4^ 1^^ VV' -"^ W// «K \\V J. y-S *J .0 * .^0 ^i^ ^^ ^Ov;^ ;^i^^; .40, ...^^^m^- .0 : %.^" /- V . o_ * ,0 ^ * o « o ^ ^^ CJ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/historyoffallofrOOsimo HISTORY OF THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, COMPRISING A VIEW OF THE INVASION AND SETTLEMENT OF THE BARBARIANS. BY J. C. L. DE SISMONDI. PHILADELPHIA: CAREY, LEA & BLAXCHARD. 1835. /S3 ff Chlotilde, as she was called by the priests, was very imperfectly known to her uncle Gondebald. No length of time, no attempts at reconciliation, nx) benefits conferred, could eradicate from her heart the hatred she had conceived. Her marriage was cele^ brated in 493 5 and, thirty years after, she demanded and ob- tained the vengeance for which slie had constantly panted. The confidence which the bishops of Gaul had placed in the charms^ of Chlotilde was fully justified. She converted her husband^, persuatled him first to have his children baptized; and afterwards prevailed on him to seek the protection of her God in a moment of danger. In 490,. the Allemans had invaded all the country which lieS' between the Moselle and the Meuse. To the Franks, this was a national war; all their tribes assembled, and gave battle to the aggressors at Tolbiac, four leagues from Cologne. They were repulsed, however, and seemed upon the point of being routed,, when Clovis invoked the God of Chlotilde: animated with fresh courage, he again attacked the enemy; the Alleman chief was slain; and his soldiers immediately offered to join the standard of Clovis, and acknowledge him as their king. The two nations spoke the same language, their origin was the same, and their manners and customs were similar; they were, therefore, easily united; and Clovis returned from the field of Tolbiac at the head of an army much more numerous than that which he had led thither, or than any which he had ever before commanded. He 22 166 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. VIII. was acknowledged king by his enemies, and suzerain or chief by the other kings of the Franks, who till then had been his equals. On his return to Soissons, his seat of empire, Clovis became one of the catechumens of St. Remi, the archbishop of Rheims: his soldiers, carried away like himself by the universal belief of the people amongst whom they lived, by the miracles which they heard attested, and by the magnificence of the catholic worship, readily followed his example. On Christmas-day, 496, he re- paired, with an army of only 3000 soldiers, to the cathedral of Rheims, where St. Remi poured upon him the water of baptism, uttering these words, which have been handed down to us: — " Bow down thy head, oh ! Sicambrian, with humility. Adore what thou hast burnt, and burn what thou hast adored. " The joy of the clergy throughout Gaul was boundless, when they heard of the conversion of king Clovis. In him, the orthodox believers gained a defender and an avenger; a persecutor of their rivals, at the moment when their need was greatest. For the emperor Zeno at Constantinople, and all the barbarian kings, ' — at Ravenna, at Yienne, at Toulouse, at Carthage, in Spain and in Germany,— were either heretic or pagan. Hence it is, that the king of the Franks has been called the eldest son of the church. St. Avitus, archbishop of Vienne, on the Rhone, wrote to Clovis, — " Your faith is our victory." This prelate was a Burgundian subject; but he rejoiced in the expectation that Clovis would attack the rulers of his nation; and all the clergy of Gaul, whether they were subject to the Burgundians or Visi- goths, showed the same zeal for the future triumph of Clovis. At the same time, the confederated towns of Armorica, which hitherto had defended themselves against the barbarians by the force of their own arms, offered to treat with Clovis. They en- tered into an alliance with him, or, rather, became incorporated m his nation; and the Armoricans were placed upon an equal footing with the Franks. All the barbarian soldiers that re- mained scattered throughout Gaul, who till then had followed the standards of Rome, under the name of Letes or Confederates, were, in like manner, adopted by the Frankic nation; the new king saw his empire extending to the ocean; to the Loire, which separated it from the Visigoths; to the mountains around Langres, the boundary of the Burgundian territory; and to the Rhine, which divided it from the independent Franks. Such an extent of conquest might have sufficed to satisfy the CHAP. VIII.] CLOVIS. 167 ambition of the little chieftain of 3000 warriors. But Clovis knew that he could only maintain his influence over his compa- nions in arms by new victories, and by holding out fresh booty to their rapacity. Many of the soldiers lamented the submission of the Roman provinces. Each of those protected by Clovis was rescued from the cupidity of plunderers: but he endeavoured to persuade them, that whatever additions he had made to his territory, there would always remain in Gaul, provinces to pillage, estates to parcel out, and inhabitants to reduce to slavery. Clovis sought an occasion of quarrel with the two nations which shared with him the empire of Gaul; but with that policy to M^hich he owed success, even more than to his valour, he be- gan by giving them insidious counsels before he attempted to sur- prise them. The Burgundians were first the object of his attack. Tliey were governed by the two brothers of Chlotilde: Godegesil, who had fixed his seat at Geneva; and Gondibard, who resided at Vienne. The kingdom was not divided between them, but each had endeavoured to secure a large number of warriors, or Leudes: this name, which answers to lieges,* describes those partisans at- tached to their chiefs by benefits conferred. Each of the bro- thers, in distrust of the other, had retired to as great a distance as possible, to escape from perfidious snares, and to enjoy at li- berty the pleasures then attached to kingly power. From this mutual dread proceeded the custom so universal among barba- rians, of designating kings by the name of their capitals, rather than by that of their provinces. One was king at Vienne, the other king at Geneva, but both of them were kings of the Bur- gundians. In the year 500, Clovis gained over Godegesil: he persuaded him to separate himself from his brother at the mo- ment when the Franks were giving battle to his countrymen; and as a reward for his compliance, he promised to assist him in gaining sole possession of the throne of the Burgundians. He then declared war upon this people, and led on his Franks to the combat. The two nations met upon the banks of the Ousche, near Dijon; but at the very moment when the battle was about to begin, Godegesil, with all his forces, deserted the national banner, and joined that of Clovis. Gondebald, in dismay, took to flight, and could not believe himself safe until he had shut * Xewife— people. (German.)— (Transl.) 168 FALl Of tHfi ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. YIII. himself up in Avignon. Godegesil lost no time in reaching his brother's palace at Vienne, and taking possession of all the riches it contained; while Clovis pursued his ravages into Pro- vence, where, tearing up the vines and burning the olive trees, he forcibly carried off the peasants, and loaded his soldiers with booty. But when he endeavoured to render himself master of Avignon, he found the walls too strong for warriors so ignorant of the art of besieging: he was obliged, therefore, to enter into a compromise with Gondebald, and to consent to retire to the banks of the Seing, with all the spoils which his troops had ob- tained. Gondebald being delivered from the fear of the Franks, im- mediately marched to Vienne with a great body of Burgundians, who were indignant at the treachery of Godegesil. He gained entrance through an aqueduct, and having found his brother, who in terror had sought refuge in a church, he put him to death, as well as the bishop who had granted him asylum. He de- stroyed by horrible tortures all those whom he accused of par- ticipating in his brother's treason, and caused his authority again to be acknowledged throughout the army of the Burgun- dians. Clovis, in the mean time, had not been making conquests; pos- sibly, this was not his object; but he had been enriching his army. At the end of a few years, he led it forth on another ex- pedition. Alaric II. reigned over the Visigoths, and between him and the Franks there had been some disputes. Clovis pro- posed to him to hold a conference in an island on the Loire, near Amboise: here he settled all their differences, removed all Alaric's anxiety about his own projects, and a lasting peace was confirmed between the Visigoths and the Franks by mutual oaths. On his return home, he assembled his troops on the Champ de Mars, between Soissons and Paris, in the spring of the year 507. " I cannot bear," he said, " that those Arians (the Visigoths) should possess the best part of Gaul: let us go forth against them, and when, by God's help, we have overcome them, we will re- duce their country under our dominion, and their persons to slavery." A longer harangue was not required to excite the Franks to warfare. They made the air resound with the clang of their arms, and followed their king to the field. Clovis had deceived his enemy by a shameful perjury; but, in order to gain the blessing of Heaven upon his arms, he caused it CHAP. VIII.] CLOVIS. 169 to be proclaimed that any soldier would be punished with death who should carry off so much as a blade of grass from the terri- tory of Tours without paying for it, this country being under the immediate protection of St. Martin. The church, at that time, did not hesitate between the two kinds of merit— liberality toward monks, or probity. St. Gregory of Tours assures us that the march of Clovis was constantly directed and aided by miracles. The per- petual chorus of monks, — the Fsallentium, — who, night and day, sang psalms in the church of Tours, announced his victory by a por- phecy. A fawn guided his passage across the waters of the Vi- enne^ a column of fire led his army on to Poictiers. At the dis- tance of ten leagues from this city, Clovis encountered the Visi- goths, commanded by Alaric II. He vanquished them in the plains of Vougle, (a. d. 507;) their king was killed, and their whole army routed. The greater part of the territory of the Visigoths, between the Loire and the Pyrennees, was ravaged by the Franks, who spent a considerable time in conquering these provinces; but during a four years' war, of which we have no details, they lost a part of what they had gained, and at the end of the reign of Clovis, in 511, his authority was acknowledged by little more than the half of Aquitaine. The other Frank ic kings could certainly no longer be consi- dered as the equals of Clovis; some of them had, indeed, fought by his side, but not one had discovered the talents of a great ge- neral, or a great politician. All of them had given themselves up to that effeminacy which so rapidly corrupts uncivilized man in affluence. Nevertheless, Clovis still regarded them as rivals; he feared the inconstancy of the people, who might at some fu- ture time seek among the other kings a protector against him- self; and he dreaded the development of talents dangerous to his power in them or their children, or the comparison that might be made between their mildness and his own cruelty. He, there- fore, came to the resolution of getting rid of them, and began with Siegbert, king of the Ripuarians, his companion in arms, who reigned at Cologne. In the year 509, he persuaded Chlode- ric, the son of this unfortunate king, who had accompanied him in his war against the Visigoths, to assassinate his father; pro- mising that he would afterwards assist him to reap the fruits of his parricide. The crime was committed; but Clovis made no attempt to screen the perpetrator, whom he caused to be assassi- nated in his turn; and immediately assembled the Ripuarians, 170 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. Vlllr who raised liim upon a shield and proclaimed him their king. Shortly after, Clevis laid snares for Cararic, who reigned at Te- rouane. Having obtained possession of his person, he compelled him and his son to assume holy orders, after which he cut off both their heads. He seduced the Leudes of Ragnacar, who reigned at Cambray, by presents; and having commanded him and his brother to be brought before him in chains, *' Art thou not ashamed," said he, ** of disgracing our descent by allowing thyself to be thus manacled? thou oughtest to have died honour- ably." Then raising his arm, with one blow of his axe he cut off his head. " And as for thee," said he to the brother of Rag- nacar, hadst thou defended thy brother, thou wouldst not now be a captive with him." And immediately, by a mortal blow, he laid him prostrate in his turn. He also procured the death of se- veral other long-haired kings who reigned over smaller tribes; then pretending to repent of his barbarity, he offered his protec- tion to all those who had escaped the massacre. He hoped thus to discover any of his relations whose lives might have been pre- served, that he might rid himself of them also: but they had all perished, and his work was accomplished. So says St. Gregory, from whom we have borrowed the history of all these horrors; and whose sentiments, even better than his narrative, porfray the spirit of the age he lived in. "Thus did God everyday cause some among his enemies to fall into his hands, and in- creased the limits of his kingdom; because he walked with an upright heart before the Lord, and did that which was pleasing in his sight." (B. ii. c. 40.) There can be no doubt that, by the larger part of the clergy of Gaul, Clovis was considered a saint. His success was attributed to a succession of miracles, which enabled him to lay the founda- tion of the French monarchy: one of these, more famous than the* rest, has been commemorated ever since, at the consecration of the kings of France. It was asserted that a phial, called La Sainte j2mpoulle, was brought from heaven by a white dove to St. Remi, and contained the holy oil with which he was to anoint the king. This story, however, did not gain much credit until the ninth century. Nothing could exceed the respect and defe- rence which Clovis testified on all occasions for the clergy, in re- turn for the zeal with which they espoused his cause. We learn, from letters which have been preserved in the collection of the councils, that, in every country which was the seat of war, he CHAP. VIII.] INSTITUTIONS OF THE FRANKS."" 171 had taken under his special protection not only the persons and property of bishops and priests, but even of their mistresses and their children. He had freed the property of the church from every kind of tax, and had consulted the ecclesiastical council upon the administration of his kingdom. We should fall into a great error, if vi^e compared this admi- nistration with any of those which exist in modern monarchies. Clovis reigned without any ministry, or civil establishment: he was not the king of Gaul, but king of the Franks who dwelt in Gaul. He was the captain of a sovereign army, both by choice and by inheritance 5 for, on the one hand, none but a descendant of Merovaeus would have been exalted by the soldiers to this high dignity^ and, on the other, they would not have intrusted their lives and fortunes to any but the most able and fortunate of the royal line. If Clovis had appeared not to justify their choice, his head would soon have fallen under the francisque, like those of the kings whom he had removed out of his way. This sove- reign army, by whose aid he reigned, very much as the dey of Algiers reigned among the janissaries, never quitted arms for agriculture. They had not taken possession of the estates or the persons of the Gauls: for, by spreading themselves over a large territory, they would have been lostj they kept together, or, at least, their cantonments were always in the neighbourhood of Paris or of Soissons, according as the residence of Clovis was in one or the other of these cities. The soldiers were generally quartered upon the citizens: they lived in the enjoyment of lux- ury and brutal pleasures, such as barbarians could relish, until the wealth acquired in former expeditions was dissipated, and then urged their king to lead them against some new enemy. As the nation of Franks had never emigrated in a body, like that of 'the Burgundians and Visigoths, there were no families to be planted, no partitions of land to be made. By degrees only, as- the veteran soldier retiring from service asked the grant of some uncultivated spot, the king was called upon to distribute land, and he had always more to give than he found claimants for^. Often, indeed, the soldier helped himself, and, with the aid of his francisque, got rid of the proprietor whose dwelling or whose land he coveted: aware that, if he chanced to be pursued and condemned for this murder, the law required nothing but a mulct or widergeld of 100 sols of gold (equal to ^50 sterling) for the murder of a Roman landholder. Irs FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. VIII. The army, thus kept together, was summoned to deliberate not only in what was properly called the Champ de Mars, where the review took place at the commencement of spring, but on all public occasions, whether for peace or for war, to make laws, or to pass sentence. The Romans were not admitted to these as- semblies ^ they had no part in the sovereignty 5 but they had all the resources of court intrigue and flattery; all the places of finance or of correspondence, in which their education and lite- rary acquirements were indispensable; and all offices in the ec- clesiastical hierarchy: in each of these different careers they not only preserved, but very often augmented, the fortune they had received from their fathers, and their credit increased so much, that before long they enjoyed the special favour and confidence of the Frankic kings. The towns continued to be governed by the Roman law, with their curise, or municipalities. To all those places, however, which had put themselves under his protection, Clovis sent a Frankic ofiicer called Graf, or Orajio, answering pretty nearly to the Roman Comes. He superintended the municipality, col- lected certain royal dues, and presided over the partial assem- blies of the Franks, — the courts where justice was administered when any troop of Franks was settled in a town. In the rural districts the people remained slaves, as they were before the conquest. They laboured for the proprietor of the estate upon which they happened to live, whether he were Frank or Roman. War had ruined many citizens, and greatly aug- mented the number of captives: the common lot of prisoners was slavery; and a warlike expedition, crowned with brilliant success, was often the cause of transporting from the banks of the Rhone to those of the Seine whole droves of unhappy beings destined to work for any masters who might become their pur- chasers. ** After having done all these things," continues Gregory of Tours, " Clovis died at Paris on the 5th of November, 511. He was buried in the church of the Holy Apostles, now called Ste. Genevieve; which, in concert with queen Chlotilde, he had founded. He had reigned in all thirty years, — five since the battle of the Vougle; and had completed the forty-fifth year of his age." ( 17-3 ) CHAPTER IX. Course of barbaric Invasion from East to West. — The Eastern Empire, by mere g-ood Fortune, survives the Western. — Emperors of the East. — Persian Kings. — Ostrogoths. — Their King" Dietrich, commonly called Theodoric; his Education at the Court of Zeno. — His Conquest of Italy. — His Wisdom and Moderation. — Restored Prosperity of Italy under his Rule. — Religious Toleration. — Extent of his Territory. — Letters of his Secretary Cassidorus. — His War with Clovis. — His Death. — His unworthy Successors. — Aggrandizement of the Franks, the most barbarous and the most powerful of the German Nations. — Incorporation of other Tribes with them. — Conquest of the Thuringians. — Reigns of the four Sons of Clo- vis; Thierry, Chlotliaire, Childebert, and Theodebert. — Conquest of Bur- gundy. — Gondebald. — Atrocities of the Frankic Kings. — Death of Chlo- thaire.