A. D.

to

A. D. 814.

*

History. THE reign of Charlemagne stands out in prominent relief from the History of the Dark Ages: a distinct From epoch of solitary grandeur dividing two long periods of Barbarian tumult and disorder. It forms that signal 768. and equidistant point between the destruction of the Roman Empire and the slow revival of social cultivation, which alone breaks the dull continuity of six centuries of anarchy; and it offers the only contrast of organized power on which the mind can repose amidst the disruptured elements of political civilization. It intervenes between two examples of degenerate dynasfies and two periods of corrupted Barbarism: between the common decay of the original Royal Houses of the Northern nations, and of the Imperial line which supplanted them; between the dissolution of the free Gothic Democracies, and the consolidation of the Feudal system.

vision of

etween the s of Pe

A. D.

Notwithstanding the fatal experience of the MerovinFrankish gian custom of partition, it was imitated by the second archy Royal line of the Franks. Pepin le Bref bequeathed his extensive dominions between his two sons, Charles and Carloman;† and the usual evils of the division were immediately shown in the quarrel of the brothers and 768. the insurrection of their tributary States. These turbulent members of the Empire, no longer compressed into unity and obedience under the vigorous sceptre of Pepin, were immediately encouraged to attempt the recovery of their independence by the youth, the inexperience, and the dissensions of his sons. If the talents of the young Princes had been similar and their lives equally prolonged, their rivalry would have perpetuated the first disorders of their common reign: but Charles surprised his enemies by an early display of extraordinary

The only original authority that can be relied upon for the History of the reign and actions of Charlemagne is his Secretary, Eginhart, who composed both a well-known Life of the Emperor, and the Annals of the Carlovingian Monarchy, which we have before quoted These Works, with the occasional light thrown on the government of Charlemagne by his Laws or Capitularies, (which have been collected in the Work of Stephen Baluze, Capitularia Regum Francorum, 2 vols. fol. Paris, 1680,) form the only authentic materials out of which various modern writers have raised their Historical superstructure.

This partition, however, was rather in fact ultimately the work of a National Assembly, after the death of Pepin. Franci, facto solemniter generali conventu, says Eginhart, ambos sibi reges constituunt. Eginharti, Vita Caroli Magni, c. 4. They repeated the division; or rather, it should seem, made a new one.

295

From

A. D. 768.

to

A. D.

814.

ability and valour; and his fortunes at once acquired France, the decided ascendant over those of his feebler brother. Germany, He forcibly stripped Carloman of a part of Austrasia, Italy, &c. which was in dispute between them; quelled an effort of the deprived Duke of Aquitaine to reestablish his independence ;* and overawed both the tributary Sovereigns of the Bavarians and Lombards, who were disposed to renounce their allegiance. The politic marriage of Charles with the daughter of Desiderio, the Lombard Monarch, gave a hollow promise of friendship, which was shortly broken by the death of Carloman. Seizing the inheritance of his brother's infant Charles sole sons with little opposition, Charles was no sooner Monarch. master of the whole Frankish Empire, than he insultingly divorced his Lombard Princess; and the resentment which Desiderio rashly betrayed, and the asylum and countenance which he afforded to the widow and children of Carloman, entailed a total ruin upon the declining Monarchy of the Lombards.

A. D.

.771.

A. D.

774.

That Kingdom was in no degree equal to a contest His conwith the power of the Frankish Empire, even if Desi- quest of the derio, with the usual imprudence or fatality of his Lombard House, had not also outraged the Papacy, and by his kingdom. aggressions compelled the reigning Pontiff, Adrian I., to implore the succour of the hereditary protector of the Holy See. At the call of the Pope, the Frankish Monarch, like his father, descended with alacrity from the Alps, besieged Desiderio in his Capital of Pavia, and compelling him to surrender at discretion, finally extinguished the national independence and dynasty of the Lombards. The widow and children of Carloman, as well as Desiderio and his family, fell into the hands of the victor, who is said to have conveyed all these Royal captives to France. History is silent on their subsequent fate; and the Lombard Monarch and his children may either have perished by violence or have been suffered to languish out their days in obscurity: but there can be less doubt that the infant nephews of Charles were inhumanly sacrificed to the safety of his usurpation. The conquest of Lombardy was not com

Though composing an integral portion of France itself, the Province of Aquitaine was not completely brought under the immediate dominion of the Crown, until the repeated rebellion of its Dukes had been punished by confiscation, imprisonment, and death. Gaillard, the modern biographer of Charlemagne, has laboriously attempted (Histoire de Charlemagne, vol. ii. p. 60, et seq.) to trace the Merovingian descent of these Princes.

