and, after his numerous diets, the whole constitu- | and that ferocious tribe, whose origin and language tion was left to fluctuate between the disorders of anarchy and despotism. His esteem for the piety and knowledge of the clergy tempted him to intrust that aspiring order with temporal dominion and civil jurisdiction; and his son Lewis, when he was stripped and degraded by the bishops, might accuse, in some measure, the imprudence of his father. His laws enforced the imposition of tithes, because the dæmons had proclaimed in the air that the default of payment had been the cause of the last scarcity. The literary merits of Charlemagne are attested by the foundation of schools, the introduction of arts, the works which were published in his name, and his familiar connexion with the subjects and strangers whom he invited to his court to educate both the prince and people. His own studies were tardy, laborious, and imperfect; if he spoke Latin, and understood Greek, he derived the rudiments of knowledge from conversation, rather than from books; and, in his mature age, the emperor strove to acquire the practice of writing, which every peasant now learns in his infancy. The grammar and logic, the music and astronomy, of the times, were only cultivated as the handmaids of superstition: but the curiosity of the human mind must ultimately tend to its improvement, and the encouragement of learning reflects the purest and most pleasing lustre on the character of Charle- | magne. The dignity of his person," the length of his reign, the prosperity of his arms, the vigour of his government, and the reverence of distant nations, distinguished him from the royal crowd; and Europe dates a new æra from his restoration of the western empire.

Extent of his em.

That empire was not unworthy of its pire in France, title:" and some of the fairest kingdoms of Europe were the patrimony or conquest of a prince, who reigned at the same time in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Hungary." I. The Roman province of Gaul had been transformed into the name and monarchy of FRANCE; but, in the decay of the Merovingian line, its limits were contracted by the independence of the Britons and the revolt of Aquitain. Charlemagne pursued, and Charlemagne pursued, and confined, the Britons on the shores of the ocean;

i Omnis homo ex suâ proprietate legitimam decimam ad ecclesiam conferat. Experimento enim didicimus, in anno, quo illa valida fames irrepsit, ebullire vacuas annonas a dæmonibus devoratas, et voces expro. bationis auditas. Such is the decree and assertion of the great Council of Frankfort, (canon xxv. tom. ix. p. 105.) Both Selden, (Hist. of Tithes: Works, vol. iii. part. ii. p. 1146.) and Montesquieu, (Esprit des Loix, 1. xxxi. c. 12.) represent Charlemagne as the first legal author of tithes. Such obligations have country gentlemen to his memory!

k Eginhard (c. 25. p. 119.) clearly affirms, tentabat et scribere . . . sed parum prospere successit labor præposterus et sero inchoatus. The moderns have perverted and corrected this obvious meaning, and the title of M. Gaillard's Dissertation (tom. iii. p. 247-260.) betrays his partiality.

1 See Gaillard, tom. iii. p. 138-176. and Schmidt, tom. ii. p. 121–129. m M. Gaillard (tom. iii. p. 372.) fixes the true stature of Charlemagne (see a Dissertation of Marquard Freher ad calcem Eginhart, p. 220, &c.) at five feet nine inches of French, about six feet one inch and a fourth English, measure. The romance writers have increased it to eight feet, and the giant was endowed with matchless strength and appetite: at a single stroke of his good sword Joyeuse, he cut asunder a horseman and his horse; at a single repast he devoured a goose, two fowls, a quar. ter of mutton, &c.

n See the concise, but correct and original, work of D'Anville, (Etats formées en Europe après la Chute de l'Empire Romain en Occident, Paris, 1771, in 4to.) whose map includes the empire of Charlemagne;