— A. D. 493— 561. The torrent of barbaric intasiofi had rolled its waves from the East to the West: it had received its first impulse in Scythia, whence it had followed the shores of the Black Sea, and laid waste that enormous lUyrian isthmus, on the coast of which the new city of Constantino was built. Almost all the tribes which had conquered the West, had previously vented their fury upon the empire of the East: Goths of every denomination, Vandals, Alans, and Huns: nevertheless, the Eastern empire survived the tempest, while that of the West perished in it. The former was, certainly, not more warlike than the latter, nor better go- verned, nor more peopled, nor more wealthy j it had no glorious recollections of the past to recall, and it contained no sparks of ancient patriotism which a virtuous administration might have re- kindled. The senate of Constantinople, an imperfect copy of that of Rome, was always despicable and timid. The character of the great was as servile as that of the people. The emperors assumed the haughty language of despotism, and, though they professed Christianity, they continued to accept worship offered to them as divinities. The ambassadors of Theodosius II. en- gaged in a violent dispute with the ministers of Attila, at the very time when they were about to supplicate for peace at the feet of that monarch, declaring that it was impious to compare Attila, who was only a man, with their emperor Theodosius, who was a god. If we compare the Greeks of the fifth century, who 23 174 • FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. IX. maintained their existence, with the Romans, who forfeited theirs, we shall find them to have been superior neither in ta- lents, nor in virtue, nor in energy, but simply more fortunate. After the extinction of the race of the great Theodosius, (a. d. 450,) the throne of Constantinople was occupied, during a period of seventy-seven years, by five emperors, down to the time of Justinian: — Marcian, (a. d. 450 — 457;) Leo, till 474; Zeno, till 491; Anastasius, till 518; and Justin, till 527. These were al- most all men advanced in age, equally feeble in mind and in body, and raised to the throne by women who governed in their names. History has but little to record of them. We have, probably, lost some contemporary writers, but the little we know of these five reigns leaves us no reason to regret that we do not know more. Thrace and the European part of the empire were exposed to frequent ravages during these seventy -seven years; but the extensive provinces of Asia, Egypt, and the Greek islands, suffered only from the vices of the government. These vast regions could scarcely be attacked, except from the frontier of the Euphrates; and, as the government of the Sassanides, in Persia, was characterized by an equal degree of pusillanimity, the two empires remained at peace with one another. The kings of Persia, Ferouz, (a. d. 457—488;) Balasch, 491; Xobad, 531, are only known to us by name: they were engaged in dangerous wars with the White Huns, or Euthalites, to the north and east of the Caspian Sea, which left them no leisure to turn their arms against the Romans. But, in the mean time, a new people started from the frontiers of the Eastern empire, to fall upon the provinces which had be- longed to the empire of the West, and to effect another change in their condition. The conquest of Italy by the Ostrogoths was connected with the reigns of the emperors Zeno and Anas- tasius, and was partly the result of their suggestions. Whilst a portion of the nation of the Goths, which had inha- bited the western regions, and were called Visigoths, {TVest go- then,) had boldly entered the territory of the empire, and had, at length, found an abode in part of Gaul and in Spain; the Goths of the East, or Ostrogoths, (Osigothen,) still remained be- yond the Danube. They had submitted to Attila, but as they had neither treasures nor cities to pillage, and nothing to offer to their new masters but brave soldiers, they were soon incorpo- rated into the Tartar's army, and honoured by the name of his CHAP. IX.] OSTROGOTHS. ^THEODORIC. 175 subjects. Three brothers, who were kings amongst the Ostro- goths, Walamir, Theodemir, and Widimir, had followed Attila in his expeditions against Thrace, and afterwards against Gaul. After the death of the king of the Huns, thej had no difficulty in recovering their independence. They occupied, at that time, the desolate plains of Pannonia (Austria and Hungary.) The impulse they had received from the Huns, the wars in which they had been engaged, and the rapid marches they had effected across Europe, had induced them to abandon the arts of agricul- ture. The habits of indolence and prodigality which they had contracted in the rich provinces they had laid waste, unfitted them to resume a life of industry; so that, in the rich lands of Hungary, where the slightest cultivation is rewarded by the most abundant crops, a nation, less numerous than the population of any one of the cities they had destroyed there, or which ex- ist there at the present time, was constantly in dread of famine. Their cupidity was goaded by their privations: the more they suffered, the more they oppressed the few wretched inhabitants who remained in these vast regions: they destroyed the last remnants of the race, and, after having consumed the substance of the husbandmen who were their subjects, they relapsed into their former misery. Theodoric, the son of Theodemir, one of the three brothers, had been given to the emperor Zeno as a hostage, and brought up at Constantinople. The example of that great empire, which, still enjoyed immense wealth, and exercised the most valuable of the arts, was not lost upon him. His mind, open to instruc- tion, did not fail to profit by whatever was still to be learned amongst the Romans in the arts of war and administration; he did not choose, however, to submit to Greek pedagogues, but edu- cated himself, and would not even be taught to write. About the year 475, he succeeded his father, and, as his two uncles were already dead, he was then chief of the whole Ostrogoth ic nation. He hastened to rescue his countrymen from the mise- ries they were suffering in the deserts of Pannonia. He invaded the empire of the East, and terrified Zeno into a purchase of his friendship. He rendered many important services to the empe- ror in the revolts which troubled his reign; but afterwards, being provoked by some instance of bad faith, or urged by the mere inconstancy and impatience of his soldiers, he again turned his arms against the empire, and ravaged Thrace with a cruelty 176 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. IX. which has left a stain upon his memory. It was said, that, in this expedition, the Goths cut off the right hands of the peasants they took prisoners, in order to prevent them from holding the handle of the plough* Theodoric could not live in peace, and Zeno, his adversary, was at a loss for a pretext for terminating a war which he was unable to carry on. At this juncture, the king of the Ostrogoths proposed to the emperor of Byzantium a negotiation by which he should be authorized to conquer Italy, and to govern it ac- cording to the laws, if not in the dependence, of the empire. Zeno was delighted to deliver himself from so formidable an enemy at any pricey he therefore abandoned Odoacer to the arms of the Ostrogoths, and in the treaty which he finally concluded with the king his vassal, expressions were introduced sufficiently ambiguous to save the dignity of the empire, without compro^ mising the independence of Theodoric. The army of the Os- trogoths, and with it the entire nation, left Thrace at the begin- ning of the campaign of 489, intending to cross Moesia, Panno^ nia, and the Julian Alps, in order to enter Italy, Wandering tribes of Bulgarians, Gepidae, and Sarmatians, ocr CUpied these regions, which had once been opulent and populous. The Ostrogoths were sometimes obliged to maintain a running fight with them during a march of 700 miles; but in other parts they were joined by numerous adventurers, attracted by the fame of Theodoric to serve under his banner. When this for- midable army descended the Alps of Friuli, Odoacer showed himself to be nowise inferior to his reputation for activity, skill, and bravery. He defended Italy better than it had been defend^ ed for ages: but, after having lost three pitched battles, he was obliged to quit the open country, and to take refuge, with his most faithful partisans, in the fortress of Ravenna, where he stood a siege of three years. He was, at length, obliged to sur- render, on the 5th of March, 493; the conditions he obtained were honourable and advantageous, but he soon learned that good faith in treaties was a virtue scarcely known amongst barbarians. The chiefs themselves rarely hesitated between their interests and their engagements, at a time when public opinion was with- out force, and public morality without principle. Theodoric, who may be looked upon as the most loyal and the most virtuous of these barbarian conquerors, caused Odoacer to be assassi- nated at the close of a banquet of reconciliatiop. CHAP. IX.] THEODORIC. 177 The king of the Ostrogoths, when he had conquered Italy, soon rendered himself master of the territory lying between the Danube and the Alps, which formed the outworks of the coun- try he governed. He also obtained from the Vandals the resti- tution of Sicily, by the terror of his name alone. He then pro- ceeded to establish the wisest and most equitable institutions which any northern conqueror had ever granted to the conquered countries of the south. Instead of oppressing one people by means of the other, he strove to hold the balance fairly between them, and to preserve, or even to augment, the distinct privileges of each. He consolidated the entire structure of the Germanic liber- ties of the Goths; their popular judicial proceedings; their laws of Scandinavian origin; their institutions, at once civil and milita- ry, which assembled the citizens of the sanie districts, to delibe- rate or to judge in time of peace, and to take the field together in time of war. He confided the defence of the state to them exclusively, and, towards the close of his life, he went so far ag to prohibit the Romans from wearing arms, (which they showed little eagerness to use,) and to allow them only to the barbarians. At the same time, he attempted to introduce the practice of agri- culture among the Ostrogoths, by giving them lands, which they held on the ancient German tenure of military service. There were deserted estates in Italy, at that time, sulRcient to have maintained thirty or forty thousand new families^ and it is not to be doubted that Theodoric had brought as many with him: but these warriors had so far lost the habit of labour, that they could not submit to the task of bringing waste lands into cultivation: they were, therefore, allowed to choose out of the estates of the Romans, with the restriction, that no Roman citizen was to lose more than the third of his inheritance. It is also possible (for the expressions of Procopius on this head are somewhat ambi-r guous) that he imposed on the Roman husbandman the obligation of handing over to his barbarian master one-third of his crop; in which case we must ascribe to Theodoric the merit of having restored that system of partiary or metayer husbandry to which Italy owes the prosperity of its agricultural population. As le- gislator, he made great efforts to unite in the Ostrogoth the do^ mestic habits of the cultivator, with the exercises and discipline of the soldier. His wish was to instruct his subjects in the arts, but not in the science or literature of the Romans, " for," said he, " he who has trembled at the rod of a tutor, will always tremble at the sight of a sword." 178 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [CHAP. IX. Theodoric indulged his Roman subjects in what they called their liberties; that is to say, the names of the republic, the senate, the consuls, and the magistracy; in tlieir laws, language, and dress. He was sufficiently acquainted with the constitution of the em- pire, to perceive the great advantages he might derive from this state of things. The Romans would pay taxes, whilst the Goths would remain free from contributions; and he could not fail to discern the security he might gain from their settled obedience, and their great superiority over the Goths in the science of ad- ministration, in foreign correspondence, and in diplomacy. With the aid of Roman industry, fostered by the protection of just laws, and by the activity of a great mind, he worked some ancient gold and iron mines in Pannonia and Istria; he encou- raged improvements in agriculture; he commenced the draining of the Pontine Marshes; restored the spirit of commerce and manufactures, and re-established the imperial posts, which were then exclusively destined to the convenience of the government, and of such as could obtain gratuitous orders for horses. In the year 500, during a visit he made to the city of Rome, where he received the compliments of the senate and the people, he as- signed an annual revenue for the preservation of the Roman mo- numents from the depredations of builders, who already looked upon them as quarries which were to furnish materials for new edifices. He even re-established, on a less lavish, but still on an expensive scale, the distributions of food to the Roman people, and those public sports which were not less dear to them than J>read. He did not, however, take up his residence in the an- cient capital, but divided his time between Ravenna, the most important fortress of his kingdom, his great arsenal and store- house, and Verona, the city of his choice, and that from which he was best enabled to provide for the defence of Italy. Thence it is, that, in the Niebelungen Lied, the most ancient German poem, he is designated as Dietrich von Berne, which must be translated Theodoric of Verona, since Bern was not then in ex- istence. Although he had been brought up in the Arian faith, Theodoric granted perfect toleration to the catholics, and even acceded to the wishes of their clergy, in forbidding any but the catholic religion amongst his conquered subjects. He distributed rewards and benefices to the clergy with such judgment and ad- dress, that they remained obedient and faithful to him till nearly the close of his life. He had intended to restore the glory of the CHAP. IX.] THEODORIC. 179 Roman senate, and to attach it to his monarchy: his success was complete at the beginning of his reign, but the men whom he imagined he had secured, eluded him towards the end of it. The bishops and senators, deceived by the attentions he paid them, thought themselves more important and more formidable than they really were. The senators were still distinguished by their immense wealth; they dwelt upon the antiquity of their race, with a degree of pride which seemed to increase as the chances of raising its dignity by illustrious actions diminished. They still believed themselves to be ancient Romans, not only the descendants, but the equals, of the masters of the world: they dreamed of liberty without equality, public strength or cou- rage; and they entered into obscure conspiracies, to restore, not the republic, but the empire. Theodoric, who had become irri- table by prosperity and suspicious by age, punished these men, whom he accused of treacherous plans and intentions, more, perhaps, on suspicion, than on any proof of real guilt. The end of his reign was sullied by the condemnation of Boethius and Symmachus, both of whom were senators, men of consular dig- nity, and eminently fitted to do honour to the last age of Rome. Boethius languished for a long time in his prison at Pavia: before he perished by a cruel death, he composed his work, ** De €on- solatione Philosophiae," which is still read with pleasure. It i& said that Theodoric, exasperated by the persecution of the Arians at Constantinople, was about to set on foot a persecution of the catholics in Italy, when he died, on the 30th of August, 526. During a reign of thirty-three years Theodoric carried on se-- veral successful wars, by means of his generals: he repelled the attacks of the Greeks, of various barbaric tribes from the Danube, of the Burgundians, and of the Franks. He was, how- ever, less solicitous for the extension of his monarchy by con-^ quest, than for its internal prosperity. The population of his' kingdom rapidly increased, thanks to the long peace it enjoyed,, to the wise laws which he had promulgated, and to the immense" resources of a country which had been thus regenerated by the barbarians, and in which every kind of labour ensured an ample recompense. At the close of his reign the nation of the Ostro-- goths was computed to possess 200,000 men capable of bearing arms, which supposes a total population of nearly 1,000,000; we must not, however, forget that it had been recruited by the sol- diers and adventurers of all the barbarous nations who flocked to^ 180 FALL PP THE HOMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. IX. share the riches and the glory with which Theodoric loaded it. It then occupied not only Sicily and Italy, but the provinces of Rhsetia and Noricum to the Danube, Istria on the other side of the Adriatic, and the south of Gaul to the Rhone. We have no positive information as to the Roman population of these territo- ries at the same time, but there is reason to believe that it was also considerably increased. The negotiations of Theodoric extended throughout Germany, and even to Sweden, whence his countrymen originally came, and whence he constantly received fresh emigrants. The volu- minous collection of the letters of his secretary Cassiodorus has been preserved j and although the truth often lies hid under the pompous style, cumbrous metaphors, or pedantic erudition of that rhetorician, these twelve books furnish us with many precious documents relating to the internal administration of the country, the manners of the age, and the diplomatic relations of the new states: it is worthy of note that the Latin language was em- ployed in these last communications by nations who did not un- derstand it themselves. We find letters addressed by Cassio- dorus in the name of Theodoric to the kings of the Warnes, of the Heruli, and of the Thuringians, who were all completely barbarous, and who lived beyond the Danube, begging them to in- terest themselves, as well as the king of the Burgundians, in the defence of his son-in-law Alaric II. against Clovis. These kings had been compelled to acknowledge the advantages of letters, and of the means of communication which they afforded to men: separated by enormous distances, although united by the same interests; but, as their language had no alphabet, and neither they nor any one else could write it, they took Roman slaves as secretaries, and frequently maintained a correspondence in a language which was equally unknown to both