From

A. D.

768.

to

A. D. 814.

History. pleted, until after a revolt which was punished by the defeat and death of a Duke of Friuli: but another great Chieftain, whose family had established the Lombard Duchy of Benevento in Southern Italy, successfully resisted the Frankish arms, and was finally permitted to preserve at least the forms of independence. It was the policy of the conqueror rather to annex the Lombard Kingdom by an equal union to his Empire, than to treat it as a subjugated Country. The great aristocracy of the Lombard Dukes, or Governors of Provinces, whose functions and power had become hereditary, remained undisturbed; the people were suffered to retain their own national laws and customs; and Charles was contented with the paramount Sovereignty and the general allegiance of Northern Italy.*

From the easy task of completing the valuable conquest of that Peninsula, by the acquisition of its Southern Provinces, which were still subject to the Eastern Emperors, the ambition of the Frankish Sovereign was strangely diverted to the wild and distant forests of Saxony. Though a considerable portion of Germany had been embraced within the Merovingian Monarchy, the fierce and Pagan Tribes or confederacy of the Saxons, which extended over its Northern regions, had always in a large sense maintained their independence. The bold spirit of freedom, with which this rude people disdained a foreign yoke, was associated with an insurmountable repugnance to Christianity; and the obstinate resistance and frequent rebellions of the Saxons, seem to have been chiefly excited and aggravated by the religious zeal of the Frankish Monarch. In his first or second expedition into Saxony, after a sanguinary contest, of which the details would be odious to humanity and are little worth particular record, Charles had received the submission and enforced the reluctant Baptism of several thousands of the people, when his attention was invited, by the arrival of a Saracen Emir in his camp at Paderborn in Westphalia, to the opposite extremity of his dominions.†

The dissensions among the Moorish Governors of Spain had at this period attained their height in the struggle betwen the adherents of the Abbassidan and Ommiadan dynasties of the Caliphate; and the Emir of Saragossa, after being expelled from his possessions, had traversed France and Germany to implore protection from the most powerful enemy of his national Faith. Charles promptly accepted an office which gratified his insatiable thirst of dominion; and soon after assembling a great army on the Spanish frontier, he descended from the Pyrenees and penetrated without difficulty to the banks of the Ebro. The tremendous renown of his grandfather's victory had not been effaced by the lapse of half a century from the memory of the affrighted and degenerate Saracens; their divisions or fears made his power irresistible; and the capitulation of Saragossa completed the rapid conquest of the country between the mountains and the Ebro, which, under the title of the Spanish March, he permanently annexed to the Frankish Empire. The Emir of Saragossa was faithfully restored to his government: but the supreme administration of the March was confided to a Frankish Count, who resided at Barcelona, and whose successors

Eginharti. Annales, ad annos 768-776. Vita Car. c. 5, &c. Annules Bertiniani, apud Muratori, Script. Rer. Ital, vol. ii. p. 475498.

↑ Eginharti, Annales, ad ann. 778.

continued for four centuries to acknowledge at least France, the feudal superiority of the French Crown. Germany, Italy, &c.

From

A. D. 768.

to

A. D.

814.

Charles at

les.

The termination of Charles's Spanish expedition was remarkably contrasted both with its substantial success and the general splendour of his reign. __ While his victorious forces, on their return into France, wound through the defiles of the Pyrenees, they were suddenly attacked by the Gascons: an aboriginal, or at least Keltish race, whose possession of that region had survived the long revolutions of Ages, and the vicissitudes Memorable of the Roman, the Gothic, and the Saracenic conquests. defeat of In the pass of Roncesvalles, these hardy mountaineers Roncesval succeeded in cutting off the rear guard of the Frankish host, and capturing the immense booty which encumbered its careless or toilsome march. History obscurely betrays the real circumstances of a disgraceful and calamitous defeat, of which the magnitude is more strongly attested, since the memory has been imperishably preserved, in the wildest traditions of Romance. One of Charles's principal Commanders was slain in the rout; and the prowess and fall of the Paladin Rolando in the fight of Roncesvalles, was long the dearest theme of those early fables of chivalry, which have been so luxuriantly adorned by the Italian muse.†

