the king.

CHAPTER IX

THE SUCCESSORS OF JUSTINIAN

565-610

Justin ir. and his unhappy financial policy — His troubles with the Persians
and Avars — Reign of Tiberius Constantinus — Accession of Matu-ice —
His victory over Persia — His failure against the Slavs and Avars— Disasters
in the Balkan Peninsula — Fall of Maurice — Tyranny of Phocas — His
unfortunate war with Persia — He is dethroned and slain by Heraclius,
610,

The forty years which followed the death of Justinian were a
period of rapid decline and decay for the East-Roman world.
The empire was paying, by exhaustion within and the loss of
provinces without, for the spasmodic outburst of energy into
which it had been galvanised by the great emperor. He left to
his heirs broad and dangerous frontiers in his newly-acquired
provinces, with an army which had got somewhat out of hand,
and a civil population shorn to the skin by the excessive
taxation of the last twenty years.

Justinian's heirs were, unhappily for the empire, princes who
tried to maintain their great predecessor's ambitious policy, at
a moment when the less brilliant, but more cautious and
economical, rule of a second Anastasius would have been the
best thing for the East-Roman world. The Emperor's nephew,
Justinus, son of his sister Vigilantia, mounted the throne on
his decease without meeting with any opposition. He had
served his uncle as Curopalata, or Master of the Palace, for
the last ten years, and had been able to make things ready
for his own peaceful succession, though Justinian had never

PERIOD I. K

146 European History, 476-918

consented to allow him to be crowned as his colleague as long
Justin II., ^s he lived. Justin was married to Sophia, the
565-78. niece of the empress Theodora, a lady who

resembled her aunt in her masterful spirit, but was far from
rivalling her abilities. Justin and his wife had led a somewhat
repressed and constrained existence during the old emperor's
life, and were set upon asserting their individuality the moment
that Justinian was buried. Justin had high ideas of the
dignity of the imperial name and the majesty of the empire,
and had determined to inaugurate a spirited foreign policy
when he seized the helm of affairs. His first measure was to
refuse to continue any of the comparatively trifling subsidies
to barbarian princes on the frontier, which Justinian had been
content to pay in order to keep them from petty raids — much
as the Indian Government to-day subsidises the chiefs of the
Khyber Pass. This involved him in a long and ultimately
dangerous war with the Chagan of the Avars, a Tartar tribe
newly established on the north bank of the lower Danube,
whom Justinian had paid to keep off the Huns and other
troublesome neighbours. The Avars, originally a race of no
great miportance, obtained at this moment a great extension
of power and territory by allying themselves with the Lom-
bards, in order to destroy the Gepidae, the Gothic tribe who
dwelt north of Sirmium on the middle Danube. After exter-
minating their Teutonic neighbours, the Lombards passed on
to invade Italy,i and left the Avars in possession of the whole
line of the Danube, from Vienna to its mouth. Thenceforth
the Avars were a scourge to the already half-desolate pro-
vinces of Moesia and lllyricum. They ranged over the whole
territory up to the Balkans, in spite of the innumerable for-
tresses which Justinian had built and garrisoned to defend
the Danube bank. This trouble was continually growing
worse all through the reign of Justin 11., and became an
actual source of danger, as well as of mere annoyance, in the
time of his successors.

^ See p. 181.

The Successors of Justinian 147

Another refusal of Justin to make a payment of money,
which he considered degrading to his majesty, was destined
to bring on a struggle even more ruinous than that with the
Avars. It will be remembered that the peace between Jus-
tinian and Chosroes of Persia, concluded in 562, had stipu-
lated for some payments from the East-Romans to the king.,
In 5 7 1 Justin refused to fulfil his obligations, and plunged the
empire into a wholly unnecessary war with his great Oriental
neighbour. Several causes conspired to induce Justin to
undertake this struggle. He was implored by the Christian
population of Persian Armenia to deliver them from the
fire-worshipping Sassanians, and the Turks of the Oxus had
sent an embassy to promise him help from the East if he
would assault Chosroes. Dizabul, their great Khan, engaged
to distract the forces of the enemy by crossing the Oxus and
invading northern Persia, while Justin's generals were to cross
the Tigris and attack Media.

This war, which the emperor undertook with such a light
heart, was destined to last no less than nineteen years (572-
591), and to drag on into the reigns of two of his successors.
It was quite as inconclusive, and quite as costly in men and
money, as had been the previous struggle in the Persian war
reign of Justinian. On the whole, the Romans of Justin,
lost no territory during its course. Their farthest frontier
stronghold of Daras was the only place of importance that
fell into Persian hands in the earlier years of the war, and the
secondary fortress of Martyropolis, in the Armenian Highlands,
the only loss of its later years. Both were destined to be
recovered, and the second Roman line of defence, based on
Edessa and Amida, held good. If the armies of Chosroes
once succeeded in penetrating into Syria, it is only fair to add
that the imperial troops made several incursions into the Persian
border-lands of Arzanene and Corduene. It was not so much
by the loss of fortresses or the ravaging of territory that the
war was harmful to the empire, as by the long, fruitless drain
of taxation that it brought about. Where the tax-gatherer

148 European History^ 476-918

of Justinian's time had shorn the population close, the tax-
gatherer of Justin's was obliged to flay them, in order to wring
out the necessary solidi. Having begun the war at his own
pleasure, Justin found that he could not conclude it in a similar
way. The Persians hoped to win by exhausting the empire's
resources, and were set on protracting the weary game.

In the ninth year after his succession to the throne, Justin
was seized with suicidal mania, and had to be placed in close
restraint for all the rest of his life. On his first lucid interval
he nominated as his colleague, and crowned as Caesar, a
respectable military officer, named Tiberius Constantinus,
who, in conjunction with the empress Sophia, acted as
regent for the demented emperor till 578. Sophia, a proud
and restless woman, kept most of the power in her own hands,
for Tiberius was not of a pushing or ambitious disposition.
His accession to power made little or no difference in the
policy of the court, which was still guided by the empress.

While Justin saw the Balkan peninsula ravaged by the
Avars, and the Mesopotamian frontier beset by the Persians,
he was destined to suffer a still more grievous loss in another
region of his empire. The Lombards, emigrating from the
middle Danube, followed the track that the Ostrogoths had
taken eighty years before, and threw themselves on the newly-
recovered province of Italy, only fifteen years after it had been
finally secured to the empire by the victories of Narses at
Taginae and Casilinum. Their fortunes will be described in
another chapter. Here it must suffice to say that ere the end
of the reign of Justin 11. they had torn two-thirds of the
peninsula from the grasp of the East-Roman governors.

In 578, four years after he had fallen into a state of
lunacy, Justin 11. died, and his colleague, Tiberius Constan-
tinus, became sole ruler of the empire. Tiberius 11. was a
thoroughly upright and well-intentioned man, who had been
chosen as heir by his predecessor solely on the ground of his
merits, and in spite of the fact that Justin had a son-in-law
and several cousins to whom he might have left the legacy of

The Successors of Jtistinian 149

power. Like Titus in an earlier age, Tiberius 11. was the
darling and hope of the whole population of the xiberius
empire, and, like Titus, he was cut off in the flower Constantinus.
of his years after a very short reign. He had time, 578-582.
however, to give some earnest of his good intentions by cut-
ting down the grinding taxation of Justin 11. by a fourth, and
remitting all arrears owed to the state. But he was unable to
do away with the cause which made taxation so heavy, the
wretched lingering Persian war, and, till the empire could
obtain peace within and without, the remission of taxation
only meant the inadequate performance of the duties of the
state, and the rapid accumulation of public debt. Tiberius
succeeded, however, in making a truce with the Avars, though
to obtain it he had to give up the great border-fortress of
Sirmium, the central point for the defence of the line of the
Danube and Save, and also to promise to make one of those
payments of money which his predecessor had regarded as
degrading the majesty of the empire. Being free from war in
the Balkans, Tiberius concentrated no less than 200,000 men
on the Persian frontier, and his troops, under the general
Maurice, won many successes, and invaded Media. But the
obstinate king Hormisdas, who had now succeeded Chosroes
on the throne, refused to listen to any proposals for peace,
and the war dragged on.

In the fourth year of his reign Tiberius was suddenly
stricken down by disease, and died while only on the thres-
hold of middle age. Like his predecessor, he chose as his
heir not any relative, but the best man that he knew. Eight
days before his death he invested with the royal diadem his
general Maurice, who had lately distinguished himself by a
great victory in Mesopotamia, and was universally respected
for his sterling merit and modesty. Maurice immediately
married his benefactor's daughter, Constantina, and ascended
the vacant throne in peace.

Like Tiberius Constantinus, Maurice was an eminently
well-meaning ruler, and a man not destitute of ability, but

150 European History^ ^y6-gi^

the times were too hard for him, and his very virtues often
Maurice, conspired to lead him into unfortunate actions.

582-602. jjig reign of twenty years (582-602), though not

wanting in successes, was still a continuation of the unhappy
period of decline and decay which had set in since the year of
the great plague of 542. The worst of the troubles of Maurice
was the complete exhaustion of the imperial finances. The
liberality of Tiberius 11. had drained out the last solidus from
the already depleted treasury, and the new emperor started
with a deficit, which remained as a perpetual nightmare to
him all through his reign. Maurice was of a prudent and
economical disposition ; the adverse balance cut him to the
heart, and he adopted all sorts of schemes — wise and unwise
— to make receipts and expenditure balance. The war ex-
penses were, of course, the main disturbing element, and
Maurice went so far in his zeal for retrenchment that while
hostilities were still in progress he endeavoured, on more than
one occasion, to cut down the soldiers' pay, and economise
the expenditure of provisions and military stores. This policy
had the most disastrous results. Several times it led to
mutiny, and at last it cost Maurice his throne and life.

The Persian war continued through the first nine years of
Maurice's reign, as long as the reckless and obstinate king
Hormisdas remained in power. On the whole it was for-
tunately conducted. Two able officers, named Heraclius and
Philippicus, obtained the mastery over the Persians, and won
several battles. They would have done even more if Maurice's
policy of ' economy at any price ' had not led to mutinies
among the soldiery, who struck work, and retired behind the
border when they heard that their pay was to be reduced. It
is hard to conceive how Maurice could be so unwise ; for he
had considerable military experience, and wrote an excellent
book on tactics. The Strategicon, which served for three
hundred years as the manual of all Byzantine officers.
Apparently the economist prevailed over the soldier in his
composition.

The Successors of Jtistinian 1 5 r

Luckily the mutiny of 588 did not ruin the empire; the
troops returned to duty when their grievance was removed,
and won more victories over the Persians. Hormisdas grew
unpopular with his subjects, and was deposed and slain by a
usurper named Varahnes. His young son, Chosroes, fled to
the Roman camp, and threw himself on the mercy of his
hereditary foe. This led to the end of the war ; Maurice lent
the young prince supplies and auxiliaries to start a rebellion
against Varahnes. The rising succeeded, and the grateful
Chosroes made peace with the empire the moment Persian war
that he was restored to his father's throne (591). ended, 591.
The terms, like those of the peaces of 532 and 562, amounted
to little more than the restoration of the state of things which
had preceded hostilities. Maurice recovered the lost fortresses
of Daras and Martyropolis, and gained the Christian districts
of Persarmenia, a new acquisition to the empire, but not one
of much importance.

But the troubles of Maurice, military and financial alike,
did not cease with the end of the Persian war. The faithless
Avars, disregarding the terms of peace which they had sworn
to Tiberius 11. in 581, were once more ravaging the Balkan
peninsula. In the second year of Maurice's reign they burst
over the Danube, and seized the fortresses of Singidunum and
Viminacium, whose garrisons had been reduced by the needs
of the Persian war. Unable to raise a new army, Maurice
sent them a subsidy which kept them quiet for two years, but
in 585 the Tartar horde took arms once more, and threw
themselves upon Thrace. Nor was it only with the wild
Avars that Maurice had to deal. We now hear of the Slavs as
becoming for the first time a serious danger to the empire.
Their tribes had for some time dwelt in obscurity along the
lower Danube and in the South-Russian plains, having flooded
in to occupy the void space left by the migration of the Goths
in the fourth century. At the accession of Maurice some of
them were subject to the Avars, others were still independent,
but all showed a tendency to move southward over the

1 5 2 European History, 476-g 1 8

Danube. The Slavs were individually not very dangerous
enemies to the empire ; they were in the very lowest stage of
civilisation, hardly yet accustomed to till the soil, and living
the precarious life of fishers and hunters. They did not fight
in the open field, but lurked in forests and morasses, issuing
forth to plunder by night, and only attacking their foes when
they could take them by surprise. It is said that they
practised the curious stratagem of lying hid in shallow pools,
showing nothing above the surface of the water save the point
of a hollow reed, through which they breathed. The story
sounds improbable, but Byzantine authors quote several occa-
sions on which it was actually used.

Many Slav tribes, seeking refuge from the domination of
the Avars, crossed the Danube in their light canoes, and
established themselves in the wooded slopes of the Balkans,
or the marshes of the Dobrudscha, where they found the cover
that they loved. The Moesian provincials had been so thinned
by two hundred years of raiding suffered at the hands of Goth,
Hun, and iVvar, that the Slavs found the land almost wholly
uninhabited. Outside the great Danube fortresses, and the
large towns like Naissus or Sardica, the population had almost
entirely disappeared. Avoiding battles with the garrisons of
the towns, the Slavs slipped between them, and spread over
The Slavs ^^^ ^^^^ °^ ^^^ dcscrted land, pitching their rude
cross the huts in the most secluded spots that they could
Danu e. ^^^^ They were not only intruders, but enemies,
for they were keenly set on plunder, waylaid every party of
travellers that strove to pass from town to town, and laid
ambuscades for every body of soldiers that was not too
numerous for them to cope with.

From 585 to the very end of his reign Maurice was engaged
in a desperate struggle against Slav and Avar, which raged
over the whole of the Balkan peninsula. The invaders
gradually pressed southwards, though they suffered many
defeats, and though whole tribes of Slavs were sometimes
exterminated. The enemy, though individually contemptible,

The Successors of Justinian 153

seemed to draw on endless reserves of strength, as horde after
horde slipped across the Danube, and threw itself into the
glens of the Balkans. The effect of these invasions is well
described by a contemporary chronicler, John of Ephesus :
' The first years of Maurice were famous for the invasion of the
accursed people called Slavonians, who overran Greece and all
the lands about Thessalonica and Thrace, plundering many
towns, and devastating and burning, and reducing the people
to slavery. They have made themselves masters of the whole
country, and settled in it by main force, and dwell in it as
though it were their own. Four years have now passed, and
still they live at their ease in the land, and spread themselves
abroad, as far as God permits them, and ravage and burn and
take captive, and still they encamp and dwell there.'

Ever since the Persian war ended, the reign of Maurice had
been one unbroken series of misfortunes ; the only remedy
that the emperor could find for the evil times was an economy
that verged on avarice. This foible at last caused his ruin.
In 599 the Chagan of the Avars demanded of him ransom-
money for 12,000 Roman prisoners who had fallen into his
hands ; the emperor refused to pay it, though he had the
required sum of solidi ready at hand. The Chagan thereupon
massacred the whole body of prisoners. The Roman world
raised a cry of horror, and threw the blame upon the avarice
of Maurice, not the savagery of the Avars. Henceforth his
throne was unsafe ; but the crowning blow to his power was
given by another piece of unwise economy. After a success-
ful campaign against the Slavs in 601, the army of the
Balkans had pursued them across the Danube. Maurice
sent orders that the victorious troops should winter in the
open field, upon the bleak townless plains of Wallachia, in
order to save supplies.

Instead of obeying, the soldiery drove away their generals,
placed a Thracian centurion named Phocas at their head, and
marched on Constantinople, loudly proclaiming that they were
coming to depose the emperor. So unpopular had Maurice

1 5 4 European History, 4y6-g 1 8

made himself with the army, that he found that he could not
trust even his household troops, and in despair armed the
Blue and Green factions, and set them to guard the city walls.
But the factions were a broken reed when disciplined troops
Rebellion had to bc faccd, and Maurice soon found himself
ofPhocas deserted by every one. He fled to Chalcedon,
hoping to raise aid in the Asiatic provinces, where he was less
unpopular than in Europe. Meanwhile, the army entered the
capital, and proclaimed Phocas as emperor, though he was
but a rough uncultured boor, who had headed the mutineers
simply in virtue of having louder lungs and a heavier hand
than his comrades. The usurper sent officers to seize his
unfortunate predecessor, and caused him to be beheaded,
along with his four sons, the youngest of whom was a mere
infant in arms. Maurice met his death with a courage and
dignity that moved the hearts of those who had so lately
reviled him. ' Just art Thou, O Lord God, and just are Thy
judgments,' he exclaimed as the executioner raised his sword,
and died with a prayer on his lips.

From the foundation of Constantinople down to the death
of Maurice the Eastern crown had never before been the prize
of successful rebellion, nor had any legitimate emperor fallen
by the hands of his subjects. Revolts there had been, but
they had never gained permanent success. It was an evil day
for the empire when the army found that they could make
an emperor, and the orderly succession of elective Caesars,
chosen by their predecessors or by the Senate, came to an
end.

The new ruler of Constantinople proved to be a brutal
ruffian, beside whose vices the faults of Maurice seemed shin-
ing virtues. Ignorant, cruel, licentious, and thriftless, he
made his lusts his masters, and soon became the detestation
of all his subjects. Phocas showed ability in one thing only,
he was most successful in tracking out and frustrating the
numerous conspiracies which were ere long framed against his
life. All whom he rightly or wrongly suspected were visited

The Successors of Justinian 155

with cruel deaths; among others he slew his predecessor's
widow, Constantina, and her three little daughters, because he
found that their names were often used as a rallying cry by
plotters. On mere suspicion he seized and burnt alive
Narses, the general of the East, the most distinguished officer
in the army. Other objects of his dread were flogged to
death, strangled, or cruelly mutilated.

Meanwhile, the reign of terror at home was accompanied
by disaster without. The decaying military and financial
strength of the empire suddenly collapsed into utter ruin
under the rule of the vicious boor who had replaced the
economic Maurice. The Slavs and Avars wrought their wicked
will unhindered on the European provinces, and pushed their
ravages up to the wall of Anastasius. In the East matters
fared even worse. The young and able king of Persia made
the murder of his benefactor Maurice a casus belli, and took
arms to avenge his ' friend and father.' From the first open-
ing of the war the Romans fared badly ; never had such an
unbroken series of disasters met their arms. Early in the
struggle Phocas had provoked the Eastern army by recalling
and burning alive their commander Narses. They fought
feebly, were ill-supplied by the incapable tyrant, and badly led
by his creatures who were placed at their head. In 606 there
came a sudden collapse; the great frontier fortress of Daras
fell, and from that moment the Persians pushed on without
meeting a check. They overran all Mesopotamia, Disastrous
ravaged northern Syria, and pushed their incur- Persian War,
sions into Asia Minor, where no enemy had been ^'^°*
seen for a century. The armies of Phocas seem to have
dispersed, or shut themselves up within city walls, for we hear
of no resistance to the invader. In 608 matters grew worse
still; from their base in Mesopotamia and north Syria the
Persians struck out boldly towards Constantinople. Overrun-
ning Cappadocia, Galatia, and Bithynia their raiding bands
crossed the whole peninsula, and even penetrated to Chalcedon
and eyed the imperial city across the Bosphorus. Phocas,

1 56 Ejiropean History, 476-g 1 8

instead of hastening to organise new troops, contented him-
self with ordering a persecution of the Jews, whom he
accused of having betrayed to the Persians some of the towns
of Syria.

In 609 the enemy once more overran Asia Minor, capturing
among other places the great city of Caesarea in Cappadocia.
Again they met with little or no opposition; the emperor's
attention was entirely taken up with real or imaginary plots in
the capital. It seemed that he would allow the empire to be
torn from him piecemeal, without striking a blow.

But relief was at last about to come to the suffering people
of New Rome. In Africa there ruled as exarch Heraclius,
the veteran officer whose victories had closed the old Persian
wars of the time of Maurice. He was capable and much
beloved both by the provincials and by his army ; under his
able rule Africa, alone among the provinces of the empire,
enjoyed peace and prosperity. In 609 Heraclius received
emissaries from Priscus, the commander of the imperial guard,
one of the innumerable persons who had fallen under the
suspicion of Phocas. The messengers bade Heraclius strike
boldly at Constantinople, for Phocas was universally detested,
and no one would raise an arm in his defence. At the same
moment the exarch learnt that his tyrannical master had
already conceived doubts of his loyalty, and had thrown
his wife and daughter into prison.

Seeing that he must strike hard or be crushed, Herachus
determined to rebel. He spent the winter of 609-10 in fitting
out a fleet, and launched it against Constantinople before
Rebellion of Phocas had learnt of his revolt. The command
Heraclius. ^^s given to his eldest son, who also bore the
name of Heraclius, for the exarch himself was old and ailing.
At the same time, to make a diversion, he sent a body of
cavalry under his nephew, Nicetas, to invade Egypt by land;
they were to follow the line of the long coast-road through
Tripoli and Cyrene.

When the fleet of the younger Heraclius reached the Dar-

The Successors of Justinian 157

danelles it met with no resistance ; on the news of its arrival,
Priscus brought the imperial guard to join the rebels, and the
emperor found himself deserted by all his soldiery. He strove,
like his predecessor Maurice, to arm the factions of the Blues
and Greens; but no one would strike a blow in behalf of
such a worthless tyrant. Heraclius sailed unopposed to the
Bosphorus, and as he arrived off the palace he met a boat
containing the wretched Phocas, whom a private enemy had
seized and cast into chains. The prisoner was brought on
deck and cast at the feet of his conqueror. ' Is it thus/ cried
Heraclius, ' that you have governed the empire ? ' ' Will you,'
the fallen tyrant replied, ' govern it any better ? ' Heraclius
spurned him with his foot, and promptly consigned him to
the headsman.

Thus perished the first, but by no means the last, military
usurper who sat on the Constantinopolitan throne, overthrown,
as he had been elevated, by an armed rebellion. All the
world with singular unanimity testified to the worthlessness of
Phocas, save one single adherent; but this was no less a
person than Pope Gregory the Great. Much to his discredit
the great pontiff had been a supporter, nay, even a flatterer,
of the Thracian boor who wore the eastern diadem with such
ill grace. But Gregory had been an enemy of the unfortunate
Maurice, because that prince — though orthodox in matters
of doctrine — had shown scant respect to the See of Rome.
He had called some of Gregory's epistles ' fatuous,' and had
allowed John 'the Faster,' patriarch of Constantinople, to
assume the title of ' oecumenical bishop,' a style which filled
Gregory with horror, and caused him to exclaim that the times
of Antichrist were at hand. Gregory therefore looked on
Maurice's murderer as the avenger of the outraged dignity of
the See of Rome, and did not shrink from heaping upon him
epithets of unseemly adulation ; the choirs of angels, he said,
sang with joy in heaven at the accession of such a worthy
Caesar ! Truly this was a painful episode in the life of a man
who, in spite of all his faults, has been justly hailed as a saint.

CHAPTER X

DECLINE AND DECAY OF THE MEROVINGIANS
561-656.

The sons of Chlothar divide the Prankish reahn — Wars of Sigibert and Chil-
perich— The fortunes of Brunhildis — Continued wars of Neustria and
Austrasia — Tyranny of Chilperich and Fredegundis— Decay of the Royal
Power among the Franks — The House of St. Arnulf and Pippin — Brun-
hildis regent in Austrasia — Wars of her grandsons — Pier death —
Chlothar ii. sole king — His weakness — His successor Dagobert I. last
free king of the Merovingian line — Rise of the Mayors of the Palace.

After the first eighty years of its existence, the P'rankish
kingdom, which under three generations of warhke monarchs
had continued to extend its borders so fast and so far, ceased
suddenly to grow, and was given up for a century and a half
to ruinous civil wars, as objectless as they were tedious and
confused. In surrendering their primitive Teutonic freedom
to their royal house, in return for the glory and aggrandise-
ment which union under a single despotic hand gave to their
hitherto weak and scattered tribes, the Franks had bartered
away their future. As long as the house of Chlodovech were
able and active, their subjects could console themselves for
submitting to an autocrat by sharing in the power and plunder
which a century of successful war brought in to them. But
when the Merovings, though still retaining their despotic
authority, grew weak and incapable, showing no trace of their
ancestor's qualities, save an inveterate tendency to treachery

158

Decline and Decay of the Merovingians 1 59

and fratricide, an evil time came upon the Frankish race.
They paid for their early aggrandisement by being condemned
to five generations of useless civil wars at home, and power-
lessness abroad, while their hereditary monarchs sacrificed
everything to their unending family feuds. Nothing more
could be hoped for the Franks till they had rid themselves of
the nightmare-incubus of this wicked house, whose repulsive
annals are, on the whole, the most hopeless and depressing
page in the history of Europe.^ From generation to genera-
tion their story reeks with blood; there is nothing that can
be compared to it for horror in the records of any nation on
this side of the Mediterranean. We have to search the
histories of the courts of Mohammedan Asia to discover a
parallel. The Franks only found salvation in the growth of
checks on the royal power by the development of the great
provincial governors, and by the final deposition of the
Merovings in favour of the great house of the descendants
of St. Arnulf, the Mayors of the Palace, whose strong hand at
last stayed the fratricidal wars of the seventh century. And
even when the new dynasty had mounted the throne, the
Frankish realm showed fatal signs of the demoralisation it
had suffered under the old royal house. The tendency of
the race to acquiesce in the unwise habit of heritage-partition,
and the unhappy grudge between the eastern and the western
Franks, were direct legacies of the Merovings.

We left the whole ^ Frankish realm concentrated in the hands
of the aged Chlothar, last surviving son of Chlodovech. When,
however, this hoary ruffian, fresh from the murder of his eldest
son, sank into his grave, in the year 561, his four surviving

^ In spite of the wickedness of the house of the Merovings, the Franks
were very loyal, even in the days of the decay of the royal race. We find
their chroniclers repeatedly contrasting the fidelity of the Franks with
the fickleness of their Visigothic neighbours, who, having lost their
ancient royal house, were continually making and unmaking sovereigns
from among the ranks of their counts and dukes.

^ For genealogy of the house of Chlodovech see page 166.

[6o

European History, 476-918

children parted the kingdom once more among themselves,
Second parti- not without a preliminary fight, in which Chil-
Frrn°kish^ perich, the youngest of the four, having laid
Realm, 561. hands on his father's treasures, and raised an
army with their aid, tried to put down his kinsmen, but failed.
When he had been defeated and brought to submission, the
realm was made into four shares. Charibert, the eldest son,
took Paris and Aquitaine ; Guntram the Burgundian kingdom ;

Sigibert the Ripuarian land on the Rhine, and the tributary
Thuringian and Bavarian lands beyond it ; lastly, the restless
Chilperich was given his father's original share, the old Salian
land between Meuse and Somme, with certain districts farther
south added to it, so that it extended nearly as far as the gates
of Rouen and Rheims.

Of these four brothers, Charibert died young, in 567. He

Decline and Decay of the Merovingians 16 1

is only remembered because his daughter Bertha married
Ethelbert, the king of Kent, and was, twenty years later, the
protector of the mission of St. Augustine. Charibert's lands
on the Seine and Loire were parted among his three brothers,
Guntram and Chilperich each taking the part that lay nearest
to his own frontier, while their distant Ripuarian brother,
Sigibert, had Tours, Poictiers, and Bordeaux, separated from
his other dominions by the whole breadth of Burgundy.

The tale of the wars and tumults which the three surviving
sons of Chlothar i. raised against each other is a long recital
of objectless strife and treachery. The uneasiest spirit of the
three was the wicked Chilperich, ' the Nero and Herod of his
time,' as Gregory of Tours very rightly styles him. The
usual fraternal hatred of the Merovings was embittered be-
tween him and Sigibert by an additional grievance. While
Sigibert was away beyond the Rhine striving with the wild
Avars, who had pushed their incursions along the Danube into
Bavaria and Suabia, his brother, the king of Soissons, invaded
Ripuaria, and tried to seize it for himself. Sigibert returned
in haste, and succeeded in driving Chilperich back beyond the
Meuse, and preserving his eastern border.

This would have been cause enough for revenge, but a
worse was to follow. Chilperich and Sigibert had married
two sisters, the daughters of the Visigothic king, Athanagild.
Galswintha was the spouse of Chilperich, Brunhildis of Sigi-
bert. They were princesses famed all over the Western world
for their beauty and abilities no less than for the enormous
dowries which their father had bestowed upon ,. ^ ,

^ Murder of

them. Before his marriage Chilperich had kept Galswintha,
a perfect harem of concubines, though on the s^^'
arrival of Galswintha he had for the moment banished them.
But Fredegundis, the chief among his former favourites,
retained such an empire over him that after a few months
he openly brought her back to the palace, and insulted the
queen by her presence. When Galswintha indignantly de-
clared that she should return to her father, the wicked king

PFRTOD I. L

1 62 European History , 476-918

had her murdered, and publicly married Fredegundis within a
few days (567).

Brunhildis, the sister of the murdered queen, and the
spouse of Chilperich's elder brother the king of Ripuaria,
devoted the rest of her life to the task of avenging Gal-
swintha's death on the king of Soissons and his paramour.
She was a strong-willed, fearless, able woman, and her in-
fluence over her husband was unbounded. For forty years
the houses of Sigibert and Chilperich and their unhappy sub-
jects were destined to shed their blood on the battle-field
that the slaughter of Galswintha might be atoned for.

It is in these wars that the final partition of the Frankish
realm into its two permanent divisions took shape, and that
new names for these divisions came into use. The Ripuarian
realm of king Sigibert, from the borders of Bavaria and
Thuringia as far as the Meuse and Scheldt, is for the future
known as Austrasia — the Eastern kingdom ; Chilperich's less
purely Teutonic realm, from the Meuse and Scheldt as far as
the Loire, gets the name of Neustria, the New kingdom, or the
New West kingdom, as others interpret it.^

The beginning of the wars of Neustria and Austrasia follows
immediately on the death of Galswintha. As the avenger of
blood, king Sigibert entered his brother's kingdom, and drove
him westward. But the hostilities were suspended by a great
Lombard invasion of Gaul. The new conquerors of Italy had
passed the Alps, and thrown themselves upon the Frankish
realm. Guntram of Burgundy, whose kingdom bore the
brunt of the assault, prevailed upon his brothers to cease
their struggles and unite to cast out the Lombards from Pro-

1 Neustria, Neuster, Neustrasia, Neutrasia, Niwistria are all found as
forms of the name. It is disputed whether it means merely the realm of
the * New Franks ' in Gaul as opposed to the * Old Franks ' on Meuse and
Rhine, or whether New and West are compressed together in the word.
The Annals of Metz say, * Occidentales Franci qui Niwistrii dicuntur. ' Its
boundaries were the Scheldt, the Silva Carbonaria about Namur and
Mons, and the Upper Meuse. Verdun is the westernmost Austrasian
town ; Langres the northernmost Burgundian town.

Decline and Decay of the Merovingians 163

vence and the Rhone valley. By his decision Chilperich gave
up as weregeld for his wife's murder, her dowry and five
Aquitanian cities, which had been bestowed upon her at the
marriage. These were made over to Brunhildis, who took
them, but nevertheless bided her time for a fuller revenge

(568)-

. Four years of Lombard wars kept the Frankish kings en-
gaged on their southern borders, and they were at last success-
ful in forcing the invaders beyond the Alps, in a series of
campaigns in which the chief glory was gained by the Romano-
Gallic duke, Eunius Mummolus, who led the armies of Guntram
of Burgundy. But in 573 the civil war between ^^^^ ^^ g. .^
Sigibert and Chilperich burst forth again. It bert and chii-
spread at once over the whole of the Frankish p^"<=^' 573-75.
realm ; for Chilperich attacked his brother's dominions in Aqui-
taine, while Sigibert pressed on beyond Meuse and Scheldt.
There followed two years of fierce fighting, attended by the
most barbarous wasting of the land. Chilperich's sons burnt
every open town between Tours and Limoges ; Sigibert's
troops from beyond the Rhine devastated the valley of the
Meuse. The Austrasians had the better in the struggle, and
Chilperich sued for peace, offering large territorial concessions.
But it was his life and not his lands that Brunhildis wanted.
Her husband was induced to decline his brother's proposals,
and pushed his victorious arms into the heart of Neustria,
after a battle in which Chilperich's son and heir, Theudebert,
was slain. The king of the West abandoned his capital,
and fled north to hide himself and his wife behind the walls
of Tournay. Most of the Neustrian counts came to do
homage to Sigibert at Paris, and when he had chased his
brother behind the Scheldt, the Austrasian had himself lifted
on the shield, according to old Frankish custom, and saluted
as King of all the Franks at Vitry, near Arras. He sent for
his wife and children to Paris to share in his Murder of
triumph, and determined to end the war by the sigibert, 575.
siege of Tournay. But, when all Gaul seemed at his command,

164 European History^ 476-918

two murderers, hired by queen Fredegundis, came before him
with a pretended message, and stabbed him while he Hstened
to their words (575).

The death of Sigibert changed the whole aspect of affairs
in Gaul, and raised his assassin from the depth of despair
to the height of fortune. The Austrasian army dispersed when
its commander was slain, and the Neustrian counts flocked to
Tournay to do homage again to Chilperich. Queen Brun-
hildis, who lay at Paris with Sigibert's infant son and heir
Childebert, was seized and imprisoned by the partisans of the
Neustrian king. Her little four-year-old son only escaped
from his uncle's clutches by being let down in a basket from
his mother's prison window, and received by a faithful ad-
herent, who rode away with him to Metz. If Chilperich had
laid hands on the boy, the Austrasian royal house would have
been ended in the promptest way.

The East-Frankish counts and dukes, when the news of
Sigibert's death reached them, resolved not to submit to his
murderer, but to take a step unheard of heretofore in the annals
of the Merovings. When they found that the boy Childebert
had escaped, they bound his father's diadem about his brows,
and saluted him as king. Hitherto the Franks had always
lived under the strong hands of a grown man, and the provin-
cial governors had been as powerless as the meaner people
under the autocratic sway of the ruler; but in the long
minority that would follow the accession of a four-year-old
child, they found their opportunity for lowering the royal
power, and dividing many of its privileges among themselves.
From this point begins the degradation of the kingly office,
which was to be the rule henceforth among them ; and the
counts and dukes, as well as the great officers of the palace,
were destined to acquire, in the early years of Childebert, a
control over the central power which they had never hitherto
possessed.

Meanwhile the fate of the little king's mother, Brunhildis,

Decline and Decay of the Merovingians 165

had been a strange one. Chilperich had seized her treasures,
and thrown her into prison at Rouen. There she caught the
eye of Merovech, her captor's eldest surviving son,i who was
charged by his father with the command of an Adventures of
army destined to attack the Austrasian king's Brunhiidis.
dominions beyond the Loire. Merovech was so infatuated
by the beauty of the captive queen that, braving his father's
displeasure, he delivered her from her dungeon, and induced
Praetextatus, bishop of Rouen, to marry them in his cathedral.
King Chilperich immediately flew to Rouen in great wrath,
and at his approach the newly-married pair took sanctuary
under the bishop's protection. After some hesitation the
king of Neustria promised to spare their lives, but, when his
son surrendered himself, he took him away to Soissons, and
shortly afterwards tonsured him, and compelled him to become
a monk. Brunhiidis escaped to Austrasia, whither her hus-
band strove to follow her. He f!ed from his monastery, and
had almost reached the frontier, when the emissaries of
his stepmother, Fredegundis, caught him, and murdered
him (577).

In Austrasia there now commenced a struggle between the
liberated queen-mother and the great ofiicers of state, for the
guardianship of the little six-year-old king. The struggle was
an obstinate one ; for if the Frankish nobles were hampered
by the autocratic traditions of the kingship, Brunhiidis, on
the other hand, was a foreigner, and met with little support
save among the Gallo-Roman clergy and officials, who found
some protection, under the shield of the king, from the
arrogance and violence of their Frankish fellow-subjects. In
Neustria or Aquitaine, where the Roman elements were
stronger, Brunhiidis might have done more, but her lot
was cast in Austrasia, where the Germans were entirely pre-
ponderant.

^ Theudebert, the eldest, had fallen in battle in the preceding
year.

i66

European History, 476-918

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1 68 European History, 476-918

To protect the young Childebert against the attacks of
Chilperich, his mother alHed herself with the boy's uncle,
Guntram, king of Burgundy. Guntram, who had no children
of his own, designated Childebert heir to all his dominions,
and took up his cause with vigour. But he was not a very
warlike prince, and it was as much as he could do to protect
his own realm against the active and ruthless king of Neustria.
Though Burgundy and Austrasia were allied, Chilperich suc-
ceeded in conquering their united armies, under the Burgun-
dian general, Mummolus, and seizing Tours, Poictiers, and all
the north of Aquitaine. He would probably have carried his
arms further if internal troubles had not arisen to check him.
The Bretons of Armorica burst into rebellion, and had to be
put down, and other risings were excited by his ruthless and
excessive taxation. But his worst vexations were those of his
own household, caused by the strife of his elder sons with
Atrocities of their Stepmother, Fredegundis. All through these
Fredegundis. years the wickcd queen had been fearfully active.
Theudebert and Merovech, the eldest of her husband's family,
were dead, but their brother, Chlodovech, still stood between
Fredegundis' children and the throne. In 580 the plague
swept all over Gaul,, and two sons of Fredegundis' were carried
off by it. She accused their step-brother of having caused
their death by witchcraft, and got her husband to permit her
to execute him. But when her last child died, two years later,
the wretched woman's rage and grief led her into the wildest out-
bursts of cruelty. She accused numbers of persons about the
court of magic arts practised against her boy, and burnt them
alive, or broke them on the wheel. Many other acts of murder
and treachery are attributed to her, notably the death of
Praetextatus, bishop of Rouen, whom she detested for the
part he had taken in the marriage of Merovech and Brun-
hildis, and her crimes fill many a page in the gloomy annals
of Gregory of Tours. A legend tells how two holy bishops once
stood before the gate of the palace at Soissons. ' What seest
thou over this house ? ' said one. ' I see nothing but the red

Decline and Decay of the Merovingians 169

standard which Chilperich the king has ordered to be set
up on its topmost gable.' ' But / see,' said the first, ' the
sword of God raised above that wicked house to destroy it
altogether.'

Meanwhile, Chilperich's wars with his brother of Burgundy
and his nephew of Austrasia continued to fill central Gaul
with blood and ashes. They ceased for a moment when the
Austrasian nobles, against the will of Brunhildis, forced their
little king to make peace and alliance with his father's mur-
derer. But no one could long trust Chilperich, and after less
than a year the old league between Austrasia and Burgundy
was renewed.

In 584 Chilperich, to the great joy of all Gaul, was murdered
by an unknown hand : — ' As he was returning from the hunt
to his royal manor of Chelles, a certain man struck him
with a knife beneath the shoulder, and pierced his belly
with a second stroke, whereupon he fell down and j^^^^j^ ^^
breathed out his foul soul,' says the chronicler. Chilperich i.,
He was perhaps the worst of the wicked Merov- ^ "*'
ings — cruel, unjust, gluttonous, and drunken, vain, boastful,
and irreligious, the worthy son of the ruffian Chlothar, and
grandson of the murderer Chlodovech. But his untiring
energy and reckless courage bore him safely through many an
evil day, and he died leaving the kingdom he had inherited
in 561 increased to three times its original bulk.

Queen Fredegundis had borne one more son, named Chlo-
thar, to her husband just four months before his murder, so
that Neustria was not left altogether without an heir. But
Fredegundis feared that Guntram and his nephew would now
seize the whole realm, and slay her with her infant. She took
sanctuary at Paris ; but when the king of Burgundy arrived
he showed his superiority to the morals of his family by
sparing the life of the wicked queen, and recognising her son
as king of Neustria. Brunhildis sought in vain to induce
Guntram to give over to her the murderess of her husband ;
he refused, and Fredegundis took advantage of his kindness

I/O European History^ 476-918

to hire assassins to make attempts on the lives both of
Brunhildis and her son the young king of Austrasia. Luckily
the project failed in both cases.

The civil wars of the Franks now ceased for a moment.
Guntram, a mild and not unamiable character, controlled both
his nephews, the fifteen-year-old Childebert of Austrasia, and
the one-year-old Chlothar 11. ; and for nine years the three
kingdoms had a certain measure of peace, broken only by
wars with the Lombards and Visigoths. Guntram seems to
have hoped that the fratricidal wars of his family might be
staved off for a space by turning the energy of the Franks
Wars with against their southern neighbours, and engaged
Goths and himsclf in a war with Reccared, king of Spain,
om ar s. ^j^jjg ^^ Austrasian nobles were induced by the
gifts of the emperor Maurice to assist the Byzantines in their
struggle against the Lombards. Both wars were long and
fruitless. In the West, the repeated attacks of the Burgundian
armies on Septimania were all beaten back. In the East, the
Austrasians twice crossed the Alps, and wasted the valley of
the Po, but in 588 they received such a defeat at the hands of
king Authari that they made peace with him and withdrew
across the Alps. In 590 Childebert, who had now attained
his twentieth year, and was governing for himself, renewed the
struggle j but his army was thinned by famine and pestilence
before the walls of Verona, and he was finally fain to renew
the peace with Agilulf, the successor of Authari.

Unfortunate foreign wars, however, were better than strife
in the heart of Gaul, and the last years of Guntram were fairly
free from this pest. He was only troubled by one rebellion :
a conspiracy between his illegitimate brother, Gundovald, and
two great Romano-Gallic dukes, Mummolus and Desiderius,
who were apparently wishing to become king-makers, and rule
under the name of an obscure and incapable pretender. But
the day of the complete triumph of the great State officials
over the kingship had not yet come, and though he was for
a moment master of all Aquitaine, Gundovald was easily put

Decline and Decay of the Merovingians 171

down, and executed in company with his chief supporter
Mummolus (585).

Guntram died in 593, and his nephew Childebert received
his dominions in Burgundy and Aquitaine, thus becoming
ruler of four-fifths of the whole Frankish kingdom in his
twenty-third year. Under his nominal sway Austrasia had
been the theatre of a long struggle between his mother
Brunhildis and the great counts and dukes, whose plots and
riots were secretly abetted by Fredegundis. From her home
in Neustria the ruthless widow of Chilperich did her best to set
her nephew's kingdom in disorder, and promised lands and
titles to the Austrasian chiefs if they would murder Brunhildis
and Childebert, and proclaim her own son, Chlothar, king of
Austrasia. But the stern and able Brunhildis unravelled and
crushed all these conspiracies, and had the triumph of seeing
her son attain his majority, and assume the rule in his own
name.

The moment that the pacific Guntram was dead, Brunhildis
and her son, freed from all restraint, set out to punish the in-
trigues of Fredegundis, and by invading Neustria to make an end
of her and her boy Chlothar. But the fortune of war declared
in favour of the Western Franks. At Droisy, near Brunhildis
Soissons, the army of Childebert was defeated with attacks
the loss of no less than 30,000 men, and Neustria ^"^tna.
was saved from conquest. The war continued without definite
result, for Childebert was prevented from using his full
strength by a rebellion beyond the Rhine, among the Warni
in Suabia. Probably his superior force must in the end have
carried the day, but the entire aspect of affairs was suddenly
changed by his unexpected death in 596, at the early age of
twenty-six. He left two infant sons, Theudebert and Theu-
derich, to the care of their grandmother, who found herself,
though she was now verging on old age, once more called
upon to assume the regency.

The death of Childebert was to the kingly authority a fatal
blow, from which it never recovered. His own long minority

172 European History^ 476-918

had raised the counts and dukes to a pitch of power which
they had never gained before, and all the efforts of Brunhildis
had not succeeded in fully holding them down. The equally
long minority of his sons was the last blow to the kingship.
Their grandmother struggled with all her might to retain the
power for the kingly race, and to curb her unruly subjects.
But though she worked with untiring energy and zeal, and
kept the reins of government in her own grasp for some time,
the treacherous nobles, bent on their own aggrandisement at the
expense of the royal authority, were at last too much for her.

Of the two sons of Childebert 11. Theudebert, the elder,
became king of Austrasia, Theuderich, the younger, king of
Second Burgundy, the legacy of his uncle Guntram. It

Regency of was an uncasy inheritance to which they suc-
Brunhiidis. cccded, for Fredegundis saw her opportunity, and
urged the Neustrians forward against her great-nephews. At
Lafaux near Laon the Austrasians suffered a great defeat, and
all the lands as far as the Meuse fell into the hands of the
queen of Neustria. But in the moment of triumph, her son's
throne being now firmly established, and her rival's power on
the decline, the wicked Fredegundis died at Rouen. Her
countless murders and cruelties met no chastisement on earth,
and the son for whom she had risked so much was destined
to carry out to a successful end the schemes in pursuit of
which she had so long striven, and to unite all the Frankish
realms under his sceptre (597).

The death of Fredegundis brought no relief to Brunhildis.
For two years more she struggled on against the intrigues of
the Austrasian nobility; duke Wintrio, who led the opposi-
tion against her, was seized and executed in 598. But in 599
Exile of a final rising took her by surprise, and she was

Brunhildis. forced to fly alonc and unaccompanied from Metz
to save her life. She escaped to Burgundy, where she took
refuge with her younger grandson Theuderich, and was there
received with all honour. Two successive Mayors of the
Palace, Protadius and Claudius, both of Romano-GaUic blood,

Decline and Decay of the Merovingians 173

lent themselves to her schemes, and the royal power in Bur-
gundy was still upheld by her strong hand.

The curse of fratricidal wars was never to depart from the
house of the Merovings. When Theudebert 11. and Theu-
derich 11. grew up and reached early manhood, they united for
a moment to attack their cousin Chlothar, and to recover
from him the lands between the Meuse, the Seine, and the
Loire, with Paris, Rouen, and Tours. But soon after they
fell to strife, and it would seem that the old Brunhildis was
greatly to blame for its outbreak. She was burning to revenge
herself on the Austrasian nobles for the banishment she had
endured at their hands, and stirred up the Burgundians to
war. She and the Mayor Protadius were far more eager
than the counts and dukes of Burgundy to begin the strife,
and when the two armies came in sight of each other, the
soldiers of Theuderich lowered their weapons, slew Protadius
when he strove to force them on, and compelled their young
king to make peace with his brother. But the curse that
rested on the Merovings was not so easily to be exorcised ;
Brunhildis and Theuderich were determined to have their
way, and ere very long the war was renewed. The Austrasians
were beaten at Toul, their lands wasted, and the victorious
Theuderich forced his way as far as Ziilpich, in the very heart
of his brother's realm. Here Theudebert with- wars of
stood him for a second time, was again beaten, Theudebert
and fell into the hands of the Burgundians. He Theuderich
was led before his grandmother, who assailed him ii-» 6"-
with bitter reproaches, and bade him be tonsured and become
a monk. But this did not content the king of Burgundy ; a
few days later he had his brother dragged out of his monastery
and put to death (612).

The revenge of heaven seemed to be called down by the
wicked deed of the young king of Burgundy. Only five
months after his brother's murder he was smitten down by an
attack of dysentery, and died at Metz in the very prime of his
early manhood (613).

174 European History, 476-918

Now for the third time the unhappy Brunhildis was left
alone, with a helpless child as her only stay. Once more she
steeled her heart and faced the situation ; she led her great-
grandson Sigibert, the eldest son of Theuderich, before the
assembly of the East Franks, and bade them do homage to
him as king of Austrasia and Burgundy. For a moment
they bent before her, and Sigibert 11. was acknowledged as
ruler of the East Franks. But the Austrasians were deter-
mined to have no more of Brunhildis' rule ; they sent secretly
to Chlothar, king of Neustria, and bade him arm and invade
his cousin's realm, for no hand should be raised against him.
When the Neustrian king marched into Austrasia, Warnachar,
the mayor of the palace, and most of the nobles of the land
took arms and joined him. Brunhildis with her great-grand-
son fled to Burgundy, and raised an army there, with which
she faced the Neustrians near the headwaters of the Aisne.
But when Chlothar's army came in sight, the Burgundian
patrician Aletheus and the dukes Rocco and Sigvald led off
their troops, and joined the invader. In a moment the whole
of Sigibert's army had deserted or dispersed. Brunhildis and
the little king fled away as far as Orbe, hard by the lake of
Neuchatel, where the emissaries of Chlothar overtook and
Death of Captured them. They were led before the king
Brunhildis, of Neustria, the worthy son of Fredegundis.
^^*" ' Here is the woman,' he cried, ' by whose intrigues

and wars ten princes of the Franks have come to their deaths,'^
and he bade his soldiers scourge the old queen, and then
bind her by hands and feet to the heels of a wild horse,
who dragged her among stones and rocks till her body was
torn limb from limb. The boy Sigibert and his younger
brother Corbo were strangled.

^ We can reckon Theudebert, son of Chilperich, and Theudebert, son
of Childebert, slain in battle ; Chilperich, whose murder was sometimes
put down to Brunhildis by her enemies ; Sigibert, who was murdered in a
war to which Brunhildis had urged him ; Merovech, who was murdered
for marrying her. But who were the other five ?

Decline and Decay of the Merovingians 175

Thus perished Brunhildis, and with her the greatness of the
house of the Merovings. For the future it was the counts
and the mayors of the palace who were to exercise real
power among the Franks, and not the kings. Chlothar, who
had conquered only by the treachery of the nobles, was, with
all his descendants, to be their servant, not their master.
Considering that she was a woman and a foreigner, it is won-
derful that Brunhildis continued for so long to sway the councils
of Austrasia. Save her abiHties and her force of character,
she had no advantage, yet she not only dominated in suc-
cession her husband, her son, and her grandson, but held
down the unruly counts and dukes, who were neither allied
to her by blood nor constantly under her eye and influence.
The tale of her life has sufficiently shown her qualities and
defects. That she was something more than a fury stirring
up war and strife from personal revenge for the character of
blood of her sister and her husband is clear Brunhildis.
enough. She was an administrator of marked ability. Almost
alone among the rulers of the Franks, she is noted as a builder
and a founder. Churches, hospitals, and monasteries she
erected in great numbers. The old Roman fortresses and
military roads were also her care. To this day some of the
high roads of Belgium still bear her name, and as the
* Chaussees de Brunehaute ' preserve her memory as the first
potentate who cared for them after the Franks came into the
land. That she was a sincerely religious woman would seem
to be vouched for by the series of her letters to Gregory the
Great, which moved the good pontiff"'s admiration. But sin-
cere piety was not in those days, any more than in our own,
inconsistent with a headstrong impatience of opposition, and
an unscrupulous readiness to sweep obstacles out of the way.
There is no doubt that Brunhildis struck down the Austrasian
counts by the dagger, as well as by the sword, when they in-
trigued against her. She never forgave her own grandson Theu-
debert 11. for allowing her to be driven out of his realm, and was
not satisfied till, ten years after his offence, she caught him,

176 European History ^ 476-918

and forced him to become a monk. Her enmity pursued not
only Fredegundis and Chilperich, the murderers of her sister
and husband, but their young son and their subjects long years
after they themselves were dead. Yet, if she was relentless
and unforgiving, we must remember that few rulers in history
have suffered such wrongs and faced such odds. Compared
with her contemporaries, Brunhildis might almost pass for a
heroine and a saint.