parties. Theodoric, who had obliged the Burgundians to cede a great portion of Provence and the town of Aries, in which he had established a prefect of Gaul in imitation of the prefecture under the empire, had endeavoured to protect his son-in-law Alaric II., king of the Visigoths in Spain and Aquitaine, whose territories adjoined his own at the mouth of the Rhone. Deceived as much as his young ally, by the oaths of Clovis, he was unable to pre- vent the battle of Vougle and the ruin of the Visigoths in Aqui- taine, but he lost no time in sending them assistance. A natu- ral sou of Alaric, who was of age to bear arms, had been placed CHAP. IX.] WEST AND EAST GOTHIC KINGS, 181 upon the throne during the infancy of Amalaric, his legitimate son by the daughter of Theodoric^ however valid this motive might appear to the nation, it did not satisfy the king of the Os- trogoths, who immediately caused his grandson to be crowned, and assumed the government of Spain and of the south of France as his guardian. Amalaric, in the mean while, established his residence at Narbonnej the lustre of his court, and of the offi- cers who attended him, served to remind the Visigoths that they were still an independent nation^ while the continued advantages with which they carried on a border war against the Franks, at- tached them to the powerful protector who maintained the glory of their monarchy. If Theodoric had had a son to whom he might have transmit- ted the dominion over so large a portion of Europe, the Goths would probably have had the honour of restoring the empire of the West; but fortune, who had conferred more true greatness on this prince than on any other barbaric monarch, refused him a male heir, and had granted him only two daughters. He died on the 30th of August, 5^6, and his reign passed like a brilliant meteor, which disappears without exercising any permanent in- fluence on the seasons. The two nations of the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, which he had united, were again divided at his death. Amalaric, who was then twenty -five or twenty-six years old, re- mained at Narbonne, whence he governed Spain, and that part of Gaul which lies between the Rhone, the Loth, and the Pyren- nees. Athalaric, the grandson of Theodoric, then only four or five years old, remained at Ravenna under the guardianship of his mother Amalasonta, at the head of the Ostrogoths in Italy and Provence. As corruption advances with more rapid strides among barba- rians than among civilized nations, so also does their ruin. Their virtues are owing to position rather than to principle: they are sober, valiant, and active, because they are poor and hardy from their infancy. Physical pleasure is all that wealth can give them; they are unable to share the intellectual enjoyments of civilized men, so that, to them, opulence is the source of every vice. The plan of this work does not compel us to enter jnto these infamous details; suffice it to say, that from the* death of the great Theo- doric, to the reign of Athanagild, who transferred the seat of monarchy to Toledo, (a. d. 526—554,) four kings successively occupied the throne: Amalaric reigned from 526 to 531; Then- 24 182 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [^CHAP. IX. dis died in 548; Thendisdi in 549, and Agila in 554. Each was assassinated by the hand of his successor. In Italy seven kings of the Ostrogoths succeeded Theodoric, till the destruction of that monarchy by Belisarius in 554: Athalaric reigned from 5^6 to 534, Theodatus to 536, Vitiges to 540, Hildebald 541, Evaria 541, Totila 55^, and Teja 554. The fate of these monarchs was scarcely less tragical than that of their contemporaries in Gaul: but we shall have occasion to recur to them, in speaking of the conquests of Justinian, in a subsequent chapter. We shall, at the same time, witness the fall of the Vandals in Africa: we are about to record that of the Burgundians in Gaul. No ray of light enables us as yet to discern the history of the internal re- volutions of Great Britain or of Germany, so that, after the death of Theodoric, all tli« interest of the West centres in the history of the Franks. The sudden rise of the monarchy of the Franks is the more remarkable, as, from the .death of Clovis, that nation was dis- tinguished neither by the virtues or talents of its chiefs, nor by its own merits. At the time of the conquest of Gaul, the Franks were the most barbarous of the barbarians, and they long re- mained so: they manifested an extreme contempt for the people they had subdued, and treated them with excessive rigour. The Visigoths had adopted a pretty copious selection from the code of Theodosius (which was then the law of the empire) as the larw of their monarchy: the Ostrogoths had promulgated laws of their own, which were not entirely dissimilar from those of the Roman republic, and which attested the importance they attached to le- gal science, and to the administration of justice. The Burgun- dians, more rude than the Goths, had retained their national Jaws, which were, certainly, less polished than the preceding cedes, but equitable in spirit, and equally just to the conquerors and the conquered. The Franks published their laws, which were the most barbarous of all. The penal code of the Germanic nations reduced itself to a scale of fines: every offence might be atoned for by a pecuniary compensation: wehrgeld was the mo- ney of defence, wiedergeld the money of compensation. But the Franks, both Salian and Ripuan, were the only people who valued the blood of a Roman, at half, or even less than half, the value of the blood of a barbarian. Murder, and every other crime, was punished in the same proportion. This public insuft, offered by the legislature to the conquered people, was of a pieee CHAP. IX.] THE FRANKS. 183 with the rest of their conduct. Thej despised the learning of the Latins, as well as their language, their arts, and their sci- ences: as governors, the Franks were violent, brutal, and piti- less: their respect for the priests alone contributed to render their yoke supportable. Their high veneration for the church, and their rigorous orthodoxy, which was the more easily preserved, as they were entirely ignorant of the disputes and controversies which had arisen on matters of faith, induced the clergy to look upon them as their firmest allies. They were ever ready to de- test, to combat, and to pillage the Arians, without listening to their arguments. The bishops, in their turn, were not very strict in enforcing the moral obligations of religion: they shut their eyes upon violence, murder, and licentiousness; they even seem to have publicly authorized polygamy, and they preached the di- vine right of kings, and the duty of passive obedience. The Franks were, however, brave, numerous, — for their population had increased rapidly in Gaul,- — well armed, tolerably well versed in the ancient Roman discipline, from their long service in the imperial armies, and almost always victorious in battle. The ties that united them were so lax, their obedience to the king and to the law so voluntary, their freedom from pecuniary and social obligations so complete, that no barbarian thought he forfeited any of his national privileges by entering into their community. On the other hand, the Franks, who, at their first establishment on the other side of the Rhine, had been composed of a confederation of several small nations, were familiar with the idea of admitting new confederates: all they asked of their associates was to march under the same standard in time of war: they did not interfere with their internal constitution; they ap- pointed no governor; they did not dismiss their dukes or heredi- tary kings, and, without claiming from them forced subsidies of men or of money, they admitted them to participation in their glory and their power. In this manner the whole of Germany, without having been conquered, became engaged in the Frankic confederation in tlie course of that half century which comprised the reigns of the four sons of Clovis. (a. d. 511 — 561.) The kingdom of Clovis, which had been founded by soldiers of fortune in some of the towns of Belgium, was bounded by the Rhine. His tribe consisted of Salians, and, perhaps, of Si- cambrians, also, though it is not at all certain, that other Salians, independent of Clovis, did not remain in their former settle- 184 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. IX. merits on the right bank of the Rhine. The Chauci, the Che- rusci, and the Chamavi, are not mentioned in the history of his reign, any more than the other ancient Franks who belonged to the primitive confederation. They had all retained their inde- pendence in a part of Germany which is still called Frankenland (Franconia,) after them; but, in the following half century, they gladly entered into a new confederation, which, without abridging their rights, promised to ensure them many new ad- vantages. Beyond the Franks of the Rhine, and of Franconia, dwelt the Frisons on the shores of the ocean, and the Saxons at the mouth of the Elbe: both these nations began to call them- selves Franks, or, at least, to march with the Frankic armies, at the beginning of the sixth century. The Alemanni, or Swa- bians, from the sources of the Rhine, and the Bavarians, on the banks of the Danube, contracted the same pacific engagements, without, in any way, changing their respective institutions; ex- cept that their sovereigns probably abandoned the title of king to Clovis, and assumed that of Duke. The Thuringians alone were subdued by force of arms. They had laid the foundation of a powerful monarchy from the banks of the Elbe and the Unstrut to those of the Neckar: they had allied themselves with the Varnes and the Heruli; and they had a long rival ship of glo- ry to decide, as well as a long list of grievances to redress, with the Franks. The Thuringian w^ar is believed to have occurred in the years 528 and 530. The sons of Clovis took advantage of the dissensions of his chiefs, and of those royal fratricides which stain the annals of all the monarchies of that age, to at- tack this nation. Three brothers governed the Thuringians — Baderic, Hermanfrid, and Berthar; they were recent converts to Christianity, and Hermanfrid had married a niece of the great Theodoric, king of Italy. This princess, who was accustomed to the Gothic order of succession, according to primogeniture, upbraided her husband for consenting to occupy a divided throne, Hermanfrid came one day into the banquet hall, where he found the table partly uncovered: when he asked his wife the cause, she said, "You complain of having only half a table, and you submit quietly to having only half a kingdom." Hermanfrid felt this reproach: to satisfy his wife, he surprised and assassi- nated his brother Berthar: he afterwards concerted the death of Baderic with Thierry, one of the sons of Clovis; but, as he re- fused to pay this prince the recompense he had promised, war CHAP. IX.] FRANKIC KINGS. 185 was declared, in which Hermanfrid perished with his whole fa- mily^ not, however, in battle, but by treachery, in a conference with his enemy. We have advanced in this history without mentioning the names of the new kings of the Franksj it is, indeed, repulsive to dwell upon the lives of princes whose annals are one tissue of perfidy and of crime. Clovis was succeeded by his four sons — Thierry, Chlodomir, Childebert, and Chlothaire; the eldest of whom was twenty-five, tlie youngest thirteen or fourteen years old. All four were distinguished by th«ir regal length of hair, and all bore the title of king, but they lived in four distinct, though not very distant towns, — Paris, Orleans, Soissons, and Metz, — in order to enjoy the pleasures of the throne without re- straint, and to be more secure from the poison or the dagger each dreaded from the other. The monarchy, however, was not di- vided, though the royalty wasj the Franks still formed one na- tion. In time of peace, the kings took so little part in the go- vernment, that the division of the royal powder was unperceived by their subjects: in war, each had his own leudes or warriors, immediately depending upon his personal favour; while, in their more important expeditions, the Franks followed the king in whom they had the greatest confidence. The provinces were divided amongst the brothers, but, in so strange a manner, that it is evident the convenience of government was not the object they had in view. The division applied more to the tribute of the Roman towns, and to the productions of the soil, than to the territory itself; each prince chose to have his share in the vines and olives of the souths as well as in the forest or pasture lands of the north; and their possessions were so intermingled through- out Gaul, that it was impossible to travel for ten leagues without passing ^ frontier. The lives of the four brothers were not of equal duration, Thierry, the eldest, who was not a son of Chlotilde, but of a concubine^ or pagan mistress of Clovis, died in 534; he was suc- ceeded by his son Theodebert, who died in 54r, and was fol- lowed by Theodebald, his son, who died in 553 without issue. Chlodomir, the second of the Frankic kings, was slain in the Burgundian war in 526. Childebert, the third, died in 558; and Chlothaire, who survived his brothers, inherited all their posses- sions, and reigned over the Franks till 561. It would be diffi- ,cult and useless to fix this list of deaths in the memory: the go- 186 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [CHAP. IX. vernment of the four sons of Clovis properly forms but one reign, which lasted from 511 to 561. These four princes laid snares for each other, but they never broke out into open hostili- ty. We shall shortly see that they were far from sparing of the bloo4 of their kindred, but they probably thought that the Franks would refuse to make war upon each other. They had but few opportunities of displaying their military talents: they, however, made some warlike expeditions^ Thierry and Chlothaire in Thu- ringia, Childebert in Narbonnensian Gaul, and Theodebert in Italy: they thus enriched their soldiers with booty, and kept up the reputation of the valour of their nation. The bravery of the Franks was more frequently called into ac- tion in numerous voluntary expeditions, undertaken by soldiers of fortune under captains of their own choice, in order to share the spoils of Italy, which was at that time the theatre of war be- tween Belisarius, the general of Justinian, and the Ostrogoths. These partial expeditions would have had no consequence more important than the success, or the untimely death, of individual warriors, had not the Ostrogoths surrendered the occupation of Provence, by which means that important part of Gaul was add- ed to the empire of the Franks. A still more brilliant acquisition was that of Burgundy, which was the consequence of a national war, anxl of a family quarrel. Gondebald, king of the Burgundians, who had massacred his three brothers, continued to reign alone over that nation from the year 500 to 516. St. Avitus, archbishop of Vienne, his sub- ject, exhorted him, in a letter which is still extant, to calm his remorse for this fratricide; he conjured him " to weep no longer with such ineffable piety the death of his brothers, since it was ihe good fortune of the kingdom which diminished the number of persons invested with royal authority, and preserved to the world such only as were necessary to rule it.''* Gondebald, from the tim« jof the commission of this crime, governed with great wisdom and justice: he protected his Roman subjects, and ensured the future observance of their rights. When he died, in 516, his son Sigismund succeeded him, after having embraced the orthodox faith, and induced the majority of his subjects to Join in his conversion. Sigismund was canonized by the Roman church, and is to this day revered as a saint. He was the founder of the convent of St. Ma/Urice in the Valais, which he endowed with immense re- CHAP. IX.] DESCENDANTS OF CLOVIS. 187 venues: we know nothing of what occurred during his reign of eight years, except this monastic institutio^n, and the precipitation with which he caused his brother Siegeric to be strangled in his sleep, on false suspicions. He lived in peace, fully occupied with what were then called good works, such as acts of penitence, and munificent almsgivings ta the monks. St. Chlotilde, the widow of Clovis, who had also retired from the world to devote herself exclusively to the exercises of religion at the tomb of St. Martin at Tours, came to Paris in the year 523, to meet her three sons; and, according to the holy bishop, Gregory of Tours, she addressed them to the following effect: — ** I exhort you, my dear children, to live so that I may never repent the tenderness with which I have brought you up; to resent with indignation the injury which I received thirty-three years ago, and to avenge, with unflinching constancy, the death of my parents." The three sons swore to perform the injunctions of their mother: they attacked the Burgundians, defeated them in battle, secured the person of St. Sigismund, who had already assumed the mo- nastic garb, and was retiring to the convent of St. Maurice: af- ter keeping him some time prisoner, Chlodomir caused him to be thrown into a well near Orleans, with his wife and his two chil- dren. A brother of Sigismund, called Godemar, rallied the fugitive Burgundians, put himself at their head, and repelled the Franks. Chlodomir, who renewed the attack in 524, was killed at the bat- tle of Veserruce. The Franks offered to treat with the Burgun- dians, and Godemir was allowed to reign in peace for eight years; but in 532 he was again assailed, taken prisoner, and treated as captive kings were treated at that time: the whole of Burgun- dy was subdued, and thenceforth the Burgundians marched un- der the standard of the Franks, though they retained their own laws and magistracy. The revenge of St. Chlotilde was at length accomplished an the children and grandchildren of her enemies; but her satisfac- tion was imbittered. Chlodamir was killed; and his brother, Chlothaire, though be had already two wives, married his bro- ther's widow, named Gondioca, and sent his three infant children to be brought up by St. Chlotilde. He feared, however, lest these sons of Chlodomir should, at some future time, assert their claim to their father's inheritance; and, accordingly, summoned his brother Childebert to Paris, to. consult with him on their com- 188 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. IX. mon interests. They desired their mother to send the three chil- dren to them, in order that they might be shown to the people, and proclaimed kings. Chlotilde accordingly sent them with a numerous train of officers, and of young pages who were brought up with them. Arcadius, a senator of Auvergne, and a confi- dential agent of Childebert, shortly afterwards returned to her with a pair of scissors and a drawn sword, calling upon her to decide the fate of her grandchildren: in a paroxysm of indignation and despair, Chlotilde exclaimed, that " she had rather they should perish, than be shorn and buried alive in a cloister." This answer was construed into assent by her two sons: Chlothaire seized the eldest of the princes, then about ten years old, by the arm, threw him down, and plunged a dagger into his side: the younger child then fell at the feet of Childebert and implored mer- cy, Childebert, touched by his supplications, with tears in his eyes entreated his brother to stay his handj but Chlothaire exclaimed furiously, *' Thou hast urged me on, and now thou desertest me; give up the boy, or perish in his stead:" on which Childebert flung the supplicant down, and Chlothaire slew him on the ground . All the pages and attendants were massacred at the same time, and Childebert divided the inheritance of Chlodomir with his sur- viving brother. Chlodoald, the youngest of these unhappy chil- dren, escaped the pursuit of his uncles: for a long time he re- mained in concealment; when he was grown up he cut off his hair with his own hands, and assumed the monkish garb: returning to France after the death of Chlothaire, he built the monastery of St. Cloud, which bears his name. After recording the crimes of the early kings of the Franks, we long to hear that speedy vengeance overtook them; but this was too rarely the case. Nations are quickly chastised for their vices and their crimes; for them, morality is indentical with good policy; but individuals, of whose existence we see but the begin- ning, await a different retribution. The powerful frequently find means to hush the upbraidings of conscience, of public opi- nion, and of posterity. Childebert and Chlothaire had risen above the scruples of remorse; they were assisted in recovering their tranquillity of mind by the assurances of the monks, whom they loaded with wealth. *' When," says Chlothaire in the diploma which was given to the convent of Riom in 516, '' we listen with a devout soul to the supplications of our priests, as to what regards CHAP. IX.] DESCENDANTS OF CLOVIS. 