From the Spanish, the attention of the King of France reverted to the Italian Peninsula; and his next visit to the latter Country was principally employed in settling the Kingdom of Lombardy upon his infant son Carloman, or Pepin. He accordingly caused the young Prince to be solemnly presented with the ancient diadem of the Lombard Kings, the Iron Crown of Italy: that symbol of an imaginary right, which was in after ages so often to form the prize of foreign conflict; and which, in our own times, after typifying the ambitious pretensions of the modern Charlemagne, has descended upon the brows of an Austrian dynasty. The infant King of Lombardy was left to grow up among his new subjects; but the restless activity of his parent was soon summoned a second time from the Italian plains to the forests of Northern Germany, by the intelligence of a fresh insurrection among the Saxons. The unconquerable love of freedom, or the blind hatred of Christianity, which distinguished that people, was animated by the hero Witikend, who, like Revolt of another Arminius, headed his nation in the obstinate the Saxon struggle against the double yoke of conquest and civi- under Wi lization. Disdaining submission to the force which he was not prepared to withstand, the Saxon Chieftain, during the former successes of Charles, had retired into Scandinavia but the general revolt of his Countrymen was the signal for his return; and before Charles could * L'Art de Vérifier les Dates, vol. ii. p. 291.

This Spanish expedition of Charlemagne is briefly related in the IXth chapter of Eginhart, our only original authority of credit. But the fabulous exploits of Charles and his Paladins against the Saraceus, which form the darling theme of the Romances of the Middle Ages, are reflected and multiplied, like many-coloured hues of prismatic light, from the lustre of his real achievements.

At a distance of ten centuries, the reestablishment of a French Empire, suggested to literary adulation the obvious resemblance between its first and second founders; and several acts of Napoleon attested his eagerness to accept the comparison. His assumption of the Iron Crown was a palpable copy of Charlemagne ; and his legislative labours, his patronage of Letters and the Arts, and the magnificence of his public works, might have justified the parallel :-if the enlightened conqueror of our times had expiated the cold selfishness of his desolating ambition with the same unaffected sympathy and zeal for the welfare and happiness of his people, which have sanctified the memory of the illustrious Barbarian.

kend

From A. D.

768.

to

A. D. 814.

History. reach the theatre of action, Witikend had inflicted a severe defeat upon his Lieutenants. The approach of the Frankish King with a formidable army revived the terror of his power; the Saxons, as usual, submitted at his presence, only to await a more favourable oppor tunity of insurrection; and Witikend, deserted by his followers, fled again for refuge to the North. Charles then resolved, with a cool and detestable cruelty which has left an indelible stain upon his memory, to quell the spirit of the whole Saxon people by an appalling example of severity. All the principal men of the nation being convened to attend his camp at Verden for the purpose of homage or counsel, the peaceful assembly was suddenly surrounded by his troops and disarmed; and four thousand five hundred Saxons of the noblest blood of their nation were led out and beheaded on the same spot.*

Subdued by Charles: but his atrocious massacre of the Saxons

A. D.

783.

rection.

Submission of Witikend. A. D.

785.

provokes a This horrible butchery, so far from producing the new insur desired effect, only goaded a brave and ferocious people to fury and vengeance. They everywhere flew to arms; Witikend once more appeared as their leader; and a war of extermination raged for two years longer, until Charles, either relenting in his policy or sincerely weary of endless massacre, converted his victories into the means of conciliation. The courage of the surviving Saxon leaders had been broken by repeated defeats, they gladly listened to his overtures of mercy; and even Witikend himself, as if yielding to the spell of inevitable destiny, at last tendered a faithful submission, and acknowledged the Religion and dominion of the victor. His example had a powerful influence upon his Countrymen: but it did not prevent a frequent recurrence of insurrection and massacre; nor were the Saxons finally subdued, and the remains of Paganism extirpated in Germany, until after above thirty years had elapsed of frightful persecution and bloodshed. Even in the total subjugation of their Country, the most resolute freemen or the fiercest idolaters, preserving their spirit untameable, retired to the forests of Scandinavia; and carrying with them their hatred of the Frankish name, while they gradually mingled their blood with the Tribes of the Northmen, or Normans, these Saxon exiles swelled the piratical swarms which were shortly to issue from the shores of the Baltic, and took a deadly vengeance on the Carlovingian Empire for the original wrongs of their nation.†

Protracted resistance of the Saxons.