Chlothar 11., though he became king of all the Frankish
realms by the murder of Brunhildis and her great-grand-
children, acquired little real power thereby. The Austrasians
and Burgundians, who had combined with him to destroy the
old queen, wrung terms from him which deprived him of many
undoubted regal rights. The dukes Warnachar and Ratho,
who were made mayors of the palace of the two realms.
Decay of Stipulated that they were to hold their offices for

Royal power. Hfe^ not at the king's pleasure. For the future
the mayorship became an office of far greater importance than
it had yet been. Another step in the weakening of the king-
ship is shown by the fact that the legislation of the Franks
from this time forward is always noted as being done by the
king, with the counsel and consent of his bishops, counts, and
dukes. A code of laws which Chlothar 11. put forth for the
Suabians, somewhere about the year 620, is indorsed not
merely with his own authority, but with that of thirty-three
bishops, thirty-four dukes, and sixty-five counts. The fact that
the reign of Chlothar was exceptionally fertile in legislation is
probably to be accounted for by the fact that he was compelled
to listen to the demands of his nobles, and grant redress to
their grievances, rather than by any particular taste of his own
for the enacting of laws. When, for example, we hear that he
' met the mayor Warnachar, and all the bishops, and great
men of Burgundy at Bonneuil, and there assented to all their
just petitions,' we must remember that he was facing an irre-
movable mayor of the palace, and a nation who had freely
given themselves into his hands on stated terms, and had no

Decline and Decay of the Merovingians 177

longer over them the unlimited authority that a Chlodovech
or a Theuderich had owned a hundred years before Nothing
can show more clearly the growing weakness of Troubles of
the king than an incident which occurred at a chiotharii.
great national gathering of Neustrians and Burgundians, at
Clichy, towards the end of his reign. In the midst of the
council a brawl arose, and the followers of a duke named
^gyna, slew Ermenhar, the steward of the palace of the
king's son. At once all the Neustrians seized their arms, and
drew apart into two bands. While ^gyna and his friends
seized the hill of Montmartre, and formed their array on its
brow, the larger party, headed by Brodulf, a kinsman of the
slain man, started off to storm the position. The king was
only able to keep the peace by inducing the Burgundians,
who were not interested in the quarrel, to follow him, and to
promise to attack whichever of the two sides should strike
the first blow. He dismissed the assembly, and was unable
to punish any one, either for the murder or for the riot which
had ensued.

Chlothar, with his diminished royal prerogative, seems to
have had neither the opportunity nor the power to engage in
wars of conquest beyond the bounds of his realm. He had to
look on, without stirring, while a great, if ephemeral, kingdom
was built up beyond his eastern frontier. Behind samo and
the Thuringians and Bavarians, on the Elbe and *^^ siavs.
Oder, there had dwelt for the last two hundred years, since the
German races had migrated westward, a group of small and
disunited Slavonic tribes, calling themselves Wiltzes, Sorbes,
Abotrites, and Czechs. Their dissensions had kept them from
being dangerous neighbours till the time of Chlothar. But
about 620 a Frankish adventurer, named Samo, who had
gone eastward, half as trader half as buccaneer, united many
of the Slavonic tribes, and became their king. He gradually
extended his power all down the valley of the Elbe, on both
sides of the Bohemian mountains, and was soon to prove him-
self a serious trouble to the realm of the Merovings.

PERIOD I. M

1/8 European History, 476-918

Towards the end of his reign, Chlothar 11. made his son
Dagobert king of Austrasia, while he was still a very young
man. The chief councillors by whose aid Dagobert adminis-
tered his realm were two men whose names form a landmark
in Frankish history — Arnulf, bishop of Metz, and count
Pippin the elder, the ancestors of the great house of the
Karlings. Bishop Arnulf was the wisest and best of the
prelates of Austrasia, and, after a long life of usefulness in
_^ . ,. church and state, won the name of saint by lay-

St. Arnulf _ _ ' ■' ■'

and Pippin ing down his crozier and ring and retiring to a
the elder. hermitage, to spend his last fifteen years in the
solitudes of the Vosges. Count Pippin, a noble from the land
between Meuse and Mosel, whose ancestral abodes are said to
have been the manors of Hersthal and Landen, was appointed
mayor of the palace, and lived in the closest concord and
amity with Arnulf. They cemented their alliance by a mar-
riage, Begga, the daughter of Pippin, being wedded to Ansi-
gisel, the son of the bishop ; for Arnulf, like many of the
Frankish clergy, lived in lawful wedlock. From these parents
sprang the whole of the line of mayors, kings, and emperors
whose mighty deeds were to make their comparatively unim-
portant ancestors famous in history.

King Chlothar 11. died in 628, and his son, Dagobert i.,
became ruler of all the Frankish realms. He was, for a
Meroving, a very creditable ruler, though he lived with three
wives at once, and indulged in occasional outbursts of wrong-
headedness. For the two first years of his reign he chose to
share the sovereign power with his brother Charibert, whom
he made king of Aquitaine out of pure fraternal affection.
But when Charibert died, in 630, he resumed his southern
dominions, disregarding Charibert's three sons. Dagobert
„ . , was the last of the Merovings whose will was of

Reign of °

Dagobert I., much importance in the ordering of the Frankish
628-38. realms ; his successors were to be mere shadows.

Even in his own time the royal power was already of little force
in Austrasia, where the king leant entirely upon the support of

Decline and Decay of the Merovingians 1 79

Pippin, who, with his son-in-law, Ansigisel, held the post of
mayor of the palace for the whole sixteen years of Dagobert's
reign. His loyalty to the king concealed the fact that he was
far more powerful in the eastern kingdom than Dagobert him-
self. The king had several sharp quarrels with him, but never
dared to depose him from his post lest trouble should ensue.
In Neustria no great mayor of the palace had yet arisen, and
there Dagobert was ruler in fact as well as name. Hence it
is not surprising that he always dwelt west of the Meuse, and
made Paris his favourite residence.

Dagobert was the last Meroving who took arms to extend
the limits of the Frankish power. He supported the pretender
Sisinand in Spain, by the aid of a Burgundian army, made an
alliance with the emperor Heraclius against the Lombards,
and entered into a protracted war with the Slavonic tribes of
the East. On the Elbe, the kingdom of Samo the Frank was
now at the height of its power. Dagobert took alarm at its
rapid growth, and when the Wends plundered part of Thur-
ingia, in 630, sent against them three great armies, comprising
the whole military force of Austrasia. Two of these expe-
ditions fared well, but the third suffered complete annihila-
tion at Wogastisburg, in Bohemia, and the victorious Slavs
ravaged Thuringia and Bavaria, from Saal to Danube, with fire
and sword, till Radulf, duke of Thuringia, at last checked
them, in 633.

Dagobert i. died in 638, He left two sons, Sigibert iii.,
aged nine, and Chlodovech 11., aged six. It was the long
minority of these two boys which finally achieved the ruin
of the Merovingian house. While Sigibert and Chlodovech
were growing up to manhood, the future of the Frankish
realms was being settled by the sword, the all-important issue
at stake being the question whether the house of Pippin and
Arnulf should retain permanent possession of the Austrasian
mayorship of the palace or should sink out of sight. Pippin
the Old died in 639, the second year of Sigibert's reign. His
son Grimoald at once proclaimed himself heir to his father's

i8o European History^ 476-918

office. But a great part of the Austrasian nobles, headed by
Otto, the foster-father of the young king, refused to acknow-
Grimoaid ledge his right to the mayorship, and a fierce
Mayor of War of three years was required to settle the dis-
the Palace, p^^^^ ^^ j^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^ Pippin conqucred, and

for fourteen years (642-56) was undisputed master of Austrasia.
King Sigibert, indeed, grew up to man's estate, but he was
completely dominated by his servant, and never made any
endeavour to take the power out of his hands. Hence he is
known as the first of the Rois Faineants^ or do-nothing kings,
who were from henceforth to be the rule among the house of
the Merovings.

In Neustria, meanwhile, the royal power was saved for a
time by the cleverness of queen Nanthildis, a lady of great
piety, the widow of Dagobert, who acted as guardian for her
younger son Chlodovech. She enlisted in her cause the
Neustrian mayor of the palace, Erchinoald, who was akin to
the royal house himself,^ and therefore not unfavourable to
its dominance. Not till these two passed away was the
Western realm to sink into the same state as the Eastern.
But the fall of royalty here, too, was now imminent.

^ He was brother of Dagobert's mother, it would appear, and therefore
great-uncle to the little king.

CHAPTER XI

THE LOMBARDS IN ITALY, AND THE
RISE OF THE PAPACY

568-653

The Wanderings of the Lombards — Alboin conquers Northern Italy— His
tragic end — Anarchy among the Lombard dukes — Reign of Authari, and
Prankish wars — Conquest and conversion of Agihilf— Rothari the Law-
giver— State of Rome and Italy — Career of St. Gregory — He founds the
temporal power of the Papacy.

In the third year of Justin 11., and only fifteen years after
Narses had swept the Goth and Frank out of Italy, a new
horde of barbarians came pouring down on that unhappy
land. The ravages of eighteen years of war, and a terrible
pestilence which supervened, had left all the northern parts of
the peninsula desolate, and well-nigh uninhabited, — 'the
land seemed to have sunk back into primeval silence and
soHtude.'^ The imperial troops held a few strong places
beyond the Po, such as Verona and Pavia, but had made no
effort to restore the military frontier along the Alps, and the
land lay open to the spoiler. Southern Italy had suffered less,
and Ravenna was still strong and well guarded, but the Trans-
padane lowlands — destined ere long to change their name to
the 'Lombard plain' — were as destitute of civil population as
they were of military resources.

The new invaders of Italy were the Lombards (Langobardi),
a Teutonic people, who, according to their ancient tribal

1 Paulus Diaconus. ii. 5.

181

1 82 European History, 476-918

legends, had once dwelt in Scandinavia, but had descended
ten generations before into northern Germany, and from
thence had slowly worked their way down to the Danube.
They had only come into touch with the frontier of the em-
pire when Odoacer smote the Rugii, in 487. After that tribe
had been scattered, they moved into its abiding place on the
mid-Danube, and became the neighbours of the Ostrogoths
and the Gepidae.

The Lombards were the least tinctured with civilisation of
all the Teutonic tribes, even more barbarous, it would seem,
The than our own Saxon forefathers. Living far back

Lombards, fn the darkncss of the North, they had been kept
from any knowledge of Roman culture, and did not even
approach the boundaries of the empire till it had already
been broken up and laid desolate. They were still heathen,
and still living in the stage of primitive tribal life which
Tacitus painted in the Germania. They were divided into
many tribal families, or clans, which they called ' faras,' and
their subdivisions were ruled by elective aldermen^ or dukes,
but the whole nation chose its king from among the royal
houses of the Lethings and Gungings, who claimed to descend
from Gambara, the wise queen who had led the race across
the Baltic from Scandinavia ten generations back.

During the times of Justinian's Ostrogothic war the Lom-
bards were under the rule of Audoin, whom Narses bribed
wdth great gifts to aid him against Baduila. Five thousand
warriors, under the command of their king himself, joined
Narses in the invasion of Italy in 552, and took a distinguished
part in the victory of Taginae. It must have been in this
campaign that the Lombards learnt of the fertility and the
weakness of Italy ; but they were still engaged in wars with
their neighbours on the Danube, and their king was an old
man, wherefore we need not think it strange that they waited
fifteen years before they turned their knowledge to account.

^ The Lombards seem to have called them * Aldones ' — cf. Ealderman
in English antiquity.

The Lombards in Italy. 183

The Lombards were the close neighbours and the bitter
foes of the Gepidae, the Gothic tribe who had remained
behind in the Hungarian plains when the other sections of
the Goths moved westward to Spain and Italy. The long
struggle between Lombard and Gepid only came to an end
in 567, when the Lombards called in to their aid wars of
the Tartar race of the Avars, and by their assist- Aiboin.
ance almost entirely exterminated the Gepidae, whose scat-
tered remnant only survived as slaves of the conquering
horde. By this time Alb oin, the son of Audoin, was reign-
ing over the Lombards. He it was who slew with his own
hand Cunimund, the king of the Gepidae. The barbarous
victor struck off the head of his enemy, and had the skull
mounted in gold, and fashioned into a drinking-cup, as the
supreme token of his triumph. Yet, but a short time before,
ere the last struggle had begun between the Lombards and
the Gepidae, he had taken to wife Rosamund, the daughter of
the man whom he now slew and beheaded.

THE LOMBARD KINGS IN ITALY.

1. ALBOIN

568-72.

Garibald, Duke of

2. CLEPHO Bavaria.

572-73- I .

I I I

3. AUTHARI=Theodelinda =4. AGILULF Gundoald
583-90. I 590-615.

5. ADALOALD Gundiberga = 6. ARIOALD 9. ARIBERT

615-25. 625-36. 653-62.

10. GODEBERT 12. BERTHARI A daughter = 11. GRIMOALD

662. 672-88. I 662-71.

Reginbert, duke of 13. CUNIBERT Garibald.

Turin. 688-700.

IS. ARIBERT II. 14. LIUTBERT

701-11. 700-701.

Kings not connected with this House were (7) Rothari, 636-52 ;
(8) Rodoald, 652-53; (16) Ansprand, 712; (17) Liutprand, 712-43;
(18) Hildebrand, 743-44; (19) Ratchis, 744-49 5 (20) Aistulf, 749-5^ 5
(21) Desiderius, 756-74.

184 European History, 476-918

Having ended this great national feud by the extermination
of the Gepidae, Alboin determined to put into effect a scheme
which must have been long maturing in his brain, the con-
quest of Italy. The Lombard historian of a later day asserted
that he had been tempted to the invasion by the treachery of
Narses, who, in discontent with Justin 11., had urged Alboin
to invade the peninsula, and sent him as gifts samples of all
the generous fruits and wines that Italy produces. But this
is the mere echo of a Lombard saga. Narses, now over
eighty years of age and on his death-bed, had other matters to
think about than the spiting of his new master. Nor did the
Lombards, who had ridden all over Italy in 552, need to be
reminded of its existence or its fertility.

Before leaving Pannonia, Alboin made over his old kingdom
to his allies the Avars, only stipulating that it should be
restored to him if ever he returned from Italy ; a rather futile
compact to make with such a faithless race as this Tartar
horde. Crossing the Carinthian Alps, in the summer of 568,
the whole Lombard nation — men, women, and children, with
their cattle and slaves — descended into the Venetian plains,
and spread themselves over the deserted lands. There was
hardly any opposition. In cities that had once been great, like
Aquileia and Milan, the scanty population did not even close
the gates, but awaited the invader with apathy. Only the
places where there was an Imperial garrison offered resistance.
Verona, protected by the rushing Adige, Padua in its marshes,
and Pavia, the ancient royal city of the Goths, were among the
^,^ . few towns that refused to admit the Lombards.

Alboin con-
quers North- The newcomers spread themselves over the whole
em Italy. valley of the Po, as far as the Tuscan Apennines
and the gates of Ravenna, and begun to settle down on the
fairest spots among the ruined Roman villages. They divided
themselves, like the Franks in Gaul or the East-Angles in
Britain, into two folks, the Neustrian, or Western, and the
Austrian, or Eastern, Lombards. The former stretched from
the Cottian Alps to the Adda, the latter from the Adda to the

The Lombards in Italy. 185

Julian Alps. Piedmont formed the bulk of Neustria ; Venetia
the bulk of Austria. Many scattered portions of tribes came
to join Alboin in his new conquest. Not only did he grant
lands to broken bands of Saxons and Suabians, but even
foreigners, such as Bulgarians and Slavs, found shelter with
him.

While Alboin was founding the new kingdom of Lombardy,
the cities which at first resisted began to drop into his hands.
Verona fell early, but Pavia made a long defence. So despe-
rately did it hold out against the host left to blockade it
that the king swore, in his wrath, to slay every living thing
within its walls. But when, after three years, the starving
citizens threw open their gates, he relented of his hard vow,
* because there was much Christian folk in that city,' and
made Pavia his capital and royal stronghold.

In the next year, however, he came to his end. The Lom-
bard chronicler, Paul the Deacon, repeating some familiar
Lombard saga, tells the grim tale of his death thus : — ' King
Alboin sat over long at the wine in his city of Verona, so that
he grew boisterous, and he sent for the cup which he had
made from the skull of king Cunimund, his father-in-law, and
forced his queen, Rosamund, to drink from it, bidding her
drink joyfully with her father. Then the queen conceived a
deep grief and anger in her heart, and questioned with herself
how she might avenge her father by slaying her husband. So
she strove to persuade Helmichis, the king's armour-bearer,
who was also his foster-brother, to slay his lord. And
Helmichis would not, but counselled her to win Peredeo,
the strongest champion of the Lombards, to do the deed.
Then Rosamund sold her honour to Peredeo, and became his
mistress, and said to him, " Now hast thou done a thing for
which either thou must kill Alboin, or he thee." So he
unwillingly consented to the deed, and at mid-day, when all
the palace lay asleep, Rosamund bound the king's sword so
tightly to the bed-head that it could not be drawn, and then
bid Peredeo go in and slay her husband. When Alboin heard

1 86 European History, 476-918

an armed man enter, he sprang from his couch, and strove to
Murder ot draw his sword without avail. For some space
Aiboin. he fought hard for his Hfe with a stool that he
caught up, but what could the best of warriors do without
arms against an armed champion ? He was slain like a
weakling, and, after passing unharmed through so many
battles, died by the counsel of one woman, and she his
own wife. So the Lombards took up his body, with much
weeping, and buried it beneath the great flight of steps over
against the palace, where it lay till my own days.' (May

572.)

Helmichis strove in vain to make himself king in his
master's room, but the Lombards would have none of him,
and he was forced to fly with Rosamund and the murderer
Peredeo, to take shelter with the Romans at Ravenna. There
all three of them came to evil ends, ' for the hand of Heaven
was upon them for doing such a foul deed.'

Meanwhile the Lombards crowned as king, in the room of
Aiboin, Clepho, one of the mightiest of their dukes, though
not of the royal blood \ for Aiboin had no son, and was the
last of the Lethings. Clepho completed the conquest of all
northern Italy, as far as the southern limits of Tuscany and
the gates of Ravenna. But ere he had reigned a year he was
slain by one of his own slaves, whom he had wronged. After
he was dead the Lombards chose no more kings to reign over
them for ten years, but each tribe went forth conquering and
plundering under its own elective duke. It is said that no
less than thirty-five of these chiefs were ranging over Italy at
Anarchy, the Same time (573-83). Nothing can show better
573-83- the survival of primitive Teutonic ideas among the
Lombards than this period of anarchy. They had not yet
learned to look upon the king as a necessary part of the con-
stitution of the tribe, but, like the Germans of the first century,
regarded him as a war-chief, to be followed in time of peril
alone. The Goths or the Franks, who had advanced to a further
stage, could not have borne to live kingless for ten whole years,

The Lombards in Italy. 187

Strangely enough, the loss of their supreme head seems to
have detracted in no wise from the warlike vigour of the
Lombards. In the ten kingless years they went on subduing
the land, and pushed their incursions farther to the west and
south. Three dukes of Neustria crossed the Alps and harried
Provence, then in the hands of king Guntram the Frank, the
peaceful brother of the warlike Sigibert and the wicked Chil-
perich. They took many cities, and were only driven out of
the land, after much fighting, by Mummolus, the great Gallo-
Roman general, who served king Guntram so well ; but for
him, Provence might have become part of Lombardy. Mean-
while other Lombard dukes were pressing southward down the
Italian peninsula. They did not act on any combined plan of
invasion, but each passed on with his war-band, leaving to
right and to left many cities held by Imperialist garrisons, till
he found a place of settlement that pleased his eye. Hence it
came to pass that Lombard duchies and Roman cities were
curiously intermixed. In central Italy, Faroald, the first duke
of Spoleto, left Ravenna and Ancona to tlie north, and estab-
lished himself in the central valley of the Tiber, with Im-
perialist garrisons all around him. Zotto, the first duke of
Benevento, passed even farther to the south, and founded a
realm in the Samnite valleys, which was almost entirely out
of touch with the other Lombard states. It was hemmed in
to east and west by the Roman garrisons of Rome, Naples, and
Calabria. The dukes of Lucca and Chiusi, who held the
bulk of Tuscany, did not push their limits down to the Tiber,
but stopped short at the Ciminian hills, leaving a considerable
district north of Rome in the hands of the Imperialists. Even
in northern Italy the dukes of Neustria left Genoa and the
Ligurian coast alone, and those of Austria did not subdue the
marshland of Mantua and Padua, nor follow the fugitive in-
habitants of Venetia into the islands where Venice and Grado
were just beginning to grow up in the security of the lagoons.
All over Italy Lombard and Roman districts were hopelessly
confused, and, save that the Po valley was wholly Lombard,

1 88 European History, 476-918

and Bruttium and Calabria wholly Roman, there was no part
of the land that was not shared between the invader and the
old Imperial Government.

Coming into a country already desolate and well-nigh dis-
peopled, and bringing with them the customs of primitive
Germany, untinctured with any Roman intermixture, the Lom-
bards established a polity even less centralised than that of the
Visigoths, and infinitely below the standard of government
The Lombard which Thcodoric had once set up in Italy eighty
Monarchy. years bcforc. When the nation once more chose a
king, his power was hopelessly circumscribed by the authority of
the great hereditary dukes. Spoleto and Benevento hardly paid
even a nominal homage to the king who reigned at Pavia.
Only when he presented himself with a large army in central
Italy could he hope to win attention for his orders. Even in
the valley of the Po, and in Tuscany, his power was very im-
perfect. The authority of the royal name had been fatally
injured by the extinction, with Alboin, of the ancient kingly
house of the Lethings. The Lombard monarchs, like their
Visigothic contemporaries in Spain, only held their crown,
when once they had been, elected, by the right of the sword.
In a short history of two hundred years the Lombard kingdom
saw nine successive races of kings mount the throne. x\ll
represented old ducal families. The rulers of Turin, Brescia,
Benevento, Friuli, and Istria all, at one time or another,
won the royal crown, besides two or three kings who were
not even Lombards by birth, but strangers from the neigh-
bouring land of Bavaria.

In the wasted regions of northern Italy, it would seem that
the Lombards formed for some time the large majority of the
population. Unlike the Goths in Spain, or the Franks in
central Gaul, they did not merely consist of a few scattered
families lost among the masses of the old inhabitants. There
is a greater breach in the old Roman traditions of municipal
and social life in the valley of the Po than in most of the other
lands of the Western Empire. In the seventh century Lom-

The Lombards in Italy.

189

bardy must have preserved less traces of its ancient imperial
organisation than Spain, Gaul, or Burgundy, and must have
presented a much more primitive and Teutonic aspect. This
is as we should expect, from the fact that the Lombards came

from the very back of Germany, and first met with the in-
fluence of the older world of Rome when they moved into Italy.
Outside the Po valley, however, Italy was in a very different
state ; southern Italy and much of central Italy preserved its
ancient organisation almost undisturbed ; the Exarchate of
Ravenna, the Diicatus Fomanus^ and the southern peninsulas

I90 European History, 476-918

of Apulia and Bruttium remained unchanged down to the
ninth century. Records show us in the neighbourhood of
Rome the old social organisation of the land, in domains
inhabited by coloni, and owned by Roman church corpora-
tions, or absentee proprietors, at a time when in the northern
plains the feudal system of the semi-independent dukes, each
surrounded by their land-holding comttes, was in full operation.
In organisation, no less than in blood, northern Italy and
southern Italy were fatally sundered, and two nations differ-
ing in all their usages of life and manners of thought were
growing up.

The parts of Italy which remained under the imperial
sceptre and preserved their ancient social and political organ-
isation were strangely scattered. In the reign of Maurice
(582-602) the emperor was still obeyed in eight regions. First
was the Istrian peninsula, and the marsh and lagoon islands
of the Venetian coast, with the strong cities of Padua and
Mantua thrust inland like a wedge into the side of Lombardy.
Second came the Ligurian coast with the city of Genoa,
crushed in between the Apennines and the sea; its rugged
valleys and cliffs did not yet tempt the Lombards out of their
smiling plain to court the neighbourhood of the sea, for the
Lombards were essentially unmaritime. Third is found the
tract of land round Ravenna, the Exarchate, as it now became
Imperial Called — a title which it shared for a space with
possessions Africa, where exarchs also reigned. The Exarchate
in Italy. stretched along the coast of the Adriatic, from the

delta of the Po up to the gates ot Rimini, reaching as far
inland as the Apennines, and comprising the whole southern
half of the ancient province of Emilia. Farther down the
coast lay the fourth imperial district, from Rimini to Ancona,
which was often called the Pentapolis and the Decapolis, from
two groups of five and ten cities respectively which it con-
tained.^ In Umbria lay a fifth detached district where the

^ The ' five cities ' were Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia, Ancona ;
the ' ten cities' — Osimo, Umana, Jesi, Fossombrone, Montefeltro, Urbino,

The Lombards in Italy. 191

emperor was still acknowledged ; it centred around Peiugia,
and was much hemmed in by the Lombard duchies of Chiusi
and Spoleto, but it stretched out one horn tow^ard the Penta-
polis on the north, and the other toward Rome on the south.
The sixth district was the Roman territory, now known as the
Ducatus jRomanus, from the dux who acted as civil governor
in the ancient city in subordination to the exarch at Ravenna.
The Roman duchy reached from Civita Vecchia to Terracina,
and from the Apennines to the sea, taking in the southern
corner of Etruria, and well-nigh the whole of Latium. It was
cut off by the Lombard town of Capua from the duchy of
Naples, a narrow coast-strip containing the towns of Naples
and Amalfi, and ruled by a duke resident in the larger place.
Lastly, all the toe and heel of Italy, Calabria Bruttium
and southern Lucania, the whole coast line' from Brindisi to
Policastro, formed the eighth Roman district. It was evident
that the administration of such a number of fragmentary
possessions would be a hard task for the exarch, cut off as he
was from access by land to the greater part of the regions for
which he was responsible. It was not so easy to foresee that the
main result of the scission of Italy by the Lombard conquests
was destined to be the rise of the temporal power of the
Papacy, that most unexpected of the developments of the
seventh century.

After the anarchy under the tribal dukes had lasted ten
years, the Lombards chose them another king. The election
seems to have been made mainly under the pressure of the
war with the Franks, which they had brought upon themselves
by their reckless invasion and ravaging of Provence in 574-75.
Guntram of Burgundy induced his Austrasian kinsman to help
him, and the Lombards were attacked by the Austrasians, who
descended the valley of the Adige and attacked Trent, as well
as by the Burgundians. Moreover, Tiberius 11. of Con-
stantinople had sent gifts to the kings of the Franks in order

Cagli, Gubbio, Pontericcioli, and the Territorium Valvense. Bury's Later
Roman Empire^ vol. ii. p. 146.

192 European History, 47^-9^^

to induce them to aid him in Italy, and had done what he
could, while the Persian and Avaric wars still dragged on, to
send help to the exarch of Ravenna.

The new Lombard king was Authari, the son of that Clepho
whose murder had left the throne vacant in 573. So greatly
was the need of providing for the maintenance of the central
power felt, that the dukes not only did him homage, and
ceded him the royal city of Pavia, but promised him a half of
all the lands that were in their hands as a royal domain to
maintain him, his comitafus, and his officers. We may doubt
if the promise was very exactly kept. Nor did all the dukes
unite in the election. The first act of king Authari had to be
to subdue and expel duke Droctulf, who had called in the
Romans, and fortified himself in Brescello to defend the
middle valley of the Po against the king. For the whole of
his reign Authari was involved in recurring struggles with the
Franks, whose young and warlike king, Childebert 11., the son
of Brunhildis, was set on resuming the schemes of his cousin
Theudebert for conquering Italy. The seven years' reign of
Authari was mainly occupied in warding off Prankish attacks
Wars of °^ -^^^^y ^ Guntram and Childebert, stirred up by

Authari, Smaragdus, the exarch of Ravenna, threatened
^ ^"^°' three or four times to cross the Alps, and twice

actually invaded Lombardy. The more dangerous assault
was in 590, when two great armies advanced simultaneously,
the one from Burgundy over the Cenis against Milan, the
other from Austrasia over the Brenner against Trent and
Verona. Both forced their way to their goal, and did much
damage to the Lombards, but they failed to meet with each
other, or with the Roman troops which the exarch had
promised to bring to their aid. Famine and pestilence
thinned their ranks, and they could not reach the Lombard
king, who had shut himself up in the impregnable Pavia. At
last they returned each to their own land, without profiting in
the least by their great expedition.^
^ See p. 170.

The Lombards in Italy 193

In the intervals between the Frankish invasions Authari
had done something to consoHdate the Lombard power in
north Italy, by capturing the great lagoon-fortress of Com-
macchio, whose seizure cut the communication between
Padua and Ravenna. At about the same time Faroald, duke
of Spoleto, took Classis, the seaport of Ravenna, and com-
pletely destroyed the city, whose only surviving remnant, the
solitary church of St. ApoUinare in Classe, stands up in such
forlorn grandeur in the Ravennese marshes. Authari is said
to have pushed one plundering expedition through Benevento
into Bruttium, to have ridden to the extreme south point of the
Italian peninsula, and to have touched with his spear a sea-
swept pillar near R.eggio, crying, ' Here shall be the boundary
of the kingdom of the Lombards.' A vain boast, if it was
ever made, for Bruttium was not destined to fall at any time
into Lombard hands.

Authari married Theodelinda, the daughter of Garibald duke
of Bavaria, a pious Christian and a Catholic, whose coming
seems to have led the wild Lombards to Christianity, much as
the influence of queen Bertha worked on the Jutes of Kent.
She had not been long wedded to him when he died ; the
Lombard witan, who had formed a high idea of her wisdom
and virtue, consulted her as to the choice of a new king.
She recommended to them Agilulf, duke of Turin, a cousin
of Authari. To him she gave her hand, and he was at
the same time raised on the shield at Milan as king of the
Lombards (590).

Agilulf was led by his wife's persuasion to be baptized, and
ere long the greater part of the nation followed his example.
The majority of the Lombards, hke most of the other Teutonic
races, adopted Arianism, and only conformed to orthodoxy in
the seventh century. It was Agilulf and Theodelinda who
built the famous Basilica of Monza, where the iron crown of
Lombardy is even now preserved. In its sacristy are still
shown many relics of the pious queen ; most curious among
them is a hen and chickens of gold of the most quaint and

PERIOD I. N

194 European History, 476-918

archaic workmanship, a marvellous example of the earliest art
of a Teutonic people just emerging from barbarism. With it
is preserved the crown of Agilulf, which he dedicated to St.
John, and which bears the inscription : agilulf gratia dei

VIR GLORIOSUS REX TOTIUS ITALIAE OFFERT SANCTO lOHANNI
BAPTISTAE IN ECCLESIA MODICIAE.

The first three kings of the Lombards had been short-lived,
but Agilulf survived for the respectable term of twenty-five
years (591-616), and reigned long enough to see his son grow
up and become his colleague on the throne. More fortunate
than his predecessor Authari, he was delivered from the
danger of Frankish invasions by the series of wars between
the sons of Brunhildis and Fredegundis, which broke out in
593, and afterwards by the home troubles of Austrasia and
Burgundy, caused by the strife between Brunhildis and the
great nobles. Agilulf was, therefore, enabled to lop away
from the empire several of the detached districts which had
hitherto adhered to it. For the greater part of his reign he
was in constant war with the Romans, and stripped the
Conquests cxarchs of Sutrium, Orte, Tuder, Perugia, and
of Agilulf. other south-Tuscan and Umbrian towns (598).
By the mediation of Pope Gregory the Great a treaty was, for
the first time, concluded between the Lombards and the
empire in 599, but the exarch Gallicinus broke the peace, by
seizing the person of Agilulf's daughter as she chanced to be
passing through imperial territory. This second Lombard war,
jwhich fell into the reign of Phocas, proved most disastrous
for the Romans. Agilulf began by capturing Padua, the
great fortress of the Venetian marshes (602). The fall of
Padua cut off Mantua from succour, and that city, the last
stronghold of the empire in the interior of Lombardy, also
fell in 602. The ministers of Phocas only obtained a final
pacification in 605 by promising to pay an annual tribute of
1200 gold solidi, and ceding the south-Tuscan strongholds of
Orvieto and Bagnarea.

There was no more fight left in emperor or exarch for

The Lombards in Italy 195

many a year ; in the throes of the disastrous Persian war,
Phocas and Heraclius were unable to send aid to Rome or
Ravenna. The opportunity afforded to Agilulf of completing
the conquest of Italy was such as never occurred again.
But contented with his annual tribute, and perhaps tamed
down by approaching old age, the Lombard king remained
quiescent. Apparently he preferred to give his realm peace,
and to occupy himself in keeping down his unruly dukes. In
the course of his reign there were three or four dangerous
rebellions of these chiefs, but Agilulf put them all down,
apparently without much difficulty. There was also trouble
on the north-eastern frontier from the Avars and Slavs, the
same foes who were so grievously afflicting the Roman empire
at this time. The Slavs made their way into Istria and Cilly,
and became troublesome neighbours to Italy, though some of
their nearest tribes were reduced to pay tribute by the dukes
of Friuli. The Avars were more active and more dangerous ;
in spite of repeated treaties with Agilulf, their Chagan burst
into north Italy in 610, slew Gisulf, duke of Friuli, in battle,
ravaged all Venetia, and carried off many captives. Fortu-
nately for the Lombards these invasions were not continued,
as the Avars found better prey and less fighting in the Balkan
peninsula.

In spite of such troubles, the reign of Agilulf was a time of
growth, expansion, and ripening civilisation for the Lombards.
They had all, by the end of his reign, received Christianity,
had settled down in their new home, and were beginning to
build churches and palaces, instead of confining their attention
to destroying them. Agilulf had found a modus vivendi with
Gregory the Great and the Papacy, and taught his subjects to
live in some sort of peace with their neighbours, instead of
persisting in the unending war which had filled the first thirty
years of Lombard dominion in Italy.

Agilulf was succeeded by his only son, Adaloald, a boy of
fourteen, whom he had induced the Lombard witan to salute as
his colleague, and raise on the shield some years before. The

196 European History, 476-918

regency was held by queen Theodelinda, who was both pious
and popular, till the young king came of age ; but soon after
he had attained his majority, Adaloald was stricken with mad-
ness, and the nation chose in his stead Arioald, duke of
Turin, who appears to have been no kinsman of the royal
house, but had married the young king's sister, Gundiberga
(626). Little is known of this king's reign of twelve years;
we hear neither of wars with the Franks, nor of conquests
from the Roman ; we only read that he was, unlike his pre-
decessor, an Arian. When he died, however, he was suc-
ceeded by a ruler of far greater mark, 'Duke Rothari of
Brescia, of the race of Arod, a strong man, and one who
walked in the paths of justice, though he was not an orthodox
Christian, but followed the deceitful heresy of the Arians.'

Rothari finally completed the conquest of northern Italy,
by taking the two districts which had still remained in the
hands of the Imperialists down to his day. He subdued
the whole Ligurian coast from Nice to Luna, with the great
city of Genoa its capital (641). He also took the city of
Conquests Odcrzo, the last mainland possession of the Romans
of Rothari, in Vcuetia. After this time the lagoon islands
^^ '^^* alone acknowledged the eastern Caesar as their

suzerain, and their homage was formal rather than real.
Rothari's conquests were not won without severe fighting.
His greatest victory was won on the Scultenna, not far from
Modena, over the exarch Plato, who had invaded Lombard
territory, but was defeated with a loss of 8000 men, and driven
back into Ravenna. The new activity of the Romans, to
which this battle bears witness, may be attributed to the fact
that the Persian and Saracen wars of Heraclius were at last
ended, and under his grandson, Constans 11., the Eastern
empire was beginning to recover some measure of strength

(642).

But Rothari is better remembered as the framer of the
Lombard Code of Laws than as the conqueror of Liguria.
In 643 he published the compilation of the traditional usages

The Lombards in Italy 197

of the nation, which had hitherto never been committed to
writing. It is noticeable that the code is promul- Laws of
gated, not on the king's personal authority, but, Rothari.
like the English laws of Ine, ' Pro comT7iuni gentis nostrae uiili-
tate, pari consilio parique consensu aim priinatis jtidicibus
nostris cwictoque felicissimo exercitu 7iostro ' — that is to say,
by the king, with the counsel of his witan^ and the assent of
the armed folk-moot of the Lombard nation. The Edictujn
Rotharis is a very primitive body of legislation, such as might
have been promulgated in the depths of the German forests,
instead of in the heart of Italy. It is mainly composed of
elaborate lists of weregelds, of laws against armed violence,
of rules of inheritance, of statements concerning the obliga-
tion of the follower towards his lord, of provisions for judicial
duels, per campionem. There is hardly any mention either of
things ecclesiastical or of city life, merely a provision against
breach of peace in a church, and some rules about magistri
comacenses^ or skilled Roman artisans. We have from the laws
a picture of a people dwelling apart by families, ox far as ^ each
in its own farm-clearing, surrounded by woods or open pasture
land. Some are ' free Lombards,' called even thus early
^baronesj' others the 'men' of a duke or of the king.
Below them are aldii^ who correspond to mediaeval villeins,
the half-free occupiers of the land of the Lombard master.
These, no doubt, are the remains of the old Roman popula-
lation, coloni who had once cultivated the tnassa of a Roman
ciirialis. The royal authority is found relegated to the local
dukes in all military matters, while civil affairs are dealt with
by the king's schulthais^ or reeve (as the old English would
have called him), or to the castaldus^ who seems to have been
the king's representative in the city, as opposed to the country-
side. It is noticeable, as showing the extremely un-Roman
character of the Lombard laws, that they are drawn up by a
German official, the notary Ansoald, not by a Roman bishop
or lawyer, as would certainly have been the case in Gaul
or Spain. Their execrable Latin, which makes light of all

198 European History^ 476-918

concords, or rules of government of prepositions, could not
have been the work of any educated Italian.

With the death of Rothari in 652, began a time of trouble
and confusion for the Lombards, in which they ceased to win
ground from the Romans, and fell into civil strife and anarchy.
It commenced by the murder of Rothari's son, Rodoald, after
he had reigned less than six months. He was a prince of
licentious manners, and fell a victim to the dagger of an out-
raged husband (653).

The eighty years of Italian history during which the Lom-
bards were settling down in the valley of the Po, and along
the Umbrian and Samnite slopes of the Apennines, have won
their chief importance in the story of the world, not from the
doings of Agilulf or Rothari, but from the events that were
taking place in Rome. To these years we may ascribe the
foundation of the temporal power of the Papacy, and the de-
velopment of the oecumenical position of the bishop of Rome
to an extent whieh had hitherto been uncontemplated. These
movements owe most of their strength to a single man. Pope
Gregory the Great.

After the first shock of the Lombard invasion had rent Italy
in twain, the Imperial governors resolved to take up their resi-
dence in Ravenna, not in Rome — in the capital of the Italy of
Theodoric, not that of the Italy of Augustus. They chose the
strong marsh-fortress close to the Lombard border, not the
decayed city of the Tiber, still scarred by the traces of
Rise of the Baduila's harrying. The exarch stationed himself
Papacy. at Ravcnna, and delegated his civil and military

authority in the scattered portions of Imperial Italy to minor
officials, of whom the duces of Rome and Naples were the
chief. This removal of the seat of the viceroy from the
ancient metropolis was destined to have the most far-reach-
ing results. Its first was that the chief lay official in Rome
was an individual of far less authority and prestige than the
chief ecclesiastical personage there resident. The bishops of
Rome had always been men of importance ; their claim to a

The Lombards in Italy 199

patriarchal primacy over all the Western sees of Europe had
already been formulated. In the ancient civil 'prefecture' of
Italy — that is, in the Italian peninsula, Africa, and lUyricum —
it had much reality. The African and Dalmatian churches
referred matters of difficulty to Rome for decision, no less than
did the church of Italy. We find Gregory the Great exercis-
ing a real influence in places as distant as Salona, Larissa, and
Carthage. During the existence of the kingdom of the Ostro-
goths, the Popes had obtained a kind of recognition from the
Teutonic kings, as the accredited representatives of the Catholic
and Roman population of Italy. They were certainly the most
important subjects of the realm outside the ranks of the Gothic
conquerors, and were allowed to petition or plead with the king
in behalf of all the Catholic Italians. The reconquest of Italy
by Justinian had threatened to lower the prestige and power of
the Popes, by placing them once more under a master who
was both the legitimate ruler of the whole empire and an
orthodox Catholic. Justinian had dealt in a very autocratic
manner with the Roman bishops, as the tales of the woes of
Vigilius and Silverius show. He summoned them to Con-
stantinople, bullied, imprisoned, or tried them at his good
pleasure. The continued survival of the Imperial power in
Italy would have checked the growth of Papal authority in
a great measure.

But the Lombard invasion changed the aspect of affairs.
The Imperial governors and garrisons were swept into corners
of the peninsula, and the Popes left without any master on the
spot to curb them. The unfortunate Eastern wars of Maurice,
Phocas, and Heraclius prevented them from turning any ade-
quate attention to Italy. They sent the exarchs over to make
what fight they could, without giving them adequate supplies,
either of men or money. The exarchs, penned up in Ravenna,
could only communicate with Rome with the greatest diffi-
culty : the land-route of communication was almost cut by the
Lombards of Spoleto ; the sea-route was long and difficult.
Hence Rome was left to itself, to fall or stand by its own

200 European History, 476-918

strength and its own counsel. The Pope and the 'Duke' of
Rome were continually thrown upon their own resources,
without the power of asking advice or aid, either from the em-
peror or the exarch. For twenty-seven years, as Pope Gregory
once wrote, Rome was continually in imminent peril of Lom-
bard conquest (572-599), and obliged to provide for itself. In
this time of stress and storm the Popes won their first secular
authority over Rome and its vicinity, and reduced the civil
magistrates to a place of quite secondary importance.

The man to whom the increase in the power of the Papacy
was mainly due was Pope Gregory the Great, whose sway of
fourteen years (590-604) covers the second half of the reign
of Maurice and the first two years of Phocas. Gregory was
a man of exceptional capacity, and of exceptional opportuni-
ties, at once administrator, diplomatist, monk, and saint. He
was a noble Roman, who had spent his early manhood in the
civil service, and had risen to the rank of prefect of the city.
In early middle age he suddenly cast secular things aside,
employed his wealth to found monasteries, and entered one
Gregory the himsclf as a simple monk. He plunged into
Great, 590-604. the most rigid extremes of asceticism, and
almost killed himself by his perpetual macerations of the
flesh. Ere long he became abbot, and signalised himself by
the stringent discipline which he maintained over his monks,
as well as by his fiery zeal and untiring charity. It was at this
time of his life that there occurred the scene so well known to
all English readers. When he found the Northumbrian boys
exposed for sale in the market-place of Rome, he conceived
pity in his heart for the uncared-for heathen of Britain, and
determined to cross the northern seas, and bear the Gospel to
the Saxon and Angle. But Pope Pelagius ii. interfered to pre-
vent the most able, as well as the most saintly, of his clergy
from leaving the service of the Roman See, and risking his
life among the Pagans. He forbade Gregory's departure for
England, and sent him instead to represent the Papacy at the
court of Constantinople. A few years after his return from

The Lombards in Italy 201

this mission, which was long enough to enable him to get a
clear view of the weakness of the emperor Maurice, and of his
impotence to interfere in Italian matters, Gregory was chosen
bishop of Rome, when Pelagius died of the plague (590).

Gregory was elected without the Imperial sanction. Rome
was so closely beset by the Lombards that there was neither
time nor means for asking Maurice's consent, but the emperor
afterwards confirmed the elevation of the saintly abbot. All
Italy — nay, even the whole of the Christian West — knew of
him already as the most prominent of the Roman clergy, and
he was able at once to assume a position of great independence
and authority. Gregory's most striking feature was his extra-
ordinary self-confidence and conviction in the absolute wisdom
and righteousness of his own ideas. The legend, started by
his admirers not long after his death, to the effect that he
was actually inspired by the Holy Ghost, who visited him in
the form of a dove, very adequately represents his own notion
of his infallibility. It was this self-confidence which enabled
him to take up the line of stern and unbending autocracy
which he always adopted. Other men were mute and obedient
before the imperious saint, in whom they recognised their
moral superior. Few, save the emperor Maurice and the fana-
tical John the Faster, patriarch of Constantinople, ever ven-
tured to confront or withstand him. Unquestionably he was
the most able, and one of the best-intentioned, men of his age.
He left his mark on all that he touched, from the conversion
of the EngHsh and the Lombards down to the official music of
the Western Church — the Gregorian chants that still preserve
his name. Although posterity enshrined him as one of the
four great doctors of the Latin Church, his theological work
was the weakest part of his activity. His writings are full of
tropes, far-fetched conceits, misinterpretation of Scripture (he
was ignorant of Hebrew and even of Greek), and pedantic
arguments from analogy.

It was as statesman and administrator, and fosterer of
missionary work that Gregory was truly great. In Rome he

202 European History, 476-918

ruled as a temporal governor rather than a bishop. It was he
who provided against the attacks of the Lombards, arrayed
soldiers for the defence of the walls, fed the starving people
from the funds of the church, and negotiated with the chiefs
of the enemy in behalf of the people of the Ducatus Romanus.
In 592 he concluded, on his own authority, a truce with the
duke of Spoleto, while the exarch was set on continuing the
war. Maurice stigmatised this conduct as ' fatuous ; ' but, as
the emperor left Rome to provide for itself, he should hardly
have complained. In another crisis, Gregory appointed,
on his own authority, a tribune to command the

Secular ac- •' '

tivity of garrison of Naples and a governor for the Tuscan
Gregory, town of Ncpi. Finally, it was he who, in 599,
negotiated the treaty of peace with king Agilulf, which ended
the thirty years of continuous war which had followed the first
coming of the Lombards to Italy. When rebuked by the
exarch, he claimed to take precedence of him, not only in
virtue of his priestly office, but also in place and dignity. In
short, for all practical purposes, Gregory made himself the
half-independent governor of Rome.

But Gregory's progress in asserting his authority as Patriarch
of the West was even more important than his advances
toward temporal power. He it was who recovered Spain and
Britain for the Catholic Church — the former by the conversion
of Reccared from Arianism,^ the latter by sending the mission
of St. Augustine to Kent, and obtaining the baptism of king
Ethelbert. Through the influence of queen Theodelinda, he
obtained control over the Lombard king Agilulf, and induced
him to bring up his son Adaloald as a Catholic. ^ He could
claim, in short, that he had reunited Italy, Spain, and Britain
to the body of the Church of Christ. He also exercised con-
internationai ^iderable influence in Gaul, mainly through the
authority of influence of the great queen-mother Brunhildis,
Gregory. ^ favourcr of all things Roman, with whom he

maintained a long and friendly correspondence. We have
^ See pp. 141, 142. 2 ggg p^ jp^^

The Lombards in Italy 203

already shown how the bishops of the Imperial provinces of
Africa and Illyricum deferred to his judgment and decisions.
Justly, then, may Gregory be styled the first Patriarch of the
united West.

His successors were, for many generations, not men of
mark. But by his work he had gained for them a temporal
authority and a spiritual precedence which they were never
again to lose. When he died, in 604, he left the Roman See
exalted to a pitch of greatness which it had never before
known, revered by all the Teutonic peoples of Europe, and
half-freed from its allegiance to the rulers of Constantinople.

CHAPTER XII

HERACLIUS AND MOHAMMED
610-641

Distress of the Empire in the early years of Heraclius — The letter of Chosroes —
Treachery of the Avars — Heraclius preaches a Crusade— His six victori-
ous Campaigns — Great Siege of Constantinople — Persia vanquished —
Triumph of Heraclius — Rise and Character of Mohammed — The Creed of
Islam— Conquests of the Caliphs in Syria and Persia— Troubled old age
of Heraclius.

When the tyrant Phocas had been handed over to the execu-
tioner to pay the penalty for his innumerable misdeeds, the
Senate and army joined in offering the crown to the young
Heraclius, the saviour whose advent had delivered them from
such a depth of misery. He was duly crowned by the
patriarch, and acclaimed by the people in the Hippodrome.
But when the first rejoicings were over, and he turned to
contemplate the state of the empire which he had just won,
the prospect was not a very reassuring one. The Slavs were
spreading all over the Balkan peninsula, as far as the gates of
Thessalonica and the pass of Thermopylae. The Persian,
securely established in northern Syria and Mesopotamia, was
advancing to permanently reduce the lands of Asia Minor,
which he had ravaged so fiercely in the two preceding years.
The treasury was empty, and the army scattered and dis-
organised ; for some years it had not dared to meet the
Persian in the open field, and the officers whom Phocas had
kept in command had never won its confidence.

The first ten years of the reign of Heraclius seemed little
better than a continuation of the miseries of the time of

204

Heraclius and Mohammed 205

Phocas. The empire had gained, indeed, a good man instead
of a bad as its ruler, but a change of fortune had not come
with the change of sovereigns. It seemed that HeracHus
would not be able to cope with the legacy of accumulated ills
that had been left him. His predecessor's dying taunt, * Will
you rule the empire any better than I have done ? ' must often
have rung in his ears, when the never-ending tidings of battles
lost, towns stormed, revenues decreasing, and starving pro-
vinces kept coming in to him. The imperial etiquette which
had prevailed for the last two hundred years prescribed that
the Augustus should never take the field in person, and this
rule seems to have prevented Heraclius from heading his
own armies.^ The generals to whom he delegated his power
were uniformly unfortunate, and occasionally disloyal. He
was obliged to depose Priscus, the ofliicer who had betrayed
Phocas, for arrogant disobedience to his orders. The absence
of the emperor from the field was a grave misfortune ; for he
was much less of an administrator than of a fighting man.
His form and face betrayed the warrior. * He was of middle
stature, strongly built, and broad-chested, with a fair com-
plexion, grey eyes, and yellow hair. He wore a bushy beard
till he ascended the throne, when he shaved it, and did not
let it grow again till he went to the wars ten years later.'

The military disasters of the first eight years of Heraclius'
reign were terrible. In 613 the armies of Chosroes began to
attack central Syria : Damascus fell, and then Persian suc-
the general Shahrbarz pushed southward into cesses, 613-17.
Palestine. In 614 the whole Christian world was seized with
horror at learning that Jerusalem had been captured. Not
only were 90,000 Christians slain in the Holy City, but —
what was reckoned far worse — all the treasures of the church
of the Holy Sepulchre fell into the hands of the fire-wor-
shippers. Chief of them was the * Sacred Wood,' the ' True
Cross,' which the empress Helena, the mother of the great

^ Since Theodosius I., who died in 395, no reigning emperor had ever
led an army in the field.

2o6 European History, 476-918

Constantine, bad discovered in 327, and placed in her magni-
ficent church. It was now carried into Persia, to be mocked
by the blasphemous king Chosroes. This was not the end
of the disasters of the empire. In 6 1 6 Shahrbarz forced his way
across the sands of the isthmus of Suez, and attacked Egypt, the
one Roman province which had not seen the horrors of war
for three centuries. The unwarlike Egyptians submitted with
hardly a blow ; many of the heretical sects that swarmed in
the Nile valley even welcomed the Persians as friends and
deliverers. The loss of Egypt seemed a deathblow to the
empire. It had been of late the chief source of revenue to
the dwindling treasury of Heraclius, and on its corn the
multitude of Constantinople had been wont to depend for their
free dole of bread. This had now to be cut off, for the State
finances did not permit of the provision being purchased else-
where. In 617 the invasion of Asia Minor was resumed, and
a Persian force seized Chalcedon, in very sight of the walls of
Constantinople.

The darkest hour had arrived. It is a great testimonial
to the popularity of Heraclius that the series of misfortunes
which we have related did not cost him his throne. Any
sovereign less well-intentioned, and less esteemed, would have
lost life and crown. The direst moment of his humiliation
The Letter of arrived when, after the loss of Egypt, the over-
chosroes. weening Chosroes sent him a formal letter, in-
viting him to lay down the sceptre which he could not wield.
In language of arrogant condescension, which almost seems
to have been borrowed from the letter of king Sennacherib
in the Book of Kings, the Persian wrote : —

' Chosroes, greatest of gods, and master of the whole earth,
to Heraclius, his vile and insensate slave. Why do you still
refuse to submit to our ruk, and call yourself a king ? Have
I not destroyed the Greeks ? You say that you trust in your
God. Why has he not delivered out of my hand Caesarea,
Jerusalem, and Alexandria? And shall I not also destroy
Constantinople? But I will pardon your faults if you will

Heraclius qnd Mohammed 207

submit to me, and come hither with your wife and children ;
and I will give you lands, vineyards, and olive groves, and
look upon you with a kindly aspect. Do not deceive yourself
with vain hope in that Christ, who was not able even to save
himself from the Jews, who killed him by naihng him to a
cross. Even if you take refuge in the depths of the seas, I
shall stretch out my hand and take you, so that you shall see
me, whether you will or no.'