185 the advantage of the churches, we are certain that Jesus Christ will remunerate us for all the good we do them."* Such was the Christianity which was taught to Chlothaire, and such the confidence in which he was educated, whilst his eyes were closed to the atrocity of the murders we have seen, and are yet to see^ and whilst he was allowed to marry, at the same time, Rhade- gunde, (he daughter of the king of the Thuringians whom he had slain, Chemsene, the mother of his son Chramne, Gondioca, the widow of his brother Chlodomir, Wuttrade, the widow of his ne- phew Theodewald, Ingunde, and Aregunde. It should be men- tioned that the bisiiops objected to his marriage with Wuttrade, and that he was obliged at the end of a few months to give her up to Gariwald duke of Bavaria; but as to the other marriages, the bishop of Tours relates them in the language of the Old Tes- tament: — " Chlothaire had already espoused Ingunde," says St. Gre- gory, " and he loved her alone, when she proffered a request to him, and said, ' My lord hath done with his servant that which hath seemed good to him, and hath called her to his bed, but now that the kindness of my lord and king be complete, let him listen to the prayer of his handmaiden. Choose, I pray thee, for Aregunde my sister, his servant, a man wise and rich, so that I be not humbled by her alliance, but exalted on the contrary, and that I may serve my lord with greater faithfulness.' Chlothaire heard what she said, and as he was extremely sensual, he burned with love for Aregunde. He speedily repaired to the country- house where she dwelt, and took her to wife; after this life re- turned to Ingunde and said, 'I have provided for that which thou hast sought of me; thou hast asked a husband for thy sister both rich and wise, and I have found no one better than myself; know then that I have married her, and that I would not have thee be displeased thereat.' Then Ingunde answered; *Let my lord do that which is good in his sight, so that his handmaid find favour in the eyes of her king.' " The end of Chlothaire's career was worthy of its commence- ment: after having shared the throne with his brothers for forty- seven years, he survived the last of them three years. Childe- bert died at Paris in 558, leaving no son; Chlothaire immediate- ly drove his wife and tw^o daughters from the country, and sought * Diplom. torn. iv. p. 616. 25 190 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. IX. to wreak his revenge on his own son Chramne, who had attached himself to Childebert bj choice. Chramne took refuge with the Britons in Armorica, a people who had refused to submit to the Franks, and who readily took up arms in defence of the young prince^ the Britons were, however, defeated, and Chramne again took to flight. '* He had vessels ready upon the sea," continues Gregory of Tours, ** but as he tarried to place his wife and his daughters in safety, the soldiers of his father came up with him, and cast him into chains. When this was told to king Chlo- thaire, he ordered his son to be burnt in fire, together with his wife and daughters: thereupon they were shut up in the hovel of a poor manj Chramne was stretched out and bound upon a bench, with a cloth taken from an altar (orarium,) and the house was set on fire, so that he perished in it with his wife and daughters. " Now when the king Chlothaire had reached the fiftieth year of his reign, he went to the gates of the shrine of St. Martin with very rich presents; and when he came to Tours, at the tomb of that bishop, he confessed all the actions in which he had any negligence to reproach himself with; he lifted up his voice and groaned exceedingly, begging the holy confessor to obtain the mercy of the Lord, and to efface by his intercession whatever might have been sinful in his conduct. After his return, he was hunting one day in the forest of Cuise, when he was attacked by a fever, so that he returned to his palace at Compiegne; being cruelly tormented by the fever, he cried, * What are we to think of this king of heaven, who kills the kings of earth in this wise.^' But he expired in this suffering. His four sons carried his body- in great pomp to Soissons, and i^iterred it in the church of St. Medard: he died on the day after the anniversary of that on which his son Chramne had been pirt to death. " t 191 ) CHAPTER X. The Reig-n of Justinian, illustrated by two Historians, Procopius and Aga thias, and distinguished for great Men. — Character of Justinian. — His In- tolerance.— Abolition of the Schools of Athens; of the Consulate and the Senate of Rome. — Contrast between the Brilliancy and the Calamity of this Period. — Wars with the Bulgarians, Slavonians, and Persians. — Peace with Chosroes 11. — Kingdom of the Vandals in Africa, from the Death of Genseric. — African War. — Belisarius. — Taking of Carthage. — Conquest of Africa. — Recall of Belisarius. — The Ostrogoths in Italy, from the Death of Theodoric. — Amalasonta. — Expedition of Belisarius against the Ostrogoths. — Vitiges. — Rome taken and retaken. — Conduct of Justinian to Belisarius. — Incursions of the Franks. — Recall of Belisa- rius from Italy. — Ruinous Consequences. — Successes of the Ostrogoths under Totila. — Expedition of Belisarius against him. — Defeat of the Goths by Narses. — Last Victory of Belisarius. — Ingratitude of the Empe- or. — ^Death of both. — Justinian as Lawgiver.— a. d. 527 — 565. In the midst of the darkness through which we have groped our way; after having seen the lights of history die out in the East and in the West; after having lost sight of all the historians ot Rome, and of the school of rhetoricians and philosophers which had been formed during the reigns of Constantine and of Julian, we are all at once surrounded by a flood of historic light, spread- ing from the East to the West, and showing how the face of things was changed, when the prince of legislators published that digest of laws which is still used in many of the tribunals of modern Europe. The reign of Justinian, from 527 to 565, is one of the most brilliant periods of the history of the lower em- pire. It has been celebrated by two Greek writers, Procopius and Agathias, the former of whom, especially, is worthy to tread in the footsteps of the fathers of Grecian history, whom he took for his models. One of the greatest men who ever adorned the annals of the world, — Belisarius, whose virtues and whose ta- lents were alike strangers at the court of Byzantium, and inex- plicable in the midst of the universal turpitude and crime, — wrenched from the barbarians both Africa, Sicily, and Italy; pro- vinces in which the foundations of powerful monarchies had been laid, and which seemed to defy the contemptible attacks of the Greeks. A code of laws, acknowledged throughout western Europe, in countries which had never belonged to the empire, or 192 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [^CHAP. "^4 which had long since thrown off its yoke, though rejected centu- ries ago by the nations for which it was especially designed, has survived that empire, and has obtained, in our days, the appella- tion of '' written reason." Monuments of art, worthy of admi- ration, began to rise in Constantinople and in the provinces, after the lapse of two centuries, during which, construction had been utterly at a stand, and nations seemed solely intent upon de- stroying what existed The reign of Justinian, from its length, its glory, and its disasters, may, on more than one account, be compared to the reign of Louis XIV., which exceeded it in length, and equalled it in glory and in disaster. The great empe- ror, like " the great king," was handsome in his person, graceful and dignified in his manners, and impressed all who approached him with a sense of that majesty to which both of them so ardent- ly aspired. Justinian displayed the same sagacity as Louis in choosing his ministers, and in employing them in the career most fitted to their talents. Belisarius, Narses, and many others, whose names, though less celebrated, are not less worthy of re- nown, gained victories for him which conferred upon the mo- narch the glory of a conqueror. John of Cappadocia, who was employed to regulate the finances, brought them into perfect or- der, at the same time that he carried to the highest perfection the art of draining the purse of the subject. Tribonian, to whom he confided the task of legislation, brought to his service his prodi- gious erudition, his sagacious understanding, and his knowledge of jurisprudence, to which was united all the servility of a cour- tier, whose object it was to sanction despotism by law. The magnificence of the edifices built by Justinian, which are more remarkable for their splendour than for the purity of their style, exhausted his treasury^ and, though these monuments still illus- trate his memory, the erection of them was more disastrous to his people than war itself. The fortresses with which he co- vered his frontiers, and which he built on every side, at an im- mense expense, could not check the invasions of his enemies in his old age. Justinian w^as the protector of commerce. For the first time in the history of antiquity, we find a government pay- ing some attention to the science of economy^ and though it is extremely doubtful whether the real wealth and happiness of his subjects were increased by the encouragement he gave to manu- fectures, it must be acknowledged that we owe to him the intro- duction of the silkworm, the cultivation of the mulberry tree, CHAP. X.] JUSTINIAN. 19S and the fabric of silk, imported from China; and that by his ne- gotiations in Abyssinia and in Sogdiana, he attempted to open a n«w route for the commerce of India, and to render his subjects independent of Persia. Justinian, believing that kings are more enlightened in matters of faith than the common run of men, de- termined on establishing his creed throughout the empire. He persecuted all who differed from him, and thus deprived himself of the assistance of many millions of citizens, who took refuge with his enemies, and introduced the arts of Greece amongst them. His reign may be signalized as the fatal epoch at which several of the noblest institutions of antiquity were abolished. He shut the schools of Athens, (a. d. 529,) in which an uninter- rupted succession of philosophers, supported by a public stipend, Imd taught the doctrines of Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and Epicurus, ever since the time of the Antonines. They were, it is true, still attached to paganism, and even to the arts of magic. In 541, he abolished the titular consulate of Rome, which was be- come an office of ruinous expense, from the magnifi.cence of the games which those who held it thought themselves obliged to give to the people. These pageants frequently cost each candi- date a sum of 80,000/. sterling. In a few years afterwards, (about 552,) the senate of Rome also ceased to exist. The an- cient capital of the world was taken and retaken five times during the reign of Justinian, each assault being marked by in- creased atrocity. It was now completely ruined, and the ancient senatorial families were so thinned by the sword, by want, and by capital punishments, that they no longer attempted to support the dignity of their ancient name. The brilliant reign of Justinian proves, even more clearly than that of Louis XIV., that a period of glory is seldom one of hap- piness. Never did a man furnish more brilliant pictures to his panegyrists, who, as they looked but on one side of things, la- vished their praises on his extensive conquests, his wise laws, his splendid court, his magnificent edifices, and even on the progress of the useful arts. Never did a man leave a more grievous re- verse to be described by the historian, nor the recollection of ca- lamities more general, or more destructive of the human race. Justinian conquered the kingdoms of the Vandals and of the Os- trogoths; but both these nations were in a manner annihilated by their defeat: and before he recovered a province, it was reduced to a desert bj the excesses of his armies. He extended the li^ 194 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [[OHAP. X. mits of his empire; but he was unable to defend the territory he had received from his predecessors. Every one of the thirty- eight years of his reign was marked by an invasion of the barba- rians; and it has been said, that reckoning those who fell by the sword, who perished from want> or were led into captivity, each invasion cost 200,000 subjects to the empire. Calamities, which human prudence is unable to resist, seemed to combine against the Romans, as if to compel them to expiate their ancient glory. Their cities were overwhelmed by earthquakes, more frequent than at any other period of history. Antioch, the metropolis of Asia, was entirely destroyed, on the 20th of May, 526, at the very time when the inhabitants of the adjacent country were assem- bled to celebrate the festival of the Ascension; and it is affirmed that 250,000 persons were crushed by the fall of its sumptuous edifices. This was the beginning of a scourge, which was re- newed at short intervals till the end of that century. The plague was brought from Pelusium, in Egypt, in 542, and attacked the Roman world with such fury, that it did not finally disappear till 594; so that the very period which gave birth to so many monu- ments of greatness, may be looked back upon with horror, as that of the widest desolation and the most terrific mortality. Justinian was born in 482 or 483, near Sophia, in modern Bulgaria, or ancient Dardania. He came of a family of common labourers. His uncle Justin, who had enlisted as a private soldier in the guards of the emperor Leo, rose by his valour alone from rank to rank, till he reached the highest dignity of the state. He obtained the purple on the 10th of July, 518, when he was alrea- dy sixty-eight years of age; but he had long since summoned to his counsels his nephew, to whom he intended to leave his inhe- ritance, and whose talents and activity might sustain his declining years. Four months before his death, on the first of April, 527, Justinian was allowed to share the imperial dignity. He was then forty-five years old: he was well acquainted with the policy of his uncle's court; but though the nephew of a successful sol- dier of fortune, he was personally unknown to tlie army, and unaccustomed to actual warfare. After he was seated upon the throne, his advancing years, the etiquette of the court of By- zantium, and the fears his courtiers expressed for his safety, jkept him aloof from the army; and though he made war for fthirty-eight years, he never put himself at the head of his sol- diers. CHAP. X.] JUSTINIAN. 195 Justinian was, however, extremely an\bitious of military fame, even from the commencement of his reign. The situation of the empire, the dangers which surrounded him, and the menacing at- titude of the barbarians upon all his frontiers, made it his duty to adopt the most expeditious means of defence, by restoring the discipline of his troops, by encouraging a warlike spirit among his subjects, and especially by creating an active militia from among the population of his vast territories. The love of a mi- litary glory like this would have been no less honourable to the sovereign than advantageous to the subjects of the empire, but such was not the policy Justinian adopted. Like his predeces- sors, he strictly forbade his citizens to carry arms; and though some few, hoarded in private families, might escape the vigilance of domestic inquisition, every kind of military exercise was po- sitively forbidden the people, by the timidity and jealousy of the emperor; so that, notwithstanding the immense extent of the em- pire and the dense population of the western provinces, levies of men were rendered almost impossible. The great generals of Justinian undertook their most brilliant expeditions with armies of no more than 20,000 men; and these troops consisted chiefly of enemies to the empire enlisted under its standard. The ca- valry and the archers of Belisarius were composed of Scythian& or Massagetes, and of Persians; the infantry of Heruli, Vandals^ Goths, and a small number of Thracians, who were the only sub- jects of the empire that retained the slightest military ardour* The citizens and peasants were not only incapable of fighting for life or property in the open field; they dared not even defend the ramparts of cities, the fortresses which the emperor had construct- ed for them on all the frontiers, nor the long line of walls whiclv covered the Thracian Chersonesus, Thermopylae, or the isthmus of Corinth. The Bulgarians, who appear to be of Slavonic origin^, with a mixture of Tartar blood, took up their abode in the valley of the Danube, where they united themselves to other Slavonians who had always dwelt there, and who had bent, like a reed, be- neath the waves of the inundation, and risen again when it had passed over them. These united tribes at length became suffi- ciently powerful to devastate the empire. They were distin- guished neither by their arms, their discipline, nor their military virtues: but they fearlessly crossed the Danube every year to make prisoners and carry off booty; they frequently advanced 300 miles into the country, and Justinian looked upon it as a l96 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. X,' victory, when he succeeded in obliging them to retire with their plunder. Another portion of the empire was threatened by a far more formidable enemy, who had at his disposal numerous armies, im- mense wealth, and almost all the arts of civilization, though he made war with the atrocious ferocity of a barbarian. The great Chosroes Nushirran, king of Persia, was contemporary with Jus- tinian, and his reign was even longer than that of the emperor. (a. d. 531 — 579.) When he ascended the throne, hostilities had broken out between the two nations 5 but his kingdom was en- feebled by civil wars, and by the inroads of the White Huns, so that its need of a peaceful and judicious government was not less urgent than that of the empire. In 531, Chosroes signed a treaty of peace with Justinian, which both monarchs called per- petual; and the Greek emperor, instead of taking advantage of it to strengthen his frontiers against the frequent aggressions of his ancient foes, turned his arms to the conquest of distant provinces, which he could scarcely hope to defend. The ambitious views of Justinian were first attracted to Afri- ca. Genseric died on the 24th of January, 477, after a reign of thirty-seven years over Carthage. The crown of the Vandals had passed successively to Hunneric, who died in 484, to Gun- thamond till 496, and to Thrasamond till 533: these three mo- narchs were all sons of Genseric, and all zealous enemies of the catholic faith. They carried on the most cruel persecutions in the name of the Arian faith: they are accused of having caused the tongues of a considerable number of bishops to be torn up by the roots; but we are assured by eye-witnesses (not of the pu- nishment but of the miracle) that these prelates continued to preach with greater eloquence than before, without suffering the least inconvenience. In 533, Hilderic, the grandson of Gense- ric, succeeded his uncle Thrasamond; he recalled the exiled bishops, and during seven years the Roman subjects in Africa lived under a more paternal rule. The Vandals, however, soon regretted the tyranny which they were accustomed to exercise over the nations they had subdued. They accused their monarch of indolence and effeminacy, while they were themselves open to the charge of having too soon yielded to the enervating influ- ence of those sultry regions; the wealth they had acquired by the sabre was dissipated without restraint and without shame; they were constantly surrounded by slaves, like the Mamelukes CHAP. X.] BELISARIUS.