Spain,

are so different from the French, was chastised by
the imposition of tribute, hostages, and peace.
After a long and evasive contest, the rebellion of
the dukes of Aquitain was punished by the for-
feiture of their province, their liberty, and their
lives. Harsh and rigorous would have been such
treatment of ambitious governors, who had too
faithfully copied the mayors of the palace. But a
recent discovery has proved that these unhappy
princes were the last and lawful heirs of the blood
and sceptre of Clovis, a younger branch, from the
brother of Dagobert, of the Merovingian house.
Their ancient kingdom was reduced to the duchy of
Gascogne, to the counties of Fesenzac and Armag-
nac, at the foot of the Pyrenees: their race was
propagated till the beginning of the sixteenth cen-
tury; and, after surviving their Carlovingian tyrants,
they were reserved to feel the injustice, or the
favours, of a third dynasty. By the re-union of
Aquitain, France was enlarged to its present boun-
daries, with the addition of the Netherlands and
Spain, as far as the Rhine. II. The
Saracens had been expelled from
France by the grandfather and father of Charle-
magne; but they still possessed the greatest part
of SPAIN, from the rock of Gibraltar to the Pyrenees.
Amidst their civil divisions, an Arabian emir of
Saragossa implored his protection in the diet of
Paderborn. Charlemagne undertook the expedi-
tion, restored the emir, and, without distinction of
faith, impartially crushed the resistance of the
Christians, and rewarded the obedience and service
of the Mahometans. In his absence he instituted
the Spanish march, which extended from the Py-
renees to the river Ebro: Barcelona was the resi-
dence of the French governor: he possessed the
counties of Rousillon and Catalonia; and the infant
kingdoms of Navarre and Arragon were subject to
his jurisdiction. III. As king of the
Italy,
Lombards, and patrician of Rome, he
reigned over the greatest part of ITALY,' a tract of
a thousand miles from the Alps to the borders of
Calabria. The duchy of Beneventum, a Lombard
fief, had spread, at the expense of the Greeks, over
the modern kingdom of Naples. But Arrechis, the

the different parts are illustrated, by Valesius (Notitia Galliarum) for
France, Beretti (Dissertatio Chorographica) for Italy, De Marca (Marca
Hispanica) for Spain. For the middle geography of Germany, I con-
fess myself poor and destitute.

o After a brief relation of his wars and conquests, (Vit. Carol, c. 514.) Eginhard recapitulates, in a few words, (c. 15.) the countries subject to his empire. Struvius (Corpus Hist. German. p. 118-149.) has inserted in his Notes the texts of the old Chronicles.

p Of a charter granted to the monastery of Alaon (A. D. 845.) by Charles the Bald, which deduces this royal pedigree. I doubt whether some subsequent links of the ninth and tenth centuries are equally firm; yet the whole is approved and defended by M. Gaillard, (tom. ii. p. 60-81. 203-206.) who affirms that the family of Montesquieu (not of the President de Montesquieu) is descended, in the female line, from Clotaire and Clovis-an innocent pretension!

The governors or counts of the Spanish march revolted from Charles the Simple about the year 900; and a poor pittance, the Rousillon, has been recovered in 1642 by the kings of France. (Longuerue, Description de la France, tom. i. p. 220-222.) Yet the Rousillon contains 188,900 subjects, and annually pays 2,600,000 livres; (Necker, Administration des Finances, tom. i. p. 278, 279.) more people, perhaps, and doubtless more money, than the march of Charlemagne. r Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, tom. ii. p. 200, &c.

Germany,

|

reigning duke, refused to be included in the slavery | of a French army, that was poured into their country by land and water, through the Carpathian mountains and along the plain of the Danube. After a bloody conflict of eight years, the loss of some French generals was avenged by the slaughter of the most noble Huns: the relics of the nation submitted: the royal residence of the chagan was left desolate and unknown; and the treasures, the rapine of two hundred and fifty years, enriched the victorious troops, or decorated the churches of Italy and Gaul. After the reduction of Pannonia, the empire of Charlemagne was bounded only by the conflux of the Danube with the Teyss and the Save: the provinces of Istria, Liburnia, and Dalmatia, were an easy, though unprofitable, accession; and it was an effect of his moderation, that he left the maritime cities under the real or nominal sovereignty of the Greeks. But these distant possessions added more to the reputation, than to the power, of the Latin emperor; nor did he risk any ecclesiastical foundations to reclaim the barbarians from their vagrant life and idolatrous worship. Some canals of communication between the rivers, the Saône and the Meuse, the Rhine and the Danube, were faintly attempted." Their execution would have vivified the empire; and more cost and labour were often wasted in the structure of a cathedral.