Final settlement of Germany by the interchange of Saxon and

Frankish

colonies.

The great talents and incessant activity of Charles, the magnitude of his power, and the constancy of his fortune, had barely sufficed for the conquest of a people, whose rebellion was renewed as often as he withdrew his armies or even his presence from among them. A transfusion of races was adopted as the only alternative of perpetual revolt or gradual extermination. By the wisdom of the conqueror, Frankish colonies were settled on the Elbe and the Weser; and bodies of the Saxons were compelled to transport themselves to Italy, and more numerously into Flanders and Brabant: in which latter Provinces they still maintained that inextinguishable passion for freedom, and resistance to tyranny, which, fostered by the spirit of Commerce, became for many centuries the proverbial inheritance of their brave and industrious descendants. In their native seats, the remains of the Saxons were permitted to retain their own laws; they were governed by Dukes of their own

Eginhart, Annales, ad ann. 783. + Ibid. ad ann. 783-786. VOL. XI.

blood; and while their union with the body of the Frankish Empire was gradually effected, the independence and distinction of their national character were in a great measure preserved.

France, Germany, Italy, &c.

From A. D.

to

A. D. 814.

Charles over

789.

A. D. 796.

dation and

The victories by which Charles subjugated, or at least curbed, the other barbarous nations who disquieted 768. the Eastern frontiers of his Empire, were associated with circumstances less repugnant to humanity, and almost equally important in their results. The Sclavonic Tribes, who had overspread the modern regions of Victories of Bohemia, Prussia, and Poland, were in general com- the Sclavopelled to acknowledge obedience to his sceptre; and nic Tribes the first of those Countries, at least, may be numbered and Huns. among the conquered Provinces which he annexed to A. D. his dominions. It required a more arduous effort, and a sanguinary and devastating struggle of several years, to reduce the Huns or Avares of Pannonia to a similar subjection: but after the Frankish arms had penetrated to the Royal village of those Barbarians, and all the flower of their race had perished in several engagements, the wreck of the nation accepted the mercy of the conqueror; and the frontier of the Empire was permanently extended over a part of the modern Hungary and Dalmatia, to the junction of the Danube with the Save, and the shores of the Istrian gulf.* These conquests on the Eastern extremity of the Consoli Frankish Empire seemed to put the seal to its grandeur and security. The traitorous machinations and fre- Empire. quent rebellions of Tassillon, the Duke of Bavaria, a kinsmau of Charles, in concert with the Saxons and Huns, had justified a lenient sentence of deposition; the whole of his great Duchy was incorporated into the ral Monarchy; and the Carlovingian dominions extended without intermission from the Ebro to the Elbe and the Lower Danube, and from the North Sea to the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, over a part of Spain, the whole of France, and Germany Proper, with portions of Bohemia and Hungary, some Dalmatian Provinces, and Italy, as far as the present Neapolitan frontiers. Greatness, The completion of this geographical circle by the arms power, and and the activity of Charles opens the most glorious reputation epoch in his long and fortunate reign. The supremacy of his power and the renown of his great talents were acknowledged, not only in his vast dominions, but throughout the Western world, in the respect and fear of the Saracens of Spain, in the reverence of the Christian Monarchs of Gallicia and Asturias, and in the homage of the Scottish and perhaps of the Saxon Princes of Britain.t The fame of his greatness extended

Upon less doubtful motives than curiosity or vanity, His interthe reputation and power of the Frankish Monarch course with commanded the respect and excited the dread of the the Eastern only Potentate who might pretend to dispute with him Empire. the obedience of the Christian world. The sceptre of

Eginbart, Annales, ad ann. 788-794. Vita Car. c. 15.