— AFRICAN WArJ" 197 of our own times^ and though their amusements were all of a martial kind, they delighted in the pomp rather than in the fa- tigue of warlike exercise. Gelimer, of the rojal blood of the Vandals, imbittered their resentment^ he headed a conspiracy against Hilderic, threw that prince into a dungeon, and took pos- session of his throne.- The war of Africa was undertaken by Justinian under pre^ tence of restoring the legitimate succession to the throne, and of delivering Hilderic from prison. The emperor was encouraged in his designs by the state of anarchy in which Africa was plunged. A lieutenant of Gelimer had raised the standard of revolt in Sardinia, and had caused himself to be crowned king: on the other hand, an African Roman had incited his country- men of Tripoli, in the name of the Athanasian creed, and had raised the banner of the empire. Justinian was encouraged by the prophecies of the orthodox bishops, which all promised him success^ and by putting Belisarius at the head of the expedition, he adopted the means most likely to ensure it. Belisarius, who was born among the peasants of Thrace, had begun his career in the guards of the emperor Justin. He had already distinguished himself in the Persian war, at a juncture of considerable difficulty 5 after a defeat, for which he was not to blame, he displayed more ability than is usually shown in victory, and saved the army which was intrusted to him. He was about the same age as th(^ emperor, and like him he was governed by his wife; like him, he was faithful to one who was destitute both of the modesty and the gentleness of her sex. Justinian, on his accession, hastened to share the honours of his new dignity with Theodora, the daughter of a charioteer in the public circus, who had united the infamy of a vicious life to the degradation of her father's occupation, until the emperor raised her to the throne. Henceforward her manners were irreproachable 5 her advice was frequently courageous and energetic 5 but her cruelty and her avarice contributed to render the emperor odious. Antonina, the wife of Belisarius, was also the daughter of a public charioteer; her conduct had been as irregular as that of the empress, her character was equally firm and audacious: unlike Theodora, how- ever, she did not conquer her early propensities,- but, though a faithless wife, she was a faithful friend to her husband. Admit- ted to the confidence of the empress, she led the way to Belisa- rius's future greatness, she defended him by her influence, and 26 198 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. X. maintained him at the head of the army, in spite of the intrigues of his rivals. Not more than 10,000 foot and 5,000 horse were embarked at Constantinople for the conquest of Africa, under the command of Belisarius, in the month of June, 533. The fleet which con- veyed this army was unable to make the whole voyage without taking in provisions; it was received with indiscreet hospitality in a Sicilian port, then dependent on the Ostrogoths. The bar- baric kings who had partitioned out the provinces of the Roman empire, would have done well to recollect that their cause was a common one; their means of resistance would then have been far superior to any means of attack possessed by the Greeks: pri- vate offences and family quarrels had, however, disturbed their mutual relations; the marriages of kings with the daughters of kings began to exercise their fatal influence, by embroiling those they were intended to unite; so that the Ostrogoths, the Visi- goths, the Franks, and the Vandals, blindly rejoiced in each other's disasters. Belisarius landed in September, 533, at Caput Vadae, which is about fiive days' journey from Carthage. The Vandals were so^ little prepared for this invasion, that the brother of Gelimer was at that very time with the best troops of the army in Sardinia, where he was endeavouring to quell the insurrection. This cir- cumstance induced Gelimer to avoid a battle for some days. But while he was thus temporizing, he afforded Belisarius an oppor- tunity of impressing the inhabitants of the provinces (the Afri- cans, who were still called Romans,) with a high idea of the dis- cipline of his army, of the liberal protection he was inclined to afford them, and of the mildness of his own character. Belisa- rius founded his hopes of conquest on the sympathies of the peo- ple: he displayed such a paternal benevolence towards these pro- vincials, whom he came to protect and not to subdue; he sa carefully respected their rights, and so scrupulously spared their property, that the Africans, who had long been oppressed, humi- liated, and robbed by their barbarian masters, no sooner hailed the Roman eagles, than they imagined that the days of their greatest prosperity under the Antonines were returned. Before the arrival of Belisarius, Gelimer reigned over seven or eight millions of subjects, in a country which had, perhaps, contained 80,000,000; on a sudden he found himself alone with his Van- dals in the midst of a Roman population. The historian Proco^ CHAP. X.] BELISARIUS.— AFRICAN WAR. 199 plus, who seeks to exaggerate the number of the conquered, in order to enhance the glory of the conquest, asserts that the na- tion did not possess fewer than 160,000 men capable of bearing arms; — a considerable number certainly, and one which supposes a rapid increase since the former conquest; but extremely small, if it be taken to denote a nation, and not an army. Gelimer attacked Belisarius with all the troops he had been able to muster, on the 14th of September, at about ten miles from Carthage: his army was routed, his brother and his nephew were killed, and he himself was obliged to fly to the deserts of Numi- dia, after having caused his predecessor Hilderic to be murdered in prison. On the morrow Belisarius entered Carthage, and that great capital, in which the Romans still far outnumbered the Van- dals, received him as a deliverer. Never was there a more rapid conquest tban that of the vast kingdom of the Vandals; never did the disproportion between the number of the conquerors and the conquered more clearly show that tyranny is the worst policy, and that the abuse of vic- tory by those who govern with the sword, hollows a sepulchre be- neath their thrones. In the beginning of September Belisarius had landed in Africa; before the end of November Gelimer had re- called his second brother from Sardinia, collected another army, fought and lost another battle; Africa was conquered, and the kingdom of the Vandals destroyed. The army of Belisarius would have required much more time merely to advance along the coast, but the Roman fleet transported to Ceuta the tribunes of the soldiers who were to take tke command of the towns; they were every where received with acclamation; every where the Vandals were intimidated, submitted without resistance, and disappeared. Gelimer, who had retired into a distant fortress of Numidia with a small retinue, capitulated in the following spring, and the terms of his submission were most honourably observed by Justinian. Gelimer received ample possessions in Galatia, where he was allowed to grow old in peace, surrounded by his friends and kinsfolk. The observance of faith plighted to a ri- val was too rare a virtue in those times for us to pass it by in si- lence. The bravest of the Vandals enlisted in the troops of the empire, and served under the immediate orders of Belisarius. The remainder of the nation was involved in the convulsions of Africa which v^^e shall shortly mention, and ere long entirely dis- appeared. 200 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [CHAP. X. Justinian demanded trophies from his generals, but he grudged them their successes. His jealousy at the rapid victories of Be- lisarius was intense. Before the close of that same autumn of 534 which had sufficed for the conquest of a kingdom, too soon for the welfare of Africa, he ordered him to return to Constanti^ nople. In the matchless character of Belisarius, the virtues themselves seemed adapted to the despotism under which he served. The will of his sovereign, and not the welfare of the empire, was the sole end of his actions, and the sole standard of what he judged to be good or evil. He foresaw that his recall would be the ruin of Africa, but he did not hesitate to obey the mandate. As he was embarking at Carthage, he saw the flames which were already lighted by the insurgent Moors in the pro- vinces which he had reconquered, and he predicted that his work would be undone as rapidly as it had been accomplished^ but the will of the emperor seemed to him to he the will of fate. His prompt obedience allayed the jealousy which his remarkable suc- cess had excited, and Justinian allowed him the honours of a tri- umph, and the consulate for the ensuing year. This triumph was the first which Constantinople had ever seen conferred upon a subject. The conquest of Africa was no sooner accomplished, than Jus- tinian projected that of Italy, and he designed to subdue the Os- trogoths by the same general who had acquired so much glory in defeating the Vandals. A Roman emperor may be supposed to have thought his honour interested in the possession of Rome and of Italy, but the West had no reasons for wishing him success. The Vandals had rendered themselves odious by their cruelty, their religious persecutions, and their piracies^ but the Goths had better claims on public esteem: they were the wisest, the most temperate, and the most virtuous of the Germanic tribes, and they gave substantial grounds of hope to the nations which they had regenerated. Their glory did not terminate with the reign of Theodoric, but to the very close of the struggle in which they perished they displayed virtues which we look for in vain amongst the other barbarians. V^e have seen that upon the death of the great Theodoric, (a. D. 526,) the crown of Italy descended to his grandson Atha- laric, who was then only ten years old, under the regency of his mother Amalasonta. This princess, who had lost her husband l^efore her father's death, attempted to procure for her son, the CHAP. X.] BELISARIUS. ITALIAN WAR. 201 only hope of his family and of his nation, those advantages of a liberal education which she had herself enjoyed. But Athalaric, who felt the irksomeness of study more than its advantages, easily found young courtiers who persuaded him that the protect- ing care of his mother was degrading to him. The old warriors of the nation had not lost their prejudices against Roman in- struction, and Roman manners; Athalaric was removed from his mother's guardianship, and, before he was sixteen, drunkenness and debauchery brought him to tlie grave, (a. d. 534.) Out of respect for the blood of Theodoric, and the grief of Amalasonta, she was allowed by the Goths to choose the future partner of her throne from amongst her kindred. She accordingly bestowed her hand on Theodatus, who, like herself, preferred studious pursuits to the boisterous revelry of the Goths; who passed for a philosopher; whom she believed to be destitute of ambition, and who had, indeed, sworn to her that, grateful for so signal a favour, he would respect her commands and allow her to rule alone, whilst he shared her throne in appearance. No sooner, however, was he crowned, than he caused his benefactress to be arrested, (30th of April, 535,) conveyed as a prisoner to an island in the lake of Bolsena, and a few months afterwards strangled in her bath. Justinian embraced the cause of Amalasonta, as he had embraced that of Hilderic, to avenge, though not to protect her. Belisarius received orders to prepare for the conquest of Italy, but the army v/ith which he was intrusted for this impor- tant enterprise, amounted only to 4500 barbarian horsemen, and 8000 Isaurian foot-soldiers. Belisarius landed in Sicily in 535, and in the first campaign of the Gothic war he subdued that island; the city of Palermo alone offered him som^e resistance. In the following year Belisarius transported his army to Reg' gio in Calabria, marching along the coast, accompanied by his fleet, till he arrived at Naples: no forces were sent to oppose his progress; he was assisted by the same favourable circumstances as in Africa, and his humanity and moderation procured for him the same advantages in Italy as in that country. On a sudden the Goths perceived, with consternation, that they were in an isolated position, in the midst of a people which invoked their enemies as its liberators. All their plans of defence were con- founded, treason began to show itself in their ranks, and a rela- tion of Theodatus, to whom the government of Calabria had been intrusted, passed over to the standard of the emperor. The 20S FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. X. cowardice of their king was, however, the chief cause of the ruin of the Goths. Theodatus had shut himself up in Rome, whilst Belisarius besieged Naples, and entered it bj means of an aqueduct. The nation of the Goths, which still reckoned 250,000 warriors, dispersed, indeed, from the Danube and the Rhone to the extremities of Italy, would no longer submit to so degrading a yoke. Vitiges, a brave general, who had been ordered to se- cure the approaches to Rome, was suddenly proclaimed king by the soldiers, and raised upon the buckler,* whilst Theodatus, as soon as he heard of this revolt, took flight, and was slain by the hand of a private enemy, against whom he did not even attempt to defend himself. (August, 536.) After the election of Vitiges, the war of the Ostrogoths assumed a new character. The struggle was no longer one of cowardice and improvidence with talent^ it lay between two great men, both of them masters of the art of war, both equally worthy of the love and of the confidence of their respective nations; both con- tending against insurmountable difficulties. Belisarius was, as he had been in Africa, just, humane, generous, and brave: he won the hearts of the Italians; but his court kept him without money, and almost without an army. The hard law of necessi- ty, the orders he received from Constantinople, and the rapacious colleagues who were sent out to him, compelled him to sustain the war by plunder, and to strip those whom he would have wil- lingly protected. Vitiges was still at the head of a powerful and martial people; but his kingdom was disorganized, time was need- ed to collect his scattered battalions, and to revive the confidence of his soldiers, who believed that they were surrounded by trai- tors. He found it necessary to evacuate Rome, (which Belisa- rius occupied on the 10th of December, 536,) and even to quit the lower part of Italy, and fall back upon Ravenna, in order to restore the discipline of his army. As soon as he had organized his forces, he returned, in the month of March following, to be- siege Belisarius in the ancient capital which he had ceded to him. Our prescribed limits do not allow us to give any detailed ac- count of the military operations even of the greatest general. A succinct abridgment, like the present, does not profess to afford any instruction in the art of war. We merely design to present, in one picture, the fall of the ancient empire, and the dispersal of those elements out of which the modern world was to arise, referring to other works for details. Nor would it be without re- CHAP. X.J BELISARIUS. ITALIAN WAR. 203 pugnance that we should dwell upon the sufferings of humanity*, or the unparalleled calamities which were caused by two virtuous chiefs. The spectacle of the excesses of tyranny is far less pain- ful, for then our indignation relieves our sympathy. In record- ing the crimes of the sons of Clovis, the horror these monsters inspire, leaves no room for pity. But when Vitiges besieged Be- lisarius in Rome during a whole year, two heroes sacrificed two nations to their animosity. Belisarius kept up the courage of his feeble garrison by his intrepidity, his patience, and his perseve- rance, whilst the entire population of Rome was perishing by fa- mine: Vitiges, equally inflexible, led back the battalions of his Goths to the walls of Rome, until the assailants were all de- stroyed by the sword, or by pestilential diseases. His courage and his ability shone conspicuously in this deadly war: if he had succeeded, the independence of his nation was secured 5 but it perished in these fatal conflicts. Justinian had desired that Italy should again be classed amongst the provinces of the Roman empire. But his vanity was satisfied by the mere possession of the soil on which the Romans had raised their power; and he purchased it by the sacrifice of all that made it glorious or valuable. Rome was defended, but during the long- famine to which it was reduced it lost almost all its inhabitants. The Goths were conquered; but they were destroyed, not sub- dued, and the void they left in the energetic and warlike popu- lation of Italy was never repaired. The Italians were delivered from a yoke which they thought debasing, but they fell under one a thousand times worse. The long continuance of the war, and- the pressure of want, did violence to the natural moderation of Belisarius, and, moreover, gave him time to receive direct orders from Justinian, instead of following his own impulses. The extortions practised on the Roman subjects were rigorous' in the extreme, and that population, which had repaired its losses^ during the protecting reign of Theodoric, was swept off by famine, pestilence, and the avenging sword of the Goths: the glorious^ monuments of Italy,-— the very stones, — were not exempt from destruction. The master-works of art were used as military en- gines, and the statues which adorned the mole of Adrian were^ hurled down upon the besiegers. In his utmost need, Vitiges had demanded the succour of the Franks, and a dreadful invasion of that barbarian people, which was marked by the destruction of Milan and Genoa, (a. d. 538, 539,) taught the Goths, that these fierce warriors, thirsting for booty and for blood, did not eveft 204 