of his country; assumed the independent title of prince; and opposed his sword to the Carlovingian monarchy. His defence was firm, his submission was not inglorious, and the emperor was content with an easy tribute, the demolition of his fortresses, and the acknowledgment, on his coins, of a supreme lord. The artful flattery of his son Grimoald added the appellation of father, but he asserted his dignity with prudence, and Beneventum insensibly escaped from the French yoke. IV. Charlemagne was the first who united GERMANY under the same sceptre. The name of Oriental France is preserved in the circle of Franconia; and the people of Hesse and Thuringia were recently incorporated with the victors, by the conformity of religion and government. The Alemanni, so formidable to the Romans, were the faithful vassals and confederates of the Franks; and their country was inscribed within the modern limits of Alsace, Swabia, and Switzerland. The Bavarians, with a similar indulgence of their laws and manners, were less patient of a master: the repeated treasons of Tasillo justified the abolition of their hereditary dukes; and their power was shared among the counts, who judged and guarded that important frontier. But the north of Germany, from the Rhine and beyond the Elbe, was still hostile and pagan; nor was it till after a war of thirty-three years that the Saxons bowed under the yoke of Christ and of Charlemagne. The idols and their votaries were extirpated: the foundation of eight bishoprics, of Munster, Osnaburgh, Paderborn, and Minden, of Bremen, Verden, Hildesheim, and Hal-boundary of Germany and Denmark. The personal berstadt, define, on either side of the Weser, the bounds of ancient Saxony; these episcopal seats were the first schools and cities of that savage land; and the religion and humanity of the children atoned, in some degree, for the massacre of the parents. Beyond the Elbe, the Slavi, or Sclavonians, of similar manners and various denominanations, overspread the modern dominions of Prussia, Poland, and Bohemia, and some transient marks of obedience have tempted the French historian to extend the empire to the Baltic and the Vistula. The conquest or conversion of those countries is of a more recent age; but the first union of Bohemia with the Germanic body may be justly ascribed to the arms of Charlemagne. Hungary. V. He retaliated on the Avars, or Huns of Pannonia, the same calamities which they had inflicted on the nations. Their rings, the wooden fortifications which encircled their districts and villages, were broken down by the triple effort

s See Giannone, tom. i. p. 374, 375. and the Annals of Muratori.

* Quot prælia in eo gesta! quantum sanguinis effusun! sit! Testatur vacua omni habitatione Pannonia, et locus in quo regia Cagani fuit ita desertus, ut ne vestigium quidem humanæ habitationis appareat. Tota in hoc bello Hunnorum nobilitas periit, tota gloria decidit, omnis pecunia et congesti ex longo tempore thesauri direpti sunt.

u The junction of the Rhine and Danube was undertaken only for the service of the Pannonian war. (Gaillard, Vie de Charlemagne, tom. ii. p. 312-315.) The canal, which would have been only two leagues in length, and of which some traces are still extant in Swabia, was interrupted by excessive rains, military avocations, and superstitious

and enemies.

If we retrace the outlines of this His neighbours geographical picture, it will be seen that the empire of the Franks extended, between east and west, from the Ebro to the Elbe or Vistula; between the north and south, from the duchy of Beneventum to the river Eyder, the perpetual

and political importance of Charlemagne was magnified by the distress and division of the rest of Europe. The islands of Great Britain and Ireland were disputed by a crowd of princes of Saxon or Scottish origin; and, after the loss of Spain, the | christian and Gothic kingdom of Alphonso the Chaste was confined to the narrow range of the Asturian mountains. These petty sovereigns revered the power or virtue of the Carlovingian monarch, implored the honour and support of his alliance, and styled him their common parent, the sole and supreme emperor of the west. He maintained a more equal intercourse with the caliph Harun al Rashid, whose dominion stretched from Africa to India, and accepted from his ambassadors a tent, a water-clock, an elephant, and the keys of the holy sepulchre. It is not easy to conceive the private friendship of a Frank and an Arab, who were strangers to each other's person, and language, and religion: but their public correspondence was

fears. (Schopflin, Hist. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xviii. p. 256. Molimina fluviorum, &c. jungendorum, p. 59-62.)