For a moment it is said that Heraclius contemplated
abandoning Constantinople, and taking refuge in his father's
old stronghold of Carthage. But the very desperateness of
the state of affairs brought its own remedy. Incensed at the
arrogance of Chosroes, smarting under the loss of the Holy
Cross, and pinched for every necessary of life, the crusade of
East-Romans were, ready to strike one wild blow Heraclius.
for existence. The Church took the lead, and declared the
war to be a holy duty for all Christian men, the first of the
Crusades. The patriarch Sergius bound the emperor by an
oath not to abandon his people, and the clergy offered, as a
war-loan, all the gold and silver plate of the churches of Con-
stantinople. Heraclius took heart, and, casting aside the
trammels of imperial etiquette, swore that he would himself lead
his army in the field. Thousands of volunteers were collected,
and the treasures of the Church lavished on their equipment.
By the end of 618 this effort of despair had given the empire
once more a general, an army, and a military chest.

But an attack on the Persian host in Asia Minor did not
turn out to be at once feasible. A sudden danger at home
obliged Heraclius to delay his crusade. The Avars concen-
trated their ravages on Thrace, and their hordes rode up
almost to the gates of Constantinople. It was necessary at
all costs to free the city from the danger of attack in the rear
before the army crossed over into Asia. Accord- Treachery of
ingly the emperor sent to offer a subsidy to the the Avars.
Chagan of the Avars if he would withdraw beyond the
Danube. The Chagan proposed a conference at Heraclea,

2o8 European History^ 476-918

forty miles west of Constantinople, the point to which he had
advanced his army. Heraclius consented to the meeting, and
rode out in royal state, with all his court. But the faithless
Avar was meditating treachery. He concealed troops of his
horsemen in the hills, with the object of waylaying Hera-
clius on his way to Heraclea, and of holding him to ransom.
The emperor was warned just in time to escape from the
ambush. Throwing off his long purple robe, and tucking his
diadem under his arm, he rode hard for Constantinople, with
the Avars close at his heels. Many of his court, and thousands
of the Thracian peasantry, who had turned out to witness
the meeting, fell into the hands of the enemy. Heraclius had
just time to order the gates to be closed before the pursuers
swept through the suburbs, and up to the walls.

In spite of this piece of abominable treachery, the emperor
was still fain to conclude a peace with the Avars, as an abso-
lutely necessary preHminary before attacking the Persian. In
620 a peace of some sort was patched up, in return for a pay-
ment of money, but even then Heraclius Avas not able to start
on his projected campaign. Some desultory Persian attacks on
Constantinople, and notably an attempt to build a fleet at
Chalcedon, and cross the strait, had first to be frustrated.

It was not till 622 that the emperor was finally enabled to
take the offensive. But all preparations being complete, after
solemnly keeping the Lenten Fast, and receiving the benedic-
tion of the Church for himself and his army, he set sail for
Asia on Easter Day. He left his young son, Heraclius Con-
stantinus, regent in his stead, und r the charge of the
patriarch Sergius and the patrician Bonus, the commander
of the garrison of Constantinople.

In the six campaigns which followed, Heraclius displayed
an energy and an ability which no one, judging from his
quiescence during the last ten years, would have expected him
to possess. Historians only doubt whether to praise the more
his strategical talents or his personal bravery. From the very
first he showed his ascendency over the enemy, taking the

Heraclius and Mohammed 209

offensive, and turning the course of the war wherever he chose
to direct it. At his first departure from Constantinople he
did not attack the Persian in the front, but boldly sailed round
the southern capes of Asia Minor, and landed his army in
Cilicia, on the gulf of Issus, a position from which he threat-
ened both Asia Minor and northern Syria. Marching up into
Cappadocia, he cut the communications between the Persian
army in Asia Minor and the Euphrates valley. This move-
ment had the result that he expected. Hastily evacuating
Bithynia and Galatia, the Persian general Shahrbarz drew
back eastward, in order to regain touch with his country.
Ere a blow was struck Heraclius had cleared western Asia
Minor of the enemy ; but he finished the campaign by inflict-
ing a crushing defeat on Shahrbarz in Cappadocia, and thus
recovered eastern Asia Minor also (622).

After in vain offering terms of peace to Chosroes, Heraclius
took effective means in the next year to bring the Persian to
reason. Syria, Egypt, and Mesopotamia were still in the
hands of the enemy : he resolved to deliver them in the same
manner that he had saved Asia Minor, by striking so hard at
the enemy's base of operations that he should be compelled
to call in all his outlying troops in order to de- victorious
fend Persia proper. In 623 Heraclius, abandon- H«ac/S^°^
ing his communication with the sea, plunged 622-27.
boldly inland, and fell on Media. For two whole years he is
lost to sight in the regions of the extreme East, subduing
lands where no Roman army had ever been seen before,
where, indeed, no European conqueror had ever penetrated
since Alexander the Great. We hear of his winning three
pitched battles, and of his storming two great Median towns,
Gandzaca and Thebarmes, the latter the reputed birthplace of
Zoroaster, the prophet of the Persians. It was some satisfac-
faction to the army to destroy their magnificent temples
in revenge for the sack of Jerusalem. To defend Media,
Chosroes had to draw back his outlying armies from the
West, and so far the purpose of Heraclius was served ; but

PERIOD I. o

2IO European History, 476-918

the emperor was still too weak to attack Persia proper, or
besiege Chosroes' capital of Ctesiphon.

After wintering at Van, in the Armenian highlands, Hera-
clius dropped southward, in 625, and came into regions more
within the ken of Western historians. He recovered the long-
lost fortresses of Amida and Martyropolis, the ancient bul-
warks of the empire on the upper Tigris, which had been
for nearly twenty years in Persian hands, and once more
picked up his communication with Constantinople, which had
almost lost sight of him during the two last campaigns. The
year ended with a fourth crushing defeat of Shahrbarz, who
had endeavoured to throw himself between the emperor and
his homeward path by defending the passage of the Sarus,
near Germanicia.

But 626 was destined to be the decisive year of the war.
Before acknowledging himself beaten, the obstinate Chosroes
was determined to make one final effort. Drawing every man
that he could together, for the Persian empire was now grow-
ing exhausted, the old king made two armies of them. While
the larger was left in Mesopotamia and Armenia, to endeavour
to keep Heraclius employed, a great body under Shahrbarz
slipped southward, round the emperor's flank, and marched
for the Bosphorus. Chosroes had concerted measures with
the treacherous Chagan of the Avars for a combined attack on
Constantinople, from both the European and the Asiatic side
of the strait. When Shahrbarz appeared at Chalcedon, he
found the Avars already masters of Thrace, and preparing to
beleaguer Byzantium. The two armies could see each other
across the water, but they were wholly unable to communicate
^ _. with each other: for the Roman fleet kept such

Great Siege ^ _ ^^

ofConstan- excellent guard in the straits that no boat could
tinopie,626. ^^.^gg^ The patrician Bonus made a most gal-
lant defence, the garrison was adequate, and the population
kept a good heart, for they knew that the Persian was
striking his last desperate blow. Heraclius himself was so
well satisfied with the impregnability of his capital that he only

Heraclius and Mohammed 211

sent a few veteran troops by sea to co-operate in the defence,
and kept the greater part of his army in hand for an attack on
the heart of the dominions of Chosroes. Meanwhile, the host
of Shahrbarz had to look on in helpless impotence, while the
Avars, on the other side of the Bosphorus, made their attempt
on Constantinople. On the night of the 3d of August 626
the Chagan gave the signal for the assault. A body of Slavs,
in small boats, attempted to storm the sea-wall from the
side of the Golden Horn, while the main body of the Avars
moved against the land-wall. But the galleys of Bonus rammed
and sunk the light vessels of the Slavs, and the assault of the
Avars miscarried entirely. Thereupon the Chagan hastily
broke up his camp, and retired beyond the Balkans. The
siege was practically raised, though the army of Shahrbarz
still remained encamped at Chalcedon. Thus ended the first of
the four great sieges of Constantinople of which we have to tell.

Meanwhile, Heraclius had been retaliating on Persia in
the most effective way. In return for the invasion of Thrace
by the Avars, he called in from beyond the Caucasus the
wild Hunnish tribe of the Khazars, and turned them loose on
Media and Assyria. Forty thousand of their horsemen laid
waste the whole land, as far as the gates of Ctesiphon, and the
emperor took possession of the upper valley of the Tigris,
and prepared to strike at his rival's capital in the coming year.

The campaign of 62 7 ended the triumphs of Heraclius. The
last army of Persia, under a general named Rhazates, faced
him near Nineveh. Charging at the head of the mailed
horsemen of his guard, Heraclius slew the Battle of
Persian chief with his own hand, and scattered Nineveh, 627.
his forces to the winds. The victorious army pressed on,
and captured Dastagerd, the magnificent country-palace of
Chosroes, near Ctesiphon, where they gained such plunder as
no Roman army had won for many ages. They burnt
Dastagerd, and four palaces more, while Chosroes fled east-
ward to conceal himself in the mountains of Susiana.

The long-suffering Persians were at last growing tired of

212 European History, 476-918

their arrogant lord. His army rebelled against him, and
proclaimed his son Siroes as king. Chosroes himself was
thrown into a dungeon, where he perished of cold and
starvation. The new king at once sent to ask for terms of
peace from Heraclius. The emperor, knowing the exhaustion
of his own realm, and its need for instant repose, made no
hard conditions. Siroes restored all the Roman territory still
Peace with i^^ ^is hands, released all Roman captives, paid a
Persia, 628. ■war indemnity, and — greatest of all triumphs in
the eyes of the subjects of Heraclius — gave back the ' True
Cross,' and other spoils of Jerusalem.

In May 628 the emperor was able to return to Constanti-
nople, bringing peace and plenty with him. He had restored
the boundary of the empire, and inflicted on Persia a blow
from which she never recovered. His arms had penetrated
far beyond the limits of the conquests of Trajan and Severus,
and his six years of unbroken victory were a record which no
Roman, save Julius Caesar, could rival. Not unjustly did the
inhabitants of Constantinople receive him with chants and
sacred processions, and hail him by the name of 'the new
Scipio.' The crowning moment of his triumph came when the
True Cross was uplifted in St. Sophia, and publicly exposed
for the adoration of the faithful. Well might the emperor have
sung his ^Nunc dimittis'' on that day of solemn rejoicing, and
prayed that the hour of his triumph might be the last of his life.

But already there was another tempest gathering, which was
destined to sweep over the Roman empire, with even greater
violence than the Persian storm which had just been weathered.
While in the midst of his last campaign, Heraclius had
received a letter from an obscure Arabian prophet, bidding
him accept a new revelation from Heaven, which its framer
called 'Islam,' or 'Submission to God.' A similar missive
was delivered at the same moment to Chosroes, then on the
eve of his fall. Chosroes tore up the letter, and swore he
would, at his leisure, lay the insolent prophet in a dungeon.
Heraclius sent a polite letter of acknowledgment and a

Heraclius and Mohammed 213

trifling present to the unknown fanatic, being averse to making
enemies of any sort while the Persian war was still on his
hands. Little as it could have been foreseen at the time, the
followers of the writer of these eccentric missives were fated
to tear up the empire of Chosroes by the roots, and to lop off
half of its fairest provinces from the realm of Heraclius.

The Arabian prophet was no less a person than Moham-
med the son of Abdallah, that strange being, half seer and
half impostor, whose preaching was destined to convulse three
continents, and turn the stream of history into new and
unexpected channels.

The tribes of Arabia had hitherto been of very little im-
portance : their local feuds absorbed all their superfluous
energy. They were divided from each other, as
well by religious differences as by ancient clan ^° ^'"'"^
hatreds. Some worshipped stocks and stones, some the host
of heaven, some had partly adopted Christianity, others Juda-
ism. They were given over to fetich-worship, human sacrifices,
drunkenness, infanticide, bloodshedding, polygamy, and high-
way robbery. Among these godless tribes appeared Moham-
med, a poor man, but born of an ancient and powerful clan,
who preached to them a rigid Unitarian creed, accompanied
by a reformation in morality. He had been called by the
One true God, he said, in a vision on Mount Hira, to
proclaim a new revelation to his countrymen, to turn them
from idolatry and hatred of each other, to the worship of
Allah and the practice of brotherly love. Mohammed was a
being of a poetic and visionary temperament, given to high
ideals and high enterprises. He was afflicted with long fits, or
trances, in which his soul wandered far into the fields of
thought : these trances he took for divine inspirations, and
his imaginings — which were often noble enough — seemed to
him the direct commands of God, though in them good and
grand ideas were freely mixed with baser elements, tainted
by the ignorance, cruelty, and lust of a seventh century Arab.
For long the preaching of Mohammed was of no effect : his

214 European History^ 476-918

own tribe grew weary of his unending exhortations, and chased
him away from Mecca (622). It is from this flight to Medina
The Hijrah, — the famous ' Hijrah,' that all Moslem chrono-
622. iQgy is dated. But in spite of ill-success and

persecution the prophet never swerved from his mission, and
at last proselytes began flocking in to him, and he became the
head of a powerful sect. Then came the fatal moment which
turned his teaching from a blessing to Arabia into a curse for
the world. When he grew powerful enough, he bade his
sectaries to take up the sword, and impose Islam on their
neighbours by the force of arms. His first success in the
field, the battle of Bedr (624), was an encouragement to
persevere in this evil path, and for the last eight years of his
life he went forth, conquering and to conquer, among the
tribes of Arabia, till he had built up a little theocratic empire
in the peninsula (624-32).

Mohammed's successes were won by unhallowed means,
and the desire to extend them at almost any cost gradually
led him into compromises with the habits and superstitions of
his countrymen which were fatal to the purity of his religion,
A strain of cunning, of revenge, of self-indulgence, appeared
Mohammed "-^ ^ character which, in his years of poverty and
and his trouble, had been blameless. He connived at the

Rehgion. ancient fetich-worship of the Arabs, by conceding
that the conical black stone of the Kaabah, which they had
always worshipped, had been hallowed by Abraham, and
should be the central shrine of his new faith. He fostered
their vanity by proclaiming them the chosen people of God.
He pandered to their craving for lust and bloodshed, by
promising them the goods of their enemies to plunder in this
life, and a heaven of gross sensual enjoyment in the next.
He restricted, but he did not abolish, the evils of polygamy
and slavery. In his day of triumph he consigned whole
tribes and towns to death, sometimes under circumstances of
treachery as well as of cruelty. Worst of all, he foisted into
his revelation special mandates of God permitting himself to

Heraclius and Mohammed 215

do things which his teaching forbade to his followers, such as
to exceed his own limit of polygamy, and even to take his
own foster-son's bride to wife. It is hard to believe that he
can have failed to see the horrible blasphemy involved in
forging the name of God to special warrants approving his
own lust. But this sin he repeatedly committed.

The personal failings of Mohammed seem to have brought
into his creed a blight of cruelty, bigotry, and self-indulgence,
which has rendered half-useless its higher and nobler features.
The religion which legalises the slaughter and plunder of all
unbelievers and consigns woman to the harem may have
been a comparative blessing to the wild Arabs of Mohammed's
own day, or to the Negro of the modern Soudan : to the
civilised world it was a mere curse — the substitution of an
inferior for a higher creed and life. Even to the Arab of the
seventh century it was but half-beneficial : if it stayed him
from drunkenness, human sacrifices, and infanticide, it merely
directed his bloodthirstiness against foreign instead of
domestic foes, and gave a divine sanction to many of his lower
instincts. Wherever Mohammedanism has taken root, it has
led at first to rapid and enthusiastic outbursts of vigour, but it
seems gradually to sap the energy of the nations which adopt
it, and leads, after a few generations of greatness, Failings of
to a stagnation and decay, which the Moslem in islam,
his self-satisfied bigotry is too blind to perceive. The creed
only thrives while mihtant. When it has won its victory, it
sinks into dull apathy. Islam is a good religion to die by, as
its fanatics have shown on a thousand battlefields, but not a
good religion to live by. Good and evil elements are too
hopelessly mixed in it, just as in Mohammed's Koran, that
miscellaneous receptacle of all his revelations : high thoughts
about the Godhead or the fate of man are mingled with the
mere opportunist orders of the day, or with licences for the
personal gratification of the Prophet.^

^ The Koran consists of all Mohammed's inspired sayings, taken down
at the time on wooden tablets, palm-leaves, or blade-bones, by his

2i6 European History, ^y6-gi^

But whatever were the faihngs of Mohammed and of
Mohammed's creed, they had one fearful efficiency, the power
to turn their sectaries into wild fanatics, careless of life or
death upon the battlefield. Life meant to them the duty of
smiting down the Infidel, and the privilege of spoiling him :
death, the yet greater joys of a paradise of gross sensual
delights. What the first mad rush of a horde of Moslem
fanatics, drunk with religious frenzy, was like, modern Europe
had half forgotten, though our crusading forefathers knew it
well enough. But the generation which has seen the half-
armed Arabs of the Soudan face the steadiest troops in the
world equipped with quick-firing rifles and artillery, and
almost carry the day against them, has had good reason to
revise its view about the power of Mohammedan fanaticism.

Before he died, Mohammed had begun to take measures
for the spread of his religion by the sword beyond the limits
of Arabia. In 629, the year after the end of the Persian war,
the troops of Heraclius who garrisoned the fortresses on the
desert frontier of Palestine, had been attacked by wandering
bands of Arab zealots. But it was not till the Prophet
himself was dead that the full storm of invasion fell upon the
Roman empire and its Persian neighbours. It was Abu
Bekr, the first * caliph ' or ' successor ' of Mohammed, who
sent forth in 633 the two armies which were bidden respec-
tively to convert Syria and Chaldaea to Islam by the edge of
the sword.

Neither the Roman nor the Persian empire was well fitted
for resistance at the moment. The twenty years of war
brought about by the ambition of Chosroes had reduced each
of them to the extreme of exhaustion. Since the end of the
war Persia had been a prey to incessant civil strife and revo-
lution : nine princes had mounted the throne in little more
than four years. In the Roman empire Heraclius had been

followers, and consigned in confusion to a chest, from which they were
afterwards drawn out at random, and strung together, not according to
their date or their contents, but simply in order of length.

Heraclius and Mohammed 217

doing his best to repair the calamities of the war : his first care
had been to repay, by means of the war indemnity paid by
Siroes and the imposition of new taxes, the great Exhaustion
loan which the Church had made him, in order of the Roman
to equip his troops for the struggle. He had dis- ^"^p^^^-
banded much of his victorious army in pursuit of the policy
of retrenchment for which the ruined state of his empire
called. But he could not repair the losses which Syria and
Asia Minor had suffered in spending ten years beneath the
Persian yoke. The very foundations of society seemed to have
been sapped in the provinces of the East by the prolonged
Persian occupation. The numerous heretical sects which
swarmed in the valleys of the Nile and the Orontes had
raised their heads during the Persian rule, and bore with
ill-concealed reluctance the restoration of the imperial autho-
rity. The Jews, who had often sided with the Persians, were
restless and discontented. It was said that half the population
of Syria and Egypt wished ill to the empire. It would have
required two generations of peace and wise administration to
restore to their old condition those Oriental dioceses which
had for the last three centuries been the stay and support of the
East-Roman Empire ; but less than four years after Hera-
clius had solemnly restored the ' True Cross ' to the custody
of the Patriarch of Jerusalem the Arabs burst into the land.

While Khaled and one fanatical Saracen horde assaulted
the Persian frontier on the lower Euphrates, another, under
Abu Obeida, attacked the eastern or desert front of Syria.
Bostra, the first city on the edge of the waste, fell by treachery,
a small army under the patrician Sergius was defeated, and
the governors of Syria and Palestine sent for aid to the
emperor. Hardly yet realising the danger of the crisis,
Heraclius sent some reinforcements under his brother
Theodore to join the local troops. This army checked the
Moslems for some months; and it was considered neces-
sary by the caliph to strengthen the Arab host in Syria
by sending thither half the force which had invaded the

2 1 8 European History^ 476-9 1 8

Persian empire, and Khaled, ' the Sword of God,' the most
terrible and bloodthirsty of all his fanatical chiefs. In July
634, Theodore was badly defeated by the Saracens at Adjnadin
near Gabatha, beyond the Jordan. This ill-success roused
the emperor : he poured in further reinforcements, and the
Battle of the enemy were attacked in the late summer of 634
Yermuk, 634. by an army of 80,000 men. The fate of Syria
was settled by the battle of the Hieromax (Yermuk), where the
troops of the Empire, after a long and bloody fight, in which
they at one time forced the Arabs back to the very gates of
their camp, were broken by the fanatical rush of an enemy
who preferred death to defeat. ' Paradise is before you,'
cried Abu Obeida to his wavering host, ' the devil and hell
fire behind;' and with their last charge the Arabs broke the
line of the legions, and rolled the wearied troops in wild
disorder back over a line of precipices and ravines, where
thousands perished without stroke of sword, by being cast
down the lofty rocks.

The army of the East was almost exterminated at the
Hieromax, and ere another force could be collected
Damascus, the greatest city of eastern Syria, was captured
by the enemy, who in spite of accepting its surrender
massacred a great part of the population (635).

Herachus now determined to lead the Roman army in
person, but he was no longer the same man who had kept
the field with harness on his back for six long campaigns in
the. old Persian War. He had now long passed his fiftieth
year, and was prematurely broken by the first symptoms of the
dropsy which afterwards caused his death. In his private life,
too, he had had much trouble of late ; he had made an un-
wise and unhallowed second marriage with his own sister's
daughter Martina, and was harassed by disputes between her
and the rest of his family, caused by the fact that the young
empress wished to induce her husband to leave her own son
Heracleonas joint heir to the empire with his elder brother
Heraclius Constantinus. But such as he was, Heraclius once

Heraclius and Mohammed 219

more put on his armour, and spent the years 635-6 in Syria
endeavouring to keep back the Arabs with the new levies that
he had assembled. His failure was complete ; city after city,
Emesa, Hierapolis, Chalcis, Beroea, fell into the hands of the
Moslems, without the emperor being able even to risk a battle
in their defence. In 636, completely broken by disease, he
returned to Constantinople, having first paid a hasty visit to
Jerusalem to take up and remove the ' True Cross ' which he
had replaced there in triumph only six years before.

After the departure of Heraclius things went from bad to
worse ; Antioch, the stronghold and capital of northern Syria,
and Jerusalem, the centre of the defence of Palestine, both
fell in 637. To receive the surrender of Jerusalem, which
Mohammed had pronounced only second to Mecca among
the holy places of the world, the caliph Omar crossed the
desert in person. When the town had yielded, the Arab com-
pelled the patriarch Sophronius to lead him all round the
shrines of the city ; as they stood in the church of the Holy
Sepulchre, the patriarch, torn by grief, could not refrain from
exclaiming that now indeed was the Abomination Fail of jem-
of Desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, in s^^^"^' ^37-
the Holy of Holies. The austere Omar showed more modera-
tion and compassion than his generals had been wont to dis-
play, he left the Christians all their holy places, and contented
himself with building a great mosque on the site of the temple
of Solomon.

While Syria was faUing before the Saracens, the lot of
Persia had been even worse ; after a great battle lasting for
three days at Kadesia, the Sassanian empire had succumbed
before the Moslem sword. Its capital Ctesiphon was sacked
and destroyed, and Yezdigerd, the last of its kings, fled east-
ward to raise his last army on the banks of Oxus and Murghab
(636). Arab hordes working up the Euphrates began to
assail the Roman province of Mesopotamia from the south,
at the same moment that the conquerors of Syria attacked it
from the west. HeracHus made one last attempt to save

220 European History, 476-918

north Syria and Mesopotamia by sending an army under his
son and heir Heraclius Constantinus to endeavour to recover
Antioch. After some shght show of success at first, the
young Caesar suffered a fatal defeat in front of Emesa, and
retired from the scene, leaving Mesopotamia with all its time-
honoured strongholds, Daras, Edessa, and Amida, a prey to
the irresistible enemy (638-9). With the fall of the seaport of
Caesarea in 640 the Romans lost their last foothold south of
the Taurus, and Asia Minor itself now became exposed to
invasion.

Before he died of the dropsy, which was the bane of his
dechning years, the unfortunate Heraclius was destined to see
one more disaster to his realm. In 640 the Saracens, now
headed by Amrou, crossed the desert of Suez and fell upon
Egypt. They beat the Roman army in the field, captured
Memphis and Babylon, and then received the homage of all
upper and central Egypt. The population was very largely
composed of heretical sects who received the Moslems as
deliverers from orthodox oppression, and Mokawkas the Coptic
governor of the province surrendered long ere the situation
had grown desperate. It was only about Alexandria, where
Saracens ^^^ Greek orthodox element was strongest, that
conquer any scrious resistance was made. But the great

Egypt, 640. seaport capital of Egypt held out very staunchly,
and was still in Christian hands when Heraclius died on Feb.
10th, 641, in the sixty-sixth year of his age.

Thus ended in misery and failure the man who would have
been hailed as the greatest of all the warrior emperors of
Rome if he had died but ten years sooner. He had saved the
empire at its darkest hour, and won back all the East by feats
of arms such as have seldom been paralleled in all history.
But he won it back only to lose again two-thirds of the rescued
lands to a new enemy, and ungrateful after-ages remembered
him rather as the loser of Jerusalem and Antioch than as the
saviour of Constantinople.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE VISIGOTHS
A.D. 603-711

Obscurity of Visigothic History — Sisibut and Swinthila expel the East-
Romans — A series of priest-ridden Kings — Chindaswinth restores the
royal power — His legislation — Recceswinth's long reign — Wamba and his
wars — The rebellion of Paulus— Wamba's weak and obscure successors—
Approach of the Saracens — Weakness of Spain — Roderic the Last of the
Goths — All Spain subdued by the Saracens.

Few periods of European history are so obscure as the last
hundred years of the Visigothic dominion in Spain. The
original sources for its annals are few and meagre, and little
has been accomplished of late in the way of making the period
more comprehensible. The Moorish conquest in 7 1 1 seems to
have swept away both books and writers, and it was not till many
years after that disaster that the composition of historical works
in Spain was resumed ; the later Visigothic times are as dark
and little known as the beginnings of the English heptarchy,
and Spain had no Bede and no Anglo-Saxo?t Chronicle to throw
gleams of light across the obscurity. Hence it comes that
many of their kings are mere names, and that their acts and
policy are often incomprehensible. The tale grows more and
more puzzling as the seventh century draws on to its close,
and by the beginning of the eighth we have only untrustworthy
legends to help us.

The house of Leovigild, after forty years of success, ended dis-
astrously in 603 by the assassination of the young king Leova 11.
His murderer was a certain count Witterich, a turbulent noble
who had joined in the Arian rising of 590, and had been un-
wisely pardoned by Reccared. The accession of Witterich

221

222 European History, 476- 9 1 8

marked a revulsion against the growth of the kingly power,
which had been making such strides under Leovigild and
Reccared, and probably also a protest against the ecclesiastical
policy of Reccared, who, since his conversion, had given the
witterich, CathoHc bishops such power and authority in his
603-10. realm. Witterich reigned for seven years, with

little credit to himself — it is only strange that he guarded his
ill-gotten crown so long. He had some unimportant struggles
with the Franks in Aquitaine and the Byzantine garrisons in
Andalusia, but won no credit in either quarter. The Church
was against him, his counts and dukes paid him little heed,
and no one showed much astonishment or regret when in
610 he was murdered by conspirators at a feast, like his
predecessor the tyrant Theudigisel.

The king chosen by the Goths in his place was a certain
count Gundimar, who appears to have been the head of the
orthodox church party, as the ecclesiastical chronicles are
loud in the praises of his piety. Gundimar determined to take
part in the Frankish civil war when Theuderich of Burgundy
and Brunhildis attacked Theudebert of Austrasia. He naturally
sided with the distant Austrasian against his nearer Burgun-
dian brother, with whom the Goths of Septimania had some
frontier disputes. But in the year that the war broke out
Gundimar died, only twenty-one months after he had been
crowned (612).

His successor was king Sisibut (612-20), a prince of some
mark and character, who like his predecessor was a great
friend of the church party and a foe of the unruly secular
nobility. He was not only a great warrior, but what was
more strange in a Gothic prince, a learned student and even a
writer of books. The modern historian would give much to
be able to recover his lost Chronicle of the Kings of the Goths \
but the irony of fate has decreed that of his works only an
Sisibut, ecclesiastical biography, The Life and Passion of
612-20. St. DesideriuSy and some bad verses, should sur-
vive. We learn from his admiring clerical friends that he

The Decline and Fall of the Visigoths 223

was skilled in grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, and that he
erected a magnificent cathedral in Toledo.

Bat Sisibut was no mere crowned savant \ he took up the
task, which had been abandoned since the death of Reccared,
of driving the East-Roman garrisons out of Andalusia, and
was almost completely successful. The emperor Heraclius,
then in the throes of his Persian war, could send no help to
Spain, and one after another all the harbours of south-eastern
Spain from the mouth of the Guadalquivir to the mouth of
the Sucre fell into his hands. Nothing remained to the East
Romans except their most westerly possession, the extreme
south-west angle of Portugal, with the fortress of Lagos, and
the promontory of Cape St. Vincent. After winning the
Andalusian coast it appears that Sisibut built a small fleet and
crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to wrest Ceuta and Tangier
from the exarch of Africa. In 615 Heraclius made peace
with him, formally surrendering all that Sisibut had succeeded
in gaining from his generals. Sisibut was also successful in
taming the intractable Basques ; following them into their
mountains he compelled them to pay tribute.

A less happy record is preserved of Sisibut in the matter of
internal government. As befitted a hot supporter of the in-
tolerant Spanish church, he gave himself up to the prompt-
ings of his bishops, and commenced a fierce persecution of
the Jews, the first of many tribulations which the unhappy
Hebrews were to suffer at the hands of the later Gothic kings.

Sisibut reigned only eight years; he had taken the pre-
caution to have his son Reccared 11. elected king by the
national council during his own lifetime, and on his death
the youth succeeded to the throne without molestation. But
less than a year after Sisibut's death Reccared followed him to
the grave, and the crown once more passed into a new house.

Count Swinthila, whom the Goths now chose as king, was
a general who had distinguished himself in the war with the
Basques, and had a great military reputation, but, unlike
Sisibut, was not a favourer of the Church party, and had to face

224 European History, 476-918

its intrigues all through the ten years of his reign. He was
equally disliked by the great nobles, whose powers he sought
to curb by asserting the rights of the smaller Gothic free-
holders, who had for long been lapsing more and more into
feudal dependence on their greater neighbours. His care for
their interests won for him the title of the 'Father of the Poor,'
Swinthiia, ^-i^d their loyalty is no doubt the explanation of
620-31. the fact that he was able to hold the crown so
long when both Church and nobles were against him. Nor
was his reign entirely without military successes. He took
Lagos and the fort on Cape St. Vincent, the two last Byzan-
tine strongholds in Spain, so that the whole peninsula was at
last drawn under a single ruler. He was equally successful
against a rebellion of the Basques, and, overrunning their
mountain valleys in Navarre and Biscay, built the fortress of
Olite, beyond theEbro and near Pampeluna,to hold them down.
But Swinthiia had too many enemies to be allowed to keep
his crown. A certain count Sisinand, a governor in Septi-
mania, rose against him, and called in to his aid Dagobert, the
king of the Franks. Gaul was now once more united under
a single monarch, and the long civil wars of the descendants
of Brunhildis and Fredegundis were over, so that the Franks
were, after a long interval, able to indulge in foreign invasion.
Backed by troops lent him by Dagobert, Sisinand crossed the
Pyrenees, and advanced against Saragossa, where the king had
marched forward to meet him. No battle took place, for the
matter was settled by treachery. The great nobles and bishops,
Rebellion of who had obcycd Swinthila's summons to war, seized
Sisinand, 631. \{y[^ jn his owu camp, threw him into chains, and
handed him over to Sisinand. The usurper, more merciful
than many Gothic rebels, contented himself with casting
Swinthiia into a monastery, and did not put him to death.
Sisinand had promised his Prankish friend to surrender to
him in return for his help the most splendid treasure in the
Gothic royal hoard, a great golden bowl of Roman work-
manship, weighing five hundred pounds, a trophy of the old

The Decline a7id Fall of the Visigoths 225

wars of the fifth century. He gave up the vessel to Dagobert's
ambassadors, but, when it was seen departing from Spain, the
Gothic counts swore that such an ancient heirloom of their
kings must never leave the land, and took it back by force.
In its lieu Sisinand sent to Dagobert a sum of 200,000 gold
solidi (;^i4o,ooo).

Sisinand was a weak ruler, the tool and instrument of his
bishops. Under his impotent hands all the power and
authority of the royal name melted away, and the work of
Sisibut and Swinthila was undone. The Church and not he
ruled Spain. When synods met, the king was seen on bended
knee, and with streaming eyes, lamenting his sins, and begging
the counsel of the holy fathers. He reigned only for five
years (631-36), and was succeeded by Chinthila, another
chosen instrument of the hierarchy, of whom we know little
more than that * he held many synods with his bishops, and
strengthened himself by the help of the true faith.' He
reigned only three years, but was allowed by his Priest-ridden
clerical partisans to have his son Tulga crowned ^^"gs, 631-41.
as his successor before he died. Tulga, another obedient son
of the Church, had only reigned two years when he was de-
throned by a conspiracy of the great lay nobles, to whom the
domination of the clergy in the State became more and more
odious under the twelve years' rule of three priest-ridden
kings. Tulga was sent to pursue the congenial path of piety
in a monastery, while the National Assembly, convened by
the conspirators, elected as king count Chindaswinth, whose
virtues were recognised by all, while his great age — he was no
less than seventy-nine — promised a free hand to his turbulent
subjects (641).

But the nobles had erred greatly in their estimate of Chind-
asAvinth, as grievously as did the misled cardinals, who, in a
later age, elected the apparently moribund Sixtus v. to the
Papacy. The touch of the crown on his brow seemed to give
back his youth and vigour to the old man, and the Goths
found that a king of the type of Leovigild and Swinthila, a

PERIOD I. p

226 European History, 476-918

stern repressor of lawlessness and feudal anarchy, was reigning
over them. Chindaswinth set himself at once to revindicate the
royal prerogative, both against the great nobles and against the
Chindaswinth, ecclesiastical synods. His hand fell heavily upon
641-52. the traitors who, twelve years before, had be-
trayed Swinthila ; he began to seek them out, and to execute
them. At once the majority of the nobles of Spain burst into
revolt. Some fled to Africa, and borrowed aid from the
Byzantine exarch, others to the kings of the Franks. But
Chindaswinth beat down all their risings, and quenched the
flame of insurrection in the blood of two hundred nobles, and
five hundred men of lesser rank, whom he handed over to the
headsman. ' He tamed the Goths so that they dared attempt
nothing more against him, as they had so often done with
their kings, for the Goths are a hard-necked folk, and need
a heavy yoke for their shoulders.' When the revolt was
crushed, Chindaswinth compelled the bishops assembled
in synod at Toledo to pronounce a solemn curse on all
rebeUious nobles — ' tyranni^^ he called them — and to decree
the penalty of deprivation of orders and excommunication on
all members of the clergy who should be found consenting to
the plots of the ' tyrants ' (646).

Chindaswinth's heavy hand won Spain seven years of peace
in the latter end of his reign, and he was able to associate
with himself on the throne his son Recceswinth, without any
of the Goths daring to murmur. The father and son reigned
together for three years, Recceswinth discharging the func-
tions of king, while Chindaswinth gave himself up to works of
piety. Their joint rule is marked by one very important in-
cident, showing the completion of the process of unification,
which had begun by the conversion of Reccared to Catholicism

Laws of in 589. Goth and Spaniard were now so much
Chindaswinth. assimilated to each other that the kings thought
that they might for the future be ruled by a single code of
laws. The races were beginning to be completely intermixed.
Spanish counts and dukes are as numerous in the end of the

The Decline and Fall of the Visigoths 227

period as Gothic bishops and abbots. The one race had no
longer the monopoly of secular power, nor the other that of
ecclesiastical promotion. Chindaswinth resolved to suspend
the use of the old Roman law in his dominion, and to make
all his subjects use Gothic law, though he introduced into the
latter a considerable Roman element. The advantage of the
new code of Chindaswinth was that the counts and vicarii,
the king's immediate representatives, had for the future full
jurisdiction over the whole native Spanish element, including
the clergy ; for the Spaniards were deprived of their Roman
law-book, the Breviarium Alarici^ and of their own courts and
judges, and were subjected for legal, no less than for admini-
strative or military matters, to the Gothic count. At the same
time the prohibition against marriage between Goths and Pro-
vincials, which still nominally existed, though it was frequently
broken since the time of Leovigild, was removed, and all the
king's subjects became equal in the eye of the law.

Chindaswinth died in 652, at the great age of ninety, un-
paralleled among Teutonic kings of his day. His son and
colleague, Recceswinth, already well advanced down the vale
of years, survived for twenty years more. He had the longest,
quietest, and, in a way, the most prosperous reign of any of
the Visigothic kings. Unlike his father, he was a devoted
supporter of the Church, and, by the aid of the bishops, main-
tained his rule until the day of his death. But he was gradu-
ally letting slip once more all the royal powers Recceswinth,
which his father had with such trouble regained 652-72.
and restored. As he grew older the entire rule of the State
dropped once more into the hands of bishops and synods.
Recceswinth was busy all his days in building churches, and
making great offerings to the saints. Chance has preserved
to us one huge gold crown, with a dedicatory inscription,
which he presented to the Virgin; it now forms the pride
of the Cluny Museum at Paris, and is the best monument
of the rude Teutonic art of the time, except, perhaps, the
golden offerings of Agilulf and Theodelinda at Monza.^
^ See p. 193.

228 European History y^y6-gi^

Tradition speaks much of the spiritual blessings that were
vouchsafed him. He and Archbishop Hildefuns were
privileged to behold with their own eyes a miraculous vision
of St. Leocadia, in the cathedral of Toledo. But meanwhile
the kingly authority was once more vanishing away, and
Recceswinth, provided that he at least enjoyed peace and
pious leisure, seems to have cared little for the fate of his
successors ; he had himself no son to whom he could be-
queath the throne. Personally he was popular — 'so mild and
unpretending that he could hardly be told from one of his
own subjects ' — and he did not reap the fruit of the seeds of
weakness that he was sowing. One insignificant rebeUion
alone interrupted the twenty peaceful years of his reign.
But meanwhile the elements of dissolution were growing in
strength. The nobles were once more reasserting their old
claims to feudal independence, and the clergy were growing
more and more domineering.

Recceswinth died in 672, leaving no heir, and there was
much disputing among the nobles as to the election of his
successor. Their choice fell at last upon Wamba, a man of
mature age and high reputation, but he refused to take up the
burden, in spite of the acclamations with which his name was
received. At last, we are told, a certain duke drew his sword,
and threatened to slay him, as a traitor to his nation and his
duty, if he hesitated any longer to obey the will of the assem-
bly. Wamba bowed to this form of persuasion, and accepted
the crown.

We have more knowledge of Wamba's reign than of those
of his predecessors and successors, as his biography, written
by bishop Juhan of Toledo, has chanced to survive. We
learn that he was a stern and hard master to the Goths, model-

Wamba, li^^g himself upon the example of Chindaswinth,

672-680. and that his reign was spent in a not unsuccess-
ful attempt to recover the powers of the crown, which the
pious Recceswinth had let slip. Rebellions were naturally
rife when the king began to make his strong hand felt. The

The Decline and Fall of the Visigoths 229

untameable Basques took to arms, and, while Wamba was busy
in their mountains, a more dangerous rising took place in Septi-
mania, where a certain count Hilderic raised the standard
of revolt. The king sent against them a large army, under
duke Paulus, a trusted officer of Roman blood. But, instead
of attacking the rebels, the treacherous Paulus opened negotia-
tions with them, debauched the chiefs of his own Rebellion of
army, and suddenly proclaimed himself king. Paulus, 673.
The challenge which he is said to have sent to Wamba
deserves, perhaps, to be recorded for its strange and high-
flown style. *In the name of God,' wrote the usurper,
' Flavius Paulus, the mighty king of the East, greets Wamba,
the king of the West. If thou hast traversed the rough, un-
peopled waste of the mountains ; if thou hast burst through
woods and thickets like some strong lion ; if thou hast tamed
the swiftness of the wild goat, and the bounding stag, and the
ravening boar and bear ; if thou hast cast out the poison of
snake and adder, — then make thyself known to me, thou man
of arms, lord of the woods, and lover of the rocks, and hasten
to meet me, that we may strive against each other in song,
like nightingales. Wherefore, great king, stir up thy heart to
strength, come down to the passes of the Pyrenees, and there
shalt thou find an athlete with whom thou mayest worthily
contend.'

Paulus was taken at his word, the ' lord of the woods ' flew
down in haste from the Basque mountains, and had thrown
himself upon the rebel army before a single week was out. He
forced the passes of the Pyrenees, driving the troops of Paulus
before him, and then threw himself upon Narbonne, the
capital of Septimania. The town was stormed by main force,
after a siege of only three days, and, when it had fallen,
Wamba recovered most of the other towns between the
mountains and the Rhone. Paulus took refuge in the
strong town of Nismes, and sent to ask help of the Franks.
But the king was too quick for him. The Goths had grown
skilled in the art of poliorcetics during their long struggle to

230 European History, 476-918

expel the Byzantines from Andalusia, and, by means of his
siege-machines, Wamba took Nismes on the second day of its
leaguer. Paulus and his chiefs then shut themselves up in
the great Roman amphitheatre, which they had turned into
a citadel. In a few days they were reduced by famine to
throw themselves on the king's mercy. Wamba swore to
spare their lives, and Paulus, with six-and-twenty counts and
chiefs, gave themselves up to his mercy. The king had their
beards and hair plucked out by the roots, and led them in
triumph to Toledo, where they were marched through the town
in chains and barefoot, clothed in shirts of sackcloth, with
Paulus in front, wearing a leather crown, fastened on to his
bare scalp by a pitch-plaster. The names of the six-and-
twenty have survived. They included one bishop (a Goth), one
priest of Roman blood, and twenty-four counts and chiefs, of
whom seventeen have Gothic and seven Roman names.

This blow to the unruly Gothic nobles secured Wamba a
quiet reign. He sat on the throne for seven years more (673-
680), in peace and prosperity, endeavouring to palliate as best

Laws of he could the diseases of the Visigothic state.

Wamba. Some of his laws show clearly enough the dan-
gers of the times. So far had the class of small freeholders,
who should have composed the bulk of the royal host, now dis-
appeared that Wamba ordains that for the future slaves, as well
as freemen, are to obey the royal summons to war. He even
ordered that the bishops were to head their serfs in the field,
a command which was deeply resented by the clergy, though
a few generations later we find the practice common enough
both in England, Gaul, and Germany.

Wamba lost his throne by a curious chance or, perhaps, by
a still more curious plot. He fell ill in 680, was given over
by the physicians, and fell into a long stupor. His attendants,
in accordance with a frequent practice of the day, clad him in
monkish robes and shore his hair to the tonsure, that he might
die * in religion.' Then before the breath was out of his body
his most trusted officer, count Erwig, seized the royal hoard

The Decline and Fall of the Visigoths 231

and declared himself king. Erwig was a great-nephew of
king Chindaswinth, and looked upon himself as ^ .
the heir of his cousin, Recceswinth, Wamba's
predecessor. Yet he was not of pure Visigothic blood ; his
father Artavasdes was a refugee from Byzantium, whom
Chindaswinth had taken into favour and honoured with the
gift of his niece's hand.

To the dismay of the palace the aged Wamba did not die :
he recovered from his long stupor and began to mend. But
the new king and the court clergy joined in assuring him that
— even though he knew it not — he had become a monk,
and could not resume his lay attire or his royal authority.
Apparently Wamba was not above the superstitions of his
day; he resigned himself to the idea, and retired to the
monastery of Pampliega, where he lived to a great old age.
It was afterwards rumoured, whether truly or falsely, that his
long trance had not been natural, but that Erwig, seeing him
on the bed of sickness, had given him a strong sleeping-
potion, and deliberately enfrocked him by fraud in order to
seize the crown.

Wamba was the last of the Visigoths ; the four kings who
followed him are mere shadows, crowned phantoms of whom
we know little or nothing, for with Wamba's death the history
of Spain sinks into the blackest obscurity. Their The last
names were Erwig (680-87), Egica (687-701), Gothic kings.
Witiza (701-10), and Roderic (710-11). Of the last two we
know little more than the names, but a few facts are ascer-
tainable about Erwig and Egica.

The former, though he had nerve enough to seize the
throne, had not courage to defend the royal rights. He let
the crown sink back into the same state of dependence on
the church into which it had fallen in the days of Sisinand
and Recceswinth. He was ruled and managed by Julian,
the bishop of Toledo, and appears to have been far less truly
king of Spain than was that prelate. At Julian's behest he
repealed the military laws of Wamba, because thev bore

232 European History, 476-918

hardly Dn the church, and recommenced the cruel persecution
of the Jews, which always accompanied the accession of a
priest-ridden king to the Spanish throne.

Apparently because he was tormented by his conscience
on account of his dealings with king Wamba, Erwig chose
Wamba's nephew and heir Egica as his successor. Having
married him to his own daughter Cixilo, and made him swear
to be kind to his wife and her brothers, Erwig laid down his
crown and followed Wamba into a monastery.

Egica did not keep his vow ; the moment that the Gothic
assembly had recognised him as king he made the bishops
absolve him from his oath, and then repudiated his wife and
seized the property of his brothers-in-law, the sons of Erwig.
Egica's reign was marked by the last and fiercest persecution
of the Jews, in which the Visigothic king and clergy ever
indulged. They voted at the sixteenth Council of Toledo
(695) that all adult Jews should be seized and sold as slaves,
while their children were to be separated from them and
given to Christian families to rear in the true faith. Under
this wicked law many Hebrews conformed, and still more
fled over sea to Africa. The crime which brought down this
doom upon them is said to have been a plot to betray Spain
to foreign enemies. A new power had just arrived in the
neighbourhood of the Visigothic realm ; after fifty years of
Approach of fig^^tiug, the terrible and fanatical Saracen had
the Saracens, just ovcrcomc the Byzantine governors of Africa
and stormed Carthage (695), the last stronghold of the East-
Romans. It was to them, it would seem, that the Jews had
sent messages, to beg them to cross the straits and put an
end to the persecuting rule of the Spanish bishops. Nothing
came of the invitation at this time ; but the very fact that it
was possible implied the gravest change in the situation of
the Visigoths. For three generations they had been lying
between two weak stationary and unenterprising neighbours,
the faction-ridden Franks and the exarchs of Africa. How
would the decaying realm fare when attacked by a new power
in the first bloom of its fanatical youth and vigour ?

The Decline and Fall of the Visigoths 233

Egica, however, was not destined to see the day of trial,
nor was his son Witiza (701-710), of whom absolutely nothing
is known, save that he was ' popular with the people but hated
by the clergy.' The details of his evil doings are the mere
imaginings of the monkish writers of the tenth century. In
his own time they were not written down, for within two
years of his death Spain had fallen under the power of the
Moor, and no native chronicler had the heart to detail the
last hours of the old Visigothic kingdom.

Witiza died young, leaving two sons who were not old
enough to wear the crown. The Goths chose, therefore, as
their king a certain count Roderic, who is a mere name to
us — though the later chroniclers say, what is likely enough,
that he was a kinsman of Chindaswinth and Erwig, and
therefore hostile to the house of Wamba and Egica.

He reigned but eighteen months, for in his time came the
evil day of Spain. The Saracen conquerors of Africa had
spent the last twenty years in taming the Moors and Berbers.
All the tribes had now bowed to their yoke and accepted
Islam : swelled to vast numbers by the new converts, and
yearning for fresh fields to conquer, the Arab chiefs were
preparing to leap over the narrow strait of Gibraltar, and
throw themselves upon the Spanish peninsula.

The romantic legends of a later generation tell a lurid
tale of the wickedness of king Roderic, how he violated the
daughter of count Julian, the governor of Ceuta, and how
the outraged father betrayed his fortress, the key of the
straits, to the Moors, and guided them over to the shores of
Andalusia. All this is purely unhistoric. There is no reason
for believing that Roderic was better or worse than his pre-
decessors ; of his character we know nothing : his very exist-
ence is only vouched for by a name and date in the list of
Gothic kings, and by a few very rare coins.

This much we know, that ere he had been eighteen months
on the throne the Moors landed in force at Calpe, thenceforth
to be known as Jebel-Tarik (Gibraltar), from the name of
their leader. They began to lay waste Andalusia, and Roderic

234 European History, ^y6-gi^

came out against them at the head of the whole host of
Visigothic Spain, which must now have been composed — as
the laws of Wamba show us — of a few wealthy counts and
bishops heading a great multitude of their serfs and depen-
dants. The levy of the Visigoths proved far less able to
resist the Moslems than had been the troops of Byzantium.
Battle of the On the banks of the Guadelete, near Medina
Guadeiete, 711. Sidonia, Tarik gained a decisive victory. Roderic
was slain or drowned in the pursuit, the Gothic army dis-
persed, and without having to fight any second battle the
invaders mastered Spain. In less than two years (711-13)
Tarik and his superior officer Musa, the governor of Africa,
subdued the whole country ; a few places, such as Cordova,
Merida, and Saragossa, held out for a short space^ but the
Goths did not choose a new king or rally for any general
effort of resistance. By 713 the only corner of Spain which
had not submitted was the mountainous coast of the Bay of
Biscay, where the untameable Basques and the inhabitants of
the Asturias maintained a precarious liberty, preserved rather
by their obscurity and the ruggedness of their homes than by
the inability of the Moslems to complete their conquest.

So fell Visigothic Spain. The reasons are not far to seek :
the kings — chosen from no single royal stock, but creatures
of a chance election — had become powerless, the mere slaves
of their clergy ; the great nobles were disloyal and turbulent ;
Causes of the ^^^ Smaller freeholders had disappeared ; the
fall of the great mass of serfs had no heart to fight for their
Visigoths. tyrannical masters. The State combined the
weakness of a land under ecclesiastical governance with the
turbulence of extreme feudalism. It would have fallen before
the first strong invader in any case; if the Moor had not
crossed the straits, Spain would probably have become an
appanage of the Frankish realm under the mighty Mayors of
the Palace, or the still mightier Charles the Great.

CHAPTER XIV

THE CONTEST OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE AND THE
CALIPHATE

641-717

Dynastic troubles after the death of Heraclius — Wars of Constantinus
(Constans ii.) with the Caliphate — His publication of the 'Type' — His
invasion of Italy and war with the Lombards— Reign of Constantine V.
— His successful defence of Constantinople — Tyranny of Justinian ii. —
His deposition — Usurpations of Leontius and Tiberius — Justinian restored
—Anarchy follows his murder— Ris6 of Leo the Isaurian.

At the moment of the death of the unfortunate Heraclius
the East-Roman Empire was left in a most disadvantageous
position for resisting the vigorous attack which the Moslems
were pressing against its remaining provinces. Yielding to
the influence of his ambitious wife Martina, the old emperor
had left the imperial power divided between Heraclius
Constantinus, the offspring of his first wife, and Martina's
eldest son Heracleonas. The elder of the young emperors
was twenty-nine, the younger only sixteen. Their joint reign
opened ill, for Heraclius Constantinus and his step-mother,
who acted in all things as the representative of her young
son, were at open discord. But before three months had
elapsed Heraclius Constantinus died ; it is pro- Troubles at
bable that his decease was due to natural causes, Constanti-
but the Byzantine public believed otherwise, "°p^^'^4i-
and Martina was openly accused of having poisoned her step-
son. Her conduct was not such as to render the charge
improbable, for she at once proclaimed her son Heracleonas
sole emperor, although Heraclius Constantinus had left two
young boys behind him.

235

236 European History^ 476-918

This was more than the Constantinopolitans would stand.
Rioting at once broke out, and the senate, which about this
time assumes an independent attitude, very different from its
usual obedient impotence, made the most strongly worded
representations to Martina and her son, threatening the
worst consequences if the sons of Heraclius Constantinus
were excluded from the succession. In terror of their lives
Martina and Heracleonas bowed to the popular will, and
allowed the boy Constantinus to be crowned as the colleague
of his uncle ; he was no more than eleven years old at his
coronation.