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. X. care to distinguish their allies from their enemies. On the same day they cut to pieces the army of the Goths, and the army of the Greeks, which had both reckoned upon their assistance^ at length they almost all perished from want in the Cisalpine coun- try, which they had devastated; and when soldiers like these perish from huno-er, it is easy to infer that nothing remains either to the peasant or to the citizen, which their oppressors can pillage or de- stroy. In March, 538, when the Goths were obliged to raise the siege of Rome, Belisarius profited by their discouragement, their suf- ferings, and their faults; he laid siege in his turn to Ravenna, and forced Yitiges to give up that town, and to surrender himself prisoner. (December, 539.) Yitiges was as deeply indebted to the generosity of Justinian, as Gelimer had been; he passed his days in affluence at Constantinople: Belisarius was at the same time recalled from Italy. Justinian hastened to recall his general after each victory, and Belisarius was not less prompt in his obedience; but every time he quitted the command, the provinces he abandoned were ex- posed to the most dreadful calamities; and the whole empire had ample reason to regret that the fate of several millions of men de- pended on the caprices of a court, on the mistrust or the envy of a haughty woman, or of a jealous despot. Five years before, at the very time when Belisarius was leaving Africa, in obedience to the orders of Justinian, a rebellion broke out among the Moors, and the hero, who was submissively leaving those shores in the moment of danger, could see from his vessel the fires w^hich were kindled over the country by the very enemy from whose attacks he had hitherto protected it. The ministers of Justinian seemed studiously to increase, by their vexatious enactments, the resent- ment of the armed population of Africa, the weakness and the degradation of the unarmed. The wandering Moor, whose ha- bits were, even in that age, not unlike those of the Bedouin Arab, endeavoured to destroy all cultivation, all permanent dwellings, and industrious arts, and drove civilization back to the sea-coast: there it was restricted to the maritime towns and their narrow suburbs; so that during the remainder of Justinian's reign it was estimated that the province of Africa barely equalled one-third of the province of Italy. The retirement of Belisarius after the capture of Yitiges was followed by similar calamities; Pavia was the only town of impor- tance which still resisted tlie Roman yoke. It was defended by CHAP. X.] ITALIAN WAR. ^05 a thousand Goths, who proclaimed their chief Hildebald king: he, as well as his successor Eraric, was assassinated within the year, and was succeeded by Totila, a young kinsman of Vitiges, whose excellent abilities were only equalled by his bravery and his hu- manity. This new king repaired the dilapidated fortunes of the Goths by his remarkable virtues as much as by his victories: he recalled to the army the sons of those who had already fallen in its ranks: he harassed, attacked, and routed successively eleven generals, to whom Justinian had intrusted the defence of the dif- ferent towns of Italy: he crossed the whole peninsula, from Verona to Naples, in order to collect the scattered warriors of his nation, who had been obliged to submit in every province, and in the course of three years (a. d. 541 — 544,) the kingdom of the Os- trogoths became, under his command, as extensive, if not as pow- erful, as it was when the war began. Justinian occasionally sent re-enforcements to his generals in Italy, but these scanty supplies served only to prolong a contest which they could not hope to ter- minate. The arrival of 200 men from Constantinople was looked upon as an event; and such was the universal desolation of Italy, that bands of one or two hundred soldiers crossed its whole ex- tent without meeting any sufficient obstacle to their progress. In 544, Justinian sent back Belisarius, but without an armyi so that for four years this hero was compelled to struggle with his adversary, more like a captain of banditti than a distinguished general; the extent of the havoc was disproportioned to their scan- ty resources, and a handful of soldiers on either side burnt and de- stroyed what they were unable to defend. Totila besieged Rome for a long time, and obtained possession of it on the 17th of December, 546; he determined to destroy a city which had displayed such inveterate hostility to the Goths; he razed the walls, and forced the inhabitants to seek a refuge in the Campania. For forty days the ancient capital of the world remained deserted. Belisarius took advantage of this occurrence to re-enter it, and fortify himself in it once more; but he was again obliged to quit it. Justinian, in leaving this great man to contend, almost without money and without troops, against an enemy infinitely superior to him in strength, seemed to be /la- bouring to destroy a reputation of which he was jealous. When he recalled Belisarius for the second time, Italy was ravaged for four yeai'S by the conflicting fury of civil and foreign war; the Franks and Germans made another incursion without the autho- 27" 206 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [CHAP. X. ritj of their government, without leaders, and with the sole ob- ject of plundering on a large scale. At length, in 552, Justinian formed an arm j of 30,000 men; he appointed a man to command it, in whom we scarcely expect to find the talents or the charac- ter of a hero; but the eunuch Narses, who had passed his youth in directing the tasks of the women in the palace, and had gained experience in various embassies in his later years, fully justified the choice of Justinian, when placed at the head of the army. In the month of July, 552, lie gained a great victory over the Goths, in the neighbourliood of Rome, when Totila was slain: in the month of March, 553, he won another battle near Naples, in which Teia, who had been chosen to succeed Totila, was also killed: and thus was accomplished the overthrow of the monar- chy of the Ostrogoths, the almost total destruction of that nation, and the submission to the emperor of the sad deserts of that Italy, in which all that was most delicious and magnificent in the world had so long been accumulated. After the victories of Narses, Italy was governed, in the name of the emperor of Constantinople, by exarchs, who resided at Ravenna, though, indeed, the government of the country scarce- ly remained sixteen years under the control of the empire of the East: the fortified town of Ravenna, however, and the Pentapo- Hs, which is now called La Romagna, not in memory of Rome, but of the Greeks who afiected to call themselves Romans, long formed part of its possessions. La Romagna and some other smaller provinces continued for two centuries, that is, until 752^ to be governed by the exarch of Italy; another exarch governed Africa, and resided at Carthage. Justinian had even extended his conquests to some cities in Spain, and had contributed to to keep alive anarchy in that great peninsula; but as the Roman province which he had recovered was not sufficiently important to deserve a third exarch, Greek dukes were appointed to such of the Spanish towns as opened their gates to the generals of Justinian, and of his successors, from 550 to 620. The wars which Justinian carried on in the East against Chos- roes occasioned as much misery as his expedition in the West. Syria was entirely occupied, and the frontiers of Armenia were devastated by the Persians, whilst Colchis was disputed with the greatest obstinacy, for sixteen years, by the two empires, (a. d. 540 — 556.) After a prodigious waste of human life, the frontiers of the Romans and the Persians remained much the same as they CHAP. X.] PERSIAN WAR. 207 . v/ere before the war: as those countries have remained in a bar- barous state ever since, they the less merit our notice. Justinian was nearly eighty years of age, when he was obliged to have recourse for the last time to the valour and ability of his general, who was not less aged than himself, in order to repel an invasion of the Bulgarians, who, in 559, advanced to the gates of Constantinople. The venerable Belisarius was looked upon as the only safeguard of the empire; he with difficulty collected 300 of those soldiers, who, in happier years., had shared his toils| to these was added a timorous troop of peasants and recruits, who refused to fight. He succeeded, however, in repulsing the Bulgarians; but this success, and the enthusiasm of the people, excited the jealousy and the fears of Justinian, who had invaria- bly punished his general for the victories he gained. In 540, he had been condemned to a fine amounting to ^6120,000 sterling: in 563 a conspiracy against the emperor was discovered, Belisa- rius was implicated in it; and whilst his pretended accomplices were executed, Justinian affected to pardon his old servant; but be caused his eyes to be torn out, and confiscated his v/hole for- tune. This account is adopted by the young and learned bio- ^apher of Belisarius, lord Mahon, though it only rests upon the authority of historians of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The general who had conquered two kingdoms was to be seen, blind, and led by a child, holding out a wooden cup before the convent of Lauros to crave the pittance of an obolus. It ap- pears, however, that the disappi-obation of the people caused Jus- tinian to repent his severity, and Belisarius was restored to his palace, where he died on the 13th of March, 565: Justinian also expired on the 14th of September, in the same year. The glory which Justinian derives from the collection and publication of the ancient Roman laws, is more solid and more durable than that of his conquests. The Pandects and the Code, which were arranged and promulgated by his authority, contain the immense store of the wisdom of preceding ages; and we cannat but be astonished at finding so much respect for law in the character of a despot; so much virtue in so corrupt an age; so deep a reverence for antiquity, at a time when every institu- tion was overthrown; and, lastly, a system of legislation entirely Latin, published by a Greek in the midst of Greeks. For, al- though Justinian sometimes substituted the stamp of servility for the noble and primitive character of the ancient law; though he 208 FALL OF THE ROMAX EMPIRE. [cHAP. X, occasionally deranged a system which had been slowly matured by the jurists, to satisfy the whim of the moment, or his own personal interest, it cannot be denied that the work he sanc- tioned is a valuable monument of justice and of reason, of which he was, though not the author, the preserver. That absolute government which had corrupted every Roman virtue, did not, in the time of Justinian, even give internal peace to the people in exchange for their lost liberty. Despotism may render civil war and popular commotions dishonourable, but it cannot suppress them. There was no longer sufficient virtue in Constantinople to induce a man to expose his life in the defence of his civil rights, for the honour of his country, or for the laws which he regarded as sacred j but battles were fought for the charioteers of the circus. Chariot-racing, which had been a fa- vourite amusement of the Romans, was introduced into Constan- tinople, and afterwards into all the great towns of the empire; the prizes were contended for by charioteers dressed either in a blue or a green uniform: the entire population was divided into two parties distinguished by these colours. Two hostile factions broke out throughout the empire; religion, politics, morality, li- berty, and all the lofty sentiments of human nature, had no part in their animosity; but the Greens and the Blues, who were only contending for the prizes of the circus, could not be satisfied without shedding each other's blood. Justinian himself, worked upon by an ancient enmity of Theodora, embraced the cause of the Blues, and, during his reign, the Greens could never obtain justice. The judges, who were to pass sentence on the property, the good name, or the lives of the citizens, examined less into their conduct and their rights than into the colour of their party. On several occasions, private violence assumed the character of open sedition; but in 532, during the most terrible of these re- volts, which is called Nika, or victory, from the cry which was adopted, the capital remained for five days in the power of an infuriated mob: the cathedral, several churches, baths, theatres, palaces, and a large portion of the town, was reduced to ashes. Justinian, who was on the point of taking flight, was only main- tained upon the thi'one by the firmness of his wife Theodora. Torrents of blood were shed by men who were too cowardfy to defend their country against barbarians, or their rights against internal oppression. ( 209 ) CHAPTER XL Saccesslon of Greek Emperors. — Narses, Exarch of Italy The Gepidse and the Lombards, between the Alps and the Danube. — Romantic Story of Alboin, King of the Lombards; his Conquest of the Gepidse; his In- vasion of Italy. — Resistance of the maritime Cities of Italy; their inter- nal Government. — Maritime Cities of Spain, Africa, and Ulyricum, — Growth of municipal Liberties. — Independence of the Lombards; their thirty Dukes in Italy. — The four Frankic King-s, Sons of Chlothaire. Growth of a territorial Aristocracy. — The Mord Dom, or supreme Judge of the Franks. — The four Kingdoms of Germ.any. — Gontran, surnamed **llie Good." — Chilperic, the Nero of France.— Fredegunde. — Brune- childe. — Efforts of Gontran to keep down the Nobles. — Scene in the Na- tional Assembly of the Franks, from Gregory of Tours. — Childebert II.; his Ferocity. — Energy, Talents, and Cruelty of Brunechilde. — Her Suc- cesses. — Her Defeat and miserable Death. — a. d. 561 — 613. At the time when the empire of the West was overthrown, when each of its provinces was occupied by a different people, and when as many kingdoms were founded as there were daring chiefs at the head of a horde of barbarians, the world presented a scene of such complex and conflicting interests, that it see.med a very difficult task to follow the general progress of events. This difficulty has, however, ceased, in a great measure, as far as we are concerned. From the reign of Justinian, the interest of European history lies almost entirely between the Greek em- pire aiid the kingdom of the Franks, which, although it had not yet acquired the title of empire, stood at the head of the whole of western Europe. This exclusive interest, this almost univer- sal monarchy of the Franks in the West, continued until the end of the reign of Louis le Debonnaire, and the civil wars be- tween his children in 840. During these three centuries, the history of the Latin world is frequently obscure, generally barbarous, and always incomplete^ but it is constantly connected with the progressive revolutions of that great people which will be the principal object of our obser- vations. During the same period the history of the East became extremely complicated; the sceptre of Justinian passed succes- sively to his nephew, Justin the younger, (a. d. 565 — 574;) from him to Tiberius IL, (574— 58^;) to Maurice, (582—602;) to 210 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XI. Phocas, (602—610^) and to Heraclius, (610—642.) Three of these princes, Tiberius, Maurice, and Heraclius, were distin- guished by their virtues: and the claim of this period to the epi- thet of glorious, is, at least, equal to that of the reign of Justi- nian. It would probably be esteemed so, if the events were bet- ter known 5 but, in monarchies, the interest excited by public concerns is not sufficiently strong to induce many men of distin- guished talents to devote themselves to the severe labours of the historian. Annals are seldom continued from the zeal of their authors alone: the vanity of the monarch may, indeed, lead him to appoint an historiographer, but, at the same time, it forbids the salaried historian to tell the truth. Events are then only record- ed in panegyrics, which inspire no confidence, or in dry and in- sipid chronicles, which excite no interest. The good fortune by which the reign of Justinian possessed a great historian was rare indeed in the history of Byzantium. This same period answers to that of the birth and education of a man, who was destined in his maturer years to change the face of the world. Justinian died in 565, and Mohammed was born in 569^ yet, until his flight to Medina, in 622, the remainder of the world, and even Arabia itself, was almost unconscious of his existence; and as the ten last years of his life, (a. d. 622 — 632,) after he had obtained the sovereign power, were devoted to the conquest of that great peninsula, the empire only learned the mighty revolution which had taken place, when (a. d. 628 — 632) it was called upon for the first time to meet the Musulmauns in the field. Before we engage in the history of the founder of the new re- ligion, we shall, in another chapter, survey the state of the East, and the conquests and defeats of Chosroes II., whose memorable reign cast a lustre, which was but the harbinger of its fall, over the monarchy of the Sassanian Persians. Our present object has been simply to recall the concordance of events in the different parts of the world, before we return to the history of the West. That country, which had so long been looked upon as the queen of the earth,— that Italy, which had been ruined and de- solated by the wars of the Greeks, and by the annihilation of the monarchy of the Ostrogoths, soon underwent another revolution. The eunuch Narses, who had conquered, was appointed to go- vern it; in his extreme old age he administered for fifteen years (a. d. 553-^568) the affairs of a country, which, perhaps, stood CHAP. XI.] NARSES. LOMBARDS. 