x See Eginhard, c. 16. and Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 361-385. who mentions, with a loose reference, the intercourse of Charlemagne aud Egbert, the emperor's gift of his own sword, and the modest answer of his Saxon disciple. The anecdote, if genuine, would have adorned our English histories.

y The correspondence is mentioned only in the French annals, and the orientals are ignorant of the caliph's friendship for the christian dog-a polite appellation, which Harun bestows on the emperor of the Greeks.

to the empty honour of crowning and anointing
these hereditary princes who were already invested
with their power and dominions. The Lewis the Pious,
pious Lewis survived his brothers, A. D. 814-840.
and embraced the whole empire of Charlemagne ;
but the nations and the nobles, his bishops and his
children, quickly discerned that this mighty mass
was no longer inspired by the same soul; and the
foundations were undermined to the centre, while
the external surface was yet fair and entire. After
a war, or battle, which consumed one hundred
thousand Franks, the empire was divided by treaty
between his three sons, who had violated every filial
and fraternal duty. The kingdoms of
Germany and France were for ever A. D. 840-856.
separated; the provinces of Gaul, between the
Rhone and the Alps, the Meuse and the Rhine,
were assigned, with Italy, to the imperial dignity
of Lothaire. In the partition of his share, Lorraine
and Arles, two recent and transitory kingdoms,
were bestowed on the younger children; and Lewis
the second, his eldest son, was content Lewis II.
with the realm of Italy, the proper
and sufficient patrimony of a Roman emperor. On
his death without any male issue, the vacant throne
was disputed by his uncles and cousins, and the
popes most dexterously seized the occasion of judg-

Lothaire I.

founded on vanity, and their remote situation left no room for a competition of interest. Two thirds of the western empire of Rome were subject to Charlemagne, and the deficiency was amply supplied by his command of the inaccessible or invincible nations of Germany. But in the choice of his enemies, we may be reasonably surprised that he so often preferred the poverty of the north to the riches of the south. The three and thirty campaigns laboriously consumed in the woods and morasses of Germany, would have sufficed to assert the amplitude of his title by the expulsion of the Grecks from Italy and the Saracens from Spain. The weakness of the Greeks would have ensured an easy victory: and the holy crusade against the Saracens would have been prompted by glory and revenge, and loudly justified by religion and policy. Perhaps, in his expeditions beyond the Rhine and the Elbe, he aspired to save his monarchy from the fate of the Roman empire, to disarm the enemies of civilized society, and to eradicate the seed of future emigrations. But it has been wisely observed, that in a light of precaution, all conquest must be ineffectual, unless it could be universal; since the increasing circle must be involved in a larger sphere of hostility. The subjugation of Germany withdrew the veil which had so long concealed the continent or islands of Scandinavia from the know-ing the claims and merits of the candidates, and of ledge of Europe, and awakened the torpid courage of their barbarous natives. The fiercest of the Saxon idolaters escaped from the christian tyrant to their brethren of the north; the ocean and Medi-hibited any symptoms of virtue or power, and the terranean were covered with their piratical fleets; and Charlemagne beheld with a sigh the destructive progress of the Normans, who, in less than seventy years, precipitated the fall of his race and monarchy.

in Italy;

987, in France.

His successors, Had the pope and the Romans reA. D. 814-887, vived the primitive constitution, the 911, in Germany; titles of emperor and Augustus were conferred on Charlemagne for the term of his life; and his successors, on each vacancy, must have ascended the throne by a formal or tacit election. But the association of his son Lewis the Pious asserts the independent right of monarchy and conquest, and the emperor seems on this occasion to have foreseen and prevented the latent claims of the clergy. The royal youth was commanded to take the crown from the altar, and with his own hands to place it on his head, as a gift which he held from God, his father, and the nation. The same ceremony was repeated, though with less energy, in the subsequent associations of Lothaire and Lewis the second: the Carlovingian sceptre was transmitted from father to son in a lineal descent of four generations; and the ambition of the popes was reduced