The joint rule of the two lads, under the regency of
Martina, lasted less than a year. In September 642 the
senate executed a coup d'etat \ Martina and her son were
seized and banished to Cherson. On the accusation that
they had poisoned Heraclius Constantinus they were cruelly
mutilated : the tongue of the empress and the nose of Hera-
cleonas were slit — the first instance of such a treatment of

THE HOUSE OF HERACLIUS.

Heraclius the Exarch.

Maria=Martinus.

Eudocia = HERACLIUS — Martina,

I A.D. 610-641. j

HERACLIUS HERACLEONAS.

CONSTANTINUS, A.D. 641-642.

A.D. 641,

I

I I

CONSTANTINUS IV. (Constans n.) Theodosius,

641-668. executed 660.

I
CONSTANTINE IV. or V.,
668-685.

I
JUSTINIAN II., = Theodora the Khazar.
685-695, and
705-711.

Tiberius Caesar.

Contest of the Eastern Empire and the Caliphate 237

royal personages, but by no means the last in Byzantine
history.

Constantinus iv., or as he was more usually but less accu-
rately styled Constans 11.,^ thus became the sole ruler of the
East ere he had finished his twelfth year. The real govern-
ment was, for some time, carried on by the senate constans 11.,
— a fact which vouches both for the loyalty of 641-68.
the empire to the house of Heraclius and for the great rise in
the power of the senate during the last two or three genera-
tions. In earlier days there is no doubt that some powerful
general would have seized the throne. But Constantinus,
though his minority was not untroubled by revolts, was
permitted to grow up to man's estate, and to assume in due
course the personal control of the empire.

It is astonishing that more evils did not come upon the
State during the boyhood of Constantinus. The energetic
caliph Omar was still urging on the Arabs to conquest, and
with no firm hand at the helm it might have been expected
that the ship of the East-Roman state would have run upon
the breakers. But though the Saracens still continued to
make way, the rate of their progress was checked. Alexandria,
the last Christian stronghold in Egypt, had fallen during the
short reign of Heracleonas. The resources of the empire
were drained for an attempt to recover it, and in the second
year of Constantinus a considerable expedition, under a
general named Manuel, fell unexpectedly upon the place and
retook it. The Arab governor of Egypt, the celebrated
Amrou, had to besiege the place for more than a year before
it yielded. Irritated by its long resistance he cast down its
walls and massacred many of its inhabitants. It would seem
that the Saracen arms were for the next few years more

^ There is no doubt that his real name was Constantinus, or in full
Flavius Heraclius Constantinus. But the Western historians, and some
of those of the East, call him Constans. Probably this was a mere
convenience to distinguish him from his father, Heraclius Constantinus,
and his son, Constantine iv. (or v.).

238 European History^ /!^y6-gi^

engrossed in the final conquest of eastern Persia than in
assaulting the Roman empire. It was not till Yezdigerd, the
last of the Sassanian kings, had been defeated and stripped
of the farthest corners of his dominion that the Arabs turned
once more to the West/

The only point of the Roman frontier which was seriously
attacked was Africa. The sandy waste between Egypt and
Barca had less terrors for the Arab than for any other invader.
Encouraged by the fact that Gregory the exarch of Africa had

War in rebelled and proclaimed himself emperor, so that

Africa. he could hopc for no aid from Constantinople,
the Saracen general, Abdallah Abu-Sahr crossed the Libyan
desert and attacked Barca. Gregory came out against him,
but was defeated and slain : Barca and Tripoli fell to the
invaders, but Carthage and the rest of Africa relapsed into
allegiance to Constantinus, when the usurper was slain. The
Saracen frontier stood still at the Syrtes (646-7), and it took
half a century more of fighting before the Romans were evicted
from the western half of their African possessions.

Meanwhile the caliph Omar had died, and his weaker
successor, Othman, proved less dangerous to the Eastern
empire. His generals, however, invaded Cyprus, and overran
the island : unable to permanently hold it, because of the pre-
ponderance of the Byzantine fleet, they contented themselves
with exacting a tribute, and retired (642). But encouraged by
the result of this, their first expedition by sea, the Saracens
commenced to build a great war fleet, and in a few years they
were in a condition to dispute the command of the eastern
Mediterranean with the Roman galleys, who since the de-
struction of the Vandals in 533 had known no rivals on the
sea.

Meanwhile Constantinus had grown up to manhood, and,
luckily for the empire, proved to be the kind of sovereign

^ The final subjection of Persia was not complete till 652, though the
battle of Nehavend, the last which Yezdigerd risked in the open field,
was in 641.

Contest of the Eastern Empire and the Caliphate 239

required in those days of adversity. He was a stern warlike
prince, possessed of no small share of the military ability of
his grandfather Heraclius. He was always in the field, headed
his own forces by sea no less than by land, and deserved
success by his courage and perseverance if he did not always
obtain it. Occasionally he was harsh and cruel, but such
faults are more easily pardoned in an emperor who had to face
such a time of peril than are cowardice and indolence.

In 652 Constantinus sent a second expedition against
Alexandria : it was met at sea off the Canopic mouth of the
Nile by a great Saracen fleet, gathered from the ports of Syria
and Egypt, and defeated with great loss. Three years later
the enemy took the offensive, Muavia, the governor of Syria,
gathered a great armada to attack the southern coast of Asia
Minor, while he himself marched by land to force saracen vie
the passes of the Taurus and invade Cappadocia. tones, 652.
Constantinus put to sea with every ship he could launch, and
met the Saracens at Phoenix, off the Lycian shore. Here the
greatest naval battle which the Mediterranean had seen since
the day of Actium was fought : the two fleets grappled, and
the crews struggled desperately hand to hand for many hours.
Constantinus was in the thickest of the fighting, his imperial
galley was boarded, and he only escaped by throwing off his
purple mantle, and springing into another ship when his own
was captured. At last the Saracens won a decisive victory,
and it seemed as if they were about to become the masters of
the iEgean (655). Even before the battle Rhodes had fallen
into their hands, and the long-prostrate Colossus had been
sold for old brass to a Jewish dealer, and exported to Syria to
be melted down.

The empire, however, was to be saved from the humiliation
of seeing a hostile fleet approach the Dardanelles for yet
twenty years. In 656 the caliph Othman was murdered, and
his death was immediately followed by a savage civil war
among the Saracens. The two claimants for the vacant dignity
of ' Successor of the Prophet,' were Muavia, who held Syria,

240 European History^ 476-918

and Ali, Mohammed's son-in-law, who held Mesopotamia and
the new Arab capital of Kufa. Engrossed in his struggle with
Ali, Muavia was fain to leave the Roman empire unmolested.
In 659 he bought peace from Constantinus on the curious
terms that he should pay for every day that the peace lasted a
horse and a slave. This treaty proved the salvation of the
empire : for the first time for twenty-seven years it was free
from Saracen war, and Constantinus could pause and take
thought for the reorganisation of his much-harassed dominions.
In the five years of peace which were now granted to him,
he contrived to make a considerable improvement in their
condition.

When he took stock of his realm, Constantinus found
that in the East five great districts were irretrievably lost : the
nearer half of the exarchate of Africa, from Tripoli to the
state of the Libyan desert, Egypt, Syria, and the greater part
Empire, 659. of Romau Armenia had fallen into the power of
Saracens. Moreover, in Europe, the troubled years between
610 and 659 had brought about the complete loss of the inland
parts of the Balkan peninsula. The Slavs, whose incursions
had already grown so dangerous in the reign of Maurice, had
now obtained complete possession of the whole of Moesia,
and of the inland parts of Thrace and Macedon. Their settle-
ments extended to within a i^^si miles of the gates of
Adrianople and Thessalonica, both of which cities they from
time to time besieged without success. They had even en-
croached south of Mount Olympus, and thrust forward their
colonies into some parts of Greece. The imperial dominions
were restricted to a coast-sHp running all round the peninsula,
from Spalato in Dalmatia to Odessus on the Black Sea. In
the West we have seen, while detailing the history of the
Lombards, that the East-Romans now preserved only the ex-
archate of Ravenna, the duchies of Rome and Naples, the
southern point of Italy, and the islands of Sicily and Sardinia.
Recognising that he must look to reorganisation rather
than to reconquest for restoring the strength of the empire,

Contest of the Eastern Empire and the Caliphate 241

Constantinus devoted himself to securing his borders. The
moment that the civil war of the Arabs broke out, and left
him free to move elsewhere, he marched against the Slavs of
the Balkans, defeated them, and reduced them to pay tribute.
It was hopeless to dream of driving them back across the
Danube, and the emperor was contented to accept the exist-
ing state of things, and to secure the coast-land of Thrace
and Macedonia from further molestation, by imposing a line
of demarcation between the Slavonic tribes and the much-
reduced provinces (657-8).

The emperor's attention was now drawn to Africa and
Italy. His presence was needed there no less than in the
Balkan peninsula, if the Lombard and the Saracen were to be
finally checked from advancing. In 662 he sailed for the
West, and was busy there for the next six years, right down to
the moment of his death. Constantinus hated the capital : he
was sufficiently autocratic in his notions to dislike the control
that the senate had been wont to exercise over him in earlier
years, and he cordially detested the mob of Constantinople.
He had fallen out with them on the same grounds that had
once proved fatal to the popularity of Zeno. The city was
torn with the religious feuds between the Orthodox and the
Monothelites, and the emperor, to calm the storm, had issued
an edict of comprehension called ' the Type,' in The 'Type'
which he forbade all mention of either the single of Constans.
or the double will as residing in the person of Our Lord.
Without satisfying the heretics, the Type succeeded in irri-
tating the Orthodox to great fury : they persistently accused
Constantinus of being a Monothelite himself, and made his
life miserable by their clamour. There was yet a third reason
for his quitting Byzantium. In 660 he had conceived sus-
picions, whether true or false we know not, that his brother
Theodosius was plotting against him. He promptly condemned
the young prince to death, but after the execution his mind
had no rest : we are told that his dreams were always haunted
by the spectre of his brother, and that the palace where the

'^ERIOD I. . Q

242 Etiropean History, 476-918

deed was done grew insupportably hateful to him. If these
tales be true, he left Constantinople to seek ease of spirit, no
less than to restore the failing powers of the empire in the West.
It was probably in the period 657-662, before his departure
from the capital, that Constantinus recast the provincial ad-
ministration of the empire in accordance with the needs of the
times. It seems that the institution of the ' Themes,' or new
provinces, must date from this, the only space of rest and re-
arrangement to be found in a long age of wars. The old
provinces, as arranged by Diocletian, and somewhat modified
by Justinian, had been small, and in each of them civil and
military powers were kept separate, the local garrison not being
under the control of the local administrator. The needs of
the long Persian and Saracen wars had led to the practical super-
session of the civil governors by the military commanders, for
it was absolutely necessary that the men trusted with the pre-
servation of the empire should be able to control its local
administration and finance. The new provinces were few and
Creation of large, and ruled by governors, who had civil as
the Themes, ^ell as miUtary authority. They were called
* themes,' after the name of the military divisions which
occupied them, a * theme ' being originally a force of some
4000 regular cavalry detailed for the protection of a district.
The names of the original Asiatic themes easily explain them-
selves, 'Anatolikon' and 'Armeniakon' the two largest, were the
regions garrisoned by the ' army of the East ' and the ' army
of Armenia.' * Thrakesion,' farther west, shows that the
original * army of Thrace ' had been brought over into Asia to
give aid against the Saracen. ' Bucellarion ' was named after
the Bucellariiji a corps originally formed of Teutonic auxiliaries.
The theme called Obsequium (Opsikion) was held by the
Imperial Guard. Only the Cibyrhaeote theme, along the
southern coast of Asia Minor, was named from a town, and
not from the troops who garrisoned it. In the West, there
seem to have been originally three themes in the Balkan

^ See page 131 for a Visigothic use of the word Bucellarii.

Contest of the Eastern Empire and the Caliphate 243

peninsula, Thrace, Illyricum, and Hellas, and three beyond
it, Ravenna, Sicily, and Africa. Each theme was governed by
a strategos, whose military title shows his military character,
and was garrisoned by its own local force of regular troops,
the core of which was in each case a division of 4000
heavy cavalry. The full force of the twelve themes would give
some 48,000 horsemen for the field, in addition to the less
important infantry, the local militia used for holding fortresses,
and the irregular hired bands of barbarian auxiliaries of many
different races.

Constantinus was the only Eastern emperor who ever paid
a large and even preponderant share of attention to his
Western dominions. The long stay of six years which he
made in Italy and Sicily caused his Eastern subjects to sup-
pose that he had designs of restoring Rome to the position of
capital of the empire, or even, perhaps, of raising Syracuse
to that distinction. Such a project seems so inconvenient
from geographical reasons, that we can hardly credit it j prob-
ably Constantinus' personal disHke for Constantinople, while

244 European History^ 476-918

sufficing to keep him away from it, did not make him scheme
to transfer the seat of empire elsewhere.

There is no doubt, however, that Constantinus was deter-
mined to reassert the supremacy of the empire in Italy against
the Lombards, and also to take care that the exarchs and the
popes should not grow too strong and independent. Even
before he sailed for Italy his jealousy of the power of the
The fate of papacy had been shown by his dealings with Pope
Pope Martin. Martin I. That prelate had dared to hold a
synod at Rome, in which he condemned the ' Type ' or Edict
of Comprehension issued by the emperor (649). Constantinus
never pardoned this : he bided his time, directed the exarch
to seize the person of Martin at a convenient opportunity, and
had him shipped off to Constantinople. There he was tried
for contumacy, thrown into chains, and banished to Cherson,
in the Crimea, where he died in exile (655).

Constantinus left the Bosphorus in 662 with a large army,
and sailed for Taranto. There he landed, and at once fell
upon the duchy of Benevento, the southernmost of the Lom-
bard States in Italy. The time of his attack happened to be
unfortunate, for Grimoald, duke of Benevento, had seized the
Lombard crown, and his son Romuald was ruling the duchy
under him. P'or once in a way, therefore, Pavia and Benevento
Campaign in wcrc United and ready to act together. The Lom-

itaiy, 663. bard historian, Paulus Diaconus, has preserved the
details of the campaign of Constantinus — whom he usually
styles Constans, as do so many other writers. The emperor
captured, one after another, all the Lombard cities of south
Italy, including Luceria, the chief town of Apulia. He drove
Romuald into Benevento, and held him closely besieged
there, till he gave up his sister Gisa as a hostage, and promised
to pay tribute. He would not have granted such easy terms,
but for the fact that he had learnt that king Grimoald, with
the whole force of Lombardy, was marching against him.

Departing from Benevento, Constantinus moved on Rome,
leaving a part of his army under a Persian exile named Sapor

Contest of the Eastern Empire and the Caliphate 245

to watch the Lombards. This division was cut to pieces at
Forino, and after he had received the news, the emperor seems
to have given up his idea of re-conquering central Italy. He
contented himself with visiting Rome and receiving the homage
of pope Vitalian, who met him at the sixth milestone, at the
head of the whole Roman people, and escorted him into the
city. But Rome took little profit from the advent of an
emperor, a sight it had not seen for two hundred years. Con-
stantinus plundered it of many ornaments, and in particular
stripped the Pantheon of its tiles of gilded bronze and sent
them to Constantinople (663).

After staying only twelve days in the ancient capital, the
emperor turned on his heel, and instead of proceeding against
the northern Lombards, led his army through Naples into
Lucania and Bruttium as far as Reggio. King Grimoald and
his son do not seem to have molested him in this long march.
Constantinus then crossed the straits of Messina into Sicily,
and established himself at Syracuse, which he constansin
made his residence for more than four years siciiy, 664-8.
[664-8]. His attention was engrossed by the forward move-
ment of the Saracens in Africa. Muavia, having secured the
sole caliphate by the death of his rival Ali, had at last recom-
menced his attacks on the empire in 663. His troops pushed
forward in Africa and seized Carthage, from which, however,
Constantinus succeeded in driving them out, and once more
pushed them back to Tripoli. It must have been in this
African war that he spent the treasures which he is said to
have wrung out of the people of Sicily, Sardinia, and south
Italy by * exaction such as had never been heard of before,'
even tearing the sacramental plate from the churches, and
selling as slaves those who refused to pay. These harsh pro-
ceedings did as much to weaken the power of the empire in
the West as the military successes of Constantinus did to
strengthen it.

It was at Syracuse that Constantinus met his end. While
he was bathing in the baths that were called Daphne, his

246 European History^ 476-918

attendant Andreas smote him on the head with his marble
soap-box, so that the skull was broken, and then fled away.

Murder of The blow was fatal, and with this strange death
constans, 668. perished that plan of restoring the empire in the
West which had been the favourite scheme of Constantinus.
His murder was probably the result of a conspiracy, for when
it was known, an Armenian officer named Mezecius proclaimed
himself emperor in Sicily, and reigned there for a few months.

For the last five years of Constantinus' long absence in
the West there had been grievous trouble with the Saracens in
Asia Minor, against which the caliph Muavia had launched his
hosts for five successive summers. The raids of his generals
reached as far as Amorium in Phrygia, which was stormed by
the Arabs, and promptly retaken by the Romans in 668. The
nominal control of affairs in Asia had been left to the em-
peror's eldest son Constantine, when his father sailed to the
constantine West. On the news of the murder at Syracuse and
Pogonatus, the Usurpation of Mezecius, Constantine, now
^' aged eighteen, sailed in person to Sicily, put down

and executed the usurper, and then promptly returned to
Constantinople. He had been beardless when he set out,
but returned next year with his face covered with hair, where-
fore the people of the capital gave him the nickname of
'Pogonatus,' the bearded, by which he is generally known.
Curiously enough the name would have been far better applied
to his father whose beard was enormous, while that of Con-
stantine v. did not exceed a very moderate limit.

Constantine Pogonatus was his father's true son, a hard-
working, hard-fighting, and somewhat high-handed Caesar, who
kept the empire well together, and spent all his energy in
holding the Saracens in check, a task in which he won great
success. He reigned for seventeen years (668-85), of which
the first ten were a time of unbroken war with the Cali-
phate. The first beginning of this struggle was not very
favourable for the empire; in 669-70 the generals of Muavia
pushed their way as far as the sea of Marmora, and in 672 the

Contest of the Eastern Empire and the Caliphate 247

Caliph thought success so nearly in his grasp that he prepared
for a formal siege of Constantinople, the second that it had
undergone in the century. Using the harbour of Cyzicus as
their base, the Saracens, under a general named Abderrha-
man, and the Caliph's son Yezid, beleaguered the city for six
months (April-September, 673). They were finally forced to
retire after a naval engagement in which the Imperial galleys
had the better, largely owing, it is said, to the newly invented
' Greek fire,' by which they burnt many of the Moslem ships.
When forced away from the Bosphorus, the Saracens fell back
on Cyzicus, which they succeeded in holding for no less than
four years, making occasional sallies from it towards Con-
stantinople, of which every single one was repelled with loss
by the emperor. At last the Arabs, after losing constantinev.
their general, and seeing Abu Eyub, one of the saves Con-
last surviving companions of Mohammed, perish ^*^"*^"°p ^•
before the walls, raised the siege. Their fleet was destroyed
by a storm off the Lycian Coast : their land-army was attacked
on its retreat by the East Romans, and defeated with a loss
of 30,000 men.

So great was the blow inflicted on the Caliph by the entire
failure of his army before Constantinople, that he was glad
to conclude an ignominious peace with the emperor, by which
he engaged to pay 3000 pounds of gold to Constantine, and to
send him fifty Arab horses for every year that the treaty
lasted (678).

The fidelity of the East Romans to the house of Heraclius
was thus justified by the victory of Constantine ; it is a pity
that only a very meagre account of his campaign has come
down to us, owing to the dearth of chroniclers in the seventh
century. We know, however, that the fame of his triumph
went all over Europe, and that ambassadors came from the
Avars, the Lombards, and even the distant Franks to con-
gratulate him on beating off an attack which had threatened
serious consequences to the whole of Christendom.

For the remainder of his reign Constantine enjoyed a

248 European History, 476-918

well-earned peace, disturbed only by some slight bickering
with a new enemy, the Bulgarians. This Ugrian tribe, who
The had dwelt for the last two centuries beyond the
Bulgarians. Danube, crossed the river in the end of Constan-
tine's reign, and threw themselves upon the Slavonic tribes
who held Moesia. They subdued the Slavs without much diffi-
culty, and defeated a Roman army which Constantine led by
sea to the mouth of the Danube. Recognising that it was
impossible to reconquer the long-lost Moesia, the emperor
made peace with Isperich, the Bulgarian king, and allowed
him to settle without further opposition in the land between
the Danube and the Balkans, where the Slavs had hitherto
held possession (679). A new Bulgarian nation was gradually
formed by the intermixture of the conquering tribe and their
subjects : when formed, it displayed a Slavonic rather than a
Ugrian type, and spoke a Slavonic not a Ugrian tongue.

The later years of Constantine v. were better known to
contemporaries as the time of the holding of the council
of Constantinople, than as the time of the foundation of the
new Bulgarian kingdom. To settle the dispute on the
divine and human wills of Christ, the emperor summoned an
oecumenical synod, at which the Western churches were well
represented. It finally condemned the Monothelite heresy,
which for the future ceased to be the great question debated
between the churches (680-1). But a new controversy, that
on Iconoclasm, was ere long to break out.

To the misfortune of the empire the able and hard-working
Constantine died in 685, at the comparatively early age of
thirty-six. We hear httle that is unfavourable to him from
any chronicler : his sole crime seems to have been the cruel
act of slitting the noses of his two brothers Heraclius and
Tiberius in 680, to disqualify them from holding imperial
power. They had hitherto been nominally the colleagues of
Character of Constantine, and were honoured with the title of
Constantine V. Caesars, but in the interests of his own son
Justinian, now a growing boy, the emperor determined to make

Contest of the Eastern Empire and the Caliphate 249

it impossible for them to aspire to the supreme power. It
appears to have been a cruel and unjustifiable act, and unless
the Caesars had given provocation, a fact of which we have
no hint in any chronicler, it was a grievous blot on the other-
wise excellent character of Constantine v.

The young Justinian, second of that name, mounted his
father's throne in 685, when only in his seventeenth year. The
accession of this prince was a fearful misfortune for the
empire. He possessed the qualities of his grandfather Con-
stantinus in an exaggerated form, being arbitrary, cruel, reck-
less, and high-handed, yet so brave and capable that his
throne was not easy to shake. He started on his career too
young, and might have come to better things if his father
had lived for another ten years; but, abandoned justinian 11.,
to his own devices ere he was well out of his 685-95.
boyhood, he developed into a bloodthirsty tyrant. The first
few years of his reign, ere he had felt his feet and fully
reaHsed his own desires, were comparatively uneventful. The
Saracens were occupied in civil wars since the death of
Muavia, and gave no trouble : the caliph Abd-el-Melik was
only too glad to renew with Justinian the treaty that his pre-
decessor had made with Constantine v. Unmolested by the
Saracens, Justinian sent armies into Iberia and Albania, the
Christian kingdoms under the Caucasus, and compelled them
to pay him tribute. Soon after he undertook in person a
great expedition against the Bulgarians, designing to push
the Roman boundary once more to the Danube. He was
very successful, beating the enemy in the field, and bringing
back more than 30,000 captives, from whom he organised an
auxiliary force for service in Asia.

Justinian's triumph over the Bulgarians emboldened him
to undertake the greater scheme of winning back Syria from
the Saracens. In 693 he picked a quarrel with the Caliph on
the most frivolous grounds : when the annual payment due
under the treaty of 686 was tendered to him, he refused to
receive the money, because the coins were not the old Roman

250 European History, 4y6-<^i^

solidi^ which had hitherto circulated in Syria and Egypt, and
still formed the bulk of the Saracen currency, but new
Arab * dirhems ' with Abd-el-Melik's name upon them, which
the caliph had lately begun to strike. But any pretext was
good enough for Justinian : he declared war with a light
Justinian's heart, and led his armies in person across the
Saracen Taurus iuto CiHcia. At Sebastopolis near Tarsus
war, 693. j^g suffered a fearful defeat, mainly caused by the
desertion to the Saracens of the unwilling recruits whom he
had enlisted from among the captives of the Bulgarian War.
When he had rallied his army Justinian was cruel and
illogical enough to order those of the corps who had 7iot
deserted to be put to death — lest they might follow their
comrades' example in the next battle (693). In the next year
the emperor lost Roman Armenia by the revolt of its
Governor, a native Armenian named Sumpad, who deserted
to the Saracens. Other disasters followed, and the Arabs
harried the ' Anatolic ' and * Armeniac ' themes.

Meanwhile the young emperorhad been makinghimself most
unpopular at home by the exactions necessary for the support
of his unlucky war, and still more by persisting in building
expensive and unnecessary palaces in the capital, while the
war still raged. His two finance ministers, Theodotus, a
lapsed abbot who had quitted his monastery, and the eunuch
Stephanus, are reported to have gone to the extremes of
cruelty in dealing with the citizens. It is said that Theodotus
was wont to torture defaulting tax-payers by hanging them
over smoky fires and half stifling them. Stephanus preferred
the rod : it is said that he even presumed on one occasion —
during Justinian's absence — to seize and beat the empress-
dowager Anastasia. The emperor only punished him by
ordering him to complete, at his own expense, a building on
which he was then engaged.

It was not only by heaping taxes on his subjects that Jus-
tinian made himself unpopular. He had a mania for seizing
and imprisoning on suspicion senators and other important

Contest of the Eastern Empire and the Caliphate 251

personages, and he was so merciless in dealing with military
officers who met with any defeat, that to accept a command
under him was considered the shortest way to the dungeon or
the block. Meanwhile his ill-luck in the Saracen war made
him as much detested by the soldiery as he was dreaded by
their officers. In 695 a distinguished general named Leontius,
the conqueror of Iberia and Albania,^ was ordered by Jus-
tinian to take command of the theme of Hellas. Regarding
this charge as a mere preliminary to disgrace and execution,
Leontius in sheer desperation planned a coup d'etat. At the
head of a few dozen followers he burst open the prisons, and
made a dash at the palace. Justinian was taken Fail of justi-
completely by surprise ; he fell into the hands of "^*°' ^5-
Leontius, who sUt his nose, and banished him to the distant
fortress of Cherson, in the Crimea. His two detested minis-
ters, Theodotus and Stephanus, were torn to pieces and burnt
by the populace.

With the fall of Justinian 11. began twenty-two years of
anarchy and disaster for the empire. Hitherto Constantinople
had been singularly fortunate in escaping the consequences of
military revolts and changes of dynasty. With the single ex-
ception of the usurpation of the tyrant Phocas, and his de-
position by Heraclius, there had been no cases of the transfer of
the imperial crown by violence for more than three hundred
years. All the earlier emperors of the East had been either
designated by their predecessors or peaceably elected by the
senate and army. It was now to be seen how fatal was the
breaking-up of the rule of orderly succession : in the next
twenty-two years there were no less than five revolutions at
home, and abroad many grave disasters cut the empire short.

The three-years' rule of Leontius was mainly distinguished
by the final loss of Carthage and Africa. Already in Justinian's
time the province had been invaded and partially overrun by
the generals of the Caliph. In 697 Carthage fell : it was re-
covered for a moment by an expedition sent out by Leontius,
1 See p. 249.

252 European History^ 476-918

but in 698 it fell permanently into the hands of the Saracens.
The Roman generals, however, escaped by sea with the
main body of their army. Fearing to face the wrath of

Carthage Leontius with such a tale of disaster, the returning

lost, 698. officers conspired against him. They sailed to the
Bosphorus, where their arrival was quite unexpected, caught
the emperor, slit his nose, and threw him into a monastery.
In his stead they proclaimed the admiral Tiberius Apsimarus
as sovereign (698).

Tiberius 11., a very capable man, clung to the throne for
seven years. He was fortunate in his war with the Saracens :
his armies defeated those of the Caliph, recovered Cilicia, and
even occupied Antiocb. But this success abroad did not save
Tiberius from the wonted end of usurpers. He was overthrown
by the banished and mutilated Justinian 11., who now reappears
upon the stage in a most startling fashion.

Justinian had been consigned by Leontius to the remote
fortress of Cherson — the modern Sebastopol — on the north
shore of the Black Sea. But being carelessly guarded, he
succeeded in escaping, and reaching the court of the Chagan
of the Khazars, the Tartar tribe who dwelt on the lower
Volga and the shores of the sea of Azoff. In spite of his
Adventures mutilated uosc he succeeded in gaining the good
of Justinian, graccs of the Chagan, and received the hand of
his sister in marriage. Hearing of this Tiberius 11. sent a huge
bribe to the Tartar, to persuade him to surrender his guest.
The treacherous barbarian consented, and despatched an
officer to arrest Justinian. But the exile got wind of the plot
through a message from his wife, and instead of allowing him-
self to be seized, slew the Chagan's emissary, and escaped to
sea in an open boat, with half-a-dozen attendants. A storm
arose, and the little vessel seemed likely to founder. ' Make
a vow to God that if you escape you will forgive your enemies,'
said one of Justinian's companions to him, as the boat began
to fill. ' No,' replied the reckless and inflexible exile, * if I
spare a single one of them when my time comes, may God

Contest of the Eastern Empire and the Caliphate 253

sink me here and now.' The storm abated, the boat came
safe to land, and Justinian fell into the hands of Terbel, the
king of the Bulgarians. Terbel lent him an army with which
to try his fortune, and with its aid he advanced to the gates of
Constantinople. The city was betrayed to him justinian re-
by partisans within the walls, and he succeeded stored, 705-11.
in getting possession of the palace^ and of the person of
Tiberius 11. Justinian then dragged out of his cloister the
deposed usurper Leontius, bound him and Tiberius hand and
foot, and laid them before his throne in the Hippodrome.
There he sat in triumph with his feet on the necks of the
vanquished Caesars, while his partisans chanted * Thou shalt
trample on the Lion and the Asp,' an allusion to the names
of the two fallen rulers (Leontius and Apsimarus). The
two prisoners were then beheaded (705).

During his first reign Justinian had chastised his subjects
with whips, it was with scorpions that he now afflicted them.
He had returned from exile in a mood of reckless cruelty r
the vow he had made was kept with rigid accuracy. Every
one who had been concerned in his deposition ten years before
was sought out, tortured, and put to death. Some of his
doings rose to a monstrous pitch of inhumanity : the chief
men of Cherson, who had offended him during his exile, were
bound on spits and roasted : many patricians were sewed up
into sacks and cast into the Bosphorus.

It is astonishing to find that the second reign of Justinian
lasted for more than five years. His tyranny was such that an
instant explosion of popular wrath might have been expected.
But if reckless, he was also active, suspicious, and strong-
handed, and crushed many plots before they could come to a
head. At last he fell before a military revolt : the army, headed
by a general named Philippicus, disavowed its allegiance,
seized the tyrant, and beheaded him. His little six-year-old
son, Tiberius, whom the Chagan's sister had borne justinian
him, was torn from sanctuary, and murdered, slain, 711.
Thus perished the house of Heraclius. after it had given five

254 European History, 476-918

rulers to the empire during a century of rule (610-7 11). It
had done much to save the state from the Saracens : all
its members, even Justinian, had been men of ability, and
Heraclius himself, Constantinus-Constans, and Constantine v.
had each borne his part in the long struggle with credit, if not
with complete success.

There now followed six years of complete anarchy (711-17),
during which the imperial annals are filled by the obscure
names of Philippicus(7ii-i3), Artemius Anastasius (713-715)
and Theodosius iii. (715-17). Each was the creature of a
conspiracy, and each fell by the same means by which he had
been uplifted. They were all feeble and incompetent sover-
eigns, far below the rank of the two earlier usurpers, Leontius
and Tiberius Apsimarus. The importance of their reigns lies
not in their struggle with each other, but in the general col-
lapse of the system of defence of the empire against the
Saracen, the natural result of the employment of the whole

Anarchy, ^rmy in civil war. The generals of the caliphs
711-17. Welid and Soliman, the sons of Abd-al-Melik
(705-17) burst through the boundaries of the empire on every
point. In 71T Sardinia, the westernmost province of the
empire since the loss of Africa, was subdued by the Arabs.
In the same year they crossed the Taurus, and sacked Tyana
in Cappadocia. In 712 they overran Pontus and captured
Amasia, in 713 Antioch in Pisidia fell, and with it much of
southern Asia Minor. It appeared as if with the downfall of
the house of HeracliUs the power of self-defence had been
taken away from the East Romans. Nor was the lowest depth
yet reached.

Emboldened by the easy successes of his armies over those
of the ephemeral sovereigns who followed Justinian 11., the
caliph Soliman at last resolved to fit out an expedition on the
largest scale against Constantinople. A hundred thousand
men advanced by land from Tarsus, while a fleet of more than
1000 sail gathered in the ports of Syria, and sailed round Asia
Mirwr into the ^gean. The Caliph's brother Moslemah was

Contest of the Eastern Empire and the Caliphate 255

to head the whole expedition. Cappadocia was aheady in
Saracen hands, and the Caliph's vanguard was saracenin-
occupied with the siege of Amorium, the chief vasion,7i6.
stronghold of Phrygia. That town, indeed, was saved from
destruction by Leo the Isaurian, the governor of the Anatolic
theme. But soon after, while the Arabs were still advancing,
this same Leo, after concluding a private truce with the in-
vaders, proclaimed himself emperor, and advanced against
Constantinople, instead of reserving his strength to resist the
armies of Sohman (716).

Once more fortune favoured the newest rising against the
emperor of the day. The troops of Leo beat those of Theo-
dosius III., and then the latter voluntarily abdicated and sent
to offer his crown to the victor. He was a mild and virtuous
man, who had been raised to the purple against his will by his
mihtary partisans, and longed to return to his ob- Leo the
scurity, feeling himself destitute of the power isaurian, 717.
needed to cope with the insurgents, and still more unable to
face the impending Saracen invasion.

Accordingly the senate and the patriarch formally elected
the rebel Leo as emperor, and set him on the throne which
had already changed masters seven times in the last twenty-
two years. At length the empire had found a master who
could defend what he had won, and was fully able to transmit
his power to his heirs. The armament of Moslemah might be
awaited without dismay, for the state was once more in the
hands of one who could be trusted to use its resources aright.
Leo was to dissipate once and for all the Saracen storm-cloud,
and to free Constantinople from all danger from the East for
more than three hundred years. But his achievements demand
a chapter to themselves.

CHAPTER XV

THE HISTORY OF THE GREAT MAYORS
OF THE PALACE

656-720

The Mayor Grimoald unsuccessfully endeavours to make his son king of
Austrasia — Decadence of the house of the Merovings— Ebroin and his
tyrannical rule in Neustria — Long civil w^ars — Rise of Pippin the younger
and his victory at Testry — The ascendency of Pippin : his successes in
consolidating the kingdom — Missionary enterprises in Germany — Civil
wars at the death of Pippin — Final triumph of his son Charles Martel.

In 656 died King Sigibert in., the first Meroving king of
Austrasia who had been but a puppet in the hands of his
Mayor of the Palace. At his death was made, a full century
too soon, the first attempt of that great family which had of
late held all real power to add the shadow to the substance
by assuming the royal name. King Sigibert had only reached
the age of twenty-seven when he died : his son and heir,
named Dagobert after his grandfather, was but eight. Taking
advantage of the boy's youth, the Mayor Grimoald had him
stolen away from his country by the hands of a bishop, and
lodged him in an Irish monastery, where his head was shorn,
and he was consecrated as a monk. Having got rid of the
rightful heir, Grimoald induced his partisans to raise his own
Usurpation of son Childcbert on the shield, and salute him as
Grimoald, 656. j^^j^g of Austrasia. But the times were not yet
ripe : Grimoald had many bitter enemies, and the majority of
the people were not yet accustomed to the idea of dethroning
the ancient house of the Merovings. Within a few days after
the usurpation, Grimoald was seized by a band of Austrasian
nobles, cast into fetters, and hurried off to Paris, where his

256

The History of the great Mayors of the Palace 257

captors laid him before the feet of king Chlodovech 11. of
Neustria, the brother of the deceased Sigibert.

Chlodovech, a cruel and debauched young man, slew Grim-
oald with horrid tortures. It appeared as if the greatness of
the house of Pippin and Arnulf was destined to be extinguished
with the life of its chief: but the Fates willed otherwise.
Within a few months of the execution of the great Mayor,
king Chlodovech died, leaving the diadem to his little son
Chlothar iii. All the Frankish realms were once more under
the nominal rule of a child, and the last chance of the survival
of the kingly power was gone, in Neustria now as well as in
the Eastern realm. The house of the Austrasian mayors was
within a few years to raise its head once more.

Meanwhile the minority of Chlothar iii. was destined to be
a time of storm and trouble. Before he had been four years on
the throne his Austrasian subjects determined that they would
once more have a king of their own, and not obey orders from
Soissons or Paris. Accordingly they took Childerich, the
younger brother of Chlothar, and crowned him as king of the
Eastern realm. The joint reign of the boys Chlothar iii. and
Childerich i. lasted for ten years : at first the kingdoms were kept
in a certain measure of peace by the queen-mother, Bathildis,
an Anglo-Saxon lady of great virtue and ability. But after four
years, worn out by the troublous task of reconciling the opposing
factions of the nobihty, she retired into a nunnery, and when
her gentle influence was removed, trouble at once broke out.

The man mainly responsible for the evil time of civil strife
that followed was Ebroin, Mayor of the Palace in Mayor Ebroin.
Neustria. He was a cruel, ambitious, vindictive ^^°"^'-
noble, who aspired to much the same position that Pippin the
Old and Grimoald had once occupied in Austrasia. Strong
by the power of using the royal name, by his numerous
comitatus, and by his unscrupulous readiness to strike down
all who opposed him, he exercised for several years what the
contemporary chroniclers called a * tyranny.' He was, we are
told, so greedy of money, that to him the man with the longer

PERIOD I. R

258 European History, 476-918

purse always seemed to have the better cause. Nor was greed
his worst fault; however small the offence, any crime committed
by a man that he suspected or envied brought the invariable
penalty of death. His mandates were as capricious as they
were harsh, for example he once issued an order that no Frank
of Burgundy should approach the king's person without the
mayor's express permission. This domination of Ebroin lasted
until his young master, Chlothar iii., of whose personal influence
orcharacter we hear naught, died on thevergeof manhoodin67o.

The autocratic Mayor of the Palace at once raised on the
shield Theuderich, Chlothar's youngest brother. But the
majority of the Neustrians saw their chance of getting rid of
their tyrant. Rising under the leadership of Leodegar, bishop
of Afttun, they proclaimed Childerich of Austrasia king of the
West, as well as of the East Franks, and called him in to their
aid. The personal following of Ebroin was too weak to resist
the Neustrian and Austrasian nobles combined. He and his
puppet king were made captive, and both compelled to take
monastic vows — Ebroin at Luxeuil, Theuderich at St. Denis.
It might have been better in the end for the Franks if
Leodegar had been less merciful to the vanquished Mayor :
he was yet to give much trouble.

For three years Childerich reigned over all the Franks : he
reached manhood in this time, but the power of the kingship
did not pass into his own hand. The Mayor Wulfoald ruled
in Austrasia, while bishop Leodegar administered Neustria
with some success ' till the old enemy of mankind, whose wont
it always is to foment discord, began to stir up against him
the envy of the great men whom he had taken as his fellows
at the helm, and to sow the tares of malice between him and
the king.' Leodegar was at last thrust by his envious col-
leagues into the monastery of Luxeuil, where he found his old
enemy Ebroin awaiting his company. In the same year king

Murder of Childerich was murdered : he had seized a free
Childerich I. Frank named Bodolin, and without trial or judg-
ment, bound him naked to a stake, and flogged him in the

The History of the great Mayors of the Palace 259

palace court. No sooner was the furious Neustrian freed from
his bonds than he gathered a few friends, and slew the king in
his bed.

There followed anarchy all over the Frankish realm, for
Childerich had left only an infant son. One party in Neustria
took out of the monastery of St. Denis prince Theuderich,
who had been Ebroin's candidate for the Neustrian throne
three years before, and proclaimed him king. Wulfoald, the
Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia, sent to Ireland to find
Dagobert, the long-lost prince whom Grimoald had kidnapped
and sent over-sea in 656. Sought out by Wilfred, bishop of
York, and perhaps guarded by Northumbrian warriors, Dago-
bert was brought over to Germany, and raised to the throne.
But another party, mainly composed of Austrasians, proclaimed
a boy named Chlodovech, v/hom they said was a natural son
of king Chlothar in. Ebroin broke from his monastery-
prison, let his hair grow, and joined the adherents of Chlodo-
vech. In this three-cornered duel the kings counted for little
or naught, the mayors and the nobles for everything. By his
superior daring and persistency Ebroin worked himself once
more to the front, and on consenting to abandon the boy
pretender, whose cause he had feigned to espouse, was made
Mayor of Neustria once more by king Theuderich Tyranny of
(678). His first care was to send for his old Ebroin.
enemy Leodegar, against whom he entertained an unforgotten
grudge, in spite of their common captivity at Luxeuil. The
good bishop was brought before him, blinded, and afterwards
beheaded. Later generations, remembering his well-meaning
government and cruel end, saluted him as a saint (St. Leger).

For three years the wicked Ebroin went forth conquering
and to conquer : he used the name of king Theuderich to
cover his misdeeds, and ordered everything at his own plea-
sure. Entering Austrasia he crushed its army, and Dagobert,
the king from over-sea, was slain by traitors after his defeat.
Some of the East Franks, however, refused to lay down their
arms, and placed at their head the heir of the house of Arnulf

26o

European History, 476-918

and Pippin, as the most popular chief that Austrasia could
find. This was Pippin the Young, nephew of Mayor Grimoald,
son of Ansegisel and Begga, and grandson both of St. Arnulf
and Pippin the Old.

THE GREAT MAYORS OF THE PALACE.

St. Arnulf, Bp. of
Metz, died 641.

Ansegisel, Mayor
of Austrasia 632-38.

Pippin the Elder, Mayor
of Austrasia, died 639.

Begga.

Plectrudis^=^ Pippin the Younger, Mayor -■- v - Alphaida.

of Austrasia, Neustria, and

Burgundy, died 714.

Grimoald, Mayor of
Austrasia, died 656.

Childebert, Pro-
claimed King of
Austrasia 656.

I

Grimoald,

Mayor of

Neustria,

died 714.

Theudoald.

Drogo,
died 708.

Charles' Martel, Mayor
of Austrasia 717, of all the
Kingdoms 719, died 741.

Carloman,
Mayor of
Austrasia,
died 754.

Pippin the Short, Gnfo.
Mayor of Neustria
741, King of the
Franks 752.

Bernhard.

Charles the Carloman. Adalhard. Wala.
Great.

Ebroin, however, was strong enough to overbear the resist-
ance of Pippin : at Lafaux, near Laon, he defeated the last
Austrasian army in the open field, and compelled all the
Franks, from Meuse to Rhine, to acknowledge his protege
Theuderich as king. He himself became mayor both of
Neustria, Burgundy, and Austrasia, and might well have
aspired to assume the royal title. But a private enemy, whose
death he had been plotting, secretly murdered him in 68 1,
and with his death the ascendency of Neustria came to an
Rise of end. The Austrasians once more took up arms

Pippin II. under Pippin the Young, and after seven more
weary years of civil war, a decisive battle at Testry near St.
Quentin settled the fate of the Frankish realms (687). Pippin
with the men of the East was completely victorious, and Theude-
rich and the Neustrians were compelled to take what terms

The History of the great Mayors of the Palace 261

he chose to give them. He claimed to be what Ebroin had
been, mayor both in East and West, but he chose to dwell
himself at Metz, the home of his grandfather, and from thence
administered Austrasia almost as an independent ruler ; while
regents named by him guided the steps of king Theuderich
in Neustria. By the fight of Testry the question of prece-
dence between Austrasia and Neustria was finally settled in
favour of the former. From this moment onward, the East-
Frankish house of the descendants of Arnulf and Pippin is of
far more importance in Frankish history than the effete royal
family. Warned by the fate of Grimoald, they did not again
demand the crown for a space of eighty years, and were con-
tent with a practical domination without any regal name.
Henceforth we shall find the Franks more Teutonic and less
Gallo-Roman than they had hitherto been : the central point
of the realm is for the future to be found about Austrasian
Metz, Aachen and Koln, not around Neustrian Soissons,
Paris, or Laon.

Pippin, the son of Ansegisel, was Mayor of the Palace for
twenty-six years (688-714), a period in which he did much to
rescue the Frankish realm from the dilapidation and evil
governance which it had experienced for the last fifty years.
His first task was to endeavour to restore the ancient boun-
daries of the kingdom ; for during the reigns of the sons and
grandsons of Dagobert i., the old Hmits of the realm had
fallen back on every side. On the eastern border the homage
which the Bavarian dukes owed to the Merovings Dilapidation
had been completely forgotten ; for all practical °^ *^® realm,
purposes they were now independent. Farther north, the
Thuringians were in much the same condition; they had
been saved from the Slavonic hordes of Samo by their own
chiefs, not by their Frankish suzerain, and since they had
repulsed the Slavs had gone on their own way, caring nought
who ruled at Metz or Koln. The Frisians of the Rhine-
mouth, a race whom the Merovings had never subdued, were
pushing their raids into the valleys of the Scheldt and Meuse.

262 European History, 476-918

These were all comparatively outlying tribes, whose freedom
is easily explained by their distance from the centre of
government. But it is more surprising to find that even the
Suabians or Alamanni, on the very threshold of Austrasia,
along the Rhine and Neckar and in the Black Forest, had of
late refused the homage which for two hundred years they
had been accustomed to render to the Merovings, and paid
no obedience to any one save their own local dukes. In the
south also the Gallo-Romans of Aquitaine had achieved
practical independence under a duke named Eudo, who was
said to be descended from Charibert, king of Aquitaine, the
brother of Dagobert i.

For fifty years Pippin and his son Charles were to work at
the restoration of the ancient frontier of the Frankish realm,
beating down by constant hard fighting the various vassal
tribes who had slipped away from beneath the Frankish yoke.
Pippin's chief wars were with the Frisians and the Suabians,
against both of whom he obtained great successes. After a
long struggle he compelled Radbod, the duke of the Frisians,
to do homage to king Theuderich, and cede to the Franks
Frisia West-Frisia, the group of marshy islands between

subdued, the Scheldt-mouth and the Zuider Zee, which is
now called Zealand and South Holland. To protect this new
conquest Pippin set up or restored castles at Utrecht and
Dorstadt, new towns destined to become,, the one the ecclesi-
astical, and the other the commercial, centre of the lands by
the Rhine-mouth. Duke Radbod was also compelled to give
his daughter in marriage to Pippin's eldest son, Grimoald.

Another series of campaigns were directed against the
Suabians. Pippin followed them into the depths of their
forests, and compelled their duke Godfrid to acknowledge
himself, as his fathers had done, the vassal of the Franks.

It is very noticeable that under Pippin's rule and by his aid
the conversion of Germany to Christianity was begun. The
descendants of St. Arnulf were, as befitted the issue of such a
holy man, zealous friends of the Church and patrons of mis-

The History of the great Mayors of the Palace 263

sionary enterprise. The Merovingian kings had been, almost
without exception, a godless race. Christian in name alone.
They had taken no pains to favour the spread of Christianity
among their vassals : it was sufficient in their eyes if their
own people, the ruling race, conformed to the Catholic faith ;
for the souls of Suabians, Frisians, or Bavarians, they had no
care. Such missionaries as had hitherto been seen in the
German forests, along the shores of the Bodensee, or the
upper reaches of the Danube and Main, had been, almost
without exception, Irish monks, drawn from the Isle of Saints
by their own fervent zeal for the spread of the Gospel, not by
any encouragement from the Frankish kings. In the sixth and
seventh centuries these holy men overran the whole Continent,
seeking for heathen to convert, or planting their humble
monasteries in the wildest recesses of the mountains or the
primeval forest. They wandered as far as Italy and Switzer-
land, where two of the greatest of them fixed their homes, St.
Fridian at Lucca, St. Gall in the hills above the Bodensee.

But till the time of Pippin no systematic attempt had been
made to convert those among the German races who still lay
in the darkness of Paganism. It was Pippin who first saw
that this duty was incumbent on the Frankish government.
He sent to England for St. Willibrord, the first apostle of the
Frisians, who with, his twelve companions wandered over
the newly conquered West Friesland, preaching to the wild
heathen. It was by Pippin's encouragement also conversion of
that the Englishman Suidbert laboured among Germany.
the Hessians, till he and his converts were driven away by the
invasion of the pagan Saxons. At the same time St. Rupert?
bishop of Worms, completed the conversion of Bavaria, and
founded there the great bishopric of Salzburg (696). Much
about the same date the Irish monk Killian passed up the
Main and along the skirts of the Thiiringerwald, to preach to
the Thuringians, till he met with a martyr's death at Wiirz-
burg. Everywhere the ascendency of the grandson of Arnulf
was followed by the arrival of zealous missionary workers,

264 European History, 476-918

Franks, Irish or English, who strove to bear the standard of
the Cross into the German woodlands, where Woden and
Thunor alone had hitherto been adored. What Pippin began,
his greater son, Charles the Hammer, and his still mightier
great-grandson, Charles the Emperor, were destined to com-
plete. By this work alone the house of the great Austrasian
mayors did more to justify their existence in three generations
than the wicked Merovings had done in eight.

The years during which Pippin governed the Franks were
marked in their regal annals by four obscure names. Theu-
derich, the weak king who had been drawn from the cloister
to sit on his brother's throne,i died in 691 : he was followed
by his two infant sons, Chlodovech in. (691-5), and Childe-
bert III. (695-711), both of whom were recognised alike in
Neustria and Austrasia, but had no real authority. Chlodovech
died while yet a boy : Childebert survived to early manhood,
begat a son, and then hastened to the grave. Apparently the
vices of their ancestors had sapped the vital energy of the
later Merovings ; scarce one of them survived to reach the age
of thirty, and each long minority made the kingly power more
and more shadowy, and the authority of the great mayor more
and more real. Childebert iii. was followed by one more
young boy, his son Dagobert iii. (711-16), the last of the
four puppet kings in whose names the great Pippin swayed
the Frankish sceptre.

Pippin lived to a great age, and had the misfortune to lose
in his declining years his two legitimate sons, Grimoald and
Drogo, whom he had destined to succeed him. The heirs
then remaining to him were Theudoald, a young boy, the son
of Grimoald, and Carl [Charles Martel], an illegitimate son
whom he had by a concubine named Alphaida. The former
was only eight years of age, the latter twenty-five , but the old
Death of man designated the boy Theudoald as his suc-
Pippin,7i5. cessor, hoping that he might be spared to see
him grow up to manhood. He died, however, within a few

The History of the great Mayors of the Palace 265

months, and a strange problem was put before the Franks,
whether they would tolerate a child-mayor ruling in the name
of a child-king. Pippin's widow Plectrudis tried to seize the
reins of government in behalf of her little grandson, and some
of the Austrasians adhered to her cause. As a precautionary
measure she cast her husband's natural son Charles into
prison^ knowing that many men regarded him as the only
possible heir to Pippin's position, since the idea of a child-
mayor was preposterous.

Plectrudis' endeavour to rule in the name of her grandson
proved, as might have been expected, a complete failure.
The counts and dukes of Neustria hastened to take the
opportunity of shaking off the domination of the Austrasians.
They mustered in arms, chose a certain Raginfred, one of
themselves, as Neustrian Mayor of the Palace, and raised an
army to invade Austrasia in the name of the young Dago-
bert III. They did not shrink from allying themselves with
the enemies of the state, the Frisians and Saxons, who attacked
Austrasia from the rear, while they themselves, advancing
through the Ardennes, wasted all the lands between Meuse
and Rhine with fire and sword. Plectrudis and her grandson
shut themselves up within the walls of Koln.

Before the end of the year, however, two important events
occurred to give a new turn to the war. Charles, the son of
Pippin, escaped from his stepmother's prison, and ^^.^^ ^^
was at once saluted as chief by the majority of charies
the Austrasians, who had been driven to wild Cartel,
rage by the ravages of the Neustrian army, and yearned for a
leader capable of commanding in the field. Shortly after the
young king, whom East and West had both acknowledged,
died, as did all his ancestors, just when he had attained man-
hood, and immediately after the birth of his first child.
Like the Grand Lamas of Thibet, these wretched Merovings
expired, with hardly an exception, just as they grew old enough
to interfere in politics. As with the Lamas, so with the Franks,
we cannot help suspecting that there was more in these

266 European History, 476-918

sudden deaths than appears on the surface : it certainly was
not to the interest of those about the persons of the kings
that they should ever live long enough to assert their regal
pov/er.