+ The respectful correspondence of our Saxon Egbert with Charlemagne appears rather apocryphal. But see Gaillard, vol. ii. ad p. 384, &c. Egin art. Vita, c. 16.

From A. D. 768.

.to

A. D. 814.

History. the Eastern Empire was now held by a woman and a mother, whose unnatural ambition was defiled with the deposition and cruel mutilation of her own son. After depriving him of his birthright and his eyes, Irene reigned alone as Empress of the East; and her alarm at the increasing power of the Frankish Monarchy had been artfully evinced in the intrigues by which she had instigated the unsuccessful revolt of the Dukes of Bavaria and Benevento and the Sclavonic Barbarians. After the failure of these machinations, she endeavoured, if the Chroniclers of her own nation may be believed, to divert the hostility and allure the ambition of Charles, with the hope of sharing the Imperial title, and uniting the Frankish and Grecian Empires by the possession of her hand.*

III. A. D. 799.

was

With whatever truth and sincerity the proposal may have been made and accepted, its fulfilment was frustrated by a revolution which suddenly precipitated Irene from the Throne of Constantinople; and the formal elevation of Charles to the Imperial dignity was reserved for another political architect. This Protection Pope Leo III., the successor of Adrian I. A sedition of Pope Leo at Rome, in which the nephews of the late Pontiff compelled Leo to fly for his life, reduced the new Pope to throw himself upon the protection of Charles, and paved the way for a signal exhibition of his gratitude to his benefactor. Charles, after restoring the fugitive Pope in triumph to his seat, proceeded in person to Rome; heard the accusations of Leo's enemies; constituted himself the judge of his innocence; and feigned a reluctance to receive the recompense of this service, for which it is probable that he had privately stipulated. Leo was popular at Rome; and his restorer was welcomed in the ancient Capital of the world with the enthusiastic plaudits of the citizens. Ever since the first delivery of Rome from the oppression of the Lombards by the Carlovingian arms, both Pepin and Charles had exercised a general, though not very definite Sovereignty over the city, with the vague and unmeaning title of Patrician, which had originally been borne by the Lieutenants of the Eastern Empire. A more august appellation was now to confess the allegiance of the Romans, and to assert the succession of the Frankish Sovereigns to the purple of the Cæsars. During the celebration of high mass at the festival of Christmas, on the last year of the VIIIth century, and in the Church of St. Peter, while the French King knelt before the altar, Leo suddenly approached him and placed an Imperial crown on his head, with the exclamation, which was immediately echoed in the shouts of the people, of tion as Em- "Long life to Charles Augustus! crowned by the hand peror of the of God: the great, pious, and pacific Emperor of the Romans!" The authority of the Pope to confer this dignity might vainly be demanded, but the new Emperor was at least worthy of the honour; the restoration of the Empire of the West may be formally dated from the solemn event; and the coronation of CHARLEMAGNE has, perhaps, more than any other single circumstance, indissolubly united the well-merited epithet of greatness with his name.t

And corona

West.

A. D.

800.

Theophanes, Chronographia, p. 401-402. In the reign of Nicephorus, the successor of Irene, a solemn Treaty was concluded between him and Charlemagne which, (A. D. 802,) on the basis of possession, adjusted the limits, and proclaimed the alliance, of the Eastern and Western Empires.

Eginhart, Annales, ad ann. 799-800. In the contest for supremacy between the Empire and the Popedom, which fiercely

In a

From

A, D. 768.

to

A. D.

814.