A. D. 813.

z Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 361-365. 471–476. 492. I have borrowed his judicious remarks on Charlemagne's plan of conquest, and the judicious distinction of his enemies of the first and second enceinte, (tom. ii. p. 184. 509, &c.)

a Thegan, the biographer of Lewis, relates this coronation; and Baronius has honestly transcribed it, (A. D. 813, No. 13, &c. See

A. D. 856-875.

bestowing on the most obsequious, or most liberal, the imperial office of advocate of the Roman church. The dregs of the Carlovingian race no longer ex

Division of the
empire,
A. D. 888.

ridiculous epithets of the bald, the stammerer, the
fat, and the simple, distinguished the tame and
uniform features of a crowd of kings alike deserv-'
ing of oblivion. By the failure of the collateral
branches, the whole inheritance devolved to Charles
the Fat, the last emperor of his family: his insanity
authorized the desertion of Germany,
Italy, and France: he was deposed
in a diet, and solicited his daily bread
from the rebels by whose contempt his life and
liberty had been spared. According to the measure
of their force, the governors, the bishops, and the
lords, usurped the fragments of the falling empire;
and some preference was shown to the female or
illegitimate blood of Charlemagne. Of the greater
part, the title and possession were alike doubtful,
and the merit was adequate to the contracted scale
of their dominions. Those who could appear with
an army at the gates of Rome were crowned em-
perors in the Vatican; but their modesty was more
frequently satisfied with the appellation of kings of
Italy; and the whole term of seventy-four years
may be deemed a vacancy, from the abdication of
Charles the Fat to the establishment of Otho the
first.

Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 506, 507, 508.) howsoever adverse to the claims of the popes. For the series of the Carlovingians, see the historians of France, Italy, and Germany; Pfeffel, Schmidt, Velly, Muratori, and even Voltaire, whose pictures are sometimes just, and always pleasing.

Otho king of Ger. many restores

the western empire,

A. D. 962.

C

suspect, that the report was invented by the enemies of Irene, to charge her with the guilt of betraying the church and state to the strangers of the west. The French ambassadors were the spectators, and had nearly been the victims, of the conspiracy of Nicephorus, and the national hatred. Constantinople was exasperated by the treason and sacrilege of ancient Rome: a proverb, "That the Franks were good friends and bad neighbours," was in every one's mouth; but it was dangerous to provoke a neighbour who might be tempted to reiterate, in the church of St. Sophia, the ceremony of his imperial coronation. After a tedious journey of cir

Otho was of the noble race of the dukes of Saxony; and if he truly deand appropriates scended from Witikind, the adversary and proselyte of Charlemagne, the posterity of a vanquished people was exalted to reign over their conquerors. His father Henry the Fowler was elected, by the suffrage of the nation, to save and institute the kingdom of Germany. Its limits were enlarged on every side by his son, the first and greatest of the Othos. A portion of Gaul to the west of the Rhine, along the banks of the Meuse and the Moselle, was assigned to the Germans, by whose blood and language it has been tinged since the time of Cæsar and Taci-cuit and delay, the ambassadors of Nicephorus found tus. Between the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Alps, the successors of Otho acquired a vain supremacy over the broken kingdoms of Burgundy and Arles. In the north, christianity was propagated by the sword of Otho, the conqueror and apostle of the Slavic nations of the Elbe and Oder: the marches of Brandenburg and Sleswick were fortified with German colonies; and the king of Denmark, the dukes of Poland and Bohemia, confessed themselves his tributary vassals. At the head of a victorious army, he passed the Alps, subdued the kingdom of Italy, delivered the pope, and for ever fixed the imperial crown in the name and nation of Germany. From that memorable æra, two maxims of public jurisprudence were introduced by force and ratified by time. I. That the prince, who was elected in the German diet, acquired, from that instant, the subject kingdoms of Italy and Rome. II. But that he might not legally assume the titles of emperor and Augustus, till he had received the crown from the hands of the Roman pontiff.