2U in need of a younger and more active ruler. This extraordinary man, who is said to have attained the age of ninetj-five, had established himself at Ravenna, whence he once more imposed the laws of the empire on the Italians^ laws of which they knew little, except the grievous imposts heaped upon them in their name. Narses was the avaricious servant of an avaricious mas- tery he was accused of amassing excessive wealth by draining the people, who enjoyed no advantages which might compensate for the costliness of their government. The fugitives who had been dispersed by the Greek and Gothic armies, gradually con- gregated in the towns; Milan arose from its ruins, and the other cities recovered a part of their population; but the country was entirely deserted, and the crops which sustained the remnant of the Italians were, probably, raised by the hands of citizens: no one dared to inhabit the rural districts, at a time when public force was extinct, and no protection was ensured to the agricul- turist. The events which occurred at the close of the adminis- tration of Narses, showed that there was no army in Italy; al- though barbarous and hostile nations, who were acquainted with the roads throughout the country, were besieging its approaches. Narses was driven from his post in the most insulting manner by the empress Sophia, wife of Justin II., who sent him a distaff, and told him that he ought to resume those feminine occupations for which he was fitted. He has been accused of having sum- moned the barbarians to assist him in avenging himself, but it is certain that such an invitation was unnecessary. In that district, which had once been Roman, extending from the foot of the Alps to the Danube, the Gepidse, of Gothic, and the Lombards, of Vandal race, had taken up their abode: both of these tribes were said to surpass in ferocity any of the pre- ceding enemies of the empire; both of them had accepted the alliance of the Greeks for the sake of tribute, disguised under the name of pension. The Gepidse were to guard the entrance to Italy: the Lombards had contributed to the conquest of that country, by the valiant auxiliaries they had furnished to Narses, The most virulent animosity divided these two nations, which had been kept alive by the romantic, and, perhaps, fabulous ad- ventures related of their kings. The historians of a barbarous people are always unacquainted with, or indifferent to, the do- mestic events of their country: kings, alone, appear upon the scene; their adventures take the place of national exploits; and 212 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XI. even the fictions of which they are the heroes, merit some atten- tion, as the J show us the bent of the popular imagination. Alboln, the young heir to the throne of the Lombards, had already displayed his valour in an expedition against the Gepidae, and had slain with his own hand the son of their king; neverthe- less, his father would not consent to admit him to his table until he had received his arms from the hands of some foreign sove- reign. Such was the invariable custom of their nation, after- wards incorporated into the laws of chivalry, and called the arming of a knight. This custom is attested by Paul Warne- frid, a Lombard historian, contemporary with Charlemagne. Alboin, with forty of his bravest companions, did not hesitate to ask his knightly arms at the hands of Thurisund, king of the Gepidse, and father of the prince whom he had slain. The du- ties of hospitality were more sacred in the eyes of the old king than those of vengeance, and the prince was received at the ta- ble of the monarch of the Gepidse; he was arrayed in new ar- mour, and protected amid the disorder of a banquet, at which Cunimund, another son of Thurisund, attempted to avenge his brother. This warlike hospitality, with which so many vindic- tive and hostile feelings were mingled, gave Alboin an opportu- nity of inflicting a fresh outrage on the royal house of the Ge- pidse: he carried off Rosamunde, the daughter of Cunimund, but he was overtaken before he could escape; the princess was taken from him, his offer of marriage rejected, and the two kings, as well as the two nations, excited by mutual aggressions, mutu- ally determined on each other's destruction. Their hostility broke out when Alboin and Cunimund had both succeeded to their aged parents. The Lombard king, perceiving that he was the weakerj sought for foreign assistance: he enlisted the Saxons under his standard, and he more especially strengthened his forces by an alliance with the khan of the Avars, a nomadic peo- ple, which had descended from the mountains of Tartary, and had crossed all the Slavonian and Sarmatian deserts, in its flight from the vengeance of the Turks. The Avars had threatened the frontiers of the Greeks, invaded the territory of several Ger- man nations subject to the Franks, and had afterwards roamed over the north of Europe with their flocks, seeking to possess themselves of some territory by the sword. Alboin united his desire of vengeance on the Gepidae, to a design which he che- rished of conquering Italy and establishing his people in that CHAP. XI.] ALBOIN.— INVASION OF ITALY. 213 country. The valley of the Danube had been so cruelly devas- tated by successive barbarous hordes, that every trace of its an- cient civilization was effaced. Its rich pastures were peculiarly adapted to a pastoral people; but the Germans were unwilling to perform the drudgery of the mechanical or agricultural arts, though they had learned to appreciate the enjoyments they pro- cure : they accordingly wished to subdue a country in which the conquered people should work for them, and they concluded a singular treaty with the Avars, by which it was stipulated that they should attack the Gepidae, destroy their monarchy, and di- vide their spoils in common; but that, after this conquest, the Lombards should abandon their own country, as well as that of their subdued enemies, to their allies, and start themselves to seek their fortune elsewhere. These extraordinary conditions were literally fulfilled; the kingdom of the Gepidae was overrun; their army was defeated by Alboin in a great battle, (a. d. 566;) their wealth was divided between the conquerors; the inhabi- tants of the country were reduced to slavery, and the princess Rosamunde was given back to Alboin, who married her. At the same time the Lombards prepared to abandon to the Avars Pan- nonia and Noricum, where they had dwelt for forty -two years. They gathered together their wives, their children, their old men, and their slaves, removed all their valuables, and having set fire to their houses, migrated towards the Italian Alps. Alboin, who united to his own character all the virtues and all the vices of a barbarian, was not less remarkable for his prudence and his valour, than for his ferocity and intemperance. The na- tion of the Lombards, of which he was the leader, had been dis- tinguished above all the nations of Germany for its bravery ever since the time of Tacitus, but it was far from numerous. Before he invaded Italy, he endeavoured to secure some reenforcements. He had formerly been connected with the Saxons, and as his previous conduct had won their confidence, twenty thousand of their warriors joined his army as soon as he summoned them to his standard. He liberated all the Gepidae who had fallen to his lot, and enrolled them in his battalions. He also invited se- veral other Germanic nations to join him; amongst them were the Bavarians, who had recently settled in the country which has since borne their name. It was not an army, but an entire nation, which descended the 28 214 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XI. Alps of Friuli in the year 568. The exarch Longinus, who had succeeded Narses, shut himself up within the walls of Ravenna, and offered no other resistance. Pavia, which had been well for- tified by the kings of the Ostrogoths, closed its gates, and sus- tained a siege of four years. Several other towns, Padua, Monzeliee, and Mantua, opposed their isolated forces, but with less perseverance. The Lombards advanced slowly into the country, but still they advanced^ at their approach, the inhabi- tants fled to the fortified towns upon the sea-coast, in the hope of being relieved by the Greek fleet, or, at least, of finding a re- fuge in the ships, if it became necessary to surrender the place. It was known that Alboin had bound himself by an atrocious vow to put to the sword all the inhabitants of Pavia, whenever it sur- rendered, and the resistance of that place, whick it was impossi- ble to relieve, was foreseen to be the prelude to dreadful calami- ties. The islands of Venice received the numerous fugitives from Venetia, and at their head the patriarch of Aquileia, who took up liis abode at Grado: Ravenna opened its gates to the fu- gitives from the two banks of the Pof Genoa to those from Li- guria^ the inhabitants of La Romagna, between Rimini and An- cona, retired to the cities of the Pentapolisj Pisa, Rome, Gaeta, Naples, Amalfi, and all the maritime towns of the south of Italy were peopled at the same time by crowds of fugitives. The Lombards, who were ignorant of the arts used in sieges, could only reduce the cities which opposed them by famine, or by threats of a general massacre. This manner of attack was in-^ fallible for the places in the interior, but it was unsuccessful for those which lay upon the coast, all of which remained faithful to the Greeks. But the Greeks, who were ignorant of the Latin language, in-^ different to the welfare of remote countries whose geography even they had forgotten, and too much occupied with the wars of the Avars, the Persians, and the Arabs, to send succour to a few fortresses scattered along a distant shore, contented themselves with an honorary allegiance.- They gave up the revenues of eaclv town for its defence, and they thought themselves generous: in- deed, they were so; for, while they gave nothing, they exacted nothing. Each city had preserved its curia, and its municipal institutions. As long as the ruling power had been close at hand, and perpetually despotic, this curia had been only a means of oppression, but it became a means of salvation to cities forgotten CHAP. XI.] RISE OF ITALIAN REPUBLICS. 215 bj their sovereign, and left entirely to their own resources. Their constitution was purely republican; the confidence of the citi- zens, and the necessity of union, restored them to new vigour and dignity. The Greek emperor placed a duke at the head of each curia; he found it more economical to give that title to one of the citizens of these distant towns, and he generally followed the suggestion of the municipal senate in his choice. Thencefor- ward this duke or doge was nothing more than a republican ma- gistrate, commanding a republican militia j disposing of finances, which were formed by almost voluntary contributions, and re- viving, in the breasts of the Italians, virtues which had been extinct for centuries. This happy revolution which was silently taking place in the maritime towns, was so little perceived by the Greek writers, that they continued to put into the mouths of the free Venetians, the declaration, tliat they were the slaves of the empire, and that they desired to remain so. But this change, which gradually raised the most despicable of men from the depths of baseness and of crime to be an example to tlie world, was not confined to the mai^itime cities of Italy. Throughout the West, the Greek empire possessed scattered - points along the coast, which it was too weak to protect,* and it appealed to that virtue which it could not know, and to that pa- triotism which it could not understand, to defend tliose walls which it was itself unable to guard. In Spain, the civil wars during the reign of Loewegild, (a. d. 572 — 586,) and of Re- casede, (a. d. 586 — 601,) which had been excited by the mutual intolerance of the catholics and the Arians, opened a great num- ber of maritime places to the Greeks, and established in them municipal governments, which afterwards became glorious ex- amples for the free cities of Catalonia and Arragon. In Africa, the invasions of the Gsetuli and the Moors, by cutting off all land communication between the maritime cities, converted them into so many little isolated republics; these were shortly after destroyed by the great conquest of the Arabs. On the Illyrian coast, opposite to Italy, the inhabitants, driven to the cliffs which overhang the sea, found refuge against the risings of the Slavo- nians, and the inroads of the Bulgarians: — the celebrated league of the free cities of Istria and Dalmatia, in which Ragusa ob- tained a distinguished place, had enjoyed an independent exist- ence of several centuries, before its voluntary union with Ve- 216 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XI* nice in 997. The Greeks obtained no footing upon the coast of France, but the example of Genoa, Pisa, and Naples, was not lost upon the cities of Aries, Marseilles, and Montpellier, which traded with themj a circumstance which explains the preserva- tion of municipal privileges in the south of France, at a time when thej were almost abolished in the north. If the Lombards revived the spirit of social liberty, they also gave their subjects an example of the individual liberty and sa- vage freedom of a nation which is more averse to servitude than to public disorder. Alboin did not long remain at the head of their armies; after a reign of three years and a half from the capture of Pavia, (which he had spared, notwithstanding his vow,) he was assassinated by that Rosamunde, whose father he had slain, whose people he had destroyed, and whom he had mar- ried after he had outraged her honour. In the intoxication of a banquet he sent her a cup which he had caused to be made of the scull of Cunimund, inlaid with gold, and ordered her to drink with her father. Hosamunde dissembled her resentment, but she employed that beauty which had been the source of her mis- fortunes and her crimes, to corrupt two of the guards of Alboin, whom she armed with daggers against the life of her husband. After the death of Alboin, at Verona, (a. d. 573,) Clef was elected by the suffrages of the Lombards, and raised upon the buckler: but, after a reign of eighteen months, he was killed by one of his pages, and the nation, which had already extended it- self over a great portion of Italy, elected no successor to the throne for ten years. In every province where the Lombards had formed a settlement, their general assembly sufficed to ad- minister justice, and to regulate the affairs of the government; it elected dukes as presidents, the number of whom amounted to thirty, for the whole of Italy. At length, however, the weaker members of the community began to feel the want of an autho- rity which should control that of the dukes, and protect the rights of the people; whilst the danger of foreign wars, and the intrigues of the Greeks, rendered it advisable to name a chief. After an interregnum of ten years, Antharic was raised to the throne, probably in the year 584; and before the middle of the following century, the Lombards had acquired the habit of trans- mitting the crown from father to son, though they had not for- mally renounced the right of electing their kings. The Lombards had scarcely completed the conquest of that CHAP. XI.] LOMBARDS. FRANKS. 217 part of Italy which is called Lombardy after them, when they crossed the Provengal Alps to pillage the territory of the kings of the Franks, or perhaps with the intention of effecting a settle- ment there. After the death of Chlothaire I., which happened in 561, the Frankic monarchy was governed by his four sons, Charibert, Gon- tran, Chilperic, and Siegbert. This was only the second genera- tion of the conquerors, for these princes were the grandsons of Clovis: yet Gontran, who survived all his brothers, did not die till the year 593, exactly a century after the marriage of Clovis with Chlotilde. This century had witnessed very important changes in the administration and in the opinions of the Franks. The warriors, who were all equal when they arrived in Gaul, had soon found in the abuse of victory, means of acquiring iniquitous possessions, which could not be restrained within the bounds of equality. As the soil was cultivated by slaves, or by those classes of men, intermediate between slaves and free-born men, who are designated in their laws as tributaries, lidi, or fiscal dependants, the extent of their estates appeared to them no obstacle to their cultivation. The smaller the number of proprietors in proportion to the extent of their conquest, the more alarming was their usur- pation. They did not, indeed, rob the wealthy Romans of their property by a general measure of spoliation, nor did they reduce them to slavery: but they constantly resorted to the law of the strongest, in a country where there was, in fact, no government — no protection for the weak. The poor freeman of Frankic ex- traction was not less exposed to this oppression than the Roman. The Franks still held their provincial assemblies for the adminis- tration of justice, but they were unable to enforce the decrees they issued 5 the rich who then first began to be styled great, gathered around them a certain number of retainers called leudes, by means of grants of land, and with these followers they were enabled to drown the voice of justice; to intimidate, to harass, and to plunder the freemen, and thus to induce them also to enlist in their bands of leudes. Henceforward, the great alone resort- ed to the general assemblies of the nation; they alone were known to the sovereign; they alone were intrusted with the command of the army, when the ban was called out: in a short time they alone constituted the nation; he who was rich was sure to become more so, and he who was poor was sure to be stripped of the little he possessed: in less than a century the turbulent democracy of the ^218 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XL Franks was transformed into a landed aristocracy of the most oppressive kind. France, properly so called, was at that time divided into four provinces, which bore the name of kingdoms^ Austrasia, Neustria, Burgundy, and Aquitaine. The Franks inhabited only the two former of these districts j they frequently called the inhabitants of the southern provinces Romans, although the nobles, the free- menj and almost all who bore arms, were nearly all of Burgun- dian or Visigothic race: but as they found themselves in a mi- nority amongst the Gauls, they had already abandoned the Ger- manic languages and adopted the Latin tongue. The assemblies of the Frankic people were still held at Metz, or Soissons, the capitals of Austrasia and Neustria, with sufficient frequency to prevent the people from being crushed under the weight of op- pression. It was probably to protect the freemen against their more powerful countrymen, that the office of rnord dom, or chief judge of murder, was instituted about that time. This func- tionary was the supreme minister of justice, and, as his authority was superior to that of the tribunals, he was able to inflict punish- ment on such as were too powerful to fall under the ordinary laws. The resemblance of the Teutonic name, mord dom, to the Latin major domus, caused the latter expression to be applied to this great officer, and it was afterwards translated Mayor of the palace, which confused and obscured the true derivation of the word, as well as the nature of the office. The Mord Dom was chosen by the people, not by the kingj his duty was to administer justice, and not to superintend the royal revenues. His office was not perpetual, but he was nominated whenever the people stood in need of him, — in times of faction, or during a minority; the bracile, or arm of justice, was carried before him, and this arm frequently fell upon the heads of criminals of the highest rank. Germany, which had been united to the confederation of the Franks, was also divided into four kingdoms; Franconia, or Ger- man France, Allemania, or Swabia, Bavaria, and Thuringia. Christianity was only beginning to penetrate into these barbarous countries; letters were entirely neglected, and hence their his- tory as well as their institutions are totally unknown. It appears, however, that each of these great nations marched under the command of an hereditary duke, and that the only connexion they had with the Franks, was that of making war in common. CHAP. XI.] CHILPERIC. TREDEGUNDE. 