On the death of Dagobert, the Neustrians drew out from
the monastery, where he had been placed in earliest infancy,
the son of Childerich i., the king whom Bodolin had slain in
678. The monk Daniel was saluted by the royal name of
Chilperich, and raised on the shield : he was the first Meroving
for eighty years who had reached manhood at the moment of
his accession, being in his thirty-eighth year. Chilperich, in
spite of his monastic rearing — or perhaps in virtue of it —
Chilperich II., tumcd out a far more vigorous personage than
7^^- any of his relatives, and cannot be called one of
the ' rots faineants.^ He continually took the field at the head
of his Neustrians, and did his best to become their national
champion. Unfortunately the times were against him.

In 716 the Neustrian king and mayor marched together
into Austrasia to make an end of the resistance ahke of
Plectrudis and of Charles. At the same time Radbod, the
Frisian duke, pushed up the Rhine towards Koln. Charles
offered battle to the invaders near that city, but was defeated,
and forced to take refuge in the mountains of the Eifel.
Chilperich then laid siege to K51n, and compelled Plectrudis
and her party to acknowledge him as king, give up the royal
treasure-hoard of Austrasia, and withdraw the boy Theudoald's
claim to the mayoralty. But while the Neustrian army was
returning in triumph to its own land, Charles, who had
assembled a new force, fell upon it near Malmedy, on the
skirts of the Ardennes. At the battle of Ambleve all the
work of Chilperich's vigorous campaign was undone, for his
army was routed, and he and his mayor, Raginfred, barely
escaped with their hves (716).

This was the first blow of Charles the Hammer [Martel],
as after generations named him. From henceforth his career
was to be one of uninterrupted success against every foe who

The History of the great Mayors of the Palace 267

dared withstand him. Early in the spring he followed up his
first stroke by invading Neustria, and defeating Battle of
Chilperich for a second time at Vincy, near Cam- vincy, 717.
bray. Pressing on after his victory he pursued the Neustrians
up to the gates of Paris, and when resistance ceased, turned
back in triumph to Austrasia. There he compelled his step-
mother Plectrudis to give up Koln to him, and dispersed
her partisans. Being now undisputed master of the Eastern
kingdom, he proclaimed a certain Chlothar king, and named
himself Mayor of the Palace. Chlothar iv., whose descent is
not certain, but who was perhaps grandson of the Irish exile
Dagobert 11., was of course a mere puppet in his mayor's
hands. After securing for himself a legitimate position in the
state, Charles started forth to humble all the enemies who had
vexed Austrasia in its time of trouble. He drove the Saxons
over the Weser, compelled Radbod the Frisian to surrender
West Friesland for the second time, and then turned against
Neustria. It was in vain that king Chilperich, who fought
hard to maintain his independence, joined forces with Eudo,
who in the late troubles had made himself independent duke
of Aquitaine. Charles beat them both at a battle near Soissons,
and chased king and duke beyond the Loire. This battle of
Soissons was the last effort alike of the Merovingian house and
the Neustrian realm. After it had been lost they both bowed
before the Austrasian sword, and humbly took their orders
from the great Mayor of the Palace (718).

At this conjuncture Charles's puppet, king Chlothar iv.
died. The victor of Soissons might perchance have chosen
to proclaim himself king of Austrasia, but remembering the
fate of his grandfather Grimoald, preferred to offer terms to
the exiled king Chilperich. On recognising Charles as mayor
of East and West alike, the vanquished Meroving was allowed
to return to Neustria, and proclaimed King of all the Franks
(719). He had deserved a better fate than to sink into a mere
name and shadow, and if he had been born eighty years
earlier might perchance by his courage and persistence have

268 European History^ 476-918

given a longer lease of power to the Merovingian house. But
the times were now too late for his energy to avail.

Chilperich 11. died only a year after his submission to
Charles. There remain only two more names to chronicle
in the ancient royal house, Theuderich iv. and Childerich 11.
These obscure persons — so obscure that the chroniclers do
not even give us the date of Theuderich's death — were too weak
even to be used as tools by the enemies of the great mayor.
A well-known passage in Einhard describes their wretched
position : — ' For many years the house of the Merovings was
destitute of vigour and had nothing illustrious about it save the
empty name of king. For the rulers of their palace possessed
both the wealth and the power of the kingdom, bearing the
name of mayor, and had charge of all high matters of state.
There was nothing for the king to do save to content himself
with his title, and sit with his long hair and long beard on the
throne, like the effigy of a ruler, to hear foreign ambassadors
harangue him and answer them in words put into his mouth as if
speaking for himself. His royal name was profitless and his
allowance of revenue was at the discretion of the mayor, nor
was there anything he could really call his own save one royal
manor of moderate value (Montmacq). There he kept his

Effeteness family and his little establishment of servants.

of the last When he had to travel he set out in a covered
erovings. ^^^^^^^^ drawn by oxen, and driven by a rustic
retainer. Thus he used to travel up to his palace, or to the
national gathering, which met once a year to settle the affairs
of the realm, and thus he would return. But the administra-
tion of the kingdom, and everything that had to be done
either at home or abroad was cared for by the Mayor of the
Palace.' Theuderich's name covers the years 720-737, Chil-
derich's the years 742-752. Between the one's death and the
other's accession there was a period of six years, in which the
great mayor did not even trouble to provide himself with a
nominal king, but ruled on his own authority.

The twenty-two years of Charles Martel's rule as mayor of

The History of the great Mayors of the Palace 269

Neustria and Austrasia are the turning-point in the history of
Western and Central Europe (719-41 ). Continuing the policy
of his father Pippin the Younger, both at home and abroad,
he devoted all his energies to restoring the old boundaries of
the Frankish realm, taming its heathen neighbours, spreading
Christianity among the more distant German tribes, and restor-
ing law and order among the unruly counts and dukes within
the empire. His strong hand was as valuable in ending
anarchy at home as in winning victory abroad.

The six years of civil war which followed the death of Pippin
the Younger had undone most of the work of that great man,
and Charles had to commence once more the task which had
busied his father. He was, however, in a position Rise of the
of greater firmness and strength than Pippin had mayoralty,
enjoyed, and was able to make his will felt all over the
Frankish realms in a much more thorough fashion. It was his
task to make the arm of the central government feared all over
the kingdom, as much as it had been in the days of the earliest
Merovingian kings. The task was hard, because a century and
a half of feeble administration had taught the local counts and
dukes all the arts of insubordination, more especially the trick
of utilising the annual meetings of the great national council
— what England would have called the Witan — for the purpose
of overawing their ruler. They appeared at the * March-field,'
followed by great hosts of armed followers, and bound them-
selves together by family or party confederacies to withstand
the central government. In this they succeeded as long as the
feeble Merovings continued, and were able to elect the
officers of state at their pleasure or to distribute the local
governorships among each other. The great mayors put an
end to this. The house of St. Arnulf had gathered such a
great following of faithful partisans in Austrasia that, by their
aid, it could face any combination of discontented counts.
The other great houses of Austrasia seem to have gradually
disappeared, and all the smaller nobility and freemen of the
land between Meuse and Rhine had become the enthusiastic

2/0 European History, 476-918

followers of Pippin and Charles. In return the great mayors
planted Austrasians in office all over the kingdom, and trusted
mainly to their aid in all crises. Their system was a domina-
tion of the Austrasians over the Neustrians, Burgundians,
Aquitanians, and East Germans : their empire reposed on the
fact that their own countrymen were loyal, united, and self-
confident, while the other races were jealous, divided, and
humbled by recent defeat. Yet the struggle was no easy one.
It needed the repeated blows of Ambleve, Vincy, and Soissons
to crush the Neustrian spirit of separatism. Aquitaine was
only kept down by campaign after campaign directed against
its disloyal dukes. Neither south Gaul nor south Germany
(Suabia and Bavaria) were really tamed till they had been
deprived of their native dukes, and cut up into countships
or gaus^ administered by Austrasian chiefs. But the house
of St. Arnulf continued to produce great men for genera-
tion after generation, and the taming was finally accom-
plished.

The work of the great mayors without was no less arduous
than within. To subdue those indomitable tribes of northern
Germany, from whose pathless w^oodlands even the iron legions
of Augustus had drawn back in despair, was a great work for
the tumultuary armies of Austrasia to accomplish. But they
carried out the struggle to the bittej: end, till they had con-
quered the very easternmost Teuton, and had looked upon
the Baltic and the unknown boundaries of the Slavs. Bavaria
and Frisia took many a hard blow ere they were incorporated
with the Frankish realm ; but at last they relinquished, with a
sigh, their heathen independence. Even the Italian kingdom
of the gallant Lombards, protected by the great Roman
fortresses of Pavia, Verona, and Ravenna could not withstand
the Austrasian sword.

But of all the military achievements of the East Franks
under the house of St. Arnulf, the grandest, as well as the
most enduring in effect, was to be won over a foe unknown to
their ancestors, a new enemy who threatened not merely to

The History of the great Mayors of the Palace 27 1

ravage the borders of the realm hke Frisian or Lombard, but
to dismember it by lopping away Aquitaine from Approach of
Western Christendom. Great as were their other the Saracens,
feats, the most important of all was the turning back of the
wave of Mussulman fanaticism at the battle of Poictiers. For
that crowning mercy, if for nothing else, Europe owes an
eternal debt of gratitude to the great mayors of the eighth
century and the indomitable hosts of Austrasia.

Three years before the death of Pippin the Younger, king
Roderic the Visigoth had fallen at the battle of the Guadalete,
and Spain had been overrun by the infidel. In 720, — the first
year of the complete domination of Charles over the two
Frankish kingdoms, — the Saracens had pushed beyond the
bounds of the Iberian peninsula, crossed the Pyrenees, and
entered Aquitaine, where they laid siege to Toulouse. Their
first blow fell on Eudo, duke of Aquitaine, who had just
acknowledged himself the vassal of the Frankish king, and
given up his claim to reign as an independent prince. The
duke obtained aid from the Frankish governors on his
borders, attacked the Saracens in their camp at Toulouse, and
put them to rout with the loss of their leader El-Samah.
But though beaten in battle, the Moslems kept a foothold
north of the Pyrenees, by holding to the old Visigothic capital
of Narbonne. The danger from them was but postponed, not
finally warded off. Ere long Charles himself was to be
obliged to take the field, to defend the southern borders of
the Frankish realm against expeditions far more formidable
than that which duke Eudo had turned back in 721.

CHAPTER XVI

THE LOMBARDS AND THE PAPACY

653-743

Usurpation and successful wars of Grimoald — Reigns of Berthari and Cuni-
bert — Quarrels of the Papacy and the empire — The exile of Pope Martin I.
— Gradual alienation of Italy from the empire — Civil wars of Aribert ii.
and Ansprand — Successful reign of Liutprand — Leo the Isaurian and
Gregory ii. — Italy rebels against the Iconoclasts — Liutprand conquers
most of the Exarchate,

After the death of Rothari the law-giver the Lombard king-
dom entered into its second stage : it had now almost reached
the full growth of its territorial extension, and had settled
down into its final shape. For nearly a hundred years the main
events of its political history are civil wars, or defensive cam-
paigns against its two neighbours, the Roman exarch and the
Chagan of the Avars. There is no sustained effort either to
expel the Imperialists from Italy, or to extend the boundary of
the Lombard realm to the north. It was only in the middle
of the eighth century that the estrangement between Constan-
tinople and its Roman subjects in Italy led to such a weak-
ening of the Imperial authority, that the Lombard kings were
able to seize the long-coveted Exarchate. The history of the
cutting short of the dominions of the eastern Caesar beyond
the Adriatic turns much more on the growth of the Papal
power, and on the quarrel on the subject of Iconoclasm, which
sundered the churches of Rome and Constantinople, than on
the ambition or ability of the rulers of Lombardy.

On the murder of Rothari's short-lived son in 653, the
Lombards elected as their king Aribert, a nephew of the

272

The Lombards and the Papacy 273

sainted queen Theodelinda, whose name was still held in
kindly memory all over the land. Count Gundoald, Aribert's
father, had long been settled in Italy : he had Aribert i.
crossed the Alps with his pious sister more than ^53-62.
half a century before, so that Aribert himself was counted a
Lombard, and not a Bavarian. The new king reigned ob-
scurely for nine years (653-62) : he waged no wars and was
mainly noted as a friend of the clergy and a builder of
churches. He was a fervent Catholic, and did his best to
root out the few traces of Arianism yet remaining in Lom-
bardy. The land had peace under his sway, but ere he died he
sowed the seeds of future troubles by the unhappy inspiration
which led him to induce the Lombard Witan to elect his two
sons, Godebert and Berthari, as joint heirs to the kingship.

When their father was dead, Godebert, the elder brother,
dwelt as king at Pavia, while Berthari took possession of
Milan. Before they had been reigning a year the inevitable
civil war broke out, ' because evil-minded men sowed discord
and suspicion between them.' They were mustering their
followers for a decisive campaign, when Godebert was
treacherously murdered by the chief of his own supporters,
Grimoald, duke of Benevento, who had left his duchy in the
south, and led his men-at-arms to Pavia, under ^ . ,^ , .

. . ' Gnmoald king

the pretence of helpmg his suzerain agamst his oftheLom-
unruly younger brother. Grimoald took posses- ^^^^^^ ^2-71.
sion of the crown, and married his victim's sister, in order
to connect himself with the house of the holy Theodelinda.
He chased Berthari out of Milan, and forced him to take
refuge with the Chagan of the Avars, in the far east, by the
shores of the Danube.

The unscrupulous usurper reigned for nine years (662-71)
over the whole Lombard realm, holding his own court at
Pavia, while Romuald, the son of his first marriage, ruled for
him at Benevento. This was the only period in the whole
history of the Lombards when the king's mandate was as well
obeyed in the southern Apennines as in the valley of the Po.

PERIOD I. S

274 European History, 476-918

It was, therefore, fortunate for the Lombard race that the
attack on Italy of the vigorous emperor Constantinus (Con-
stans II.) fell within the years of Grimoald's reign. Though
he overran much of the duchy of Benevento, the energy of
Constantinus failed before the advent of king Grimoald, and
the danger passed away {66'^}

His successes against the emperor were not the only
triumphs of king Grimoald : he repelled an irruption of the
Avars into Venetia, and repulsed a Frankish army which the
Mayor Ebroin, who ruled in behalf of king Chlothar in.,
sent across the Western Alps. His only territorial gain, how-
ever, was the capture from the Imperialists of the little town of
Forimpopoli, near Rimini, which he stormed by surprise on
Easter Day, and harried most cruelly, ' slaying the worshippers
at the altar, and the deacons at the baptismal font, while all
were engaged in celebrating the Holy Feast.' We might have
supposed that the Romans in central Italy would have fared
worse after the repulse of Constantinus : but no other city was
lost. In the south, however, Grimoald's son Romuald cap-
tured Taranto and Brindisi, two of the chief remaining strong-
holds of the Imperialists in Apulia. But this was after the
death of Constantinus, during the troubles caused by the
rebellion of Mezecius in Sicily (668-9 ?)•

In spite of the treachery by which he had attained the
throne, Grimoald's victories made him very popular among the
Lombards, and many tales survive bearing witness to his
generosity and clemency, no less than to his strong hand and
cunning. But when he died it was seen that his power rested
purely upon his own personal merit : the Lombards did not elect
as king either his elder son Romuald, the duke of Benevento,
or his younger son, Garibald, whom the daughter of Aribert
had borne him. They recalled from exile king Berthari, the
son of Aribert, whom Grimoald had driven out of Milan ten
years before. This prince had spent an unhappy life in
wandering from land to land, from the Danube to the British
^ See page 245.

The Lombards and the Papacy 275

seas, and was sailing to England when the news of the
usurper's death reached him. He returned to Italy, and was
received with submission by the whole Lombard race, and
solemnly crowned at Pavia.

Berthari reigned for seventeen years (672-88) in peace and
quietness, for he loved not war. He was ' a man of religion,
a true Catholic, tenacious of justice, a nourisher of the poor ;
he built the famous nunnery of St. Agatha, and the great
Church of the Virgin outside the walls of Pavia.' The kings of
this type, whom the monastic chroniclers delighted most to
honour, were not those who made history. Berthari never
attempted to conquer Rome or the Exarchate, and only took
arms once in his reign, when he was assaulted by a rebeUious
duke, Alahis of Trent, whom he subdued and then pardoned,
— as a Christian man should — a pardon which was to cost
Lombardy much blood in the next reign.

The reign of his son Cunibert (688-700) was far more dis-
turbed. This king was a man of mixed qualities, brave,
generous, and popular, but careless, incautious, and given over
to the wine-cup. He was caught unprepared and driven from
Pavia by duke Alahis, who now rebelled again, in spite of the
fact that his life had once been spared by Cunibert's father.
Cunibert was driven for a time from all his realm, save a
single castle in the lake of Como, where he stood a long siege.
But Alahis, by his tyranny, made himself unbearable to the
Lombards, and ere many months had elapsed the lawful king
was able to issue from his stronghold and face the usurper in
battle. They met at Coronate on the Adda, not far from
Lodi, Alahis backed by the * Austrians ' of Venetia, Cunibert
by the * Neustrians ' of Piedmont. The men of the West had
the better, Alahis was slain, and the son of Berthari resumed
his kingship over the whole Lombard realm. This was not
the last rebellion that Cunibert had to crush : all through his
reign we hear of risings of the unruly dukes, and of the
punishments which were inflicted on them when they fell into
their master's hands.

2/6 European History, 476-918

There is nothing of first-rate historical importance to relate
of the doings of the Lombard kings in this last quarter of the
seventh century. But while Berthari was building churches,
or Cunibert striving with his rebels, the course of events in
the city of Rome was growing more and more important. The
papacy and the empire were gradually working up to a pitch
of estrangement and mutual repulsion, which was in the next
generation to lead to open war between them. We have
sketched in an earlier chapter the work of pope Gregory the
Great, in raising the papacy to a condition of unprecedented
spiritual importance in the Christian world, and no less in
building up a position of high secular importance for the
The Pa ac Pop^ in the govcmance of Rome. For half a
in the seventh ccntury after Gregory's death this state of affairs
century. remained unaltered. The Pope was now firmly

established as patriarch of the West, and sent missions to
Britain, Gaul, and Spain without let or hindrance. Nor was
his secular authority much interfered with, either by the
exarch or by the home government at Constantinople. But
friction and struggling began under the reign of the stern and
ruthless Constantinus (Constans 11.) and the hot-headed pope
Martin i. We have mentioned elsewhere^ how the emperor
published his ' Type ' or edict of Comprehension, forbidding
further discussions on the question of the Monothelite heresy.
Martin not merely refused to acquiesce in letting the discussion
sleep, but summoned a council which declared the ' Type ' to
be blasphemous and irreverent. Martin wrote to the same
effect to the kings of the Franks, Visigoths, and English, thus
calhng in foreign sovereigns to participate in a dispute between
himself and his master. Relying on his remoteness from By-
zantium, and on the grandeur of his position as Patriarch of
the West, he attempted to defy Constantinus. The emperor's
proceedings show that he was determined to assert his power,
but that he was fully conscious of the danger and difficulty of
dealing with such an important personage as the bishop of
^ See page 244.

The Lombards and the Papacy 277

Rome had now become. He had to wait for a favourable
opportunity for punishing Martin, and it was not by openly
arresting him in the face of the people, but by pate ot Pope
secretly kidnapping him, that he got him into his Martin, 655.
power. But when once shipped to Constantinople the Pope
felt his sovereign's wrath : insulted, loaded with chains, im-
prisoned, and banished to the remote Crimea, Martin learnt
that the emperor's arm was still strong enough to reach out to
Rome (655).

But all Italy regarded Martin as a martyr to orthodoxy, and
his fate did much to estrange the Romans from their loyalty
to the empire. Nor was their wrath diminished by the sacri-
legious plunder of the Pantheon and other Roman churches,
which Constantinus carried out, when in 663 he deigned to
visit his Western dominions. It would seem that Constantinus
himself was fully conscious that the Roman see was growing
too strong, and deliberately strove to sap its resources, for at
this time he granted to the archbishop of Ravenna a formal
exemption from any duty of spiritual obedience to the Pope
as patriarch of the West, and constituted him an independent
authority in the exarchate. For twenty years this schism of
Rome and Ravenna continued, but in the end the old tradi-
tional prestige of the see of St. Peter triumphed over the
ambition of the Ravennese archbishops.

If there had been a strong pontiff at this moment, it is pro-
bable that an open rupture might have taken place between
the papacy and the empire. But pope Vitalian was a weak
man, the fate of his predecessor Martin had cowed him, and
the idea of cutting Rome away from the respublica Romana^
as the empire was still habitually called, had not yet entered
into the minds of the Italian subjects of Byzantium. To dis-
own the Imperial supremacy would have been tantamount to
throwing Rome into the hands of king Grimoald the Lom-
bard, and neither Pope nor people contemplated such a
prospect with equanimity.

Accordingly the breach between Rome and Byzantium was

278 European History, 476-918

deferred for another generation. After Constantinus was dead,
more friendly relations reigned for a space, for his son Con-
stantine v. was impeccably orthodox. He held the Council of
Constantinople in 681 with the high approval of pope Agatho,
whose representatives duly appeared at it, to join in the final
crushing of the Monothelite heretics. Constantine, in the
fulness of his friendship to the papacy, even granted to the
Roman see the dangerous privilege that when at papal elec-
tions the suffrages of the clergy, the people, and the soldiery,
— the garrison of Rome — were unanimously fixed on any one
person, that individual might be at once consecrated bishop
of Rome, without having to wait for an imperial mandate of
approval from Constantinople. As a matter of fact, however,
unanimous elections were very rare, and the exarchs of
Ravenna are still found interfering to decide between the
claims of rival candidates.

Signs of a breach became evident once again in the days
of the tyrant Justinian 11. When pope Sergius refused
obedience to his behests, the emperor bade the exarch seize
him and send him to Constantinople. But not only the
Roman mob, but the soldiers of the imperial garrison took up
arms to resist Justinian's officials when they tried to lay
hands on Sergius : the ties of military obedience had already
come to be weaker than those of spiritual respect, and the
Pope triumphed, for Justinian was deposed, mutilated, and
sent to Cherson by his rebellious subjects, ere he had time to
punish tlie Romans.

The twenty-two years of anarchy and dissolution at Con-
stantinople which followed the deposition of Justinian (695-
717) were fraught with important consequences in Italy.
The ephemeral emperors of those days were unable to assert
their authority over the West, and we once more find the
popes assuming secular functions, after the fashion ot Gregory
the Great in the preceding century. John vi. levied taxes in
Rome, made treaties with the Lombard duke of Benevento,
and even protected and restored the exarch Theophylactus

The Lombards and the Papacy 279

when he had been expelled from Ravenna by a military
revolt. Gregory 11. went so far in his independence as to
refuse to acknowledge the usurping emperor Quarrel of
Philippicus ; by his advice ' the Roman people and^Phn/J-
determined that state-documents should not bear picus.
the name of a heretical Caesar, nor the money be struck with
his effigy. So the portrait of Philippicus was not set up in
the Church, nor his name introduced in the prayers at Mass.'
Gregory only consented to recognise Philippicus' successor
Anastasius 11. when he heard that the new emperor was a
man of unimpeachable orthodoxy. The independent posi-
tion of the popes had now grown so marked that the next
quarrel with Constantinople was destined to lead to the final
rupture of relations between the papacy and the empire. It
was impossible that things should remain as they were : the
breach was inevitable. Its cause was to be the accession of
the stern Iconoclast, Leo the Isaurian, and his attempt to
enforce his own religious views on the western, no less than
the eastern provinces of his empire. The protagonists in
the final struggle are Leo, pope Gregory 11., and the Lombard
king Liutprand, whose position and power we must now pro-
ceed to explain.

When king Cunibert died in the year 700, he left his
throne to his young son Liutbert, a mere boy, whose realm
was to be administered by a regent-guardian, count Ansprand,
the wisest of the Lombards. A minority was always fatal to
one of the early Teutonic kingdoms. Only eight months
after Liutbert had been proclaimed king, his nearest adult
kinsmen rose in arms against him, to claim the Rebellion of
crown. These were Reginbert, duke of Turin, Reginbertof
and his son Aribert, the child and grandchild of '^"""•
king Godebert, and the cousins of the boy-king's father.

Reginbert was followed by all the Neustrian Lombards,
and was able to defeat the regent Ansprand at Novara. He
died immediately after his victory, but his son Aribert followed
up the success by winning a second battle in front of Pavia,

28o European History^ 476-918

and taking prisoner the boy Liutbert. The victor seized the

Civil wars Capital, and was hailed as king by his followers,

of the under the name of Aribert 11. The regent

Lombards. Ansprand, who had escaped from Pavia, tried

to keep up the civil war in the name of his ward : but the

new king put an end to this attempt by ordering the boy

Liutbert to be strangled in his bath. Ansprand then fled

over the Alps and took refuge with the duke of Bavaria.

Aribert 11. reigned over the Lombards for ten troubled
years (701-11), fully occupied by the tasks of putting down
rebellious dukes, driving back raids of the Carinthian Slavs
from Venetia, and endeavouring to assert his power over Spoleto
and Benevento. The time was opportune for attacking the
imperial possessions in Italy, but Aribert refrained from
making the attempt. He was friendly to the papacy, and
made over to pope John vi. a great gift of estates in the
Cottian Alps : nor did he assist his vassal Faroald, duke of
Spoleto, when the latter in 703 made an attempt on the
Exarchate. Aribert preferred to live in peace both with the
Pope and the Emperor.

Aribert 11. had gained his kingdom by the sword, and by
the sword he was destined to lose it. In 711 the exile
Ansprand, once the regent for the boy Liutbert, invaded Italy
at the head of a Bavarian army, lent to him by duke Teut-
bert. Many of the Lombards still loved the house of Ber-
thari and hated Aribert as a murderer and usurper. The
army of Ansprand was ere long increased by many thousands of
the ' Austrian ' Lombards, and he was soon able to face the king
in the open field near Pavia. The battle was indecisive, but
when it was over Aribert retired within the walls of the city.
His retreat discouraged his army, which began to fall away
from him: thereupon Aribert determined to take with
him the royal treasure, and flee to Gaul to buy aid of the
Franks. While endeavouring to cross the Ticino by night
with all his hoard, he was accidentally drowned, and left the
throne vacant for his rival Ansprand (712).

The Lombards and the Papacy 281

The ex-regent was now proclaimed king, but only survived
his triumph a few months : on his deathbed he prevailed on
the Lombards to elect as his colleague his son Liutprand,
who therefore became sole ruler when his father died a few
days later.

Liutprand was the most able and energetic king who ever
ruled the Lombard realm, and his long reign of thirty-one
years (712-43) saw the completion of the long- Liutprand,
delayed process of the eviction of the East Lomblrdr,
Romans from Central Italy, and the rise of the 712-43.
Lombards to the highest pitch of success which they ever
knew — a rise which was to be closely followed by the extinc-
tion of their kingdom.

When Leo the Isaurian commenced his crusade against
image-worship, Liutprand had been on the throne for fourteen
years. In these earlier years of his reign he was occupied in
strengthening his position, and made no attack on the
Imperial dominions in Italy, though he is found making war
on the Bavarians, and capturing some of their castles on
the upper Adige.

But in 726 things came to a head, when Leo issued his
famous edict against images, forbidding all worship of
statues and paintings. Pope Gregory 11. was not in a mood
to listen to such a command from Constantinople. Quarrel of
He was already in great disfavour with the em- an?Leo the
peror for having advised the Italians to resist isaurian.
some extraordinary taxation which Leo had imposed to main-
tain the Saracen war. When he received Leo's rescript, and a
letter addressed to himself requesting him to carry out the
imperial orders, and destroy the images of Rome, he burst out
into open contumacy, and the Romans, with all the other
Italians, followed his lead. Exhilaratus, duke of Naples,
who tried to carry out the edict in his duchy, was slain by a
mob, and many other imperial officials were maltreated or
driven off by those whom they governed. The cit'es elected
new rulers over themselves, and would have chosen and

282 European History, 476-918

proclaimed an Emperor of the West, if Gregory 11. had not kept
them from this final step. Meanwhile, all the imperial pro-
Liutprand vinces of Italy being in open sedition, and quite
ExTrcha^tl^^ cut off from Constantinople, king Liutprand
727. ' thought the moment had at last come for round

ing off the Lombard dominions by seizing the long-coveted
Exarchate. He crossed the Po, took Bologna, with most of
the other cities of Emilia, and then conquered Osimo,
Rimini, Ancona, and all the Pentapolis. Chassis, the seaport
of Ravenna, fell before him, but the exarch Paul succeeded
in preserving the great City of the Marshes for a short time
longer, till he was murdered by rioters (727). The Lombard
king's conquests were made with astonishing ease, for in each
city the anti-imperialist faction betrayed the gates to him
without fighting.

Soon after, the triumph of Liutprand was completed by
the surrender of Ravenna itself: the exarch Eutychius fled to
Venice, already a semi-independent city, but one which still
preserved a nominal allegiance to the empire. Meanwhile,
pope Gregory 11. was occupied in writing lengthy manifestos
Gregor II Setting forth the atrocious conduct of Leo, and
rebels against the intrinsic rationality of reverencing images.
Leo II. jj-g let^-gj-g iQ ^Q emperor were couched in

language of studied insolence. ' I must use coarse and rude
arguments,' he wrote, ' to suit a coarse and rude mind such
as yours,' and then proceeded to say that 'if you were to go
into a boys' school and announce yourself as a destroyer of
images, the smallest children would throw their writing tablets
at your head, for even babes and sucklings might teach you,
though you refuse to listen to the wise.' After completely
confusing king Uzziah with king Hezekiah in an argument
drawn from the Old Testament, Gregory then proceeded to
quote apocryphal anecdotes from early church history. He
wound up by asserting that in virtue of the power that he
inherited from St. Peter, he might consign the emperor
to eternal damnation, but that Leo was so thoroughly damned

The Lombards and the Papdty 283

by his own crimes that there was no need to inflict any
further curse on him. ' A more practical threat was that
if the emperor sent an army against Rome, he would
retire into Campania and take refuge with the Lombards

(729).

As a matter of fact, however, to throw himself into the
hands of the Lombards was the last thing that pope Gregory
desired to do. He had the greatest dread of Position of
falUng under the direct authority of Liutprand, Gregory 11.
for the occupation of Rome by a powerful and strong-handed
Italian king would have been fatal to the secular power of the
papacy. It was easy to disobey a powerless exarch and a
distant emperor, but if Liutprand had become ruler of all
Italy, the popes would have been forced to be his humble
subjects. Gregory wished to rid himself of the domination of
Leo, without falling into the clutches of Liutprand. While
disclaiming his allegiance to the emperor, he pretended to
adhere to the empire.

Meanwhile an unexpected turn of events had checked the
career of victory of king Liutprand. While he was absent at
Pavia, the exarch Eutychius had collected some troops at
Venice, and aided by the forces of the semi-independent
citizens of the lagoon-city had landed near Ravenna. The
place was betrayed to him by the imperialist party within the
walls, and became once more the seat of imperial power in
Italy. At the same time the dukes of Spoleto and Benevento
took arms against their suzerain, and allied themselves with
pope Gregory (729).

Liutprand determined to conquer the Lombard rebels
before resuming the hard task of retaking Ravenna. He even
made a truce with the exarch, by which it was stipulated that
they should mutually aid each other, the one in subduing the
revolted dukes, the other in compelling the Pope to return
to his allegiance. Accordingly Eutychius marched against
Rome, and Liutprand against Spoleto. On the king's approach
the two dukes submitted to him, and swore to be his faithful

284 'European History, 476-918

vassals. He then moved toward Rome, which the exarch
Liutprand ^^^ already besieging. But he had no wish that
pacifies Italy, the imperial power should be strengthened by
'^^°' the recovery of Rome, and, encamping his army

in the Field of Nero, outside the city, proceeded to claim to
act as arbitrator between Gregory and Eutychius. They were
too weak to resist him, and the Pope at least gladly acquiesced
in the pacification of Italy which Liutprand proposed. The
exarch was to return to Ravenna, leaving Rome unmolested,
and to be content with the possession of Ravenna only, all
his other lost dominions in the Pentapolis and ^Emilia re-
maining in the hands of the Lombards. Gregory, in con-
sideration of being left unmolested in Rome, professed to
return to his allegiance, but in reality remained in an inde-
pendent position. He did not withdraw his opposition to
Iconoclasm, and took advantage of the peace to call together
a great council of Italian bishops, ninety-three in number,
who solemnly anathematised all who refused to reverence
images, though they did not curse the emperor by name (730).

Two months later pope Gregory 11. died, and was succeeded
by Gregory iii., as great an enemy of Iconoclasm as his
namesake. He had no sooner displayed his views, than the
emperor, discontented with the peace which the exarch had
concluded, and much irritated by the anathema of the
Council of Rome, revenged himself on the papacy by issuing
an edict which removed from the jurisdiction of the Pope, as
Patriarch of the West, the Illyrian and south Italian dioceses
which had hitherto paid spiritual obedience to Rome. For
the future, not only Epirus and Sicily, but even Apulia and
Calabria, were to look to the Patriarch of Constantinople as
their head and chief (731).

In 732 Leo took a more practical step for reducing the
Pope to obedience. He fitted out a great armament in the
ports of Asia Minor, which was to sail to Italy, to recover by
force of arms the lost regions of the Exarchate, and to arrest
Gregory iii. and send him in chains to Constantinople. But

The Lombards and the Papacy 285

the fates were against the restoration of imperial authority in
the West : the fleet was completely wrecked by a storm in
the Adriatic, and the fragments of it which reached Ravenna
effected nothing. This was the last serious attempt of the
empire to recover central Italy. Henceforth the Last effort
Popes went their own way, while the exarch, conquer Italy,
penned up in the single fortress of Ravenna, 732-
awaited with trembling the outbreak of the next Lombard
war — a war which would certainly sweep away him and his
shrunken Exarchate.

But for eight years after the treaty of 730, king Liutprand
maintained peace over all Italy. He was a pious prince, and
a respecter of the papacy, to which he had even made a grant
of territory, ceding the town of Sutri in Tuscany, which he
had captured from the exarch in the war of 728-30. His
reign was a time of prosperity for Lombardy : the southern
dukes were compelled to obey orders from Pavia : the Slav
and Avar were kept back from the northern marches, Liut-
prand also kept up his friendly relations with Charles Martel,
the great Mayor of the Palace in Gaul. When Charles was
looking about for a neighbour sovereign who should, accord-
ing to old Teutonic custom, gird with arms and clip the hair of
his son Pippin on his arrival at manhood, he chose Liutprand
to discharge this friendly office. On the invasion of Provence
by the Saracens in 736-7, Charles asked the Lombard for the
aid of his host, and Liutprand crossed the Alps and joined in
expelling the infidels from Aix and Aries.

The peace of Italy was not broken till 738 when Transi-
mund duke of Spoleto rebelled, not for the first time, against
Liutprand. The king crushed the revolt with his accustomed
vigour, and the duke was compelled to fly : he took refuge
at Rome with pope Gregory iii. Liutprand ^.xvX'or^.ndL
promptly demanded his surrender : Gregory re- attacks Rome,
fused, and the Lombard army at once marched ^^^*
into the duchy of Rome. The king captured Orte, Bomazo,
and two other towns in south Tuscany, and menaced Rome

286 European History^ 476-918

with a siege. Gregory iii. could hope for neither help nor
sympathy from his master the emperor Leo, whom he had so
grievously insulted. Accordingly he determined to seek aid
from the one other power which might be able to succour
him, the great Mayor of the Franks. He sent to Charles
Martel the golden keys of the tomb of Saint Peter, and be-
sought him to defend the holy city against the impious Lom-
bard. He conferred on the Mayor the high-sounding title of
Roman Patrician, which was not legally his to give, for only
Gregor III ^'^^ cmpcror could confer it. He even offered to
asks aid from transfer to the ruler of the Franks the shadowy
the Franks. allegiance which Rome still paid to the emperor.
Thus did Gregory iii., first of all the Roman pontiffs,
endeavour to bring down upon Italy the curse of foreign
invasion. He had drawn upon himself the wrath of Liutprand
by his secular policy : the war arose purely from the fact that
he had favoured the rebellion of the duke of Spoleto, and
sheltered him when he fled. Yet he made the Lombard
invasion a matter of sacrilege, complaining to Charles that
Liutprand's attack was an impious invasion of the rights of
the Church, and a deliberate insult to the majesty of St. Peter.
Considering that the king had saved him from destruction
eight years before, Gregory must be accused of gross ingrati-
tude, as well as of deliberate misrepresentation and hypocrisy.
But the Pope had imbibed a bitter and quite irrational hatred for
the Lombard race : the danger that he might lose his secular
power, by Rome being annexed to the realm of Liutprand,
caused Gregory to view the pious, peaceable, and orthodox
king of the Lombards with as much dislike as he felt for
the heretical Iconoclast at Constantinople. Considering the
amiable character of Liutprand^ and the respectable national
record of the Lombards when they are compared with their
contemporaries beyond the Alps, it is astonishing to read of
the terms in which Gregory and his successors spoke of them.
No epithet applied to the heathen in the Scriptures was too
severe to heap upon the * fetid, perjured, impious, plundering,

The Lombards and the Papacy 287

murderous race of the Lombards.' And all this indignation
and abuse was produced by the rational desire of Liutprand to
punish the Pope for harbouring his rebels ! It is impossible
not to wish that the great king had succeeded in taking Rome,
and unifying Italy, a contingency which would have spared
the peninsula the curses of the Frankish invasion, of its long
and unnatural connection with the Western Empire, and of
that still greater disaster, the permanent establishment of the
temporal power of the papacy.

Charles Martel did not accept Gregory's offers, or carry out
the Pope's plans : he would not quarrel with his old friend
Liutprand on such inadequate grounds as the Pope alleged.
He chose instead to endeavour to mediate between Gregory
and the Lombard king. He accepted the title of Patrician,
and received the Roman ambassadors with great pomjl) and
honour, sending them home with many rich presents. But
his own delegates who accompanied them were charged to
reconcile the Pope and the king, not to promise aid to the
one against the other. Both Charles and Gregory, as it
happened, were at this moment on the edge of the grave :
both died in the next year (741), and it was some time before
the first active interference of the Franks in behalf of the
papacy was destined to take place.

How uncalled for was the action of pope Gregory is shown
by the fact that in the next year Liutprand came to terms with
the Roman See. On the accession of pope Zachariah, who
promised to give no more aid to the rebel duke Liutprand
of Spoleto, Liutprand restored the cities he had fJ^JJeV^o^p^e"
taken from the Roman duchy, and granted a 742.
peace for twenty years. He even presented great offerings
to the Roman Churches and made a present of some valuable
estates to Zachariah. Yet the anger of the popes was in no
way appeased : in their hearts they hated the Lombards as if
they were still Arians or heathen, and only awaited another
opportunity for conspiring against them.

Meanwhile Liutprand died in peace in 743, after a reign

288 European History, ^yG-gi^

of thirty-one years, in which he had added the greater
part of the Exarchate to his kingdom, had extended the
boundaries of Italy to north and east against the Bavarian
and Slav, and had reduced the Beneventan and Spoletan
dukes to an unwonted state of subservience. No one, save
his enemies the popes, ever laid a charge of any sort against
his character, and he appears to have been the best-loved and
best-served king of his day. We read with pleasure that he
died in peace, ere the terrible invasion of the Franks began to
afflict the land he had guarded so well. It would have been
better perhaps for Italy if he had been a less virtuous and
pious sovereign : a less temperate ruler would have finished
his career of conquest by taking Rome, and so would have
staved off the countless ills that Rome was about to bring
on the whole Italian peninsula.

CHAPTER XVII

CHARLES MARTEL AND HIS WARS
720-41

Wars with the Saxons and Frisians — Missionary enterprises of St. Boniface —
The Saracens in Septimania and Aquitaine — Charles wins the battle of
Poictiers— Revolt and subjection of duke Hunold of Aquitaine— Charles
and the Papacy.

The name of Charles Martel is generally remembered as that
of the victor of Poictiers, but although the defeat of the in-
vasion of the Saracens of Spain was destined to be the greatest
of his achievements, his struggle with them was but one of a
long series of wars waged against all the races of infidels who
surrounded the Prankish realm. It was not till the twelfth
year of his mayoralty that he himself took the field to face the
invader from the south. Up to that year he had been far
more concerned with the heathen neighbours of his own
Austrasia, and must have spared comparatively few thoughts
for the danger of distant Aquitaine, and its half-independent
duke.

Charles had first to deal with the Saxons. To punish them
for their interference in the Prankish civil war of 714-20 he
led several expeditions into the valley of the Weser, and
pushed the Prankish frontier up to the Teutobiirgerwald
and the head waters of the Lippe and the Riihr. The
Prisians had already submitted to him, but he had come
to the conclusion that their homage was worth little until they
should have adopted Christianity, and he therefore employed all

PERIOD I. T

290 European History, 476-918

his influence to make their duke Aldgisl co-operate in the con-
Warsof version of his subjects. The duke, a just and peace-

charies in loving princc, was not averse to the scheme, and
Germany, 730. ^ndcr his guarantee missionaries were despatched
by bishop WiUibrord of Utrecht over all the Frisian districts.
In the course of a generation they had christianised the greater
part of the country, but the East Frisians were far behind
the rest in accepting the gospel, and their conversion was to
be reserved till the reign of Charles's son.

Frisia and Saxony having been dealt with, it was the next
task of the great mayor to restore the Frankish suzerainty
over Bavaria, which had disappeared for more than eighty
years. But before he could complete this task he was sum-
moned into the West to suppress a Neustrian rebelHon. The
nobles of northern Gaul, in spite of their deep humiliation at
Vincy and Soissons, rose once more under Raginfred, the late
mayor of Chilperich ii. But the rising collapsed at the first
appearance of Charles, and the enemy laid down their arms,
Raginfred only stipulating that he should retain his countship
of Angers on giving up his sons as hostages (724).

The next three years were occupied in the subjugation of
south-eastern Germany. Marching eastward through Suabia,
whose warriors he compelled to accompany him to the field,
Charles advanced against the Bavarians. After severe fight-
ing, lasting over three campaigns, he returned in triumph with
much plunder, a troop of hostages, and the submission of
duke Hukbert. The allegiance of the Bavarians was still
very insecure, but something had been done to enforce the
long-forgotten suzerainty of the Franks. Alarmed by the
subjection of Bavaria, the Suabian duke Lantfrid rebelled,
but Charles slew him in battle, and refused to appoint any
duke in his stead, in order that Suabia might more easily
amalgamate with the neighbouring districts when it had lost
the prince whose title symbolised its separate unity (730).

While Charles worked with the sword against the eastern
Germans, he did not neglect the other great means of binding

Charles Martel and his Wars 291

them to the Frankish realm. It was during the time of his Saxon
and Bavarian wars that he lent his protection to the zealous
West-Saxon monk Winfrith, the indefatigable preacher and
organiser who won the name of the 'Apostle y^^^^^xonoi
of Germany ' by his long life-work among the Boniface to
Bavarians, Thuringians, and Hessians. After ^^'■"^^"y-
spending some time with bishop Willibrord at Utrecht, Win-
frith had started eastward to find newer and wilder fields for
his activity. He fixed himself first among the Hessians where
no missionary had been seen since the death of St. Suidbert.^
Here he met with such success that the whole land was soon
reckoned Christian. Pope Gregory 11., hearing of his triumphs,
sent for him to Rome, and consecrated him missionary bishop
of all Transrhenane Germany. After swearing implicit obedi-
ence to the Apostolic See for himself and all his converts,
Winfrith — or as he is more often called in his later years
Boniface — returned to the North with a papal letter of cred-
ence recommending him to the Mayor of Austrasia. Charles
undertook the support of the new bishop with the greatest
zeal: 'without the aid of the prince of the Franks,' wrote
Boniface, * I should not be able to rule my church nor defend
the lives of my priests and nuns, nor keep my converts from
lapsing into pagan rites and observances.' It was the fear
of the wrath of Charles that kept the wild Hessians and
Thuringians from murdering the unarmed missionary, when
he came among them with his life in his hand, and hewed
down the holy oak of Woden at Fritzlar in the presence of
thousands of heathen spectators. For the next thirty-one
years (723-54) Boniface went forth conquering and to conquer,
churches and abbeys rising everywhere beneath his hand, in
the regions where the Christian name had never before been
known.

While Charles had been busied on the Austrasian frontier
a new storm was rising in the South. The Saracens of Spain
were once more crossing the Rhone and the Cevennes to
^ See p. 263.

292 European History^ 476-918

overrun southern Gaul. Luckily for the Franks the efforts
of the Moslems were most spasmodic ; the governors of Spain
were, as a rule, more concerned with preserving their own
authority against revolted lieutenants than with extending the
bounds of Islam. The centre of government at Damascus
was so far away that the Caliph's authority was only displayed
at rare intervals, and as a rule the various Arab and Berber
chiefs who represented the sovereign were busily engaged in
deposing and murdering each other. In the first forty years
of Mussulman rule in Spain there were no less than twenty
viceroys, of whom seven came to violent ends.

We have already related the disastrous issue of the expedi-
tion of El-Samah against Toulouse in 721. It was not till
725 that the Saracens stirred again; in that year the Emir
Anbasa-ibn-Johim set out from Narbonne with a large army,
and subdued Carcassonne, Nismes, and the rest of northern
Con uests of Scptimania as far as the Rhone. He placed
the Arabs garrisons in the newly conquered cities, and
in Gaul. ^^^ crossed the river and executed a rapid raid
through Burgundy as far as Autun in the heat of the summer.
After sacking Autun he returned with such speed to Spain
that the Franks were totally unable to overtake him. But
Anbasa died before the year was out, and for seven years his
successors were too much engaged in strife with each other to
renew the attack on Christendom. Eudo, duke of Aquitaine,
employed the respite in conciliating the friendship of Othman-
ben-abu-Neza, the Moslem governor of Septimania, whom he
won to his side by giving him his daughter in marriage. It was
probably in reliance on the aid of his son-in-law that Eudo
in 731 rebelled against the Franks, and once more declared
himself independent duke of Aquitaine. Charles crossed the
Wars with Loire, beat Eudo in the field, and ravaged the
Eudo of country up to the gates of Bordeaux. The duke,
Aqmtaine. howevcr, persisted in his resistance, till he learnt
that another foe was about to attack him. His son-in-law
Othman had rebelled against Abderahman the viceroy of Spain,

Charles Martel and his Wars 293.

and had been defeated and slain. After subduing the rebel,
Abderahman resolved to march against Othman's ally and
father-in-law. This drove Eudo into making an abject and
instant submission to his Frankish suzerain.

In 732 the viceroy crossed the western Pyrenees at the
head of the largest Saracen army that Spain had yet seen,
strengthened by reinforcements from Africa and the East.
Eudo stood on the defensive against him and endeavoured to
defend the line of the Garonne, but was routed with the loss
of almost the whole of his army. He fled beyond the Loire
and threw himself on the mercy of Charles Abderahman
Martel ; meanwhile the Saracens stormed Bor- invades Gaui,
deaux, and moved slowly forward, ravaging the ''^'
country on all sides till they drew near to Poictiers. It was for
no mere raid that they had come on this occasion, but for
the permanent conquest of Aquitaine, perhaps even with the
design of attacking Neustria also. Headed by the strongest
and most popular viceroy that Moslem Spain had yet known,
and mustering not less than seventy or eighty thousand men,
they set no limit to their desires.

In the hour of danger the great Mayor of the Palace was
not wanting. He did not rush hastily into the field, but drew
together the whole force of both the Frankish realms, though
his firmest reliance was on his own Austrasians. Leading an
army whose like had not been seen since the earliest days of
the monarchy — for never had Neustria and Austrasia com-
bined for an expedition of such moment — he crossed the
Loire near Tours and advanced to meet Abderahman. It was
close to Poictiers ^in suburbio PictavieiisV that the two great
hosts faced each other, though by some freak of the chronicler
it is Tours that has given its name to the battle in the pages
of many of our histories. Abderahman and Charles both felt
that they were about to engage in no common contest. The
fate of Aquitaine, possibly of all Gaul, might be largely in-
fluenced by the result of the oncoming battle between Christian
and Moslem. For seven days the two hosts lay opposite

294 European History^ 476-918

each other, each waiting for the enemy to advance ; at last
Abderahman took the offensive, and his host poured out
from their camp to assail the Frankish line. Hardly a detail
of the great struggle has survived : we only know that the
Saracen horsemen surged in vain around the impenetrable
masses of the Frankish infantry, whose firm shield-wall 'was
frozen to the earth like a rampart of ice.' The Austrasians bore
the brunt of the fighting ; * the men of the East huge in stature
Battle of aii^i iron-handed hewed on long and fiercely ; it

Poictiers, 732. ^as they who sought out and slew the Saracen
chief.' The fight endured till night fell, when the invaders
withdrew, leaving Abderahman and many thousands more lying
dead in front of the Frankish line. In the darkness the Arabs
had time to count up their losses, which were so appalling that
they hastily fled rather than face another day's fighting. Their
tents, crammed with all the booty of Aquitaine, their baggage
and military stores, with thousands of horses and enormous
piles of arms, fell into the hands of the victorious Franks.
So ended the danger of western Christendom from the
Moslem invader, a danger which has not unfrequently been
exaggerated, especially by French writers anxious to glorify
the Austrasian mayor, whom they have chosen to make into a
French national hero. It is probable that even if Abderahman
had been victorious nothing more than the duchy of Aquitaine
would have fallen into his hands, for this invasion after
leaving Bordeaux was degenerating into an incursion for
plunder, like that which in 725 had ended with the sack of
Autun. The Moslems of Spain had proved themselves during
the last forty years so factious and unruly, that we cannot
believe that even under a leader of exceptional ability they
would have held together long and loyally enough to ensure
the conquest of central Gaul. Neustria, and still more
Austrasia, were states of a very different degree of vigour
from the decrepit Visigothic monarchy which fell in 711.
Even if Poictiers had fared as Aiitun, there was strength and
courage enough in the Franks to face many such another

Charles M artel and his Wars 295

blow, and we may doubt the judgment of Gibbon when he
draws his gloomy forecast of the probable results of a victory
for Abderahman, ending in a picture of the Muezzin calling
the True Believers to prayer in the Highlands of Scotland,
and the MoUahs of Oxford disputing on the attributes of a
Unitarian Godhead.

The remnants of the Saracen host made no attempt to hold
Aquitaine, but fled hastily across the Pyrenees, so that duke
Eudo was able to reoccupy Bordeaux and Toulouse, and rule
once more over the whole of his former dominions as the
vassal of the Frank. Meanwhile, Charles returned to Aus-
trasia laden with booty, and was hailed by all western
Christendom as the greatest conqueror since Constantine.
The Frankish poets and chroniclers continued to celebrate
his triumph with such fervour that ere long the world was told
and believed that he had slain 375,000 Saracens, with the loss
of no more than 1500 men on his own side ! If only he
had been more of a favourite with the Church he would have
been enshrined in history as the equal of his grandson,
Charles the Great. But the zeal with which he forwarded
the conversion of Germany, and smote the infidel, did not
atone, in the eyes of the monkish historians, for the high-
handed way in which he had dealt with the GauUsh church.
Because he banished bishops, and forbade synods to be held
without his leave, and occasionally laid military burdens on
church-land, he received a very half-hearted blessing from the
annalists of his day.

Charles spent the years that followed his great victory in
regulating the government of Burgundy, where he replaced
most of the counts and dukes by followers of his own, and in
completing the subjection of Frisia. The peaceful duke
Aldgisl had been succeeded by a fierce pagan named Boddo,
whom the great mayor was soon forced to attack, when he
commenced to kill or drive away the missionaries of Willi-
brord and Boniface. After slaying Boddo in battle, and
burning every heathen shrine in Friesland, Charles left the

296 European History^ 476-918

country so tamed that it did not revolt again for full twenty
years.