The elevation of Charlemagne to the Imperial dignity France, introduces the most splendid, the pacific glories, of his Germany, protracted dominion. In a natural division of his reign, Italy, &c. that event marks the triumphant term of his conquests, and the settlement of his Civil administration. period of thirty-two years, which were passed in incessant hostilities, he had extended his possessions from the Rhine to the Elbe and the Save, from the Pyrenees to the Ebro, and from the Alps to the borders of Calabria : the remaining fourteen years of his life were almost Pacific glo wholly occupied in unwearied and laudable efforts to con- ries of his solidate and ameliorate the institutions of his Empire. subsequent reign An era of general peace was maintained, with few interruptions, by the fame of his talents and power, and the dread of his arms and activity; and the establishment of tranquillity was followed by efforts for universal im- Efforts in provement in jurisprudence, learning, manners, and legislation. morals. Among the Franks, he restored the regular convocation of the National Assemblies, which had fallen into some disuse under the Merovingian Kings, He laboured to introduce order into their meetings, and encouraged their legislative deliberations for the common weal. While he left the people of the conquered Provinces as much as possible in the enjoyment of their own ancient privileges and customs, he endeavoured to modify and amend their Barbarian institutions. He even meditated the comprehensive design of reducing and reconciling the contradictions of the Roman and Barbarian law into one uniform Code of jurisprudence throughout his whole Empire; and the magnitude of this conception, which a single life was too short to mature, at least attests the capacity of his mind and the elevation of his views. He also mingled actively in the Ecclesiastical affairs of his Empire; and Supremacy even, with the tone of command or protection to the Latin Church, interposed in her controversies and dic- fairs. tated the proceedings of her Councils. It was in the same plenitude and security of his own power, that he lavishly increased the privileges and authority of the Clergy, whom he intrusted with a large share in the administration of the Empire. With too abundant a confidence in their superior qualifications for office, he extended the jurisdiction of the Bishops over his temporal tribunals; he forbade the lay Magistrates to enter tain causes against churchmen; and he thus elevated the influence of the Episcopal Order above all former example and authority.*

in Eccles

astical af

provemen

With less questionable advantage to his subjects, Measures this great Monarch reformed the coinage of the Empire social imand enacted the legal divisions of money, provided by his laws for the correction of innumerable abuses of administration, and laboured to ameliorate the slavish condition and to diminish the oppression of the common people.† The same wise and benevolent zeal for the advancement of general civilization and happiness,

agitated the Middle Ages and has been more harmlessly continued to modern times by the zeal of literary and antiquarian partisans, the circumstances of Charlemagno's coronation have been variously regarded: but the simple fact remains the same, that the Pope first conferred the Imperial diadem upon a Prince whose general sovereignty he had already acknowledged, and afterwards paid him the homage of a subject. See, chiefly, Muratori, Annali d'Italia, ad ann.; Pagi, Critica, vol. iii. p. 418; Giannone, (Istoria di Napoli,) vol. i. p. 395; Gaillard, vol. ii. p. 412-446; St. Marc, Abrégé Chronologique, vol. i. p. 440-450.

Steph. Baluzii, Capitularia, (Caroli,) vol. i. p. 227, 904, 985, 1105, &c. + Baluzii, Cupit. passim.

From A. D.

768.

to

A. D. 814.

Public works

History. was shown in the number and variety of the public works which he directed: in the construction of roads and bridges, the opening of navigable rivers, and the creation of a marine to foster the commerce and protect the coasts of the Empire. Among these projects, the attempt to complete a communication between the German Ocean and the Euxine by connecting the Rhine and the Danube with a canal, deserves a particular and honourable mention for the grandeur of the design, although it miscarried in the execution.* The failure has been imputed to the rude state of the Arts and the ignorance and unskilfulness of a dark Age: yet, if the difficulties of the work were not really insuper able, it is a greater reproach to the superior intelligence and power of modern times, that at the distance of ten centuries, the magnificent conception of a Barbarian mind remains still unaccomplished.

All these useful efforts to associate his greatness with the welfare of his people have justly raised and encon- and perpetuated the renown of Charlemagne far above ragement of the ordinary fame which is lit up in the desolation of learning. conquest. Yet, to the eye of scholastic enthusiasm, it is his zealous endeavours for the encouragement of Learning, imperfect and transient though they were, which have shed the purest and most pleasing lustre on his memory; and, with their usual prodigality of gratitude, men of letters have delighted to confer that immortality on the genius of Charlemagne, which Princes nave ever cheaply won by the patronage of intellectual studies. But after every detraction for the tastelessness and superstition which disfigured his purposes, the foundation of Schools and the collection of Libraries, the attempt to form an Academy in his Court, and the persevering and successful desire to gather the few learned men of every Country around his person, are all positive evidences of a real sympathy for literary excellence, which not only overcame the original deficiencies of a neglected education, but rose far superior to the rude spirit of his times.†

years.