Transactions of

The imperial dignity of Charlethe western and magne was announced to the east by eastern empires. the alteration of his style; and instead of saluting his fathers, the Greek emperors, he presumed to adopt the more equal and familiar appellation of brother. Perhaps in his connexion with Irene he aspired to the name of husband: his embassy to Constantinople spoke the language of peace and friendship, and might conceal a treaty of marriage with that ambitious princess, who had renounced the most sacred duties of a mother. The nature, the duration, the probable consequences of such an union between two distant and dissonant empires, it is impossible to conjecture; but the unanimous silence of the Latins may teach us to

b He was the son of Otho, the son of Ludolph, in whose favour the duchy of Saxony had been instituted, A. D. 858. Ruotgerus, the biographer of St. Bruno, (Bibliot. Bunavianæ Catalog. tom. iii. vol. ii. p. 679.) gives a splendid character of his family. Atavorum atavi usque ad hominum memoriam omnes nobilissimi; nullus in eorum stirpe ignotus, nullus degener facile reperitur, (apud Struvium, Corp. Hist. German. p. 216.) Yet Gundling (in Henrico Ancupe) is not satisfied of his descent from Witikind.

e See the treatise of Coringius: (de Finibus Imperii Germanici, Francofurt. 1680, in 4to:) he rejects the extravagant and improper scale of the Roman and Carlovingian empires, and discusses with moderation the rights of Germany, her vassals, and her neighbours.

d The power of custom forces me to number Conrad I. and Henry I. the Fowler, in the list of emperors, a title which was never assumed by those kings of Germany. The Italians, Muratori for instance, are more scrupulous and correct, and only reckon the princes who have been crowned at Rome.

• Invidiam tamen suscepti nominis, (C. P. imperatoribus super hoc

him in his camp, on the banks of the river Sala; and Charlemagne affected to confound their vanity by displaying, in a Franconian village, the pomp, or at least the pride, of the Byzantine palace.® The Greeks were successively led through four halls of audience in the first they were ready to fall prostrate before a splendid personage in a chair of state, till he informed them that he was only a servant, the constable, or master of the horse, of the emperor. The same mistake, and the same answer, were repeated in the apartments of the count palatine, the steward, and the chamberlain; and their impatience was gradually heightened, till the doors of the presence-chamber were thrown open, and they beheld the genuine monarch, on his throne, enriched with the foreign luxury which he despised, and encircled with the love and reverence of his victorious chiefs. A treaty of peace and alliance was concluded between the two empires, and the limits of the east and west were defined by the right of present possession. But the Greeks soon forgot this humiliating equality, or remembered it only to hate the barbarians by whom it was extorted. During the short union of virtue and power, they respectfully saluted the august Charlemagne with the acclamations of basileus, and emperor of the Romans. As soon as these qualities were separated in the person of his pious son, the Byzantine letters were inscribed, "To the king, or, as he styles himself, the emperor, of the Franks and Lombards." When both power and virtue were extinct, they despoiled Lewis the second of his hereditary title, and, with the barbarous appellation of rex or rega, degraded him among the crowd of Latin princes. His reply is expressive of his weakness: he proves, with some learning, that both in sacred and profane

i

indignantibus magnâ tulit patientià, vicitque eorum contumaciam

mittendo ad eos crebras legationes, et in epistolis fratres eos appellando. Eginhard, c. 28. p. 128. Perhaps it was on their account that, like Augustus, he affected some reluctance to receive the empire. f Theophanes speaks of the coronation and unction of Charles, KapovAAos, (Chronograph. p. 399.) and of his treaty of marriage with Irene, (p. 402.) which is unknowu to the Latins. Gaillard relates his transactions with the Greek empire, (tom. ii. p. 446-468.)

g Gaillard very properly observes, that this pageant was a farce suitable to children only; but that it was indeed represented in the presence, and for the benefit, of children of a larger growth.

h Compare, in the original texts collected by Pagi, (tom. iii. A. D. 812, No. 7. A. D. 824, No. 10, &c.) the contrast of Charlemagne and his son to the former the ambassadors of Michael (who were indeed disavowed) more suo, id est linguâ Græcâ laudes dixerunt, imperatorem eum et Bagiλea appellantes; to the latter, Vocato imperatori Fran. corum, &c.

i See the epistle, in Paralipomena of the anonymous writer of Saler