Ii^ 735? however, new troubles began in the south. Duke
Eudo died, and Charles thought the time was ripe for the
complete incorporation of the great southern duchy with the
Frankish realm. He rode through the land and forced its
inhabitants to do him homage, but their subjection was only
the result of fear, and when he had returned home the
southerners proclaimed Eudo's son Hunold as their duke.
Hunold would probably have been put down had not the
Saracens begun once more to stir. Headed by Yussuf-aben-
Abderahman, the son of the chief who had fallen
Hunold of at Poictiers four years before, they sallied out
Aquitaine, of Narbonne, crossed the Rhone, and seized the
old Roman city of Aries. The years 736-39 were
mainly occupied in driving back three successive Moslem in-
roads into south-eastern Gaul, and Charles was so engrossed
in this strife that he consented to recognise Hunold as duke of
Aquitaine, so that he might have his hands entirely free for
the greater struggle. Complete success at last crowned his
arms : Provence was swept clear of the Arabs ; Aries and
Avignon, which the Infidels had seized and held for a space,
were recovered ; Nismes, Agde, and Beziers, which they had
possessed since the great invasion of Septimania in 725,
were taken, dismantled, and burnt, and a great host was de-
feated in front of Narbonne. That city, however, did not yet
fall into the hands of the Franks ; together with the southern
half of Septimania it still remained a Saracen outpost, covering
the passes of the eastern Pyrenees. For twenty years more
it was fated to remain unconquered ; not Charles but his
son was destined to move forward the Frankish boundary to
the foot of the mountains. Meanwhile the Saracens of Spain,
cowed by the crushing blows of Charles the Hammer, aban-
doned their attempt to push northward, and plunged into a
weary series of civil wars.

While Charles was engaged in his Saracen war, the puppet-

Charles Martel and his Wars 297

king Theuderich iv., in whose name he had been ruling for
the last seventeen years, chanced to die. So little had the
royal name come to mean, that the great mayor pour king-
did not seek out the next heir of the childless less years,
king and crown him, but ruled for the last four ^37-42.
years of his life without any suzerain. He did not himself,
however, take the kingly title, but continued to be styled
mayor, prince, or duke of the Franks ; he cared not for name
or style so long as the real power was in his hands.

The reconquest of Provence and northern Septi mania was
the last of the great mayor's triumphs. But the four years
which he had yet to live were not without their importance.
In 738 he compelled the Westphalian Saxons on the Lippe
and Ems to do him homage and pay tribute. In 739 the
organisation of the south German church was completed by
the erection of four bishoprics in Bavaria, which looked to
Boniface, now archbishop of all Transrhenane Germany, as
their Metropolitan. Thus Bavaria became ecclesiastically an
integral part of the Frankish Church, even as politically it had
already become an integral part of the Frankish ^^^ ^
empire. But though Charles was a firm supporter asks aid from
of the Church in his own dominions, he would ^^^"^^^^'739-
not interfere in ecclesiastical disputes beyond his frontier.
Pope Gregory iii. had plunged into a struggle with the
Lombard king Liutprand, and invited the pious ruler of the
Franks to march against the enemy of the Church. But
Charles refused ; Liutprand had given him some aid against
the Saracens, and he was not minded to attack an old ally
merely because the Lombard had fallen out with the Pope
concerning the duchy of Spoleto.

In the summer of the next year the great mayor began to
feel his health failing, though he had not yet completed his
fifty-fourth year. He determined to set his house in order
ere yet the hand of death was upon him, and summoned the
great council of all the Frankish realms to meet him. With
its approval he proceeded to make over the rule of the

2gS European History, 476-918

kingdom to his sons. There was no Merovingian king whose
rights needed to be taken into consideration, as Theuderich
IV. had died four years back, and had left no successor.
Accordingly Charles and the council dealt with the land as if
Charles ^^ ^^^ already become the rightful inheritance of
divides his the housc of St. Arnulf. The great mayor had
rea m. three grown-up sons ; two, Carloman and Pippin,
were the offspring of his wife Rothrudis, the third, Grifo, was
the son of Swanhildis, a Bavarian lady whom he had taken
as his concubine during his Bavarian campaign of 725.
Their ages appear to have been twenty-seven, twenty-six, and
seventeen. Charles handed over the rule of Austrasia and
Suabia to Carloman, and that of Neustria and Burgundy to
Pippin. It is said that he also contemplated leaving a small
appanage on the border of Neustria and Austrasia to Grifo.
Bavaria and Aquitaine, the two great vassal dukedoms, were
not named in the division, though the former fell under
the influence of Carloman, and the latter under that of
Pippin.

Shortly after he had accomplished this division of his
realms, Charles died at Cerisy-on-Oise on the 21st of October
741. He had completed the work which his father, Pippin
the Younger, had taken in hand, for the ancient boundaries
of the Frankish empire had now been everywhere restored,
Aquitaine and Bavaria had been reduced to vassalage, Chris-
tianity was now firmly rooted all over Frisia, Thuringia, and
Hesse. The difficulties he had faced were far greater than
Life-work of thosc which his father had to encounter. He had
Charles. rcscucd the fortunes of the house of St. Arnulf
from the lowest depths, — though Austrasia had been divided,
though Neustria was hostile, and though an energetic king
was for once swaying the Frankish sceptre and endeavouring
to recover the lost privileges of his ancestors. Having fought
his way to power, Charles had then to face the one serious
danger from without which the Franks had yet encoun-
tered. He had met it without flinching, and smitten the

Charles Martel and his Wars 299

intrusive Moslem so hard that the blow did not need to be
repeated. For the future we hear of Frankish invasions of
Spain, not of Saracen invasions of Gaul. Charles then had
won peace without and within, he had reorganised the
Frankish realm, raised it to a pitch of power and glory which
it had never attained before, and made possible the triumph-
ant career of his son and grandson. As the champion of
Christianity and the protector of the evangelist of Germany,
he had won a yet nobler title to honourable memory, and the
complaints of the Gaulish bishops, who murmured that his
hand was too hard on the Church, may be lightly disregarded
when we add up the sum of his merits, and salute him as the
inaugurator of a new and better era in the history of Europe.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE ICONOCLAST EMPERORS — STATE OF THE EASTERN
EMPIRE IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY

717-802

Leo and the defence of Constantinople, 718 — Importance of his triumph —
Social and economical condition of the Empire — Decay of Art and
Letters — Superstition and Iconoduly — The Iconoclast movement— Leo's
Crusade against Images — Constantine Copronymus and his persecu-
tions—Successful wars of Constantine V. — Minority of Constantine vi. —
Intrigues and triumph of Irene— Restoration of Image-worship — End of
the Isaurian dynasty, 802.

In March 717 Leo the Isaurian became master of Constan-
tinople, his predecessor, Theodosius iii., having abdicated
and refused to continue the civil war which had begun in the
previous year. It is probable that his resignation was due as
much to fear of the oncoming of the Saracens as to the dread
of Leo, for the armies of the caliph Soliman were already
ravaging Phrygia and Cappadocia, and slowly making their
way towards the Bosphorus. Nothing save the conscious-
ness of his own capacity to stem the rising flood of Moslem
invasion could have justified Leo in taking arms against
Theodosius in such a time of danger ; but fortunately for the
empire he had not overvalued his own power, and was des-
tined to show that he was fully competent to face the situation.
Leo the ^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ ^ youug man, but his life had already
Isaurian, been full of incident and adventure ; he was the
717-40. sQn of parents of some wealth, who had migrated

from the Isaurian regions in the Taurus to Thrace. He had

300

The Iconoclast Emperors 301

entered the army during the second reign of Justinian Rhino-
tmetus, and after serving him well had incurred the tyrant's
suspicion, and been sent on a dangerous expedition into the
Caucasus, from which he was not intended to return. But he
extricated himself from many perils among the Alans and
Abasgi of those distant regions, and came back in safety, to be
made by Anastasius 11. governor of the Anatolic theme. He
was an active, enterprising, persevering man, with a talent for
organisation, a great power of making himself loved by his
soldiery, and an iron hand. His later career shows that he
was more than a good soldier, being also one who looked
deep into the causes of things, and had formed his own views
on politics and religion.

Leo was only granted five months in which to prepare for
the long-dreaded advent of the Saracens. He spent this time
in accumulating vast stores of provisions, recruiting the
garrision of Constantinople, and strengthening its fortifica-
tions. On the 15th of August Moslemah with an army of
80,000 Saracens appeared on the Bithynian coast; a few days
later a Syrian fleet of over 1000 sail appeared in the Propontis,
took the army of Moslemah on board, and transported it into
Thrace. The Saracen's land-troops at once commenced the
blockade of the capital by land, while part of the fleet moved
into the Bosphorus, to post itself so as to block the mouth of
the Golden Horn, in which the Imperial navy had taken refuge.
Leo delivered his first blow while the Saracen vessels were
passing up the Bosphorus ; issuing out of the Golden Horn
with many galleys and fireships he attacked the enemy as
they were trying to pass up the straits, and burnt Moslemah
twenty ships of war. The Saracen admiral then besieges Con-
dropped down to the southern exit of the Bos- ^tantinopie.
phorus, and left the northern exit free to the Romans, so that
Leo was able to continue to draw supplies from the Black Sea.

The blockade of Constantinople was, therefore, imperfect,
and we learn without surprise, that while the Saracens in
their camp on the Thracian side of the straits suffered severely

302 European History, 476-918

from the cold of an unusually severe autumn and winter, the
garrison within the walls was well fed and also w^ell housed,
and continued to grow in self-confidence. Moslemah sent in
haste for reinforcements, and the Caliph supported him with
zeal ; a second land-army marched up from Tarsus to Chal-
cedon in the spring of 718, and occupied the Bithynian shore
of the Bosphorus, while a great fleet from Africa and Egypt
joined the blockading squadron, and moored at Kalosagros
on the eastern side of the Bosphorus, in order to watch the
mouth of the Golden Horn, and stop the communication of
the city with the Black Sea.

The preservation of the free waterway to the north was all-
important to the defence. Accordingly, Leo determined to
make a great effort to destroy the Egyptian fleet. His galleys,
many of them fitted with apparatus for discharging the famous
Greek fire, sailed out suddenly, and fell on the Saracen ships
as they lay moored against the Asiatic shore. Many of the
crews of the Egyptian ships were Christians, forced on board
against their will ; these men either deserted to the Imperial-
ists or fled ashore and dispersed. The Moslem sailors on
board made some resistance, but being caught at anchor, and
unable to manoeuvre or escape, they were soon overcome.
The whole blockading squadron was burnt or towed back
in triumph to Constantinople. The rest of Moslemah's
fleet made no further attempt to bar the Bosphorus, and
allowed the Roman galleys to dominate its waters. Leo then
threw a force on to the Bithynian shore, and dispersed the
Saracen troops who were encamped there. Thus the army of
Moslemah was cut off from Asia, and could draw no further
supplies from thence. It had already exhausted those of the
nearer districts of Thrace, and by the summer of 718 was
reduced to the verge of starvation, living from hand to mouth
on what its foragers could procure. Many had already
perished of privation, when Moslemah heard that a great
Bulgarian army had crossed the Balkans, and was advancing
against him. Leo had apparently convinced king Terbel

The Iconoclast Emperors 303

that a Saracen invasion of Europe was as dangerous to him as
to the empire. Moslemah detached a portion of his army
to hold back the Bulgarians, but near Hadrianople it was
completely cut to pieces by the barbarians. The Arab his-
torians confess that 22,000 men fell in the rout.

This decided Moslemah to raise the siege. His fleet took
the remains of the land army on board, and put it siege of Con-
ashore near Cyzicus. From thence he forced his stantinopie
way back to Tarsus, but of more than 100,000 men ^^^^^ ' ^^ "
comprised in his original army and its reinforcements, Mos-
lemah brought back only 30,000. The fleet fared yet worse;
it was caught in a storm off the Lycian coast, and almost
entirely destroyed. The Romans captured many of the sur-
viving ships, and it is said that only five vessels out of a
thousand got back to Syria.

Thus perished the last Saracen armament which ever seri-
ously threatened the existence of the East-Roman Empire.
It was perhaps the most formidable expedition that the
Caliphs ever sent forth, far larger and better equipped than
the predatory bands which had overrun Africa and Spain
with such ease a few years before, or the army which Charles
Martel faced at Poictiers a few years later. It was no mean
achievement of Leo the Isaurian, that, ere yet firmly seated
on his throne, and with all his Asiatic provinces already over-
run by the enemy, he should beat off with ease such a mighty
armament. His success must be ascribed primarily to his
own courage, energy, and skill, next to the impregnable
strength of the walls of Constantinople, and lastly, to the
inexperience of the Arabs on the sea, which compelled them
to use unwilling Christian seamen for their galleys, and pre-
vented them from making any adequate use of their momen-
tary naval predominance. The fleet of Moslemah seems to
have been as useless and unwieldy as the fleet of Xerxes.
But, however much he may have been helped by the faults of
his enemy, Leo the Isaurian deserves the thanks of all future
ages for staying the progress of the Saracen invader at a

304 European History, 476-918

moment when there was no other power in eastern Europe
which could have for a moment held back the advancing
Moslem. If Constantinople had fallen, it is absolutely certain
that the barbarous pagan tribes who occupied all eastern and
central Europe would have become the subjects of the
Caliph, and the votaries of Islam. There was no capacity for
prolonged resistance in the Bulgarian, Avar, or Slav ; and if
the East-Roman Empire had fallen, the wave of Saracen
invasion would have swept all before it up to the borders of
Austrasia. Whether the Franks could have stood firm if
attacked on the east as well as on the south is very doubtful.
It is, therefore, fair to ascribe to Leo the Isaurian an even
greater share in the salvation of Europe from the Moslem
peril than is given to Charles Martel.

After the failure of Moslemah the victorious Leo had a
breathing time granted him, in which to reorganise the
shattered realm that had been left him by his predecessor.
Although the Saracen war still went on, and border raids
never ceased till the very end of his reign, yet there was no
very serious danger in these latter bickerings, and Leo was
able to turn his attention to the internal affairs of the empire,
without the fear of having at any moment a dangerous in-
vasion launched against him from beyond the Taurus.

Leo was a reformer and an innovator in every branch of
administration. His dealings with the Church are those which
caused most stir and are best remembered, but his activity
was as great in secular as in ecclesiastical matters. It is un-
fortunate that most of the records of his reforms have
perished, nothing having been preserved except his Ecloga or
new handbook of law. But enough survives to show the
character of his administration, and its effects in the succeed-
ing century are very marked.

We have already pointed out in an earlier chapter that the
East-Roman Empire had been in a state of rapid decay since
the middle of the sixth century. The downward movement
that had begun with the wars and taxes of Justinian had been

' The Iconoclast Emperors 305

accelerated under his successors, and had threatened the
actual destruction of the empire during the reign of Heraclius.
That the State struggled through all its troubles, and emerged
bleeding at every pore, shorn of many of its members, but
still alive, was due to the personal abilities of Heraclius and
his descendants Constantinus-Constans and Con- Decadence of
stantine v. But though the life still lingered in ti^e empire,
the body of the State, it was yet in the most deplorable con-
dition. Its purely Oriental provinces — Egypt, Syria, and
Africa — were gone for ever. Asia Minor was dreadfully
wasted by the repeated invasions of the Saracens. The
Balkan peninsula was, as regards more than half its extent, in
the hands of the Bulgarians and Slavs. In the seventh
century Slavonic tribes had made their way even into Hellas
and Peloponnesus, there to occupy all the more remote and
mountainous corners of the land.

The disasters of the seventh century were accompanied by
wholesale displacements of population. In Europe the old
Latin-speaking population of Illyricum, Moesia, and Thrace
had almost disappeared. Only a few scattered fragments, the
ancestors of the modern Roumanians and Dalmatians, still
survived, scattered among the Slavs of the Balkans. In Asia
the old provincial population had been grievously thinned by
Saracen wars, but, on the other hand, it had been recruited by
great bands of refugees from all the lands that the Saracen
had overrun. Many thousands of Armenians and Persians
had chosen to become subjects of the Emperor rather than
the Caliph, and in particular the Mardaites or Christians of the
Syrian mountains had emigrated wholesale into changes in
Asia Minor, after maintaining for many years a population,
struggle in the Lebanon against the power of the Saracens.
The European themes were now Greco-Slav, not Greco-
Roman, in their population : the Asiatic ones were far more
Oriental and far less Greek than in the sixth century. By the
time of Leo this change was complete : the empire was now
Roman in nothing but name and administrative organisation.

PERIOD I. u

3o6 European History^ 476-918

On the other hand, it had not yet become Greek, as it was to
do in a later age. Its most important element in this and
the next two centuries was the Asiatic. Isauria and Armenia
and the other mountain lands of Asia Minor supplied most of
the rulers of the empire. They were not Orientals of the more
effeminate and feeble type — like the Syrians or Egyptians,
whose only show of energy for many years had been in the
hatching of new heresies and the practice of irrational asceticism
— but were a bold vigorous race, hardened by many generations
of Persian and Saracen wars, the men who, ever since the fifth
century, had been supplying the core of the East-Roman armies.
The change in the population of the empire had been
accompanied by equally great changes in its social condition.
Of these the most important was the disappearance of the old
Roman system of predial serfdom, of great estates tilled hy coloni
or peasants bound to the soil and unable to leave their farms.
This tenure, which lasted on in the West till it became the
basis of the feudal system, had in the East entirely disappeared
between Justinian and Leo the Isaurian. In the time of Leo
we find the soil cultivated either by free tenants, who worked
the estates of great land-owners at a fixed rent, or by villages of
Decrease of ^^^^ peasants Occupying their own communal lands,
serfdom. The very healthy outcome of this change was a
great growth in the proportion of freemen to slaves all over
the empire : of this the most important and beneficial result
was that the government could reckon on a much larger and
better recruiting ground for the army than in those earlier
times, when the peasant was fixed to the soil and absolutely
prohibited from serving as a soldier. The cause of the vanish-
ing of the old tenure was, without doubt, the fact that the
ravages of Slav, Persian, and Saracen between 600 and 700
had broken up the old landmarks, and either swept away or
displaced the former servile population. When many provinces
had been, for many years at a time, in the hands of foreign
enemies, as happened to the whole of Asia Minor during the
first years of Heraclius and to great part of it in the anarchy

The Iconoclast Emperors 307

between 710 and 718, it was not wonderful that old social
arrangements which bore hardly on the bulk of the population
tended to vanish.

The disappearance of predial serfdom was a change for the
better within the empire. But in most other things the
changes had been for the worse. The civilisation of the
whole realm had sunk to a very low level compared with that
which prevailed in the fifth century. Arts and letters had
reached the lowest depth which they ever knew in ^^^^ ^^
the East. All literature save the compiling of arts and
polemical religious tracts had disappeared: be- ^^"^*■^•
tween 620 and 720 we have not a single contemporary
historian : the story of the times has to be learned entirely
from later sources. Poetical, scientific, and philosophical com-
position had also died off; except the Heracliad — the wars
of Heraclius told as an epic — of George of Pisidia, the seventh
century produced no single poem. The study of Latin had
so far died out that the great legal works of Justinian had
become useless to the inhabitants of the empire. They were
a sealed book to all save the exceptionally learned, so that
systematic law had almost disappeared. In the various themes
we find justice being administered according to local customs
and usages, instead of by old Roman precept. Leo had to
abridge and translate Justinian's Code, in order to render it
either useful or intelligible. When doing this he omitted
great sections of it, in order to bring the book into accordance
with the needs and customs of the day, for both manners and
social conditions had been transformed since the reign of
Justinian. The decay of art had been as rapid as that of
letters : very few remains of the unhappy seventh century have
come down to us, but in those which are most numerous, the
coins of the emperors, we find the most barbarous incapacity
to express the simplest forms. The faces of Heraclius or
Constantine v. are barely human : the legends surrounding
them are so ill spelt as to be almost unintelligible : the letters
are ill formed and ill cut.

308 European History, 476-918

But the most painful feature of the time was that the decay
of arts and letters had been accompanied by the growth of a
dense superstition and ignorance which would have seemed in-
credible to the ancient Roman of the fourth, or even the fifth
century. Although Constantinople still preserved all the great
literary works of antiquity, the minds of its rulers were no
more influenced by them than were the eyes and hands of its
craftsmen inspired by the great works of Greek sculpture that
still adorned the streets. It was a time of the growth of
countless silly superstitions, of witchcraft and necromancy,
of the framing of wild legends of apocryphal saints, and of
strange misconceptions of natural phenomena.

Among the most prominent tokens of this growth of
irrational superstitions was the great tendency of the seventh
century towards image-worship, — Iconoduly as its opponents
called the practice. In direct opposition to early Christian
custom, it became common to ascribe the most strange and
magical powers to representations, whether sculptured or
painted, of Our Lord and the Saints. They were not merely
regarded as useful memorials to guide the piety of believers,
but were thought to have a holiness inherent in themselves,
Image- ^"^^ to be Capable of performing the most astonish-
worship. ing miracles. Heraclius possessed, and carried
about with him as a fetich, a picture which he believed to
have been painted in heaven by angelic hands, and thought it
brought him all manner of luck. The crucifix over the door
of the imperial palace was believed to have used human
speech. Even patriarchs and bishops affirmed that the hand
of a celebrated picture of the Virgin in the capital distilled
fragrant balsam. Every church and monastery had its wonder-
working image, and drew no small revenue from pious offer-
ings to it. The freaks to which image-worship led were often
most grotesque : it was, for example, a well-known practice to
make a favourite picture the god-father of a child in baptism,
by scraping off a little of its paint and mixing it with the
baptismal water.

TJte Iconoclast Emperors 309

The act for which the name of Leo the Isaurian is best
remembered is the issue of his edict against these puerile
superstitions, and his attempt to put down image-worship all
through his realm. Leo was not only a man of strong
common sense, but he was sprung from those lands on tlip
Mohammedan border where Christians had the best oppor-
tunity of comparing the gross and material adoration of their
co-religionists for stones and paint, with the severe spiritual
worship of the followers of Islam. The Moslem was always
taunting the Christian with serving idols, and the taunt found
too much justification in many practices of the vulgar. Think-
ing men like Leo were moved by the Moslem's sneer into a
horror of the superstitious follies of their contemporaries.
They fortified themselves by the view that to make graven or
painted representations of Our Lord savoured of , ,

, , .1-1 1 TT- Iconoclasm.

heresy, because it laid too much stress on His
humanity as opposed to His divinity. Such an idea was no new
thing : it had often been mooted among the Eastern Christians,
though more often by schismatics than by Catholics. Of
Leo's own orthodoxy, however, there was no doubt : even his
enemies could not convict him of swerving in the least from
the faith : it was only on this matter of image-worship that he
differed from them. Wherever he plucked down the crucifix
he set up the plain cross — on the standards of his army, on
the gates of his palace, on his money, on his imperial robes.
It was purely to the anthropomorphic representation of Our
Lord and to the over-reverence for images of saints that he
objected.

Leo was no mere rough soldier : his parents were people of
some wealth, and he had entered the army as an imperial
aide-de-camp {spathtartus)^ not as one of the rank and file.^
It is probable therefore that he was sufficiently educated to
object to image-worship on rational and philosophic grounds.^
not from the mere unthinking prejudice picked up from

^ The story that he began life as a poor huckster travelling about with
a mule is one of the many inventions of his enemies the monks.

310 European History, 476-918

Saracens or heretics. This much is certain, that from the
moment that he declared his poHcy he found the greatest
support among the higher officers of the civil service and the
army. Educated laymen were as a rule favourable to his
views : the mass of the soldiery followed him, and the eastern
provinces as a whole acquiesced in his reformation. On the
other hand, he found his chief opponents among the monks,
whose interests were largely bound up with image-worship,
and among the lower classes, who were blindly addicted to it.
The European themes were as a whole opposed to him : the
further west the province the more Iconodulic were its ten-
dencies. Of the whole empire Italy was the part where Leo's
views found the least footing.

Leo began his crusade against image-worship in 726, eight
years after his great victory over the Saracens. The empire
was by this time quieted down and reorganised ; two rebellions
had also been crushed, one under a certain Basil in Italy,
tlie other under the ex-emperor Artemius Anastasius, who had
tried to resume the crown by the aid of the Bulgarians. The
heads of Basil and Artemius had fallen, and no more trouble
from rebellion was expected. Leo's edict forbade all image-
worship as irreverent and superstitious, and ordered the
removal of all holy statues and the white-washing of all holy
pictures on church walls. From the very first the emperor's
Leo's icono- commauds met with a lively resistance. When
clastic Edict, ^jg officials began to remove the great crucifix
over the palace gate, a mob fell upon them and beat them to
death with clubs. Leo sent out troops to clear the streets,
and many of the rioters were slain. This evil beginning was
followed by an equally disastrous sequel. All over the empire
the bulk of the clergy declared against the emperor : in many
provinces they began to preach open sedition. The Pope, as
we have already seen when telling the fate of Italy, put him-
self at the head of the movement, and sent most insulting
letters to Constantinople. In 727 Rome refused obedience
to the edict, and what was of more immediate danger, the

The Iconoclast Emperors 311

theme of Hellas rose in open rebellion. The garrison-
troops and the populace, incited by the preaching of fanatical
monks, joined to proclaim a certain Cosmas emperor. They
fitted out a fleet to attack Constantinople, but it was defeated,
and the rebel emperor was taken prisoner and beheaded. It
is acknowledged, however, even by Leo's enemies, that he
treated the bulk of the prisoners and the rebel theme with
great mildness. Indeed, he seldom punished disobedience
to his edict with death : stripes and imprisonment were the
more frequent rewards of those whom the Iconodules styled
heroes and confessors of the true faith. Leo was determined
that his edict should be carried out, but he was not by nature
a persecutor: it was as rioters or rebels, not as image-
worshippers, that his enemies were punished, just as in the
reign of Elizabeth of England the Jesuit suffered, not as a
Papist, but as a traitor. Leo deposed the aged patriarch
Germanus for refusing to work with him, but did him no further
harm.^ In general it was by promoting Iconoclasts, not by
maltreating Iconodules, that he worked.

The last thirteen years of Leo's reign (727-40) were on the
whole a time of success for the emperor. He succeeded in
getting his edict enforced over the greater part of the empire,
in spite of some open and more secret resistance ; only Italy
defied him. From the reconquest of Rome he was kept back
by the necessity of providing for the defence of the East, for in
726 the caliph Hisham — hearing no doubt of Leo's domestic
troubles — commenced once more to invade the Asiatic
themes. In 727 a Saracen host pushed forward as far as
Nicaea, where it was repelled and forced to retire, wars with
There were less formidable invasions in 730, 732, the Saracen,
and 737-8, but none led to any serious loss, and the imperial
boundary stood firmly fixed in the passes of the Taurus. The
Saracen war practically ended with a great victory won by Leo
in person at Acroinon, in the Anatolic theme, where an army

^ The stories of the sufferings of Germanus are late inventions of
Iconodule writers.

312 Etiropean History^ 476-918

of 20,000 Arab raiders was cut to pieces with the loss of all
its chiefs. The house of the Ommeyad Caliphs was already
verging towards its decline : it never again prepared any
expedition approaching the strength of the great armament of
Moslemah, which Leo had so effectually turned back in 718,
and its later sovereigns were not of the type of those fanatical
conquerors who had cut the boundaries of the empire short in
the preceding century. Leo had effectually staved off any im-
minent danger to eastern Christendom from Moslem conquest
for three full centuries.

Leo was succeeded by his son Constantine, fifth of that
name according to the usual reckoning, sixth if the grandson
of Heraclius be given his true name, and not the erroneous
title of Constans 11. The second of the Isaurian emperors,
however, is less known by the numeral affixed to his name
than by the insulting epithet of Copronymus, which his
IconoduHc enemies bestowed on him — showing thereby their
own bad taste rather than any unworthiness on the part of
their sovereign.

Constantine was a young man of twenty-two at the moment
of his accession. He had long acted as his father's colleague,
and was thoroughly trained in Leo's methods of administration,
Constantine ^^^ indoctrinated with his Iconoclastic views.
Copronymus, He sccms, whilc posscssiug a great measure of his
74°'^5- father's energy and ability, to have been inferior

to him in two respects. Leo had combined caution with
courage, and knew how to exercise moderation. Constantine
was bold to excess, did not understand half-measures or
toleration, and carried through every scheme with a high hand.
Moreover, while Leo's private life had been blameless and
even severe, Constantine was a votary of pleasure, fond of
pomp and shows, devoted to musical and theatrical entertain-
ments, and sometimes lapsing into debauchery. Hence it is
easy to see why he has been dealt with by the chroniclers of
the next century in an even harsher spirit than his father, and
is represented as a monster of cruelty and vice.

The Iconoclast Emperors 313

Constantine was no sooner seated on the throne than he
showed that he was determined to continue his father's policy.
He was at once assailed by the rebellion of the Iconodulic
faction : they induced his brother-in-law Artavasdus, general
of the Obsequian theme, to seize the capital, and proclaim
himself emperor, while Constantine was absent on an expe-
dition against the Saracens. All the European themes,
where the image-breakers were hated, did homage to Arta-
vasdus. But the Anatolic and Thracesian themes, the heart
of Asia Minor, remained true to the son of Leo. He showed
his energy and ability by beating the sons of Artavasdus in two
battles, and besieging the rebel in Constantinople. When the
city was well-nigh reduced by famine, Artavasdus fled, but he
was caught and brought before Constantine. The emperor
ordered him and his sons to be blinded, and confined them
in a monastery. Their chief adherents were beheaded (742).

This sanguinary lesson to the Iconodulic party seems to
have cowed them to such an extent that they did not raise
another open rebellion in the long reign of Constantine (740-
775). But they adhered as fully as ever to their faith:
nothing is so difficult to eradicate as a well-rooted superstition,
and Constantine's strong hand was better fitted to cow than to
persuade. As the years of his reign passed by, and he found
image-worship practised in secret by thousands of conscientious
votaries, the emperor grew more and more determined to up-
root it. After a time he resolved to call in the spiritual sanction
to aid the secular arm : in 753 he summoned a general council
to meet at Constantinople, but it was oecumenical only in name.
The Pope replied by anathemas of contumely to the summons
to appear ; the patriarchs of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alex-
andria, safe under the protection of the caliph, denied their
presence. But there assembled an imposing body of three
hundred and thirty-eight bishops, presided over by the Constan-
tinopolitan patriarch, Constantine of Sylaeum, and by Theo-
dosius, metropolitan of Ephesus, son of the emperor Tiberius 11.
This council committed itself fully to Iconoclastic doctrine;

314 Europeayi History, 476-918

it proscribed all representations of Oui Lord as blasphemous
Council o' snares, for endeavouring to express both His
Constanti- human and His divine nature in the mere likeness
nopie, 753. Qf ^ j^^j-,^ ^j^^ thereby obscuring His divinity in
His humanity. At the same time it condemned the worship
of images of saints, because all adoration except that paid to
the Godhead savoured of heathenism and anthropolatry.
The emperor had other scruples of his own, on which he did
not press the council to deliver a decision ; he denied the
intercessory powers of the Virgin, and scrupled to prefix the
epithet ayios, * holy,' to the names of even the greatest saints.
He spoke, for example, of ' Peter the Apostle,' not of ' the holy
Peter.' On these awful depths of free thought the Iconodules
of his own and the succeeding generation wasted expressions
of horror, worthy to be employed on a Herod or a Judas.

Armed with the decree of the council of Constantinople,
the emperor proceeded, during the remainder of his reign, to
indulge in what was a true religious persecution, for he pur-
sued the image-worshippers as heretics, not as rebels or rioters.
He inflicted the death-penalty in a few cases, but the majority
of his victims were flogged, mutilated, pilloried, or banished.
The most obstinate supporters of Iconoduly were found among
the monks, who not only resisted themselves, but never ceased
to use their vast influence over the mob in order to turn it
against the emperor. After a time Constantine resolved to
make an end of the monastic system, as being the strongest
bulwark of superstition. To uproot a habit of life founded on
Persecution the practice of centuries, and highly revered by the
of monks. multitude was ofcoursc an impossibility. Monas-
teries can only be suppressed, as they were at the Reformation,
if the nation sides with the sovereign. Nevertheless, Con-
stantine drove out and harried a vast number of monks. He
held that they were over-numerous, that they were men who
shirked the ordinary duties of the citizen, and that their pro-
fession was a cloak for selfishness and sloth. He aimed not
only at breaking up the cloisters, but at secularising their

The Iconoclast Emperors 3 1 5

inmates. On one occasion he had all the monks and nuns of
the Thracesian theme assembled, and offered them their choice
between marriage or banishment to Cyprus. The majority
chose the latter alternative, and became in the eyes of their
contemporaries confessors of the true faith. On another
occasion he exhibited in the Hippodrome a procession of un-
frocked monks, each holding by the hand an unfrocked nun
whom he was to marry — the Iconodule writers, as might be
expected, call the backsliding nuns ' harlots.' The deserted
monasteries were either pulled down for building materials or
turned into barracks.

But it must not be supposed that Constantine's activity was
entirely engrossed in persecuting the worshippers of images.
The thirty-five years of his reign were a period of considerable
military glory, and the emperor, who always headed his own
armies, took the field for more than a dozen campaigns. In
Asia the fall of the Ommeyad Caliphs, accompanied by savage
civil wars among the Saracens (750), offered an unrivalled
opportunity for extending the bounds of the empire. Con-
stantine pushed beyond the Anti-Taurus as far as the
Euphrates ; in 745 he occupied the district of Commagene,
and transported all its Christian inhabitants to Thrace : m 75 1
he took Melitene on the Euphrates, and the great wars of Con-
Armenian fortress of Theodosiopolis. Part of stantine.
these conquests were afterwards recovered by the first Abbaside
Caliph, Abdallah Al-Saffah, but the rest remained to the
empire as a trophy of Constantine's wars. Several Saracen
attempts to invade Cappadocia and Cyprus were driven
back with great slaughter, and in general it may be stated
that" Constantine effectually protected Asia Minor from the
Mohammedan sword, and that the country began to grow
again both in wealth and in population.

Nor was his work less useful in Europe. He completely
reduced to order the Slavonic tribes south of the Balkan, both
in Thrace and Macedonia : they had got out of hand during
the troubles of the years 695-718, and required to be subdued

3 1 6 European History, 476-9 1 8

anew. Constantine carefully fortified the defiles of the
Balkans, which communicate with the valley of the Danube,
garrisoning once more the ruined castles which Justinian had
built there. This advance northward brought him into hostile
contact with the Bulgarians, who had long been accustomed
to harry both the Slavonic and the Roman districts of Thrace
and Macedon, and could not brook to be walled in by the new
fine of forts. Constantine waged three successful wars with
the Bulgarians ; the first, lasting from 755 to 762, ended with
a great victory at Anchialus, after which king Baian sued for
peace, and obtained it on promising to keep his subjects from
raiding across the Balkans. The second war occupied the
years 764-773. Constantine crossed the Balkans, wasted
Bulgaria, slew the new king Toktu near the Danube, and was
preparing in the next year to complete the conquest of the
country, when his whole fleet and army were destroyed by a
storm in the Black Sea (765). Long and indecisive bickering
on the line of the Balkans followed, and peace was made in
773 on the old terms. The last Bulgarian war, provoked by
an attempt of king Telerig to invade Macedonia in 774-5,
was notable for a great victory at Lithosoria, but Constantine
died while leading his army northward, and his successes had
no permanent result. The Bulgarians were not subdued by
him, but they were kept at bay, and so tamed that they were
compelled to leave Thrace alone, and content themselves with
defending their own Danubian plains from the attacks of the
East-Romans.

The Saracen and Bulgarian being driven away from the
frontier, we are not surprised to hear that the empire flourished
under Constantine. He planted many colonies on the waste
lands of the borders, settling the emigrant Christians of
Constantine's ^^^^"'^"i^ ^^^ Thracc, and many Slavonic and Bul-
home govern- garian rcfugccs in Bithynia. We are told that
ment. agriculture prospered in his time, so much that

sixty measures of wheat sold for a gold solidus. He ex-
terminated brigandage, and made the roads safe for merchants.

The Iconoclast Emperors 317

He furnished Constantinople with a new water-supply by
restoring the aqueduct of Valens, broken more than a hundred
and fifty years before. When the capital had been devastated
by a great plague in 746-7, he more than replaced the lost
thousands of its population by new settlers from Hellas and
the islands, for whom employment was found by the increasing
commerce which followed the growth of internal prosperity.
When he died in 775, aged fifty-seven, he left a full treasury,
a loyal and devoted army, and a well-organised realm.

Constantine was succeeded by his eldest son Leo iv., often
called Leo the Chazar, because his mother Irene had been a
Chazar princess. Leo had acted as his father's colleague for
many years, and carried on Constantine's policy, though with
a less harsh hand. In the beginning of his reign he showed
toleration to the Iconodules, but when they commenced to
raise their heads again he resumed his father's per- Reign of Leo
secuting manner, flogging and banishing many pro- ^v., 775-80.
minent image-worshippers. He did not, however, object to
monks, as Constantine had done, but allowed them to rebuild
their convents, and even promoted some of them to bishoprics.
It is probable that his resumption of persecution in 777 was
connected with the discovery of a conspiracy against him
in which his own brothers Nicephorus and Christophorus
had leagued themselves with the discontented party. The
treacherous Caesars were pardoned by their brother, and their
associates suffered banishment and not death.

Leo continued his father's war with the Saracens. In 778
his armies invaded Commagene, defeated a great Saracen host
in the open field, and brought back under their protection a
great body of Syrian Christians, who were settled as colonists
in Thrace. The caliph Mehdy replied in the next year by an
invasion of the AnatoHc theme : his army forced its way as
far as Dorylaeum, but retired in disorder, and much harassed
by the Romans, after failing to take that place.

Leo was of a sickly habit of body, and died after a short reign
of five years, in 780, before he had attained the age of thirty-

3 1 8 European History^ 4/6-9 1 8

two. He left the throne to his son Constantine vi./ for whom
the empress Irene was to act as regent, as the boy was only-
nine years of age. Leo's early death was a fatal misfortune
alike for the Iconoclastic cause and the Isaurian dynasty.
The empress Irene, though she had succeeded in concealing
the fact during her husband's life, was a fervent worshipper of
images, and the moment that the reins of power fell into her
hands, set herself to reverse the imperial policy of the last
Constantine sixty ycars. She began by putting an end to the
VI. and Irene, repression of the Iconodules, and then gradually
displaced the old ministers of state and governors of the
themes by creatures of her own. This led to a plot against
her ; the conspirators proposed to crown Nicephorus, the eldest
of her brothers-in-law, but they were discovered and banished,
while all the five brothers of the deceased emperor were for-
cibly made priests, to disqualify them from seizing the throne.
When the patriarch Paul died in 784, Irene replaced him
by Tarasius, a fervent image-worshipper, and then ventured to
call a general council at Nicaea, to which she invited pope
Hadrian at Rome, and the Patriarchs of the East, to send
delegates. Under the influence of the empress the council,
by a large majority, declared the lawfulness of making repre-
sentations of Our Lord and the Saints, and bade men pay
not divine w^orship (Aarpei'a), but adoration and reverence
(7rpo(rKvvi](TLs) to them. The recalcitrant Iconoclastic bishops
were excommunicated. The doings of the council caused a
Restoration of ^"^^^"7 ^f the Imperial guard in Constantinople,
image-wor- for the greater part of the army still adhered to
ship, 785. ^YiQ views of the Isaurian emperors. But Irene

succeeded in steering through the troubled waters, put down
the mutiny, and retained her power.

Meanwhile the reign of a child and a woman proved

disastrous to the empire. The Slavs of the Balkans burst into

revolt, and the Saracens invaded Asia Minor. The want of

an emperor to head the army was grievously felt, and Haroun-

^ Or seventh, if Constantinus-Constans is counted.

The Iconoclast Emperors 319

al-Raschid, the son of the caliph Mehdy, ravaged the whole
Anatohc and Obsequian themes as far as the Bosphorus.
Irene felt herself unable to cope with the situation, and
bought a peace by an annual payment of 70,000 solidi (784).
Soon after the Bulgarian king declared war, and ravaged Thrace
after slaying the general of the Thracian theme in battle.

Among these disasters Constantine vi. grew up to manhood,
but his mother, who had acquired a great taste for power, and
feared to see her son reverse her religious policy, long refused
to give him any share in the government. She constantine
even made the army swear never to receive her seizes power.
son as sole emperor as long as she should live. The young
emperor, after chafing for some time in his state of tutelage,
took matters into his own hands. In his twenty-first year he
repaired to the camp of the Anatolic troops, and there pro-
claimed himself of age, and sole ruler of the State. He
banished his mother's favourites, and confined her for some
months to her own apartments in the palace.

When he had firmly seized the helm of power, Constantine
was weak enough to take his mother again as his colleague on
the throne, and to associate her name with his in all imperial
decrees. The ambitious and unnatural Irene repaid his con-
fidence by scheming against him. She had grown so fond of
power that she had resolved to win it back at all costs. Con-
stantine was, like his ancestors, a warlike and energetic prince.
He won several successes over the Saracens, and then engaged
in a Bulgarian war. His popularity was first shaken by a
fearful defeat at the hands of the Bulgarian king ^^^^^ ^^^
Cardam, by which he lost much of his influence thrones her
with the army. Shortly afterwards he entered ^°"'797-
into a fierce struggle with the Patriarch and the clergy, having
divorced, in spite of their opposition, a wife whom his mother
had forced upon him in early youth, and espoused Theodota,
on whom his own afiections were set. Knowing that the
Church was wroth with Constantine for this outbreak of self-
will, and that the army no longer loved him as before, the

320 European History, 476-918

wicked Irene determined to strike a blow against her son.
She suborned some of the young emperor's attendants to seize
their master, and, when he fell into her hands, had his eyes put
out. He was then immured in a monastery, where he sur-
vived for more than twenty years.

It was by a mere palace-conspiracy, not by an open rising,
that the unnatural mother had dethroned and blinded her
son. It is, therefore, all the more extraordinary to find that
she was able to cling to power for more than five years, in
spite of the horror which her act had caused. The gratitude
of the image-worshippers to her, for having restored to them
the power of practising their superstition, partly explains, but
does not at all excuse the impunity which she enjoyed after
her cruel deed.

Irene's five years of power (797-802) were disastrous at home
and abroad. Her court was swayed by two greedy eunuchs,
Aetius and Stauracius, on whom she lavished all the highest
offices. Their miserable quarrels with each other are the chief
things recorded in the annals of her internal government.
Meanwhile the frontiers were overrun by the armies of Haroun-
al-Raschid. The Saracens harried the Anatolic and Thracesian
themes, and forced their way as far as Ephesus. Peace was
only granted when Irene consented to pay a large annual
tribute to the Caliph.

In 802 the cup of Irene's iniquities was full. To put an
end to anarchy abroad and within, a number of the chief
officers of State, headed by the treasurer Nicephorus, seized
her by night, and shut her up in a nunnery. No one struck a
blow in her defence, for she was loved by no one, not even
Deposition of by the Iconodulcs, for whom she had done so

Irene, 802. much. Niccphorus was proclaimed as her
successor, and ascended the throne without any disturbance.

Thus ended the house of the Isaurians, after eighty-five
years of rule. They had effected much for the empire ; for
the disasters of Irene's short reign had not sufficed to undo the
solid work of Leo in. and Constantine v. The boundaries

The Iconoclast Emperors 321

were safer, the population greater, the wealth largely increased,
the armies more efficient than at the commencement of the
century. Even the Iconoclastic persecutions, though they
had failed to crush superstition, had done some good in
rooting out the grosser vagaries of image-worship. The
Iconoclastic party still subsisted, and was strong in the army
and civil service \ we shall see it once more in power during
the ninth century.

PERIOD I.

CHAPTER XIX

PIPPIN THE SHORT — WARS OF THE FRANKS
AND LOMBARDS

74T-768

Mayoralty of Pippin and Carloman — Their successful wars — Boniface
reforms the Prankish church — Abdication of Carloman — Pippin de-
thrones Childebert ill. and assumes the royal title— Quarrel of Aistulf
and Pope Stephen— Tlie Pope calls the Franks into Italy — Pippin twice
subdues Aistulf— The Exarchate given to the Papacy — Martyrdom of
St. Boniface — Conquest of Narbonne — Long struggle with the dukes
of Aquitaine — Death of Pippin.

The events which immediately followed the death of Charles
Martel showed clearly enough that the house of St. Arnulf
must still depend on the power of the sword to guard its
ascendency, and that it could only continue to rule by con-
tinuing to produce a series of able chiefs. It was fortunate
for the Frankish realm that Pippin and Carloman were both
men of sense and vigour, though perhaps they did not attain
to the full stature of their father's greatness. Not less fortu-
nate was it that, unlike the kings of the Merovingian house,
they dwelt together in amity and brotherly love, and under-
took every scheme in common.

The moment that Charles was dead troubles broke out on
every hand. Grifo, the younger brother of the two mayors,
declared himself wronged in the partition of the kingdoms,
seized Laon, and began to gather an army of Neustrian mal-
contents. Theudebald, the brother of the duke of Suabia,

322

Pippin the Short 323

who had been overthrown in 730, raised the Alamanni in revolt
in Elsass and the Black Forest. Hunold, duke of Aquitaine,
disclaimed the suzerainty of the Prankish crown, while the
Saxons refused the tribute which had been laid upon them,
and invaded Hesse.

The whole of 742 was spent by Pippin and Carloman in
dealing with the storm which had burst upon them. They
began with crushing their unruly brother, captured him, and
sent him captive to a fortress in the Ardennes. Next they
marched against Hunold of Aquitaine, and harried the
southern bank of the Loire, but the duke retreated southward
without fighting, and other duties called away the two mayors
before he was subdued. It was now the dangerous rising in
Suabia, in the very midst of their realm, which ^^^, ^^^^
demanded their attention. They descended paignsof
upon the Alamanni with irresistible force, and ^*pp'"-
soon subdued the whole land as far as the Bavarian fron-
tier But there was yet more fighting to be done, and, ere
they finished their task, the two mayors had determined to
legalise their somewhat anomalous position as regents for
a non-existent sovereign. They sought out and crowned
Childerich iii., the last of the Merovingians, as feeble a
shadow as his long-deceased kinsman, Theuderich iv. So,
after an interregnum of six years, the Franks had once more
a king.

It was three years before the authority of Carloman and
Pippin had been vindicated in every corner of the realm, but
at last Aquitaine had acknowledged once more its vassal
obligations, the Saxons had been chastised, and an attempt
of Bavaria to make itself independent had been crushed.
The struggle had not been without its difficulties, and the
two mayors had been so hard pressed for resources, that they
had followed in their father's steps by laying hands on Church
property, compelling bishops and abbeys to devote a certain
portion of their landed estates to the support of the war-
expenses of the crown. Other dealings with the Church had

324 European History ^ 476-918

been as unpopular though less unorthodox; the Frankish
St Boniface ^^^^§7 ^ere oftcn irregular in their lives, lax in
reforms the their spiritual duties, and given over to all
Church. manner of secular pursuits. The mayors set

the stern missionary enthusiast Boniface to reform these
evils. At the great synod of 745, to which all the prelates
of both Frankish realms were bidden, the great archbishop
entered into a campaign against clerical abuses of all sorts.
At his behest canons were passed against immoral life, plurali-
ties, the granting of benefices to unordained persons, the dis-
obedience of bishops to their metropolitans, the light assump-
tion and rejection of the monastic habit and vow, and the
favouring of heresy. Boniface had also much trouble with
those who, headed by the Irish missionary bishop Clement,
refused obedience to the Roman See, a fault which the great
archbishop regarded as no less heinous than the open profes-
sion of unorthodoxy. In all his doings he received the zealous
support of Carloman and Pippin. Ecclesiastical reform within
was not unaccompanied by ecclesiastical extension without.
In these troubled years of the two mayors, Boniface portioned
out the newly-converted lands of central Germany into the
three bishoprics of Wiirzburg, Erfurt, and Buraburg, to serve
respectively as sees for Franconia, Thuringia, and Hesse. At
the same time was founded his great abbey of Fulda, the
centre of piety and learning in Transrhenane Germany during
the succeeding age.

To the great surprise of all his contemporaries, the mayor
Carloman, on the completion of his task of re-establishing
Carloman Order in Austrasia, laid down his sword, and as-
abdicates, 747. gumed the monk's gown, in the year 747. * The
causes no man knew, but it would seem that he was truly
moved by a desire for the contemplative life and for the love
of God.' It was certainly no weakness or desire for inglorious
ease that led him to follow the example of his ancestor St.
Arnulf, and seek out a hermitage. He passed into Italy,
obtained the blessing of Pope Zacharias, and built himself a

Pippin the Short 325

cell on Mount Soracte, in the Sabine hills. We shall hear of
his name but once again, seven years after his abdication.

By his brother's retirement Pippin became mayor of Aus-
trasia as well as of Neustria. He had one more struggle to wage
ere all things were fully beneath his hand. In 747 his brother
Grifo escaped from prison, and fled to Saxony, from whence
he tried to stir up trouble. When Odilo duke of Bavaria
died, he seized that duchy, claiming it in right of his mother,
Swanhildis, who was of the ducal stock. Pippin soon drove
him out, and he was constrained to flee to Aquitaine. Bavaria
fell to Tassilo, the son of the late duke.

After the rebellion of Grifo we read in the Frankish annals
the unusual entry, that 'the whole land had peace for two
years' (749-50). Being now in complete possession of the
Frankish realm, and fearing no foe from within or from with-
out, Pippin took the step which must always have been pre-
sent in the brains of his ancestors, since the day when the
over-hasty Grimoald had endeavoured to seize the royal power
in 656. Warned by Grimoald's fate. Pippin the Younger and
Charles Martel had scrupulously refrained from claiming the
title of king, and had religiously kept up the series of puppet-
princes of the old Merovingian stock. Their descendant was
now determined to bring the farce to its end, and would not
even wait for the death of the imbecile Childerich in., whose
vain name had for the last ten years served to head Frankish
charters and rescripts. Early in 751 the national council of
the whole realm was summoned, and eagerly approved of the
removal of Childerich and the election of Pippin as king. To
bestow a still greater show of legal authority on the change,
Pippin then sent an embassy to Rome to obtain the approval
of the Pope. Its leader, Burkhard, bishop of Wiirzburg,
demanded of pope Zacharias 'Whether it was well or not
to keep to kings who had no royal power ? ' p. .^ ^
The pontiff, whose chief desire was to win aid thrones Chiide
against the Lombards by flattering the ambition "*^^ ^"•
of Pippin, made the answer that was expected of him. * It

$26 European History, 476-918

is better,' he said, 'that the man who has the real power
should also have the title of king, rather than the man who
has the mere title and no real power.' On the receipt of the
Pope's encouraging message, which he regarded as freeing him
from any religious obligation resting on oaths sworn to the
unfortunate Childerich, Pippin once more summoned the
Great Council of the Franks to meet. It assembled at Sois-
sons in October or November 751, and, in the ancient royal
city of Neustria, Pippin was first acclaimed as king, and lifted
on the shield, after the ancient Teutonic custom, by the
unanimous voice of the whole nation, and then anointed, as
befitted a Christian sovereign, by the great Austrasian arch-
bishop Boniface. Childerich was shorn of his regal locks,
and sent to spend the remainder of his days in an obscure
monastery, instead of the hardly less obscure royal manor in
which he had hitherto dwelt.

Thus liad the house of St. Arnulf at last reached the
summit of its ambition, and the Frankish race once more
obtained a king whose busy brain and strong right hand
could make a reality of the title which for four generations
had been but a vain name, while borne by the last effete
Merovings. Raised on the shield by the Austrasian counts
Pippin as ^ud dukcs, anointed by the Apostle of Germany,
king, 752-768. blessed by the Roman pontiff. Pippin went forth
conquering and to conquer, into lands where the Frankish
banner had not been seen for many generations. Charles
Martel vindicated the old frontier of the realm, his son was
destined to extend its bounds into regions where no Frankish
king had ever obtained a permanent footing.

The doings of Pippin the Short during the seventeen years
of his kingly rule fall into three main heads. First and most
important are his deahngs with the popes and the kings of the
Lombards, leading to his two great campaigns in Italy. Of
secondary moment are his conquests from the Saracens and
the Aquitanian dukes in the south of Gaul. His wars against
the Saxons are of minor importance only.