All the glory and fortune of Charlemagne, however, has declining could not exempt his declining years from the heavy cares of Empire and the ordinary afflictions of humanity. The perpetual anxiety for the repression of abuses which his edicts evince, betrays also the inefficacy of his best efforts, and reveals the internal disorders of his reign and the miseries of the lower class of people. The very extension of his conquests had served only to enlarge the assailable circle of his dominions; and his subjugation and settlement of Northern Germany first threw down the barrier which had concealed the general weakness of Europe from the fierce natives of Scandinavia. At least the advancement of the Frankish frontiers to the First rava- Elbe, and the flight of the Saxon exiles to the shores of ges of the the Baltic, were almost immediately followed by the emerging of those piratical fleets from the Scandinavian seas, which in a few years spread desolation throughout the coasts of the Ocean and Mediterranean. The genuine origin or fortuitous union of those merciless swarms of adventurers, who became so terrible to the less barbarous nations under the name of Northmen,

Northmen

the coasts of the Em

pire.

A. D. 808.

Eginhart, Annales, ad ann. 794: with a commentary on the attempt, in the Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, vol. xvii. + Eginbart, in Vitá Car. passim, and especially c. 25. and 29. But the efforts of Charlemagne for the promotion of Learning are best collected and developed in the Hist. Littéraire de France, vol. iv of the learned Benedictines.

France,

From

A.' D. 768.

⚫ to

A. D.

814.

Normans, or Danes, is buried in the obscurity of Scandinavian legends; but the Age and the Empire of Germany, Charlemagne first witnessed and sustained the scourge Italy, &c. of their perpetual invasions. Nursed in the wild storms and cold of their native regions, and habituated to a tempestuous navigation, these Northmen fearlessly braved every peril, and were unequally opposed by the less hardy people of milder climates, whose defenceless coasts invited their roving activity, and whose possessions tempted their ravenous appetite for plunder. In a few years after their appearance on the Ocean, they extended their desultory ravages along the shores of Germany, England, France and Spain. Their descents were sometimes repulsed by the vigilance of Charlemagne and the victories of his navy: but all his power was insufficient to check the incessant expeditions and avert the progress of their numerous fleets. Even during his life they penetrated into the Mediterranean; and on the first spectacle of their vessels from a port in that sea, the aged conqueror is said to have wept in prophetic sorrow at the evils which threatened his Empire.

afflictions

and death of

Charle

magne. A. D. 814.

In his family the heart of the Emperor was doomed Domestic to suffer some of the severest trials which belong to the parental condition: to witness and survive the death of his children. His eldest son, Pepin, whose legitimacy is doubtful, had engaged in an unnatural rebellion, and was justly punished by confinement to a Monastery in which he died. Two other of his sons also, Charles and Pepin Carloman, closed their lives before him; and the leath of his favourite daughter Rotrude filled up the measure of his affliction. These misfortunes, indeed, were soothed by the filial piety of Lewis, his only remaining son, whom he rewarded by associating with him in the Government. In the last year of the Emperor's life, a solemn Assembly of his States was convened at Aix-la-Chapelle, to confirm his intention; and the Imperial Crown being laid on the altar, Charlemagne, as if he foresaw and desired to prevent the usurpations of the Church, commanded the Prince to place it on his own head, in token that he received and held it alone of God, his father, and his people.* Charlemagne survived this remarkable ceremony only a few months; breathing his last in the seventy-first year of his age and the forty-seventh of his reign.† The character of Charlemagne has been perhaps His charac sufficiently described in the political, the military, and ter. the domestic transactions of his memorable life. But, on a formal estimate of his qualities of heart and mind, our judgment should in fairness be confined, and his real merit should be measured only by the moral and intellectual standard of his own times. Apart, indeed, from the accidents of his position at an epoch of thick barbarism and ferocious violence, we may readily discover in many features of his conduct the true and unchangeable elements of greatness. His universal ambition of excellence, the magnitude of his conceptions, his benevolent purposes of social improvement, and the indefatigable activity of his spirit, could be the natural products of no particular state of civilization, and less than any, of the times in which he lived. In whatever age of the world he had filled a Throne, these capacities would probably have numbered him among the most illustrious of mankind: but the positive as well as the

* Thegan. Chron. Vitæ Ludovici Pii, c. 7. Eginhart, ad ann.