Pippin the Short 327

In giving his blessing to the accession of king Pippin pope
Zacharias had kept in view the aid which the Franks might
grant him in his quarrels with his Lombard neighbours.
Zacharias died ere he had time to demand a return for his
complaisance, but his successor Stephen soon claimed the
gratitude of the newly-crowned monarch of the Franks. The
old Lombard king Liutprand had died in 744, ^^^ Lombards
and his nephew Hildebrand, who succeeded him, and the
had held the throne for no more than a few P^P^<=y-
months. The Great Council of the Lombards deposed him
for vicious incompetency, and elected in his place Ratchis,
duke of Friuli. The new king, a man of mild and pious
disposition, kept the peace which Liutprand had made with
the Papacy till 749, when, for reasons to us unknown, he
advanced to attack Perugia, one of the few places in Italy
which still adhered to the empire. Pope Zacharias visited his
camp to plead with him in behalf of peace, with the un-
expected result that Ratchis not only raised the siege, but
laid down his crown and retired into a monastery, stricken,
like his contemporary Carloman, with the sudden horror of
secular things which occasionally fell upon the Teutonic
monarchs of the seventh and eighth century.

Ratchis was succeeded by his brother Aistulf, an ambitious
and restless monarch, who raised the Lombard kingdom to its
widest territorial extent by conquering the long- Aistuif takes
coveted Ravenna. When he attacked the shrunken Ravenna, 752.
Exarchate it received no help from Constantine Copronymus,
who detested his Italian subjects as obstinate image-wor-
shippers, and was much occupied at the moment by his
Saracen war. Ravenna fell with hardly any resistance, and
Eutychius, the last exarch, fled to Sicily. Aistulf then busied
himself in reducing the independent duchy of Benevento to
vassalage. His next project was to annex the towns of the
*ducatus Romanus' — the valley of the lower Tiber — and to
make the Pope his liegeman. Although he had concluded a
forty-years' peace with the Papacy, yet, in 752-53, he was

328 European History ^ 476-9 1 8

hovering about the neighbourhood of Rome, and occupying
the Umbrian and Sabine borders of the 'patrimony of St.
Peter.' At last his ambassadors appeared before Stephen 11.
to demand the homage of Rome, and the payment of an
annual tribute. After trying in vain to scare off Aistulf, first by
the terrors of excommunication, and then by empty menaces
of applying for aid to Constantinople, which the Lombard
derided, Stephen bethought himself of the debt of gratitude
which the Frankish king owed to the Holy See. After ascer-
taining that his presence and demands would not be un-
acceptable to king Pippin, he left Rome in October 753,
and, after making one more appeal to the Lombard king to
grant him peace and independence, crossed the Alps, and
appeared before the Frankish Court at Ponthion, near Bar-
le-Duc.

His reception was all that he could have wished. Pippin
met him three miles from the town, knelt before him on the
Po e ste hen ^^^adsidc, and walked beside his stirrup to the
invites Pippin palace gate, leading his palfrey by tlie bridle,
to Italy. though the month was January, and the snow

lay on the ground. In the royal chapel, when the court was
assembled, Stephen, ' with many tears and groans, laid before
the king the lamentable state of the Church, and besought him
to bring peace and salvation to the cause of St. Peter and the
Roman State. Whereupon Pippin swore an oath that he
would grant him all he asked, and use every endeavour to
put him in possession of the exarchate of Ravenna, as well as
all the cities which belonged by right to the Roman republic'
It was to no purpose that an unexpected guest appeared in
Gaul to beg Pippin to swerve from his purpose. This was his
brother Carloman, who left his Sabine monastery to pray
Pippin not to bring down the horrors of war upon Italy — a
request which seemed so strange to the Church historians of
the day, that they could only suppose that his mind had been
overpowered by diabolic delusions, or that he was yielding to
dread of the wrath of Aistulf. Pippin refused to listen to him,

Pippin the Short 329

and bade bim quit the court, and take up his residence at
Vienne, where he soon afterwards died.

Meanwhile the Great Council of the Frankish realms was
summoned to meet at Cerisy-sur-Oise, and there the king an-
nounced to his assembled counts and dukes that he proposed
to make war on the Lombards, in order to vindicate the rights
of the Holy See. Won over by their king's zeal, and by the
great gifts which Stephen 11. distributed among them, the
Franks eagerly clamoured for war. In return for their good-
will the Pope solemnly crowned Pippin, his wife Bertha,
and his young sons, Charles and Carloman, and pronounced
a curse on any one who should ever remove the house of
Pippin from the Frankish throne.

In the summer of 754 the hosts of the Franks choked the
Savoyard passes with their multitudes, and prepared to force
their way down into Italy. Aistulf had mustered his army,
and was ready to meet them. In the narrow gorge of the
Dora, hard by Susa, he fell on the Frankish vanguard ; but
he suffered such a crushing defeat that he had to fall back on
Pavia without striking a second blow. Pippin followed, wasting
Piedmont with fire and sword, and soon beleaguered Aistulf
in his royal stronghold. Then, with an alacrity pippin subdues
which his conqueror should have found some- Aistulf, 754.
what suspicious, Aistulf offered terms of peace. He would do
personal homage to Pippin, give him hostages, and engage to
restore to the Roman See all that was its due. So a treaty
was signed, Stephen was reconducted in triumph to Rome,
and Pippin returned beyond the Alps, proud that he had
added Lombardy to the list of states dependent on the
Frankish crown.

On his homeward journey the king heard of the death of
the great archbishop of Mainz, the apostle of Transrhenane
Germany. Zealous even in extreme old age for the conver-
sion of every subject of the Frankish realm, Boniface had
started on a missionary journey to East Friesland, where
paganism still held sway. As he lay encamped at Dokkum a

S30 European History, ^^^^-(^xZ

great multitude of wild heathen, indignant at the invasion of
their last retreat, fell upon him and slew him with all his
Martrydom of Companions. His death was not long unavenged ;
St. Boniface, ^j^g Christian majority of the Frisians took arms,
put down their pagan brethren, slew many thousands of them
and compelled the rest to submit to baptism. By his martyr-
death the great archbishop completed the conversion of the
land for which he had striven so much during his lifetime.
He was buried at Fulda in Hesse, where a great abbey was
reared over his shrine and became the centre of Christian life
in the Hessian lands whose apostle he had been. It would
have afforded the keenest pleasure to Boniface if he could
have witnessed the zeal with which his patron Pippin went
forward with the task of reducing the Frankish clergy to
canonical discipline. In the year which followed his mar-
tyrdom the Synod of Verneuil passed the most stringent laws
against evil-living, simony, the practice of secular avocations,
and the other failings of the clergy against which the arch-
bishop had raged in his lifetime.

The easy promises winch king Aistulf had made when he
was beleaguered in Pavia had never been intended for keep-
ing. When the Franks had withdrawn from Italy the king
found pretexts for delay, and did not restore to Stephen ii. a
single one of the Sabine or Latin cities which he had occupied
Aistulf attacks '^"^ 753) Still Icss the Exarchate of Ravenna, which
Rome. the Pope had impudently asked and fondly hoped

to receive. In the winter of 755-6 he took still more unmis-
takeable steps of hostility ; descending the valley of the Tiber
he suddenly laid siege to Rome. The walls of Aurelian were
still too strong to be stormed, but three months of blockade
brought the citizens near to yielding. The news that king
Pippin had once more taken arms restored courage to Pope
and people, and ere long Aistulf was forced to raise the siege
and hasten north to defend Lombardy. Once more the
Franks forced the defiles of the Cenis, and cut to pieces a
Lombard force which strove to stop the way. For the

Pippin the Short 33 1

second time Aistulf was forced into Pavia, beleaguered, and
compelled to sue for peace. This time he was given harder
terms. Pippin demanded one-third of the royal hoard of the
Lombards, an annual tribute, a larger body of hostages, and
the instant surrender of the Exarchate. The unwiUing Lom-
bard was forced to concede everything; Frankish envoys
received and handed over to the Pope, the cities of Ravenna,
Rimini, Pesaro, Forli, Urbino, and Sinigaglia, with all their
dependencies. Their keys were brought to Rome p. .^ .^^^
and laid in triumph on the sepulchre of St. Peter, the Exarchate
Thus did the Pope become an important secular *° *^® ^^v^-
prince, by taking over the old Byzantine dominions in central
Italy. It would seem that the theory by which he justified
this usurpation was that the guard of the possessions of the
* Roman Republic ' in Italy was incumbent on the emperor,
but that Constantine Copronymus being an obstinate heretic
his rights fell into abeyance. The Pope then stepped forward
as the representative of the ' Roman Republic ' in default of a
Caesar, and claimed possession of all that the Lombards had
lately usurped. Apparently he considered himself as 'Patrician'
in the Exarchate, but as a Patrician owing no duty or obedi-
ence to a heterodox emperor.

King Aistulf died in the next year, killed by a fall from his
horse, and the affairs of Italy troubled Pippin no more, Desi-
derius, duke of Istria, the new Lombard king, being occupied
with strengthening himself against an attempt of the ex-king
Ratchis to leave his cloister and resume the crown. The rest
of Pippin's reign was mainly devoted to the completion of the
Frankish dominion in southern Gaul. Soon after his procla-
mation as king his officers had recovered for him all the
Saracen towns in Septimania north of Narbonne. In 759
Pippin inarched in person to lay siege to that city, the last
bulwark of Islam beyond the Pyrenees. The Christian in-
habitants of the place rose at his approach, pippin takes
slew the Arab garrison, and opened their gates Narbonne, 759.
to the Frank. No help came from Spain, where civil war was

332 European History, 476-918

— as usual — raging, and the boundaries of the reahii of Pippin
were advanced to the Pyrenees.

Of far greater difficulty was the conquest of Aquitaine, the
last achievement of Pippin. The old duke Hunold, the adver-
sary of Charles Martel, had retired into a cloister, and had
been succeeded by his false and restless son Waifer. On
being summoned to give up some Frankish refugees, and
surrender certain church lands, the new duke took up arms
against his suzerain in 760; when Pippin appeared with all
the host of Austrasia and ravaged Berri and Auvergne, Waifer
asked for peace, and did homage. But the moment that his
liege lord had departed home, he flung his fealty to the winds
and began to ravage Burgundy. Next year the king returned
in force and conquered Clermont and the rest of Auvergne, to
which in 762 he added Bourges and the land of Berri. Waifer
held out with the greatest obstinacy, and was confirmed in
his resistance by learning of the revolt of Tassilo, duke of
Bavaria, who judged the time favourable for freeing his
duchy from the Franks. This gave Aquitaine a certain re-
spite, but by 766 Waifer had been driven beyond the Garonne,
and saw all his subjects except the Gascons compelled to do
Conquest of homage to Pippin. In 767 his capital Toulouse
Aquitaine, 767. feU^ and soon after his despairing followers ended
the war by murdering him and laying down their arms.
Aquitaine was now annexed to the Frankish crown, and
divided up into counties after the manner of the rest of the
realm.

During the seven years of the war of Aquitaine king
Pippin had found time to put down Tassilo's rebellion, and
to chastise some sporadic raids of the Saxons against whom
he had at an earlier date (755) undertaken a more serious
expedition, which resulted in all the Westphalian tribes doing
homage to him. But the full subjection of this wild race,
whose obstinate paganism and unconquerable courage had
baffled ten generations of Frankish missionaries and kings,
was reserved for Pippin's greater son.

Pippin the Short 333

In the last years of his reign Pippin occupied a central
place in the affairs of Europe such as no prince had held
since the days of Theodoric the Great. Even the Abbaside
Caliph of Bagdad sent to solicit his alliance : troubled by the
revolt of Spain under the Ommeyad prince Abder- ^^ ortance
ahman, he endeavoured to enlist the aid of Pippin of Pippin in
for the driving out of the rebel. The Frank ^"'•ope-
wisely allowed the infidels to tear each other to pieces with-
out helping either party. The Eastern emperor Constantine
Copronymus sent frequent embassies to Gaul. One was de-
signed to cajole Pippin into restoring the Exarchate to the
Byzantine realm. Another brought a proposal for wedding
Constantine's eldest son to Gisela, Pippin's only daughter.
On a third occasion the communication was on religious sub-
jects, the East-Roman envoys being clerics who were to
endeavour to interest the Franks in the Iconoclastic contro-
versy, and induce them to join in the destruction of images.
The Byzantines held a discussion with some legates of the
Pope in Pippin's presence, but got no assistance from the
great king of the West, in whose eyes the dispute was far
from having the same importance that it possessed in those
of Constantine.

In the fulness of years and honours Pippin passed away on
September 24th, 768, at St. Denis near Paris, after a long ill-
ness which gave him time to divide the kingdom between his
two sons before he died. His character is somewhat difficult
to fathom : he possessed all the distinguishing traits of the great
men of the house of St. Arnulf, courage, ambition, energy,
administrative skill, but showed few special characteristics of
his own. It is not easy to detect any ruling passion or foible
in his character, but his interference in Italy and his assump-
tion of the royal title show that he lacked the extreme caution
of his father. On the other hand his piety Death of
is praised by contemporaries not in the half- Pippin, y68.
hearted way in which that of Charles was described, but in
the most unquahfied terms of laudation. There are indica-

334 European History, 476-918

tions that he possessed somewhat of that taste tor literature
which we find so well marked in his son Charles the Great.
But it is impossible to draw any complete picture of his per-
sonality : even his nickname ' the Short ' was given him not by
his own contemporaries but by the chroniclers of the eleventh
century, who speak from tradition and not from knowledge.
Our idea of him must be constructed solely from what we
know of his life and actions.

CHAPTER XX

CHARLES THE GREAT— EARLY YEARS 768-785—
CONQUEST OF LOMBARDY AND SAXONY.

Chailes and Carloman — Final conquest of Aquitaine— Death of Carloman—
Character and habits of Charles — State of the Frankish Empire— Charles
interferes in Italy on behalf of the Pope — He subdues the Lombard
monarchy — His later expeditions into Italy — First conquest of Saxony —
Expedition to Spain — Rebellions of Saxony followed by its reconquest
and permanent subjection.

The moment that king Pippin had been laid beneath his
marble slab near the high altar of St. Denis, his two sons
drew apart, and atter retiring a few leagues from the place of
their father's death hastily had themselves saluted as kings by
their counts and dukes, and anointed by their bishops —
Charles at Noyon, Carloman at Soissons (Oct. 9th, 768).

Now for the second time it appeared likely that the great-
ness of the house of St. Arnulf might be wrecked by the old
and evil Frankish custom which prescribed the division of the
kingdom among the sons of the king. How that custom had
worked under the Merovings we have already seen. At the
death of Charles Martel it had already threatened to break up
the power of his house, a danger which was only averted by
the unexpected abdication of the elder Carloman. Untaught
by the experience of his own youth Pippin the Short had
committed the same mistake : old habit was too much for
him. On his deathbed, as we have seen, he divided his
realm between his two sons. He had, however, done his

best to leave his first-born so superior in strength to his

335

336 European History, 476-918

brother, that the younger king should not be able to compete
Joint rule of with him. Charlcs was left the warlike half of
CarToman"'^ the kingdom, all those Frankish lands, both
768-72. Austrasian and Neustrian, from the Main to the

Channel, which supphed the chief fighting element in the
Frankish armies. In addition he obtained the western half of
the newly conquered Aquitaine. Carloman's share consisted
of Burgundy, the Suabian lands on both sides of the upper
Rhine, and the whole Mediterranean coast from the Maritime
Alps to the border of Spain — the old Provincia and Septi-
mania. Moreover, he took the eastern half of Aquitaine, —
the country about Clermont, Rodez, Albi, and Toulouse.
Though wellnigh as large as the share of Charles, his king-
dom was not nearly so powerful, for the king who could
command the swords of the Franks was the one who could
give law to the whole realm.

For reasons which we know not, Charles and Carloman had
never been friendly — perhaps the younger son as born after
his father's coronation may have claimed some precedence
over the elder, who was the son merely of a Mayor of the
Palace. We know at any rate that throughout the three years
of their joint reign they were always on the edge of a quarrel.
Nothing but the influence and advice of their worthy mother
Bertha kept them from an open rupture. Luckily for the
realm both were good sons, and listened to the maternal
pleadings : still more luckily for the Franks the life of the
younger king was destined to be a short one. If Carloman
had been granted many days on earth, we may be sure that
the history of the last quarter of the ninth century would
have repeated the old fratricidal wars of the Meroyings. The
historians who wrote the life of the great Charles are never
tired of insisting on the many provocations which his brother
gave him. If Carloman had chanced to find an apologist we
might perhaps have learnt that Charles also gave subjects for
offence.

The commencement of the joint reign of the two kings was

Charles the Great ^3^

followed by the prompt revolt of the newly subdued Aquitaine.
Duke Waifer, the leader of the Southerners in their long war
with Pippin, being dead, his old father Hunold emerged from
his monastery to put himself at the head of the insurrection.
The country as far north as Angouldme — which was kept down
by a Frankish garrison — at once fell away to him, for the
Gascons trusted that the two jealous brothers charies sub-
would be too much occupied with their griev- dues Aquitaine
ances against each other to spare time for the '^^•
reconquest of the south. Charles immediately marched
against the rebels, and invited Carloman to accompany
him : the younger king appeared for a moment, but only
to hold an angry colloquy with his senior and then to return
to Burgundy. He did not, however, take the opportunity to
attack Charles, and the latter was able to pursue, unaided but
also unhindered, his campaign against the Aquitanians. It
was completely successful : he forced his way in arms as far
as Bordeaux, built a great fortified camp at Fronsac, which
was destined to remain as the central stronghold of the
Garonne for many generations, and so thoroughly beat Hun-
old that the old man fled for refuge to Lupus, duke of the
Gascons. But Lupus fearing the wrath of Charles submitted
to the conqueror, surrendered the fugitive, and asked and
obtained peace. Charles went home in triumph, replaced
Hunold in a cloister, and was henceforth undisputably king
in Aquitaine. He divided the country into countships on the
usual Frankish system, and placed these provinces in the
hands not of natives, but of men from north of the Loire
whose fidelity he could trust. For the future Aquitaine gave
no trouble.

In spite of Carloman's denial of help during the war in the
south, Charles was ere long persuaded by his mother to be
reconciled to his brother. But he took measures to keep him
in check for the future by making alliance with the neighbours
of Carloman to north and south. He concluded a treaty with
Tassilo, duke of Bavaria^ whose dependence on the Frankish

PERIOD I. Y

338 European History, 476-918

realm had of late grown very loose, and allied himself yet
more closely with Desiderius, the king of the Lombards, by
wedding his daughter Desiderata. This marriage was con-
cluded in spite of the most undignified shrieks of wrath on
the part of the Pope, who besought Charles * not to mix the
famous Frankish blood with the perfidious, foul, and leprous
Lombard stock — a truly diabolical coupling, which no true
man could call a marriage.' The Papacy had learnt so well
how to utilise the distant monarch of the Gauls against the
neighbouring lord of Pavia, that Stephen iii. looked upon an
alliance between Frank and Lombard as high treason against
the Holy See. The marriage, however, was consummated in
spite of Stephen's threats, whereupon, with more prudence
than consistency, he suddenly forgot his fundamental objec-
tions to the Lombard race, and made his peace with king
Desiderius, lest he should be left unaided to feel the weight of
the Lombard arm.

Within a year, however, Charles suddenly repudiated his
wife, alleging that she was sickly and barren. Whether this
was his real motive, or whether political causes also influenced
his action, we cannot tell; but as Charles wedded immediately
after his divorce a fair Suabian lady, named Hildegarde, we
may suspect that his motives were possibly those which guided
Henry viii. of England in a similar circumstance. Be this as
it may, he won by this divorce the unrelenting and not un-
Death of justifiable hatred of Desiderata's father, the king
Carioman. gf the Lombards. Trouble was soon in the air.
There was again a rumour that war was about to break out
between Charles and Carioman, in which Desiderius would
have taken part. Just in time to prevent such an out-
break, king Carioman died (December 771). He left an
infant son, but the nobles and bishops of Burgundy and
Alamannia made no attempt to set the child on his
father's throne. Wisely suppressing any particularist yearn-
ings, they betook themselves to Charles at Corbeny-sur-Aisne,
and there did homage to him as king of all the Frankish

Charles the Great 339

realms. Gerberga, the widow of Carloman, fled with her
child and a handful of followers to Lombardy, where Desi-
derius was now in a state of mind which made him glad to
receive any enemy of Charles's, and more especially one
who had such a plausible claim to a share in the Prankish
kingdom.

Once more, then, all the lands between the mouth of the
Rhine and the mouth of the Rhone, and from the Main to
the Bay of Biscay, were united under a single character of
king. And this was a king such as none of those Charles,
realms had ever seen before — a heroic figure, whose like we
have not met in all the three centuries with which we have
had to deal. Theodoric the Ostrogoth alone deserves a
mention by his side, and Theodoric had a smaller task and
less success than the great Charles. For the first time since
we began to tell the tale of the Dark Ages we have come
upon a man whose form and mind, whose plans and method
of life, have been so well recorded that we can build up for
ourselves a clear and tangible image of him. Charles the
Hammer, king Pippin, Leo the Isaurian, and even the good
Theodoric himself, are but shadowy figures, whose outlines
we can but dimly seize, but Charles stands before us firm
and masterful, a living man, whom we can understand and
admire.

' He was tall and stoutly built,' writes his chronicler, Ein-
hard ; ' his height just seven times the length of his own foot.
His head was round, his eyes large and lively, his nose some-
what above the common size, his expression bright and cheer-
ful. Whether he stood or sat his form was full Charles's
of dignity ; for the good proportion and grace of person and
his body prevented the observer from noticing ^^^*^^-
that his neck was rather short and his person rather too
fleshy. His tread was firm, his aspect manly; his voice
was clear, but rather high-pitched for so splendid a body.
His health was excellent ; only for the last four years of his
life he suffered from intermittent fever. To the very last he

340 European History^ 476-918

consulted his own goodwill rather than the orders of his
doctors, whom he detested, because they bade him give up
the roast meats that his soul loved.'

Charles was always of an active habit of body. He de-
lighted in riding and hunting, and was skilled in swimming
above other men. One of the chief reasons that induced
him to make Aachen his capital was that he loved to take
his sport in the great swimming-bath that was supplied by
its hot springs.

He always used the Frankish costume, and loved not
foreign apparel. Next his skin he wore a linen shirt and
drawers, over these a woollen tunic, with a silk border, and
breeches. He wrapped his calves and feet with the linen
bandages that were worn ere stockings were invented, and
drew high boots over them. In winter he wore a coat of the
fur of otter or ermine, and over that a bright blue cloak. A
sword with a golden hilt was always at his side. On great
days of state he assumed a tunic and cloak embroidered with
gold and clasped with gold buckles, girt his head with a
jewelled crown, and carried a sword with a jewelled hilt.
But for every-day wear his clothes were not more splendid
than those of his courtiers.

He was temperate in food and drink, more, however, in
drink than in food. No one ever saw him drink more than
three cups at his dinner, and he hated drunkenness, and chas-
tised it among his suite. But eating he loved in moderation,
and would often say that church fasts were bad for his health.
There were never more than four dishes on his table, besides
a roast, which was brought him hot from the kitchen on its
spit, and this was his favourite food.

At dinner he used to listen to a reciter or a reader. He
loved histories and tales of the ancients, and also the works
of St. Augustine, whose De Civitate Dei delighted him espe-
cially. He caused to be written out and committed to
memory the ancient Frankish epics about the deeds and wars
of the kings of old. He himself was well skilled in reading

Charles the Great 341

aloud and singing to the harp, and took much pains in in-
structing others in those accomplishments. All the liberal arts
were dear to him, and he loved learned men, and summoned
them from all quarters of the world. To study grammar he
sent for the deacon Peter of Pisa. In most other arts he had
as his preceptor Alcuin, the Englishman, the most learned of
all men, with whom he studied rhetoric and dialectic, and
spent much time in acquiring a knowledge of astronomy ;
for he was curious about the times and motions of the stars.
He invented German names for the twelve months of the
year, and the twelve winds. He tried, too, to learn the art of
the scribe,^ and used to keep paper and notebooks under his
pillow in bed, to practise his fingers at odd moments in form-
ing the characters ; but he began too late in life to get very
forward in this undertaking. Moreover, he loved building,
and designed the splendid cathedral of Aachen, glorious with
lamps and candlesticks of gold and silver, and doors and rail-
ings of solid bronze. When he was erecting it, and could not
get marble columns near at hand, he had them brought all the
way from Ravenna and Rome. He was a great churchgoer,
and always took care that the service in his presence should
be conducted with decorum. He used to pray both in
Frankish and in Latin, being equally skilled in both tongues.
For he had a great power of acquiring languages, and spoke
Latin excellently. Greek he learnt, but understood it better
than he spoke it He had a free and fluent power of speech,
and always expressed his meaning in the clearest way.

He slept lightly, and would often rise three or four times in
the night. When he was dressing for the work of the morning
he would have not only his friends in his chamber, but would
bid the count of the palace bring in litigants before him, and
give a decision from his chair just as if he was in a court of
law.

Charles had one lamentable failing — he was too careless of
the teachings of Christianity about the relation of the sexes.
* We know that he could at least sign his name.

342 European History, 476-918

He divorced his first wife over-lightly, and when his third
wife died he took to himself three concubines at once, who
bore him many bastard children. There were scandals at his
court, and two of his own daughters were known to be living
in open sin with two of his courtiers. Charles treated their
offence lightly, and never visited them with any rebuke. Not
so his son, Lewis the Pious, who regarded his sisters' shame
as so heinous that he banished them when he came to the
throne. It was the shortcomings of the great king in respect
of sexual morality which prevented the Church from decree-
ing the beatification of its protector after his death. The
spirit of the times was well shown by the strange vision of
the monk Wettin of Reichenau, who, falling into a trance
and wandering through the other world, saw Charles in Pur-
gatory, kept in purifying flames for a space, till this sin
should be purged from his soul.

So much do the chronicles tell us concerning the person
and the manner of life of Charles the Great ; but there are other
points which impress us more than they did the contemporary
observer. Considering that he was so far in advance of his age
in the cultivation of literature, art, science, and architecture,
that in administration and organisation of his realm he so far sur-
passed all that had lived before him, and that he rose in most
of his conduct to such a high conception, alike of his kingly
office and of his personal responsibility for all his actions, it
is disappointing, though not surprising, to find that in some
matters he was not above the standard of his time. We have
already alluded to his loose living, but a worse failing was his
occasional liability to outbursts of inhumanity. The most
savage of them was his massacre of 4500 unarmed prisoners of
war at Verden, in 782. If the majority of his wars were defen-
sive, or at least necessary, there were a few — notably the Lom-
bard war — in which aggressive ambition was the main operat-
ing cause, but this was a small failing in the unscrupulous
eighth century. On the whole we stand amazed at the magna-
nimity of the man, and are so much struck with his splendid

Charles the Great 343

qualities, that we are perhaps in danger of doing him wrong
by judging him from our own moral standpoint. He rises so
far above that of the Dark Ages, that it scarcely occurs to the
historian to judge him by their low standard. Yet it is by
remembering what was the spirit of those times that his great-
ness is most readily recognised.

We shall have to deal with Charles in three main aspects,
as conqueror, as organiser, and as the introducer of new
theories of political life into the mind of Christendom. It
is difficult to keep the three lines of activity clearly separate \
for all through his reign, from first to last, Charles was equally
busy in each of these capacities. To make clear the logical
sequence of his doings it is sometimes necessary to override
their chronological order.

At the first glance the most extraordinary of the achieve-
ments of Charles appear to be his huge additions to the terri-
tory of the Frankish realm by the annexation of the conquests of
Lombard kingdom, the Spanish march. Saxony, Charles,
and the Slavonic lands of the Elbe and the Drave to the inherit-
ance that he had been left by his father. These conquests
represent a plan of operations deliberately undertaken, carried
out with an unswerving hand, and brought to a successful
finish. Charles had inherited from his father and grand-
father the duty, which they had undertaken, of protecting
Christian Europe from the Saracen, the Slav, and the
heathen Saxon, the three enemies whom his ancestors had
driven back, but had not crushed. Closely connected with
this duty was the obligation to convert to Christianity the
new subjects whom he might subdue, to deal with Saxon and
Slav as Charles Martel had already dealt with Frisian and
Thuringian, and so to push the outer defences of Christen-
dom into those parts of central Europe which had hitherto
been sunk in savagery and paganism. The Saracen alone it was
impossible to convert. He might be expelled, but then, as now,
it was found easier to exterminate the Moslem than to make
him abandon Islam. To these altogether useful and salutary

344 European History, 476-918

tasks, which Charles inherited from the great Mayors of the
Palace, another was added, the less happy plan of cementing
a close union with the Papacy by crushing the nation of the
Lombards. Pippin had committed the Franks to this scheme,
and Charles did but carry out his father's pledges. But by
his action he destroyed a healthy and vigorous Christian state,
the possible base for a strong Italian nationality, and com-
mitted the Frankish kingdom to a profitless union, which was
to bring forth seven centuries of discord. What was worst of
all, he firmly established the temporal power of the Papacy, a
curse to blast Italy for a thousand years. The gains which he
received in return, — the religious sanction bestowed on his
royal power by the Pope, and the imperial title, were but
doubtful boons. It was to be seen, ere the ninth century had
expired, that the house of St. Arnulf, like all the dynasties
that succeeded it, lost more than it gained by putting itself
under obligations to the Roman See, and consenting to
accept from the Pope's hands the style of emperor, and
the vague commission to protect the unity of Christendom,
— a commission which to the Roman pontiff meant little
more than the duty of giving the Church all that she chose
to crave.

Before proceeding to relate the earlier conquests of Charles
the Great, it is necessary to explain the boundaries of his
realm as it stood at the moment of the death of his brother
Carloman. In Germany the border to north and south was
held by the two vassal peoples of Frisia and Bavaria, both now
Christian, and both reduced during the last fifty years to a
more strict obedience to the Franks than they had ever
known before, but still possessing their own native rulers, and
not completely united to the monarchy. East of Frisia lay
the Saxons, the race whom the Merovings, and the great
Limits of i^'iayors who succeeded them, had alike failed to
Charles's tame. After three hundred years of hard fight-
reaim. -^^g ^^ boundary of the Frank and Saxon re-

mained where it had stood in the year 500. To the east of

Charles the Great 345

Saxony lay races hardly yet known to the Franks, the
Slavonic tribes of the Abotrites, Wiltzes, and Sorbs.

The duchy of Bavaria had as its eastern neighbours another
group of Slavonic peoples, the races who had once formed the
ephemeral kingdom of Samo,^ Czechs and Moravians on the
upper Elbe, Carentanians on the Drave. Beyond these Slavs
lay the realm of the Avar Chagan, now in a state of decadence
owing both to civil wars and to rebellions of its Slavonic
subjects.

Between Frisia and Bavaria the frontier of the realm of
Charles was held by the Thuringians, now no longer under
the rule of native princes, but divided up into Frankish
counties, as the adjacent Suabia had also been, and forming
like Suabia an integral part of Charles's monarchy. The
neighbours of the Thuringians beyond the border were the
Slavonic Sorbs.

The south-east frontier of the Frankish empire was
formed by the main chain of the Alps, beyond which lay
the Lombard realm of king Desiderius. Its south-western
limit was the main chain of the Pyrenees, beyond which
lay the Saracens of Spain, over whom at this moment
Abderahman the Ommeyad had just succeeded in establish-
ing his power, and had formed a state independent of the
Abbaside caliphate (755).

Of all the neighbours of king Charles, it was Desiderius
the Lombard who was first destined to feel the weight of the
Frankish sword. He had not only received Carloman's widow
Gerberga, when she fled from Burgundy, but had shown some
intention of proclaiming her son king of the Franks. Yet it
was not this machination against Charles that was the actual
cause of war, but the relations of the Papacy with Desiderius.
Hadrian i. had just been raised to the Papal throne. He
was a Roman by birth, and a great hater of the Lombards.
He refused the friendship and alliance which Desiderius prof-
fered, and very shortly after he was consecrated began to
1 See p. 177.

34^ European History^ 476-918

pick a quarrel with the unfortunate king. He demanded
Quarrel of the ^^°"^ ^^^^ ^^^ important towus of Ferrara and
Pope and the Faenza, as part of the Exarchate of Ravenna.
Lombards. ^j^^^ j^^^ ^^^^^^ promised to St. Peter, he said,
in 757, while Desiderius was struggling for the crown with
king Ratchis, and must be handed over at once. Desiderius,
thinking that Charles would be too much occupied beyond
the Alps in settling the newly-annexed dominions of his
brother to allow of his appearance in Italy, replied to the
Pope's challenge by sending a host into the Pentapohs, and
seizing Sinigaglia and Urbino. Shortly afterwards he raised
the full force of the Lombard realm, and marched against
Rome. Hadrian had expected this. He fortified and strongly
garrisoned the city, and sent in haste to bid the lord of the
Franks to come to the help of St. Peter, and force the un-
righteous Lombards to carry out in full the treaty that king
Pippin had imposed upon them. The news of the despatch
of this embassy seems to have frightened Desiderius. He drew
back to Viterbo, and, instead of pressing the siege of Rome,
sent an embassy to Charles, to explain that the Pope's charges
were unfounded, as he was not keeping back anything that
really belonged to the Exarchate (772, autumn).

Desiderius, when he first attacked Rome, was not wrong in
thinking that Charles was already occupied in the affairs of his
own kingdom. He had that summer commenced the great
undertaking of the conquest of Saxony, a task which was to
tax his energies for the next twenty years. In the summer of
772 he had entered the land, compelled the Mid-Saxons or
Engrians to give him hostages, and cut down in token of
triumph the Irminsul, a holy tree reverenced by all the Saxon
tribes, which stood in a grove near Paderborn, and v;as adorned
with many rich offerings. On his return to Austrasia, Charles
met the ambassadors of Hadrian and Desiderius at Thionville.
He did not swerve for a moment from his father's policy of
supporting the Papacy through thick and thin. He sent off
ambassadors to bid Desiderius give up all the cities belonging to

Charles the Great 347

the Holy See that he was unlawfully occupying, and told him to
do justice to St. Peter without delay. The Lombard king was
far too angry at this interference to grant the Frank's demands.
He swore that he would restore nothing. This drew down
Charles into Italy. Marching from Geneva he charies in-
crossed Mont Cenis with one division of his army, vades Lom-
while his uncle Bernard with the rest followed the ^^''^y- 773-
route of the Great St. Bernard. Desiderius on their approach
fortified the Alpine gorges by Susa and Ivrea, and stood upon
the defensive. But a chosen band of Franks turned his
position at Susa by climbing over the hills, and when he saw
himself outflanked, the Lombard king abandoned his lines,
and fell back on Pavia, exactly as his predecessor Aistulf had
done in the war with king Pippin. Charles followed in haste,
and laid siege to Pavia, which held out for many months.
Meanwhile Adelchis, the son of Desiderius, raised a second
Lombard army, and took post in front of Verona. Leaving
part of his army to maintain the blockade of Pavia, Charles
marched against Adelchis, compelled him to fly, and captured
Verona, and afterwards Brescia and Bergamo. The Lombard
prince took to the sea, and sought Constantinople, where he
endeavoured to obtain help from Constantine Copronymus,
then in the midst of his Bulgarian war.

As king Desiderius held out in Pavia with the greatest ob-
stinacy, and the siege was protracted for many months,
Charles resolved to spend the spring of 774 in visiting Rome,
and coming to a complete understanding with pope Hadrian.
He reached the city in Holy Week, and celebrated the Easter
festivities with great splendour : his communings with Hadrian
ended in his confirming his father's grant to the Papacy of the
whole Exarchate of Ravenna, from Ferrara and charies at
Commachio on the north, to Osimo on the south, Rome, 774.
including all the places that had been in dispute between the
Pope and the Lombard king. Later Roman writers pretended
that Charles had even increased Pippin's liberal gift by adding
to it north Tuscany, Parma and Modena, Venice, and even

34^ European History, 476-918

the island of Corsica. But there is no trace of this in con-
temporary authorities : the Frank never made over to the
Pope the sovereignty of Tuscany or Emilia, much less of
Venice — which was not his to give, — or the distant island of
Corsica.

On returning from Rome to the valley of the Po, in the early
summer of 774, Charles found Pavia ready to submit: Desi-
Faiiof Pavia, derius and his men of war were wasted by famine
774- and opened the gates on condition that their lives

should be spared. The king was sent as a prisoner to Neu-
stria, and died many years after as a monk in the abbey of
Corbey. His royal treasure was divided among the Frankish
army. Adelchis, the heir of the Lombard throne, had, as we
have already mentioned, escaped to the Byzantine court, and
died there many years afterwards as a ' patrician.'

Instead of following Pippin's example, and allowing Lom-
bardy to survive as a vassal state, Charles had himself pro-
claimed as king in Italy, and compelled all the Lombard dukes
and counts to do homage to him at Pavia. Only Arichis of
Benevento, the son-in-law of Desiderius, persistedin maintaining
his independence. For the future Charles styled himself 'King
of the Franks and Lombards, and Roman Patrician.' Except
that he left a garrison in the capital, and handed over some
of the more important Italian cities to Frankish counts instead
of leaving them in the hands of their old Lombard governors,
he made little change in the administration of Italy. His
rights of conquest were used with such moderation, that Italy
gave him very little trouble for the rest of his reign. The
only serious disturbance that took place was in 776, when the
dukes of Friuli, Spoleto, and Benevento conspired to send for
Adelchis from Constantinople, and proclaim him as king of
Later expedi- the Lombards. Hearing of their plot, Charles
tion to Italy, descended upon Italy, slew the duke of Friuli in
battle, and compelled the duke of Spoleto to do him homage.
Arichis of Benevento was not subdued : he maintained his
southern duchy intact, though the Franks sent more than one

Charles the Great 349

expedition against him. Apparently Charles regarded the
homage of this distant state as too small a thing to be worth
his attention till 787, when he made another descent into
Italy in person, besieged Arichis in Salerno, and finally com-
pelled him to become his vassal. But in 792, Arichis being
dead, his son Grimoald shook off the Frankish yoke, and main-
tained a precarious semi-independence for the future, though
he was several times attacked, and saw more than one of his
chief towns stormed by the armies of Charles. The great
king himself, however, never entered Beneventan territory
again, and it was only his presence that could have sufficed
to subdue the unruly duke.

But we must return to the doings of Charles after his first
conquest of the Lombards in 774. During his absence the
Saxons had once more taken arms, and it was now high time
to recommence the campaign against them, which had been
interrupted by the great expedition to Italy. The year 775
saw the first of the many subjections of Saxony which Charles
was to carry out during his long reign.

The Saxons were divided into four great divisions. Nearest
the Frankish frontier were the Westphalians, who dwelt on the
Ems and Lippe, and about the Teutobiirger Wald. Beyond
them to the east, the Engrians occupied the valley of the
Weser, from its mouth as far as the borders of Hesse. East
of the Engrians again, lay the Eastphalians, on the Aller and
Ocker and Elbe. The latter-named river separated them from
the Slavonic tribes of the Abotrites, who lived in the modern
Mecklemburg. The fourth division of the Saxons were the
Nordalbingiansj who dwelt in Holstein, beyond the Elbe, on
the borders of the Danes, and were the least accessible and
most savage of their race. Saxony was a land of state of
wood, heath, and morass : only on its southern Saxony.
border was there a hilly tract, the spurs of the Harz mountains.
The chief obstacle in the way of conquering the country was the
fact that the Saxons had no towns and very few fortified posts ;
they took refuge in woods or swamps when the king's army

350

European History, 476-918

appeared, and came forth again when he was gone. The land
was quite roadless, so that the pursuit of the flying tribes was
very difficult. If surrounded and compelled to do homage to
Charles, they gave hostages, and paid great fines in cattle, but
the moment that the Franks had left their neighbourhood
took arms again. Nine times did one or other section of the
Saxon race rebel, and any will less strong than that of the

SAXONY

IN THE 9TH CENTURY

inflexible Charles, would have yielded before their intractable
obstinacy. But he persevered to the end in leading expedi-
tion after expedition against the rebels, punished their revolts
by fire and sword, transplanted incorrigible tribes across
the Rhine, built towns and castles all over the land, erected
bishoprics, and sent forth countless missionaries, till in the last
ten years of his life he had the satisfaction of seeing Saxony
both submissive and Christian.

The expedition of 775 began by the invasion of Westphalia ;
after dispersing its inhabitants, and storming their great

Charles the Great 351

entrenched camp at Sigiburg, Charles passed on into Engria,
defeated the Mid-Saxons and crossed the Weser. This brought
him into EastphaHa, which he ravaged as far as the river Ocker.
The Eastphalians, though the furthest of the Saxons from the
Frankish border, were the first to submit to Charles, and their
chief Hessi eagerly accepted Christianity, and did homage.
Soon after the Engrians also came in to the king's camp, and
gave up hostages for their fidelity. The Westphalians held out
last, and only submitted when Charles, on his return towards
Austrasia, ravaged their land from end to end, and First conquest
made a great slaughter of their warriors. The o^ Saxony.
king left garrisons in two great camps at Sigiburg and Eresburg,
to hold down the Westphalians and Engrians respectively. The
hostages whom he brought back were mostly boys of noble
family, whom he sent to be brought up as Christians in various
Austrasian monasteries. Three-fourths of Saxony had thus
done homage to Charles, but their adhesion was of the most
unstable sort. They hated the Franks as ancestral enemies,
and detested Christianity as a Frankish device for subduing
them body and soul. It was only the presence of Charles and
the fear of his return that kept them in order for a moment.

No sooner had Charles started in the next year for his second
invasion of Italy, to put down the dukes of Friuli and Bene-
vento, than the Westphalians and Engrians at once took arms.
They stormed the Frankish camp at Eresburg, and slaughtered
the garrison, but failed in a similar attempt at Sigiburg. The
moment that Charles heard of this rebellion, he hastened back
from Italy with such speed that he was already on the Lippe
before the Saxons suspected that he had crossed the Alps.
So great was their fear of him that the whole race at once asked
for peace, and sent their local chiefs to do him homage, 'pro-
mising that they would all be baptized, and hold their land as
true vassals of the king.' Only one chief, named ^^^^^^
Witikind, refused to submit, and fled northward, quest of
to take refuge with the Danes (776). Charles saxony,776.
replaced his garrison in the fort of Eresburg, and built

352 European History^ 476-918

another entrenched camp at Karlstadt. That winter he
remained in Austrasia, close to the Saxon border, in order to
watch these untrustworthy subjects. In the next spring he
summoned the great national council of the whole Frankish
realm to meet at Paderborn, in the heart of Engria, in order
to mark the fact that Saxony had now become an integral part
of his dominions (777). ' Then were a great multitude of the
Saxons baptized, and following their national custom, they
swore that they would forfeit their freedom and their lands if
ever they revolted again, according to their old habit, and
unless they kept their Christianity and their loyalty to king
Charles and his heirs.'

To this great diet at Paderborn came some ambassadors
from Spain, bearing an unexpected offer of homage to the king.
Abderahman, the Ommeyad, had finally succeeded in conquer-
ing well-nigh the whole of the Spanish peninsula from those ot
the Saracens who refused to accept him as king. The last sur-
vivors of his opponents, in desperate straits, sent to offer to
become the vassals of Charles if he would preserve them from
the conqueror. These chiefs were Soliman Ibn-al-Arabi and
Kasmin Ibn-Yussuf, who were holding the towns of Barcelona,
Gerona, and Huesca, in the extreme north-west of Spain, on
the Frankish border. Charles determined to accept their offer,
and so to thrust forward his frontier beyond the Pyrenees, as
to protect Septimania from Saracen raids by interposing a new
line of fortresses between it and the dominion of the ruler of
Cordova. He believed that Saxony was fully subdued, and
might be safely left alone to settle down into loyalty and
Christian ways.

Accordingly, in 778, Charles led his first great expedition

into Spain. He himself crossed the Western Pyrenees with

„, , . the host of Neustria, while the levy of Austrasia,

Charles in- ' J '

vades Spain, Burgundy, and Lombardy, passed the Eastern
'^^^' Pyrenees. The two armies met in front of Sara-

gossa, and Charles there received the homage of the rebel
Saracen chiefs of Barcelona and Gerona. Saragossa, how-

Charles the Great 353

ever, did not fall, in spite of the great army that had been
concentrated against it, and Charles then wheeled about, and
returned to Aquitaine by the same way that he had come.
His expedition had not proved a great success. The Saracen
rebels were untrustworthy vassals, nor was the only other
result of the campaign, the homage paid to Charles by the
Spanish Basques and Navarrese, after he had stormed their
town of Pampeluna, a more solid gain. Indeed, while the
Prankish army was returning through the passes of the
Pyrenees, the Basques fell upon the king's rearguard and
waggon-train, in the famous defile of Roncesvalles. They cap-
tured much booty, and slew three great officials — Eggihard, the
seneschal ; Anselm, the count of the palace ; and Hruotland
(Roland), the warden of the Breton marches. The last named,
of whom history knows nothing save his untimely fall at
Roncesvalles, must have been a great man among the Franks,
for within a short time after his death he had become the hero
of many legends, which ultimately took shape in the famous
Chanson de Roland^ wherein the Breton Margrave appears as
second only to Charles the Great among the hosts of Christ-
endom (778).

The king had not long reached Aquitaine when the unwel-
come news arrived that the Saxons had broken their oaths, and
were once more up in arms. The exile Witikind had returned
from Denmark, and called the turbulent youth of Saxony
into the field. The greater number of the tribes had risen
at his call, and a great Saxon host had stormed the new fort
of Karlstadt, and harried Hesse and the right bank of the
Rhine, as far as Deutz and the mouth of the Moselle, burning
churches, and slaying the peasantry of the country-side in
revenge for the destruction of the Irminsul and the ravages
of Charles in 775-76. On receiving this disturbing news the
king made his way to Austrasia, sent out some troops to clear
the Rhine-bank of the Saxon plunderers, but put off the
general muster of the hosts of the Franks for a third con-
quest of Saxony till next year. In the summer of 779,

PERIOD I. z

354 European History^ 4^7^-9^^

however, he again started on his endless task, and marched
through WestphaUa with fire and sword. The Westphahans
once more surrendered, after a defeat in the open field ; the
Engrians and Eastphalians yielded without fighting. In the
next spring he returned again, held a great diet at the head-
waters of the Lippe, and divided all Saxony into missionary
Fourth con- ^^^^tricts, cach to be worked by a colony of monks
quest of from Austrasia, the first step towards the partition
Saxony. ^f ^^^ |^j^^^ jj^^-q ^^^ X'^i^x bishopries. This activity
was rewarded by the conversion and baptism of many thou-
sand pagans. Charles assisted in person on more than one
occasion, when whole thousands of Saxons were simultaneously
passed through the waters of the Ocker and the Elbe (780).

He then turned off" towards Italy. For the first time his
departure was not followed by an immediate outbreak of
rebellion. The land remained quiet for more than two years
(780-82), and when he next passed that way Charles thought
it had advanced so far in the paths of peace that he divided it
up into countships, after the model of the rest of his empire,
and gave the charge of many of them to native Saxon chiefs,
whom he honoured with the title of count ; the rest were
placed under officers of Frankish blood. He also published
a code of laws for Saxony, in which the harshest punishments
were denounced against all those who still clung to paganism.
Such offences as sacrificing to Woden, burning instead of
burying the dead, openly deriding church ceremonies, or
robbing a church, were to be punished with instant death.
Even those who obstinately refused baptism, or who after
baptism refused to fast in Lent, and conform to church
discipline, were threatened with capital punishment.

It was perhaps in consequence of the issue of this cruel
code that the Saxons once more flew to arms in the autumn
of 782. The rebel Witikind returned from Denmark to put
himself at their head, and most of the northern tribes rose at
his call. The news quickly brought Charles back into the
country. Once more he came in overwhelming force, and

Charles the Great 355

many of the Saxons at once laid down their arms and sub-
mitted. But now for the first time the king showed signs of
violent wrath against the unruly race. He could not pardon
them for slaying priests, burning churches, and washing off in
mockery their marks of baptism. He bade each tribe send to
him in bonds those men who had been most prominent in
casting off Christianity and fomenting the last rising. Four
thousand five hundred captives were brought before him by
their submissive countrymen in his camp at Massacre of
Verden, on the Aller. Yielding to an impulse Verden.
of revenge, Charles had the whole of this great body of help-
less prisoners beheaded. But, instead of cowing the Saxons,
this cruel execution only roused them to wild wrath. Every
man in the nation had lost some friend or relative in the
great massacre, and even the tribes which had hitherto been
most submissive flew to arms. There followed more than two
years of unbroken fighting (783-85). Charles marched twice
through the land, burning and slaughtering over the face of
every Saxon gau^ from the Ems to the Elbe, but the infuriated
rebels closed in behind him after he had passed, and still
held out in the woods and marshes. But the king only hard-
ened his heart. He refused to quit the land, and wintered,
with all his army, near Minden, in the heart of Saxony. At
last, in the spring of 785, the perseverance of the rebels began
to quail ; it was impossible to drive off the inflexible king of
the Franks, and they once more bethought them of submis-
sion. The rebel chief Witikind obtained a promise of his life
if he would surrender and be baptized, and, when he, with
his chosen warriors, submitted, the great rising ^
was at last at an end. Once more the counts quest of
received charge of their old districts, the mis- Saxony, 785.
sionaries returned to rebuild their ruined churches, and the
surviving Saxons submitted in despair to the yoke of the
Frankish warrior and the Frankish priest.

It was seven years before any further trouble arose in
Saxony, though there were to be four more partial risings

356 European History, 476-918

between 792 and 804. But none of these threatened seriously
to shake Charles's domination ; they were merely the last
throes of Saxon despair, and cannot be compared to the great
struggle of 783-85, in which the fate of Saxon independence
and Saxon heathendom was really settled.

It was shortly after the final annexation of the Germans of
the Elbe and Weser that Charles fully incorporated the
Germans of the upper Danube with his empire. His vassal,
Tassilo, duke of Bavaria, had been a somewhat unruly and
disobedient subject. He was pardoned for more than one
Annexation outburst of disloyalty, but when he was treated
of Bavaria, -with kindncss and consideration he behaved no
better than before. At last, in 788, he was deprived of his
duchy, which was cut up into countships and put under
Frankish governors, while he himself was sent to end his days
HI the Neustrian monastery of Jumieges

CHAPTER XXI

THE LATER WARS AND CONQUESTS
OF CHARLES THE GREAT

785-814

Wide scope of the later conquests of Charles— Outlying provinces governed
by his sons— Conquest of the Baltic Slavs— Subjection of Bohemia— Wars
with the Avars and their final subjection — HostiUties with the Eastern
Empire — Conquest of the Spanish March — Later revolts of the Saxons —
Wars with the Danes.

King Charles had now come to the end of the first of the
stages of his conquests, and the nearer enemies of the Frankish
kingdom had been reduced to subjection. With comparatively
httle trouble the fertile Lombard plain had been won j after
long toil and exertion the pathless woods and moors of
Saxony had been taken within the boundary of his realm.
But his schemes of conquest had a much wider scope than
the annexation of Lombardy and Saxony. Before Christendom
could be reckoned as safe from all foes without, there were
more realms to be won, more marches to be made secure.
By pushing his frontier up to the Elbe and the Julian Alps,
Charles had taken up the ancient feuds of the Lombard and
the Saxon with their eastern neighbours, the Avar and the
Slav. Moreover, there was still the Spanish border to be
made firm, for the expedition of 778 had resulted in no
permanent gain; the unstable allegiance of Barcelona and
Gerona was once more being paid to the Ommeyad king at
Cordova, not to the lord of the Franks.

867

35^ European History, 476-918

The second period, therefore, in the record of the con-
quests of Charles the Great includes the history of the making
firm of his new eastern and south-western borders. But this
is not, like the first fifteen years of his reign, a time of com-
plete conquest and incorporation of races who were near
akin to the Franks. All the Teutonic peoples of central
Europe were already gathered beneath the sceptre of Charles ;
the tribes with which he had now to do were strangers to the
Franks, not only in religion, but in blood and language. The
Wide scope work of Charlcs in the East in the second period
of Charles' of his rcigu was to make the Slav and Avar
schemes. harmless, by compelling their princes to pay
homage and tribute, not by occupying their realms with
Frankish garrisons, or carving them up into countships and
marches. In the West, on the other hand, his task was to
build up a strong border against the Moor, by conquering,
one by one, the fortresses between the Pyrenees and the
Ebro. The Moslem had to be driven out, since there was no
hope of converting him. In the towns from which he was
expelled a new population grew up, neither purely Spanish
nor purely Frank, but the mixed race of the Catalans, in
whose veins Romano-Spanish, Visigothic, Aquitanian, and
Frankish blood was mingled in various proportions, so that
they have always differed very considerably, both in character
and in language, from the inhabitants of the rest of the penin-
sula. But the history of the foreign policy of Charles during
the second period of his reign contains much more besides
his dealings with the Slav, the Moor, and the Avar. He had
frequent troubles with the East-Roman Empire, arising from
their disputed boundaries in Italy. In the very end of his
reign he met and turned off the first assault of the Danes on
the Frankish realm, an attack insignificant in itself, but por-
tending the gravest dangers in the future. We find him
interfering beyond the British sea with the affairs of Northum-
bria, and at the same time extending his hand far to the
south to seize the Balearic Isles. Even to the distant Abbasside

Charles the Great 359

Caliph at Bagdad his fame was known, and Haroun's ambas-
sadors sought the court of Aachen to concert an alHance with
him.

In the second half of his reign Charles very frequently took
the field in person, but was not so constantly at the head of
his armies as during the period 773-85- He had charies makes
now three growing sons, whom he intrusted with his sons
the charge of three important sections of his ^^"ss.
realm, and he looked to them to guard each that portion of
the frontier of the Frankish empire which bordered on his
own sub-kingdom. Charles, the eldest of the three, ruled in
western Neustria (Anjou, Maine, Touraine); Pippin, the
second, in Lombardy; Lewis, the youngest, in Aquitaine.
Charles would thus be specially concerned with the unruly
Bretons of Armorica, who twice made unsuccessful risings in
his father's reign (786 and 799). Lewis was in charge of the
Saracen frontier along the Pyrenees. Pippin had to keep watch
over the duke of Benevento, as well as to turn his attention to
the Avars on the north-east of Italy. But the three princes
were not strictly confined each to his own sphere. Charles was
occasionally sent against the Saxons ; Lewis conducted at
least one campaign in southern Italy ; Pippin more than once
took charge of an attack on the Slavs of Bohemia. Whenever,
in short, the great king could not march in person against a
rebel or a foreign enemy, he would send one of his sons to
take his place. He did not allow them to become completely
localised and engrossed with the affairs of their respective
governments, but often kept them with him at Aachen for
many months at a time.

In reviewing the later conquests of Charles the Great it will
be most convenient to follow the geographical order from
north to south, rather than the chronological order of each
campaign, for his arms were engaged in so many quarters at
once that an attempt to tell his doings in a purely annalistic
form leads to dire confusion.

On the North-East the Frankish border, after 785, was

360 European History^ 476-918

fringed by Slavonic tribes, all ancient enemies of the Saxon.
These were the Abotrites in the north — in the modern Meck-
Conquestof l^mburg — the Wiltzes beyond them in western
the Northern Pomerania, and the Sorbes in Brandenburg, on
^'^^'^^- the Havel and Spree. These tribes, Hke their

kindred whom we have already met in the Balkan peninsula,
were rude peoples, and not very formidable enemies, owing to
their subdivisions under petty princes, and their incapacity
for union. Though numerous and not unwarlike, all
the Slavs between Elbe and Oder were subdued by
Charles in a single campaign. He crossed the Elbe in
789 with an Austrasian army, strengthened by levies of
Frisians and of Saxons, who served gladly against their
ancestral foes. The terror of his name seems to have
stricken the Slavs with dismay. After a very slight resistance,
first the Abotrites and their chief king Witzin, then the
Wiltzes and their chief king Dragovit did homage to
Charles, gave him as many hostages as he chose to demand,
and consented to pay him a tribute and to receive the Chris-
tian missionaries whom he prepared to send among them.
The Frankish army marched through moors and woods till it
saw the Baltic at the mouth of the Peene in Pomerania, and
then returned with some booty and no loss to the banks of
the Rhine. So thoroughly were the Slavs subdued that during
the next revolt of the Saxons they did not take the oppor-
tunity of disowning their homage to Charles, but came to
help him against the rebels (795). Witzin, prince of the
Abotrites, was actually slain by the Eastphalians while in
arms for the Franks, and his death was well revenged by
the king, who harried the lands along the Elbe with excep-
tional severity to atone for his ally's slaughter. In a later
Saxon rising (798) we again find the Abotrites taking arms at
the bidding of Charles. Their new king Thrasuco recon-
quered the Nordalbingians without Frankish aid, and brought
their chiefs in bonds to the king's feet, ' whereupon Charles
honoured him marvellously, and gave the Slavs great gifts.'

Charles the Great 361

Ten years later the same prince and people fought valiantly
against the Danes when they invaded the wars of Dane
northern frontier of Charles's realm, though their and siav.
neighbours the Wiltzes on this occasion deserted to the
enemy. The latter people, however, were subdued again in
812, at the very end of the great king's reign, so that he left
his eastern boundary undiminished at his death. On the
whole the Slavs of the North were not by any means the most
difficult to rule of the many races with whom Charles had to
deal.

With their fellow Slavs more to the south, the Czechs of
Bohemia, the Franks had comparatively few rela- subjection of
tions. The vast uninhabited tract of forest and Bohemia,
mountain called the Bohmerwald seems to have long kept
them apart. But in 805-6 the king sent against them his son
and namesake Charles the Younger, who twice wasted all
the valley of the upper Elbe, and finally compelled the
chiefs of the Czechs to acknowledge their dependence on the
Frankish empire by paying tribute.

South of Bohemia, along the Danube and the Raab and
Leithe, the realms of Charles bordered on the Tartar tribe of
the Avars, ancient enemies both of the Lombards and of the
emperors of Constantinople. The Avars had of late years
fallen on evil times. They were vexed with civil wars so
much that none of their princes any longer ruled war with the
the whole race, or could call himself by the title Avars,
of Chagan, the old name of their supreme ruler. Yet, though
wasted by their own dissensions, and by the revolts of the
Slavonic tribes who were their vassals, the Avars could not
keep from their old habit of making descents on their neigh-
bours. They drew down their doom on themselves by invading,
in 788, at once the Lombard march of Friuli and the vassal
duchy of Bavaria. When next he had leisure, two years later,
Charles planned an invasion of their land on the largest scale.
He himself marched down the Danube with an Austrasian
and Saxon army, burst through the long line of fortifications

362 European History, 476-918

with which the Avars had strengthened their border, and
wasted their lands as far as the Raab. At the same moment
a great Lombard host entered the valley of the Drave, pushed
into the heart of Pannonia, beat the Avars in the field, and
stormed their great circular camps. The complete subjection
of the whole tribe would have followed in the next year if
Charles had not been called away by a Saxon revolt, which
kept him employed during the two next campaigning seasons.
The king himself never again took the field against the Avars,
but his son Pippin and Eric duke of Friuli continued the
war on his behalf. Twice they captured the great * ring,' or
royal camp, between Danube and Theiss, the central strong-
hold of the Avar race, and sent its spoils to Aachen in such
quantities that Charles was able to send Avaric trophies as
gifts to all his friends, even to such distant kings as Offa of
Mercia. At last the spirit of the Avars was so much broken
that their chiefs, or ' Tuduns,' came of their own accord to

The Avars Aachcu to do homage to Charles, and offered to

subdued, rcccive Christianity. Their submission was ac-
cepted. The king appointed one of them to rule the whole
race as his vassal, and bade him assume the ancient title of
Chagan (805). This prince was baptized by the name of
Abraham, paid a regular tribute to the Franks, and kept his
subjects for the future from the dangerous temptation of
meddling with the Lombard or Bavarian border. The Avars
were, however, in a state of decay at this time, and their race
and kingdom were ere long to be swept away by the invading
Magyars.

The same fate which befell the Tartar Avars fell also upon
their southern neighbours and former vassals, the Slavs of the
Save and Drave. These Carantanians (Carinthians) and
Slovenians were subdued by the arms of Charles's Bavarian
and Lombard subjects, and became dependants of the
Prankish empire, forced to pay tribute and do homage, but
not wholly incorporated with the realm.

Wc have already spoken in a previous chapter of the

Charles the Great 363

dealings of Charles with Italy. He never succeeded in fully
subduing the duchy of Benevento, though its dukes were
several times compelled to do him homage when he marched
in person against them. Italy was finally put under charge of
Pippin, the king's second son, who was given the royal title
and authority there as his father's delegate. Pippin, besides
the task of striving to hold down Benevento, had also to cope
with the intrigues of the East Romans in Italy. The Con-
stantinopolitan emperor had still a foot-hold in the peninsula
at Naples, Reggio, and Brindisi, and still enjoyed the homage
of the half-independent peoples of Venice and Istria. Luckily
for the Franks the Eastern realm was during the most im-
portant years of Charles's reign, under the weak hands of the
empress Irene (780-90 and 797-802) and the usurper Nice-
phorus I. (802-11.) They bitterly resented the establishment
of a new power in Italy, and the assumption of the imperial
title by the Frankish king, which they regarded as the worst
insult that could be put upon the majesty of the Eastern Empire,
which claimed to be the sole and legitimate heir wars with the
of Augustus and Constantine. But their efforts East Romans,
went little further than endeavouring to stir up trouble in
Italy by means of the Lombard prince Adelchis, the son of
king Desiderius, who had fled to Constantinople and become
a Byzantine patrician. He tried to make more than one
descent on Italy, but met with uniform ill-success. The only
serious fighting between Frank and East Roman was in the
years 804-10, when Nicephorus i. undertook several expeditions
against Italy to avenge the revolt of Venice. In the first-
named year, a party among the Venetians, who were torn by
civil strife, called in the Franks and transferred their allegiance
to Charles. Nicephorus sent out a fleet which harried the
coasts of Tuscany and the Exarchate, but could make no
solid impression on the Lombard kingdom. A little later the
East Roman party in Venice got the upper hand, and once
more handed the city over to the Byzantines. Contented with
the recovery of his vassal-state, Nicephorus then made peace

364 European History^ 476-918

with Charles. The only net result of the war had been
that the Franks got permanent possession of Pola and the
other coast-cities of Istria, which had hitherto been East
Roman. Michael Rhangabe, the successor of Nicephorus,
went so far in allying himself with Charles, that he con-
sented to recognise him as Emperor of the West, a con-
cession accepted with pride by the Franks, and regarded as a
lamentable token of weakness by the Constantinopolitans
(812).

One of the consequences of the conquests of Charles in
Italy was to bring the Franks into collision with the Saracen
pirates, who infested the central Mediterranean, making their
harbourage in the ports of the islands which face the western
coast of the peninsula. At a date which cannot be accurately
fixed, the Franks took possession of Corsica and Sardinia,
hunting out the Saracen colonists who had conquered the
Wars with inlands from the East-Romans some fifty or sixty
Saracen years before. In 799 the Franks also took pos-
pirates. session of the Balearic islands. These distant de-

pendencies were attacked and ravaged by fleets from Spain on
more than one occasion, but they were held down to the close
of the reign of Charles. They were given in charge to the
counts of Genoa and Tuscany, who seem to have been able
to raise a considerable fleet, and more than once gained naval
victories over the plundering Moor.

But the most serious struggle between Charles and the
Moslems took place in Spain, where during the whole of the
second period of his reign the fighting was almost continuous.
The permanent advance of the Christians beyond the Pyrenees
began with the capture of Gerona in 785. The conduct of
the war fell mainly into the hands of Lewis, the third son of
Charles, whom his father had named king of Aquitaine, and
trusted with all the affairs of the south-west. He and his chief
captain and councillor William, count of Toulouse — a great
hero in the Frankish romances — had to deal with the two
first Ommeyad kings of Cordova, Abderahman (755-88) and

Charles the Great 365

Hisham (788-897), both strong and capable rulers, from
whom it was by no means easy to win territory. Nevertheless
the Christian border slowly advanced, owing to the conquests in
seditious and turbulent Moslem governors, who Spain,
were always rebelling against their masters, and calling in
Frankish aid. In 795 the newly-won land beyond the
Pyrenees — around the towns of Gerona, Cardona, Urgel, and
Ausona — was made into a separate government, the March of
Spain, and intrusted to a Margrave of its own, instead of
forming a dependency of the duchy of Septimania. Barcelona,
the greatest town of Catalonia, was added to the March in 797,
by the treachery of its governor Zeid, who, failing in a rebellion
against his master at Cordova, handed the place over to the
Franks. The Moors recovered it for a moment in 799, but
king Lewis then came over the Pyrenees with the whole levy
of Aquitaine, and laid siege to the town. It held out for
nearly two years, but fell in 801, conquered by famine, after the
Franks had walled it in with a circumvallation, and sat before
it in their huts for the whole winter of 800-801. The Moorish
population departed en masse after the surrender, and the great
city was re-populated with ' Goths ' from Septimania. The
Franks were now firmly established beyond the Pyrenees, and
in the last ten years of Charles's reign subdued the whole
southern slope of the mountains from Pampeluna as far as the
mouth of the Ebro. Tarragona, the second town of Catalonia,
fell in 809, and Tortosa, the great fortress which commanded
the lower course of the Ebro, in 811. After this the Franks
were able to cross the river, and ravage the wide plains of
Valencia ; it was probably their advance in this direction that
induced Al-Hakem, the third Ommeyad ruler of Cordova, to
sue for peace in 812, ceding to the Christians all that they had
gained beyond the Pyrenees. The Franks were not destined
to hold permanently the entirety of their conquests, but Bar-
celona and all the towns north of it were lost to Islam and won
for Christendom : these strongholds guarded the Aquitanian
frontier against Saracen inroads with success, and were

366 European History 476-918

ultimately to form the nucleus of the more important half of
the Christian kingdom of Arragon.

Such were the foreign conquests of Charles the Great. But
his offensive campaigns were not the only wars in which blood
was shed during the later years of his reign. There were also
troubles, though of comparatively insignificant scope, within
the interior of his realm. We have already alluded to two
fruitless attempts of the Bretons of Armorica to resume their
ancient independence. These were easily crushed, but not
so the later Saxon rebellions. It was seven years after the
pacification of 785 before the unruly dwellers by the Elbe and
Later Saxon Wescr rosc again, but in the eighth summer some
revolts. of the districts of the extreme north took arms
again and relapsed into their ancestral heathendom, ' returning
like the dog to his vomit,' in the words of the contemporary
chronicler. The insurrection spread widely among the East-
phalians and Nordalbingians in the following year (793), and
was not finally put down till 794, though it never extended
over the whole land, as did the great risings of the early part of
the reign of Charles. Ere two years more were passed there
were new troubles among the Engrians and Nordalbingians,
which required the presence of Charles : but it says much for
the growing strength of his power in the country that he was
able to suppress them by means of armies composed partly of
Christian Saxons, and partly of the loyal Slavs of the Abotrite
tribe. The last outbreak in the land was as late as 804 : it
extended only over the northern tribes, and was suppressed
by the summary transportation to Gaul of the whole of the
unruly Nordalbingian race, the greatest offenders among the
rebels. Charles settled 10,000 of their families in small
colonies among the Neustrians, and gave their vacant lands as
a gift to his vassal, the king of the Abotrites. This was the
last Saxon rebellion : henceforth * they abandoned the worship
of evil spirits, and gave up the wicked customs of their fathers,
and received the sacrament of Christian baptism, mingling with
the Franks till at last they were reckoned one race with them.'

Charles the Great 367

The complete subjection and conversion of Saxony is marked
by the creation of the first bishoprics in the ^ . .

. ' Complete sud-

country at this period. Cnarles estabhshed jection of
bishops at Bremen, Miinster, and Paderborn in Saxony.
804-6, to serve respectively as the religious centres of northern,
western, and southern Saxony. Others were afterwards added
at Hamburg, Osnabruck, Verden, Hildesheim, Minden, and
Magdeburg, but these foundations belong to the next genera-
tion. Round these bishops' sees grew up the first towns of
Saxony, for hitherto its inhabitants had lived a purely rural
life, and never gathered within walls.

The possession of Saxony brought Charles in the end of his
reign into hostile contact with a race almost unknown to his
ancestors, but destined to be only too well known to his sons
— the Danes of the Jutland peninsula and the Scandinavian
isles, who dwelt beyond the Eider on the Nordalbingian
border. The advent of a new and militant Christian power
into the recesses of the unknown North seems to have stirred
up the Danes to unwonted activity. They must have heard
from Witikind, and the other Saxon exiles who took refuge
with them, many tales of the untiring energy and unrelenting
severity of the great king of the Franks, and feared lest his
strong hand would be stretched out beyond the Eider to add
them to the list of his tributaries, and force them wars with
to accept his religion. To guard against the the Danes,
further advance of the Franks, king Godfred built in 808 all
along his frontier, at the narrowest point of the isthmus of
Schleswig, a great earthwork from sea to sea, long known as
the Dannewerk, and famed in wars down to the last conflict
of German and Dane in 1863. But Godfred did not confine
himself to defensive works ; he began to make piratical descents
all along the Frisian and Flemish coasts as far as the mouth
of the Seine, and at the same time attacked the Abotrites and
Wiltzes, the Slavonic vassals of Charles on the Baltic. God-
fred did much damage in Frisia, and actually succeeded for a
moment in cnishing the Abotrites and subduing the Wiltzes.

368 European History ^ 476-918

He gave the Franks much' trouble, since he ravaged all the
coast where it was unguarded, but took to his ships again when
a large army was sent against him. In 810 he penetrated so
far into Frisia, that he spoke, in boasting mood, of paying
Charles a visit at Aachen. But in the same year he was
murdered by his own people, and his nephew and successor
Hemming made peace with the Franks. The peace was ill-
kept, for we hear of isolated Danish raids in the last years of
Charles's reign and a fleet of war-ships, which were built in the
ports of Neustria for the defence of the coast, does not seem
to have protected the Frisian waters very efficiently.

But Charles did not survive to see the serious development
of the Danish attack : he died before his realm had suffered
any serious loss from their ravages, and must have been far
from suspecting that ere he was fifty years dead these half-
known and somewhat despised foes would pierce through the
Frankish empire from end to end, and even sack his own
chosen dwelling, the royal palace of Aachen.

CHAPTER XXII

CHARLES THE GREAT AND THE EMPIRE

Survival of the Theory of the Empire in Western Europe, and especially in
Italy— Its influence— Troubles of Pope Leo iii.— He crowns Charles on
Christmas Day 800— Consequences, immediate and remote, of the coro-
nation— The Papacy and the Empire — Charles as administrator and
legislator — His encouragement of Literature, Architecture, and Science
— His later years and death.

While narrating the never-ending wars of the great king of
the Franks, we have barely found time to mention the
internal changes which he wrought in the condition and
constitution of his realms. Of these the first and foremost
was his introduction of a new political theory into the govern-
ment of Western Christendom, when he caused himself to be
crowned emperor by Pope Leo iii. in the memorable year 800.
We have had occasion to remark in an earlier chapter that
the theory of the universal dominion of the Roman Empire
.had long survived the extinction of any real power of the
emperors in most of the countries of Western Europe.
Theodoric the Ostrogoth and Chlodovech the Frank had
been proud to acknowledge themselves as the first subjects of
the Constantinopolitan Caesar, and to receive from his hands
high-sounding titles and robes of honour. Till the middle of
the sixth century Gaul, Spain, and Italy had all owned a
nominal allegiance to the empire, and their homage had only
been denied when Justinian by his bold attempt to recover
the whole of the West had forced the Teutonic kings to take
arms against him in their own defence. Then Baduila,

PERIOD I. 2 A

370 European History^ 476-918

Leovigild,and Theudebert had disclaimed their allegiance, and
banished the imperial name from their coins and their charters.
The last practical traces of the old Roman connection had
been lost in Spain when the soldiers of Heraclius were
driven out by Swinthila (623)/ and in Gaul when the en-
couragement and the subsidies of Maurice had failed to sustain
the pretender Gundovald (585).2 Yet there still lingered on
in the minds of the educated classes a memory of the ancient
empire ; curious turns of expression in chroniclers of the
seventh century often show us that they still remembered the
old theory of the world-wide rule of Rome. A Spanish chro-
nicler writing in the seventh century can still call the East
Roman armies 'the soldiers of the respublica.^ Subjects of
the Frankish kings in Gaul still dated their letters by Con-
stantinopolitan indictions.

In Italy, of course, the tradition of the unity of Christendom
under the emperors was in no danger of being forgotten.
Appeals to the ancient temporal and spiritual supremacy ot
Rome were the most powerful items in the Pope's stock of
arguments, when a Gregory or a Zacharias stated his pretensions
to patriarchal authority in the West, or denounced the wicked-
ness of the intrusive Lombard. The personal ambition of the
Popes was always leading them to indulge in fond reminiscences
of the ancient glories of the Empire. The vanity of the de-
generate populace of Rome sometimes found vent in futile
claims that they, ' the Roman senate and people,' really were
the heirs of Augustus and Constantine, while the Caesar at
Constantinople was nothing more than a mere Greek. When,
by the rupture between Leo the Isaurian and Pope Gregory 11.,
Rome practically passed out of the hands of the Eastern
Augustus, it was easy enough for an Italian to maintain
„^ ^ . that Constantine Copronymus or Leo the Khazar

The Empire ^ -'.

and the had no longer any true right to use the Roman

West. Imperial title. And the Italian malcontent would

add, not, of course, that Rome had ceased to form part of the
1 See page 224. ^ See page 170.

Charles the Great 371

Roman Empire, but that the title of emperor had passed away
from the heretical Isaurian house, and fallen into abeyance,
while the empire itself still existed, for its cessation had grown
to be inconceivable to the Italian mind.

The Italians, and to a less extent the Franks, were sorely
puzzled by the long continuance of the anomalous condition
of affairs, when for sixty years the titular emperors had re-
mained heretics, and had failed to maintain their hold on
Rome. Nor was the position improved when the Eastern
Empire relapsed into orthodoxy indeed, but at the same time
passed into the hands of an empress-regnant, a thing repug-
nant to all those who remembered the ancient Roman horror
of a woman's reign. Irene herself, too, had obtained the crown
by such a series of crimes against her son, that not merely
constitutional jurists, but all right-minded men shrank, in spite
of her extreme orthodoxy, from the idea of recognising in her
the legitimate ruler of Rome.

More than once during the long quarrel between the Popes
and the Isaurian emperors there had been some talk of elect-
ing a separate Augustus to bear rule over Roman Italy, — those
districts of the peninsula which were not in the hands of the
Lombards. The scheme had not been carried _ , .

Tendencies

out, mainly because the Popes opposed it, but it to separation
had not been forgotten. Now that the greater *" ^**^y-
part of Italy, both Lombard and Roman, was under the rule
of a single king, and one well liked both by the Pope and
by the Roman people, it would have been strange if the idea
of completely repudiating the ignominious dependence of Rome
on Constantinople had not been once more mooted. For as
long as there remained but one person bearing the Imperial
style, — the ruler of the East, — the Pope and his Roman and
Italian contemporaries had an uneasy consciousness that their
homage ought still, perhaps, to be paid to that person, Greek
and heretic though he or she might be.

We may suppose that these doubts hardly troubled the Frank-
ish vassals of Charles the Great, but to his Italian subjects

372 European History ^ 476-918

they were a constant source of vexation of spirit ; while
practically they were liegemen of the Frankish king, they were
not quite sure whether in theory they might not still be con-
sidered the liegemen of the hated Caesars at Constantinople.

Such thoughts must have been running through the heads of
all the Popes who held the Roman See from 773 to 800. But
it would seem that it was Pope Leo iii. who first bethought him
of the easiest way of settling the situation — to declare the king
of the Franks Roman emperor, and not merely Roman patri-
cian. A barbarian Augustus would be unprecedented, but
not more so than the female ruler of the Empire who now
swayed Constantinople. It was evidently the sight of a
woman — and a very wicked woman — on the Byzantine throne
that gave the final impulse to the desire of the Italians to cut
off the last thread of connection with the Imperial line in the
East. Their desire must have been well known to Charles
himself, but it would seem that he for some time shrank from
granting it. Perhaps he feared the responsibilities of the
title ; more probably he did not see how it legally could be
conferred upon him : there was no precedent to settle what
person or body in the West could claim to give it, and it was
most certain that the court of Constantinople would utterly
refuse to grant it, and would view its assumption by a * bar-
barian ' king of the West as a gross piece of insolence.

It would seem that the fervent gratitude of Pope Leo iii.
for his deliverance by the hand of Charles from certain domestic
enemies in Rome, was the active cause of the great cere
mony of Christmas Day 800. Leo had been cruelly mal
Leo III, and treated by personal enemies in Rome, the kinsmen
Charles. q{ j^jg predcccssor Hadrian i. ; they had seized
his person and tried to blind him. But he escaped, fled over
the Alps, and took refuge with the great king at his camp
near Paderborn, in Saxony. Charles investigated the dispute
between Leo and his enemies, and he determined that he
would come to Rome and decide the matter in person ; mean-
while he sent Leo home under the protection of some Frankish

Charles the Great , 373

ambassadors. Late in the year 800 Charles moved down into
Italy, and held a synod at Rome in which he carefully inves-
tigated the conduct of Leo, and pronounced him blameless,
while his enemies were executed or thrown into prison. The
Pope then purged himself by an oath from all the charges that
had been made against him, and was reinstated in his place
with much solemnity.

It was only a few days after Charles had thus restored and
commended Leo, that the Pope paid the debt of gratitude by
crowning his saviour as emperor. The details of this all-im-
portant ceremony are curious. The royal and papal courts
were thronging St. Peter's basilica to celebrate the festival of
Christmas. When the service was ended, and while the
emperor was still kneeHng before the altar in silent prayer,
Leo advanced with a diadem in his hand, and charies
placed it upon the bowed head of the great king^ crowned
crying, ' God grant life and victory to Charles the Emperor.
Augustus, crowned by God, great and pacific Emperor of the
Romans.' Frankish warriors and Italian clergy and citizens
joined in the cry, and all present, including the Pope himself,
bent their knees to Charles as he rose, and saluted him with
the fashion of adoration paid to the ancient emperors.

Charles himself was wont to declare that the ceremony took
place without his consent having been obtained, and that he
would never have entered St. Peter's that day, if he had known
of the Pope's intention. Yet there is no doubt that he had
seriously taken the matter into consideration long before ; it
is probable that Leo in his outburst of gratitude for his restora-
tion did no more than force Charles's hand, by sweeping away
by his sudden act the king's lingering objections to the coro-
nation. He knew that the act would be hailed with joy both
by Frank and Roman, and that Charles himself was rather
doubtful as to the proper form for assuming the title than
opposed to its actual adoption. The way in which the corona-
tion was viewed by the majority of his subjects may be gathered
from an extract from the Frankish chronicle of Lauresheim : —

374 . European History, 476-918

' The name of emperor had ceased among the Greeks, for they
were enduring the reign of a woman, wherefore it seemed good
both to Leo the apostolic Pope, and to the holy fathers
(bishops) who were in council with him, and to all Christian
men, that they should hail Charles king of the Franks as
emperor. For he held Rome itself, where the ancient Caesars
always dwelt, and all these other possessions of his own in
Italy and Gaul and Germany. Wherefore, as God had
granted him all these dominions, it seemed just to them that
he should accept the imperial title also, when it was offered
him by the consent of all Christendom.'

That there was much to be said against the legality of the
assumption by Charles of his new style, cannot be disputed.
Certainly the Pope had no right to give it : nor had there
been a precedent for many centuries for the conferring of the
imperial title by the decayed body of nobles and the miscel-
laneous gathering of citizens who might still call themselves
' the senate and people of Rome.' Apparently the Pope,
when he saluted Charles as ' crowned by God,' claimed that
the impulse to hail him by the great name of emperor,
descended by a direct inspiration from heaven upon the
multitude gathered in St. Peter's. But such a plea would
hardly appeal with much force, either to the Byzantine Court
The meaning ^^ to the modern historian. In truth, there was
of the much to be said for the assumption of the im-

coronation. • i . i i r^\ ^ • •

penal style by Charles, as recognisnig an accom-
plished fact, but little for the particular forms by which it was
carried out. Most especially did the fact that the Pope
seemed to confer the title, by his own act and impulse, prove
of incalculable harm in future years. If the coronation of
the great king had taken some other form, it would have been
impossible for the Popes of later generations to bring forward
their preposterous claim to have the power of giving or taking
away the imperial crown. The successors of Charles would
have been spared many a weary journey to Rome, and many
a bitter wrangle with the Holy See, if there had been a formal

Charles the Great 375

election-ceremony in which all the nations of the West could
have taken part, or if Charles, like Napoleon in a later age,
could have placed the crown on his own head instead of
receiving it from the pontiff's hand.

The assumption of the imperial title by the great king had
many practical consequences at the moment, and many and
yet more important influences upon the history of Europe for
long centuries to come.

The most notable of the immediate results of the corona-
tion was that Charles and all his subjects regarded his regal
authority as being reaffirmed in a new and more hallowed
shape by the ceremony. Formerly his power rested on his
election as king by the Franks, and afterwards by the Lom-
bards : now he was * crowned by God ' as well as chosen by
the people. For the future he showed an increasing tendency
to insist on the omnipotence of his authority in things eccle-
siastical and moral as well as in civil matters. As Heaven's
anointed he claimed to be the guardian of morality and the
reformer of Christendom, as well as the protector Charles's
of the Church. Charles had always shown a views of the
deep interest in the spiritual welfare of his ^™P^»*e-
dominions. We have seen already what energy he displayed
in enforcing the conversion of Saxony, of the Slavs, and of the
Avars. He had presided at innumerable councils and synods,
stirring up his bishops to enforce strict discipline and sober
life among the clergy, and to root out heathen survivals and
immorality among the laity. Now that he had become em-
peror he insisted even more than before on the moral side of
his authority : he thought of himself not only as the successor
of Constantine and Theodosius, but even as inheriting the
theocratic powers of the ancient kings of Israel — of David or
of Josiah. When Charles recrossed the Alps after his corona-
tion and held his next great council in Austrasia, he took the
opportunity of bringing home his views to his liegemen. He
made all his subjects, lay and secular, swear allegiance to him
for a second time under his new name of emperor : every

37^ European History^ 476-918

person above the age of twelve was to have the oath adminis-
tered to him by the local clergy, and to be warned ' that his
vow of homage was not merely a promise to be true to the
emperor and to serve him against his enemies, but a promise
to live in obedience to God and His law according to the
best of each man's strength and understanding. It was a
vow to abstain from theft and oppression and injustice, no
less than from heathen practices and witchcraft : a vow to do
no wrong to the Churches of God, nor to injure widows and
orphans, of whom the emperor is the chosen protector and
guardian.' Much more followed to the same effect : Charles
formally claimed that the defence of all law and morality was
involved in the imperial name, and warned his subjects that
any offence against him and his ordinances was a direct crime
against the anointed of God.

It was not only in the mind of Charles that this high and
holy view of the duty and power of the emperor found a place.
He succeeded in impressing it on his own contemporaries
and on long centuries to come : with him starts the idea of
the 'Holy Roman Empire,' which affected so deeply the
whole secular and rehgious life of the Middle Ages. The
Frankish kingship, a mere rule of force, had no exalted and
spiritual meaning : the new empire represented a close and
conscious union of Church and State for the advantage of
The Hoi both. It started with the conception that the
Roman cmpcror should be the protector and overseer of

Empire. j.|^g Church : by an unhappy development it

ended in making the Pope the overseer of the State. But the
generation which had seen Pope Leo on his knees * adoring '
the majesty of the great Charles, could not have foreseen the
day when the successor of Charles should humbly wait for
hours before the unopened door of the successor of Leo, or
beg as a favour the privilege of holding his stirrup.

A new age then commences in Europe with the coronation
of Charles the Great. The reign of pure barbaric force is
ended : there follows a time when the history of Europe is

Charles the Great 377

complicated by the strife of ideas no less than by the strife of
armed nations. For the future we must always be on the
watch to detect the influence on poUtics of the ideal concep-
tion of Christendom as a great empire, under a single ruler
chosen by God to sway the sword, and the rival conception
of it as a great Church under a single Patriarch at Rome,
appointed to hold the keys of heaven and hell, and to guide
kings in the way they should go.

The internal government of the vast realm of Charles was a
difficult problem. In his own lifetime the great king provided
for it by delegating his authority in certain large sections of it
to his sons : we have already spoken of his nomination of
Charles, Pippin, and Lewis to be kings in Neustria, Italy, and
Aquitaine. Charles contemplated the possibihty of a single
empire existing while yet many of its parts should be governed
by vassal sovereigns. In his own time the plan worked well
enough : he did not, perhaps, foresee that the problem would
be far harder in the next generation, when the chariesand
homage and obedience of the lesser kings would ^^^ ^°"^-
have to be paid to a brother, an uncle, and at last to a mere
distant cousin.

Charles publicly issued in 806 the scheme on which his
realm was to be ruled after his death : the title of emperor
and all the Prankish lands, both Neustrian and Austrasian,
were to go to his first-born Charles ; with them went Saxony,
Thuringia, and Burgundy. Pippin, the second son, had Italy,
together with Bavaria and eastern Suabia. Lewis, the
youngest child, was to take Aquitaine, Provence, and the
Spanish March. This division, however, was rendered fruitless
by the unexpected decease of the two elder kings: to the great
grief of their father. Pippin died in 810, and Charles in 811.
This necessitated a new division of the empire : Lewis was
now the only grown man in the family : to him, therefore, was
left the imperial name and all the realm save Italy, which was
to be a vassal-kingdom for Bernard, the young son of Pippin.

Charles, while all his sons yet lived, gave over the charge

3 7 8 European History^ 47^-9 1 8

of large sections of his realm to them. Beneath their autho-
rity the kingdoms were ruled by the same hierarchy of dukes
and counts who had existed in Merovingian times. When
any new land, such as Saxony or Lombardy, was added to
the empire, it was ere long cut up into countships on the same
pattern that already served for Austrasia and Neustria. Thus
a regular ascending scale of grades lay between the count and
the emperor. The count obeyed the duke, the duke the sub-
king, the king his father the suzerain of all. In the conquered
lands Franks were, as a rule, intrusted with the most im-
portant provincial governments : but Charles often gave
countships in their own native districts to Lombards, Aqui-
tanians, or even Saxons who had served him well and truly.

The best security for the unity and peace of the empire
was the never-ceasing activity of Charles himself, who in-
cessantly perambulated his realm from end to end so long
as life was in him. It was his own frequent visits to Saxony,
Italy, or Bavaria, that were the best means of keeping those
outlying provinces in loyalty and obedience. But he had
also a regular system of travelling commissioners who were
The Missi always moving round the realm, and reporting
Dominici. ^q y^^ q^ ^\^q needs and requirements of the
different provinces. The circuits of these Misst Dominici^
or royal legates, as they were called, were fully settled by him
only in 802, but he had been employing them less systemati-
cally at a far earlier date. His father and grandfather,
Pippin the Short and Charles Martel, had been wont to send
out occasionally travelling commissions {Missi discurrentes),
but it was Charles the emperor who multiplied and system-
atised their activity. By his arrangements his emissaries, who
were sometimes clerics, sometimes laymen, were appointed
for a year's duty over a certain number of countships. They
visited the assemblies of the inhabitants of the district,
summoned to the count's Malliis} and inquired into the state
of the provinces. Complaints against the count himself or
^ See page 125.

Charles the Great 379

the local bishop were brought before them, and they would
send them up to the king or take account of them on the
spot. We sometimes find Missi charged with other duties,
such as the conduct of an embassy or a warlike expedition,
but this terminal inspection of the local governors was their
primary duty. As long as men of probity and strength were
chosen, no better machinery for keeping together the wide
empire of the Franks could have been devised.

We have already mentioned in an earlier chapter the
interest which Charles always showed in art and letters, an
interest which had been very rare among the Frankish kings,
whether of his own house or of the Merovings. Of all the
two dynasties the ruffian Chilperich i. is — curiously enough —
the only one who is recorded to have shown any literary
tastes. Charles, however, atoned for the neglect of his pre-
decessors. He collected learned men from all quarters : the
Northumbrian Alcuin and the Lombards Peter of Pisa and
Paul the Deacon were the best-known names „

Encourage-

among them : at first his scholars were mostly ment of
foreigners, but by the end of his reign he had ^^^^"'"s-
seen a generation of learned Franks arise in response to his
encouragement. Two of his proclamations, the Epistola de
litteris colendis and the Encydica de emendatione librorum^ set
forth his purpose. He complains that the letters addressed
to him by bishops and abbots from all parts of his realm are
' very correct in sentiment but very incorrect in grammar,' so
that he has begun to fear whether his clergy have enough
knowledge of Latin to understand the whole sense of the
Scriptures. Wherefore he will have schools established in
every monastery for the perfect teaching of the Latin tongue,
* because it is useful that men of God should not only live by
the rule and dwell in holy conversation, but should devote
themselves to literary meditations, each according to his
ability, that they may be able to give themselves to the
duty of teaching others.' Under the fostering hand of Charles
all the greater monasteries became centres of learning : we

380 European History^ 476-918

owe to his care the preservation of many of the classical
authors, for he was incessantly causing the old volumes,
' almost worn out,' as he says, ' by the carelessness of our
ancestors,' to be fairly copied out and multiplied. Each
monastery was urged to have its own treasures preserved by
several copies, and to interchange them with those of its
neighbours. He paid special attention to the books of the
Old and New Testaments, was shocked at the diverse read-
ings which he found to exist — due, as he asserts, to the
extreme ignorance of copyists — and set Paul the Deacon to
construct a new lectionary, corrected according to the best
texts, and destined to be used in all the Churches in his
Multiplication realm. It was not only to religious books that

of books, j^g turned his attention : he had the old heroic
epics of the Franks — the prototypes, we may suppose, of such
works as the Nibelungenlied — collected and written out:
unfortunately his pious son Lewis destroyed this invaluable
corpus of Frankish poetry, because he deemed it heathenish.
He is also found setting his scholars to work on the compila-
tion of grammars — both Latin and German — biographies,
and even of works of secular history. It is, no doubt, to his
inspiration that we owe the sudden expansion and multipli-
cation of the Frankish chronicles. Our historical sources,
down to his time, are few, bald, and jejune; soon after his
accession they become full, satisfactory, and numerous. The
ninth century, in spite of all its troublous times, is far better
known to us than the eitihth.

Charles kept the best of his scholars about his Court, and
treated them as familiar friends. When he was settled down at
Aachen for the winter, and was at rest from wars, he gathered
them about him to discuss all manners of subjects, from
astronomy to logic. The literary circle assumed old classical
names. Alcuin called himself Flaccus, Charles was addressed
as King David, other scholars styled themselves Homer,
Mopsus, and Damaetas. Their discussions were often fruit-
less, and sometimes childish, but it was something new in

Charles the Great 381

Western Christendom to find a whole group of scholars busied
in discussions of any sort whatever. After looking back at
the blank darkness of the seventh century, we find the court
of Charles the Great a very centre of light and wisdom. In
it lay the promise of great things in the future, a promise for
which we have looked in vain in any period of the preceding
ages.

It was not only in literature that Charles busied his leisure
hours. He was a great admirer of music, both secular and
ecclesiastical. His ear was charmed by the Gregorian chants
which he heard at Rome, and he took back with him Italian
choirmasters to teach the churchmen of the north the
sonorous cadences of the sainted Pope.

He was also a mighty builder. At Aachen he reared a
great palace for himself and a magnificent cathedral. The
former has perished, but enough survives of the latter to show
the exact extent to which Romanesque architecture had de-
veloped by his time. So much was he set on making it the
most magnificent basilica to the north of the charies
Alps, that when he found his own workmen un- as builder,
able to carry out his ideas, he sent for ancient columns and
marbles from distant Rome and Ravenna. His own coffin
was a splendid Roman sarcophagus, probably procured from
Italy. He constructed palaces in two other Austrasian towns
besides Aachen, the old royal seats of Nimuegen and Engel-
heim, for he was Austrasian to the core, and always made
the land of his ancestors his favourite dwelling. He built a
bridge at Mainz five hundred yards long, the first effort of
Frankish engineering in that class of structure. Unfortunately
it was destroyed by fire in 813, and never renewed. Another
piece of work which testifies to his interest in engineering was
a canal to join the Rhine and Danube, by means of their
tributaries, the Altmiihl and the Rednitz.

But to follow Charles into every department of his activity,
during his long life and reign would require many volumes.
Here it must suffice to say that after all these achievements he

382 European History, 476-918

died at his chosen abode at Aachen, on the 28th of January
814, carried off at a ripe old age by a pleurisy caught in the
Death of winter cold. He was buried in the cathedral
Charles, 814. that he himself had built, and over his tomb
was placed a golden shrine, with his image and the inscrip-
tion : — ' Sub hoc conditorio situm est corpus karoli

MAGNI ET ORTHODOXI IMPERATORIS, QUI REGNUM FRANCORUM
NOBILITER AMPLIAVIT, ET PER ANNOS XLVII FELICITER REXIT.'

It was but a short epitaph considering the mighty deeds of
him who lay beneath, but no length of words could have done
justice to his greatness. A far better memorial was left to him
in the hearts of his subjects ; his name survived in the mouths
of all the races that had served him, as the type of power,
wisdom, and righteousness. All Western Europe looked back
to him for seven hundred years as the common pride of
Christendom, the founder of that 'Holy Roman Empire'
which satisfied their ideal of governance. His figure looms
out, though often with outlines blurred and distorted, from
dozens of the legends and romances which shadowed forth
the aspirations of the Middle Ages. Within a hundred years
of his death it was currently believed that he had conquered
Spain and Byzantium, and carried his arms as far as Palestine.
So great was the impression he had left behind him, that
the world thought nothing too impossible for him to have
achieved. Perhaps the notion that his reign had been a
kind of Golden Age was partly produced by the contrasting
years of trouble and civil strife that followed his death. But
the tendency to look back to his time as a period of un-
exampled splendour and righteousness was no delusion, but
a just recognition of the fact that he had given the Western
world a glimpse of new and high ideals, such as it had never
known under the brutal rule of twelve generations of bar-
barian kings, nor in those earlier days when it was still held
together in the iron grasp of the Caesars of ancient Rome.

CHAPTER XXIII

LEWIS THE PIOUS
814-840

Character of Lewis the Pious — He reforms the Prankish court— His ecclesi-
astical legislation — After a narrow escape from death he divides his
kingdom among his sons — The partition of Aachen — Rebellion a'nd death
of Bernard of Italy — The second marriage of Lewis and its consequences
— Second partition of the empire followed by rebellion of Lewis' elder
sons — Their repeated risings — The ' Liigenfeld ' — Lewis twice deposed
and restored — Continued troubles of his later years— He dies while lead-
ing an army against his son Lewis — Disastrous consequences of his reign.

Charles the Great left his throne and his empire to his
only surviving son born in lawful wedlock, Lewis the Pious, as
his own age named him, though later chroniclers style him
Lewis the Debonnair. The heir of the great emperor was a
devout prince, who proved — like our own Edward the Con-
fessor— * a sair saint for the crown.' He was a weak, good-
natured man, no longer in the first flower of his youth, whose
meek virtues were far more suited to adorn a monastery than
a palace. Utterly wanting in self-respect and determination,
the slave of his wife, his chaplains, and bishops, a doting
father and husband, and an over-liberal giver, he had one of
those natures which are entirely unfit to bear responsibility,
and are only happy when placed under the rule of a stronger
will than their own. Lewis had before him the problems thrt
had taxed his father's iron nerve, — the task of ruling each of
the nations that dwelt beneath the Frankish sceptre in the
way that it needed, with the additional trial of being sorely

384 European History, 476-918

vexed by the incursions of the Danes, whose first ravages
Charles the Great had hardly lived to see. Enough was
there to occupy his every moment, even had he been a man
of ability. But he chose to add to his troubles the needless
trial of a disputed succession and a spasmodic civil war. The
main feature of his reign of twenty-six years is the weary tale
of his unwise dealing with his undutiful sons, and of the evils
that ensued therefrom.

The great realm which now fell to Lewis had been built
up in despite of three main difficulties — the enormous extent of
the conquered lands, and the slowness of communication be-
tween them, the national differences between the various
peoples which inhabited them, and the old Teutonic custom
which favoured the partition of a kingdom among all the sons
of its ruler, just as if it were a private heritage. The first two
dangers had not proved fatal. The personal energy and never-
ending travels of Charles the Great had vanquished space and
time. Racial divergences were less formidable than might
have been expected, for true national feeling was not yet
fully developed in Western Europe. It was neither the enor-
mous extent of the Frankish empire nor the heterogeneous
character of its inhabitants that proved the direct cause of its
ruin, but the baleful practice of the partition of heritages among
all the heirs of the reigning sovereign. Hitherto the empire
had been fortunate in escaping the consequences of this evil.
Charles the Hammer had broken up his realm, but the voluntary
abdication of the elder Carloman had ere long reunited the
Neustrian and Austrasian lands. Pippin, again, had divided
his kingdom, but the co-heir, whose survival would have
thwarted the life-work of Charles the Great, died young.
And in the next generation, too, death had stripped the king
of all his lawful issue save one, and Lewis the Pious received
an undivided heritage.

But Lewis, unhappily for himself and for the empire, had
already three half-grown sons when he succeeded to the
empire, and was destined to see a fourth reach manhood ere

Lewis the Pious 385

he died. The custom of partition was now destined to have a
fair trial and develop to its utmost extent.

Lewis was at Doue, in his kingdom of Aquitaine, when he
received the news of the death of his aged father. Making
such speed as he could, he arrived at Aachen after a journey
of thirty days, and took possession of the reins of power.
Without sending for the Pope to assist at his coronation, he
celebrated his accession by taking the imperial crown off the
altar in the cathedral of his capital city, and placing it on his
own head, while the assembled counts and bishops shouted
Vivat Imperator Ludovicus ! The magnates also saluted him
by the title of ' the Pious,' an appellation which he placed
upon his coins, on whose other side appeared the legend,
' Renovatio Regni Francorum.^ The ' renewing ' of the
kingdom found its first expression in the expulsion from
office of the ministers who had administered affairs during
the declining years of Charles the Great. Lewis came to
Aachen with his own trusted servants at his back, and was
determined not to put himself in the hands of his father's
favourites. There had been much in his father's life and
court which his own scrupulous conscience could not
approve. As a man who led a singularly virtuous life him-
self, he could not abide the bishops and abbots who had
connived at his father's immoralities. The ^

Accession of

Frankish court, though teeming with ecclesi- Lewis the
astics, had not been a model of soberness or ^^°"s-
chastity, and the old emperor himself had not set the
best of examples. Lewis was determined that this should
cease.

The moment that he was firmly seated on the throne the
new monarch dismissed from his court his sisters, whose life
had been nothing less than scandalous during his father's later
years. Their paramours were banished or imprisoned — one
was even deprived of his eyes. His next step was to send
away the three chief ministers of Charles the Great. The
Chancellor Helisachar, Abbot of St. Maximin, was relegated

PERIOD I. 2 B

386 European History^ /\.'j6-gi^

to his monastery. The two brothers, count Wala and abbot
Adalhard/ had harder measure dealt out to them. The
emperor sent Adalhard to dwell in the lonely monastery of
Hermoutier, on an island by the Loire mouth. Count Wala
was stripped of sword and armour, shorn, and immured as a
monk in the cloister of Corbey.

These councillors were replaced by men whom Lewis
had learnt to know while he was yet but king of Aquitaine.
The chief were Ebbo, his own foster-brother, abbot Hildwin,
and count Bernard of Septimania. |Ebbo, though but the
son of a serf, was dear to the emperor from early association ;
he had taken orders, and was made archbishop of Rheims by
his patron at the earliest opportunity, amid the murmurs of
many high-born Frankish ecclesiastics, who exclaimed that
such preferment was not the meed of a man of servile extrac-
tion. Hildwin, the new chancellor, was a shameless plurahst,
three abbots rolled into one, and ever seeking more prefer-
ment. Bernard, however, a clever, restless, intriguing Gascon,
provoked even greater jealousy and bitterness among the old
courtiers of Charles the Great, and seems to have been the
best-hated man in the realm. But perhaps the most influ-
ential of all the advisers of Lewis was his wife, Hermengarde,
the daughter of the count of the Hesbain, an ambitious and
unscrupulous woman, who exercised such an influence over
her uxorious spouse that she was even able to drive him once
and again to deeds of ill-faith and cruelty very foreign to his
mild and righteous disposition.

Charles the Great had left the frontiers of his great realm
so well secured that in the earliest years of Lewis the Pious
there was no foreign war to call the emperor into the field.
It was a characteristic sign of the new regifne that things
ecclesiastical took precedence of all others at the first meetings
of the magnates of the empire. We hear of legislation against
carnally-minded bishops and abbots, who shocked the pious

^ They were Carlovingians of illegitimate descent, sons of Bernard, a
bastard of Charles Martel.

Lewis the Pious 387

by riding with cloak and sword and golden spurs like secular
nobles. A modus vivendi was established between clerics of
servile birth and their former lords, providing that on due
compensation being paid the villein might go free. The
emperor took the keenest interest in this question. Not only
his favourite Ebbo, but several others of his counsellors had
been serfs, and he was most anxious to defend them alike
against claims of their ancient masters, and insults at the hands
of the free-born clergy. Another decree of Lewis' dealt with
the tenure of the lands of monasteries. After stipulating that
fourteen great houses owed both military service and aids in
money to the empire, and sixteen more the financial duty alone,
he declared that all the other monastic establishments in his
wide dominion should hold their property on the simple under-
taking that they should ' pray for the welfare of the emperor
and his children and the empire.' This threw a vast quan-
tity of estates into tenure by what later ages Ecclesiastical
called ' frank almoin,' and relieved of its natural legislation,
responsibility to the State more land than could prudently be
suffered to go scot-free.

Another sign of Lewis' extreme regard for the Church was
given at the very commencement of his reign. When pope
Leo III., the aged pontiff, who had crowned Charles the
Great, died in 816 the Romans elected, in great haste,
Stephen iv. as his successor. The new Pope was consecrated
without the imperial sanction being sought, but Lewis made
no objection, and showed no wrath at this disregard of his
prerogative. So far was he from resentment that he allowed
Stephen to represent to him that his coronation at Aachen
had lacked the Church's blessing, inasmuch as he had taken
the crown from the altar with his own hands. To render
Lewis' position more like that of his great father, the Pope
proposed to cross the Alps and recrown his master. Lewis
took no offence at the slur thrown on the form of Lewis re-
his election to the empire, but received Stephen crowned, 816.
in great state at Rheims, and was there crowned for the

388 European History, 476-918

second time (816). Thus he loosened his own grasp on the
Papacy in one year, and allowed the Pope to tighten his
grasp on the empire in the next.

In 817 happened an accident which was to have the gravest
consequences on the emperor's character and fate. He was
passing with all his train over a wooden gallery which con-
nected the cathedral and the palace at Aachen, when the
whole structure came crashing to the ground. Many of the
courtiers were killed, and the emperor himself received injuries
which confined him to his bed for many weeks. The shock
and the narrow escape from death set Lewis meditating on the
instability of life and the necessity for being always prepared
for the grave. He had never been anything but sober and
self-contained, but he now fell into a morbid and lugubrious
frame of mind, which never left him till his dying day. If he
had only hitherto been a daring sinner he might have salved
his conscience by turning to a new manner of life : but being
already a man of blameless and virtuous habits, his conversion
only led him into an exaggerated asceticism. He abandoned
the study of profane literature, which had hitherto soothed his
leisure hours, and would for the rest of his life read nothing
but theology. We are even told that he destroyed the collec-
tion of Old- Prankish heroic poems which his father had made,
because of the many traces of heathenism which he found in
them. It was with difficulty that his councillors prevented
him two years later from laying down his crown and retiring
to a monastery.

One of the first effects of Lewis' morbid brooding over his
latter end was that he determined to make a settlement of the
mheritanceof his wide d