219 Twice in the course of the reigns of Chlothaire's sons, these Germanic nations were invited into France bj one of the kings, and devastated the country wherever they passed. The sons of Chlothaire hated each other as cordially, and formed as many treacherous designs against each other, as the sons of Clovis had done. They found, however, the nation more willing to adopt their quarrels as grounds of civil war. Of the four sons of Chlothaire, Charibert, who had fixed his residence at Paris, and who was the sovereign of Aquitaine^ passed his short life in the pursuit of sensual enjoyments, and in the grossest debauchery, — a kind of vice then so common among kings that it scarcely excited any censure. He had four wives at once, two of whom were sistersj one of them, Marcovesa, had previously taken the veil, but this was no obstacle to the king. Charibert died in 567, and the division of his kingdom of Aqui- taine amongst his three brothers was one of the great causes of the civil wars of that century. Gontran, the second of these kings, who survived all the others, (his reign lasted from 561 to 593,) and who had received Burgundy for his kingdom, and Orleans for his residence, is styled, by Gregory of Tours, in opposition to his brothers, " the good king Gontran." His morality, indeed, passed for good: he is only known to have had two wives and one mistress, and he repudiated the first before he married the second: his temper was, moreover, reputed to be a kindly one; for, with the excep- tion of his wife's physician, who was hev/n in pieces because he was unable to cure her; of his two brothers-in-law, whom he caused to be assassinated; and of his bastard brother Gondebald, who was slain by treachery; no other act of cruelty is recorded of him, than that he razed the town of Cominges to the groundj, and massacred all the inhabitants, men, women, and children. He was, however, in general, disposed to pardon offences; and he displayed incredible forbearance in favour of his sister-in- law, Fredegunde, who more than once attempted his life. In opposition to the good king Gontran, his third brother, Chil- peric, has been called the Nero of France; and, indeed, this bar- barian, who aspired to the reputation of a poet, a grammarians, and a theologian, who was ambitious of every kind of success except that of gaining the affections of his subjects, may, on more than one account, be compared to the Roman tyrant.. Soissons and Neustria had fallen to his share, and he reigned 220 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, [cHAP. XI. over them from 561 to 584. His habits were more grossly licen- tious than those of any other French prince, and the number of queens and mistresses he collected in his palace was so great, that they were never enumerated. Amongst them, however, was the infamous Fredegunde, a worthy consort for such a mon- ster. She was of low extraction, and had lived with Chilperic many years as his mistress before he married herj at length, however, she acquired an absolute ascendency over him, which she employed to rid herself of all her rivals. Queen Galsuintha was strangled; queen Andovera was executed, after languishing for some time in exile; the others were driven from the palace. The children of these unfortunate women shared the same fate; three grown-up sons of Andovera perished successively by the order, or, at least, with the consent, of their father. The fate of their sister was even more cruel; Fredegunde abandoned her to the brutal lust of her pages, before she was put to death. A king who shed the blood of his children with so little re- morse, was not likely to spare that of his people. France was full of unhappy victims whose eyes Chilperic had caused to be torn out, or whose arms he had cut off; assassins, hired by Fre- degunde, kept the country in a constant state of alarm; they pursued her enemies beyond her own territory, and frequently murdered them in the palaces of kings, or in the assemblies of the people. The young pages and priests whom she brought up in her palace, were the ministers of her vengeance or of her po- licy. They committed the most horrible crimes with the per- suasion that heaven would be open to them, if they succeeded not upon earth, " Go," said she, as she armed them with poi- soned knives, *' go; and if you return alive, great shall be the honour of yourselves and all your race; if you fall, I will dis- tribute abundant alms at the tombs of the saints for the welfare of your souls!" The contemporary author who relates these words, does not seem to doubt the efficacy of such alms. Chil- peric was assassinated in 584; but Fredegunde, who was left a widow with a child only four months old, Chlothaire II., suc- ceeded in maintaining that infant prince on the throne of Neus- tria, and lived till the year 598 in glory and prosperity. The fourth son, Siegbert, to whose share Austrasia had fallen, with Metz as a residence, was younger than his brothers when he mounted the throne, but his conduct was far more decorous, as he never had any other wife than the celebrated Brunechilde, CHAP. XI.] GONTRAN. 221 daughter of Athanagild, the king of the Visigoths. The alle- giance of the Germanic nations beyond the Rhine was so uncer- tain, that, without paying attention to their number or to the ex- tent of country which they occupied, they had all been included in the share of this prince, although he was the youngest, and, consequently, entitled to the smallest portion. But Siegbert soon taught the other Franks how formidable these lawless na- tions really were. Twice, in his disputes with Chilperic, he led them into the heart of France, and twice the banks of the Seine and the environs of Paris were devastated with inconceivable fury: Siegbert already considered himself master of Neustria, and had dismissed his Teutonic auxiliaries, laden with plunder, when, in 575, he was assassinated by two pages of Fredegunde. His crown passed to a minor, Childebert II. Nine years after- wards, as we have already observed, the crown of Neustria passed to another minor, Chlothaire II. Charibert had died without heirs, and Gontran, who was still alive, was also child- less; and, as he was not allowed to be the guardian of his ne- phews, the three kingdoms of Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgun- dy, began to be looked upon, even by the Franks, as totally dis- tinct. The minority of the kings, and the implacable hostility of their fathers, had enabled the nobility to usurp the supreme power. Thenceforth the government of Austrasia may be looked upon as an aristocracy feebly controlled by the authority of the Mord Dom, otherwise called the mayor of the palace. Neustria was approaching the same state, but by slower steps. King Gontran, who was indolent and capricious in his habits, and who lived in perpetual dread of the poniard, was unable to stay the progress of aristocratical power even in Burgundy; though he was not the. guardian of his nephews, he still thought that he was necessary to their defence. One day, just as the priest who wa& about to celebrate mass in the cathedral at Paris, had imposed silence on the assembled crowd, Gontran, who had come to that city a short time after the death of Chilperic, with the intention of restoring peace in Neustria, addressed them in the following language:-^" Men and women here assembled I I conjure you not to break the faith which you have plighted to me, and not to cause my death, as you have recently caused that of my brothers: I ask only for three years; but three years are absolutely neces- rary to enable me to bring up my nephews, whom I look upon as my adopted children. Let us beware, and may God forbid that a9 222 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XI% at my death you should perish together with these children, since there no longer remains an individual of my race, who is of an age to protect you." Instead of three, " good king Gontran," lived ten years longer, and died, at length, a natural deathf but it may be doubted whether his life or his death were matters of such extreme importance to his family and to the nation as he supposed. A natural son of Chlothaire, a brother whom Gontran refused to acknowledge, took advantage of the death of almost all the heads of his family to endeavour to get himself proclaimed king by the Franks. During this civil war, Gontran summoned the national assembly to meet at Paris. Gregory of Tours, who was, doubtless, present on this occasion, gives us an animated descrip- tion of all that passed there, which portrays the state of Francer far better than a long detail of the high feats performed in war. With a view, therefore, to throw light on this period, we shall borrow his language, without attem.pting to restrict ourselves to the national annals, or the chronological order of events. France was making no foreign conquests, and her relations with other nations were unchanged^ but an insight into her national assem- blies enables us to appreciate, not the events of a day, but the spirit of an age. "In the year 584, the kingdom of Austrasia," says Gregory of Tours, '* deputed to this assembly, in the name of Childebert, Egidius, bishop of Rheims, Gontran-Boson, and Siegwald, (the chief ministers of the young prince,) who were accompanied by a great multitude of Austrasian nobles. As soon a& they had come in, the bishop said to king Gontran, ' We render thanks to Almighty God, that, after so many toils, he hath restored thee to thy provinces, and to thy kingdom.' — *It is, indeed,' ansv/ered Gontran, * to Him who is the King of kings, and Lord of lords, that thanks are due ! He it is who hath done these things in his great mercy, and not thou, who by thy perfidious and perjured advice causedst the destruction of my provinces last year; thou, whose plighted faith hath never been kept to any man; thou, whose snares are spread on every side, more befitting an enemy of this realm, than a priest of God.-^ The bishop shook with rage at this discourse, but he made no answer^ thereupon another deputy got up, and said, * Thy nephew, Childebert, beggeth thee to order the cities, which his father possessed, to be restored to^ him.' To which the king answered, * I have already told you^ CHAP. XI.] NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF PARIS. 223 that thej were conferred on me bj treaty, and that I will not give them up.' Another deputy then said, * Thy nephew de- mandeth, that the wicked Fredegunde, who hath killed so many kings, be given over to him, that he may avenge the death of his father, of his uncle, and of his cousins.' Gontran answered, * I have no power to deliver her into his hands, since she is herself the mother of a king: moreover, I do not believe in the truth of your accusations against her.' "After all these, Gontran-Boson approached the king, as if he had something to say; but as it was already noised abroad that Gondewald had been proclaimed king, Gontran interrupted him, and said, * Enemy of this land, and of our realm! why didst thou go into the East some years ago to fetch back this Ballomer into our states? (for so he always called Gondewald, who pre- tended to be his brother. ) Thou art a traitor, and thou hast ne- ver kept any one promise thou hast made. Then Gontran-Boson replied, * Thou art our lord and our king, seated upon a throne, so that no one dares answer thy charges; nevertheless, I protest that I am innocent of all thou sayest: and if any one of my own rank has accused me of these things covertly, let him come forth and speak this day; and thou, king! shall submit this cause to the judgment of God, who will decide between us in open fight in one field/ *' Thereupon every one was silent, and the king rejoined, * It is a thing which ought to inflame all your hearts, to drive this stran- ger from our frontiers, whose father was nothing better than the master of a mill, — ay! his father held the comb, and carded wool.' Now, though it is very possible for one man to have two trades, a deputy answered the reproaches of the king, and said, * What, then, dost thou affirm that this man had two fathers, — one a miller, and the other a wool-comber? Take care, O king! of what thou sayest; for, except in spiritual matters, we have never yet heard that a man can have two fathers at once.' At these words many of the deputies laughed aloud, and one of them said, 'We take our leave, O king! for since thou wilt not re- store the cities which belong to thy nephew, we know that the axe which laid thy brothers low is not broken, and will fall upon thy head also.' "In this scandalous manner the assembly broke up, and the king, irritated by their language, ordered the deputies to be pelted with horse-dung, straw, rotten hay, and the mud of the streets. They 224 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XI. reached their homes with clothes begrimed with filth; the indig- nities and insults they received were immense." The causes of the animosity which existed between Gontran and the deputies of Austrasia, are devoid of interest to us, and its consequences terminated with the generation that witnessed its commencement; but the relation in which the king stood to the nobles, their mutual threats and recriminations, and the in- sulting vengeance which the sovereign took, teach us, what the titles of the actors incessantly lead us to forget, namely, the real character of kings and nobles at that time. We here discover what we ought to understand by '' that constitution which has stood unchanged for fourteen centuries, whose stability is so often held up to our admiration;" just as if the monarchy had not been modified by each succeeding generation, and as if there was the slightest resemblance between the prerogatives of Gon- tran, those of Charlemagne, and those of Louis XIV. Childebert II. had arrived at man's estate before the death of Gontran; he was endowed witli more energy, and, perhaps, with more talent, than had been displayed for a long time by any of the race of Clovis, but he also surpassed his predecessors in fe- rocity and cruelty. He felt that he was coerced on every side by the Austrasian aristocracy, which had silently usurped all the influence both of the people and of the crown. The country was divided into vast districts, which a few nobles claimed as their property; they parcelled out their land amongst such of their former companions in arms, the Frankic freemen, as consented to take the title of leudes, and to bind themselves by special oaths to second all the enterprises of their lord. With their as- sistance, these chieftains were sure of always retaining the go- vernment of the duchies, although they were nominally in the gift of the king or of the people: by law, every office and digni- ty was elective, but, in fact, they were all hereditary. Childe- bert struggled against this aristocracy, sometimes with the aid of his uncle Gontran, but at others he had recourse to the surer ex- pedients of the dagger or the axe. Those nobles who thought themselves the most secure of his friendship were sometimes murdered by his side, in the midst of the gayest festivals : we shudder as we read of the ferocious joy with which he excited the boisterous merriment of duke Magnorald at a bull -fight, whilst the headsman was silently advancing behind him; in the midst of his laughter his head was struck oiF, and fell into the circus. CHAP. XI.] FREDEGUNDE. BRUNECHILDE. 225 A great number of Austrasian nobles perished by the orders of Childebert II.: at the same time, he took possession of the inhe- ritance of his uncle Gontran, and drove the young Chlothaire, who was still governed by his mother Fredegunde, to the very confines of Neustria. He thought that he was securely seated upon his throne; but this can never be the case with a monarch who is hated by an entire people. He escaped a great many se- cret conspiracies, and repressed as many open revolts; but in 596 he perished by poison, and his murderers were sufficiently wary to escape those inquiries which, indeed, are not very active after the death of a man who is generally detested. At this epoch, exactly a hundred years after the conversion of Clovis, the warlike nation of the Franks was subject to the go- vernment of three kings in their minority, and to the regency of two ambitious and cruel women, equally hardened in crime. In Neustria, Fredegunde was the guardian of Chlothaire, who was then scarcely eleven years old. In Austrasia, and in Burgundy, Brunechilde was the guardian of Theodebert II. and of Thierry, her grandsons' — the one ten, the other nine, years old. Brune- childe had probably contributed to inspire her son, Childebert II., with that hatred of the aristocracy, and that ardent desire to crush it by the most violent means, which had at length brought him to the grave. This haughty woman, who was endowed with great talents, great knowledge of mankind, and an invincible firm- ness of character, had, at various periods of her life, risen above calamities which would have crushed a feebler being. She had been twice married; first to Siegbert, king of Austrasia, second- ly to Merovaeus, (Meerwig) the son of Chilperic, and both her husbands had fallen by the dagger of assassins commissioned by Fredegunde: she had been the prisoner of her enemies; and she lived in the midst of powerful nobles, who had sworn her ruin. After the death of her son, she was even more fiercely threatened by the dukes of Austrasia, who were angry at not being able to resist her ascendency, and indignant at her endeavours to cor- rupt the morals of her grandchildren, in order to govern longer in their stead; but who, spite of all their menaces and reproaches, never failed in the end to acknowledge her remarkable sagacity, and to yield to the authority which she exercised over them. She had long been possessed of extraordinary beauty; and she employed that beauty, (which is ever enhanced by a crown,) to its latest period, as a means of attaching to her service the most 226 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XI. zealous of her partisans. But as she was a grandmother, and even a great-grandmother, before her death, the common arms of women must have become powerless in her hands. " Away from us, woman!" said duke Ursis to her^ •' awaj, or the hoofs of our steeds shall tread thee to earth." But Brunechilde stood her ground: she remained seventeen years in Austrasia after having been thus threatened; she continued to govern men who refused to acknowledge her even as their equal; she laid out the revenues of the kingdom in raising monuments which perpetu- ated her renown; — for the roads and towers, which long bore her name, might have been taken for Roman works; she vigorously seconded the exertions of pope Gregory the Great, in his mis- sions for the conversion of Britain, which was then divided amongst the Anglo-Saxons; and, if we may believe the letters of the pope, it is to her zealous and constant efforts that England owes the introduction of Christianity. The country which she governed with so much power, soon displayed signs of that pros- perity which is always the result of energy united to talent. But the dukes of Austrasia could not consent to submit; they found means to gain king Theodebert, who was almost imbecile, over to their side, as well as the slave whom Brunechilde had given him as a mistress, and whom he had subsequently married. With his consent, they carried off Brunechilde, in 598, from her palace, and left her alone, on foot, and without money, on the frontier of Burgundy. The haughty queen arrived at the court of the youngest of her grandsons, Thierry II., who reigned at Chalons-sur-Saone, as a suppliant. Her ambition was influenced by an ardent thirst for vengeance; she wished to govern Burgun- dy, but she wished it chiefly that she might turn its arms against Austrasia, and destroy her other grandson. Years passed ere she had acquired the necessary influence over the mind of Thier- ry, and over the character of the people: several assassinations were committed, to rid her of such as might have crossed her purposes; but she was still obliged patiently to submit to the open resistance of the Franks to a civil war, and to consent to temporary arrangements which, in her heart, she cursed. After an interval of fourteen years, the wished-for moment of ven- geance arrived. In 612, Thierry II. declared war against his brother, and defeated him in two great battles; Theodebert him- self fell into his hands, and he was put to death by the pitiless Brunechilde, as well as his infant son Merovseus, whose head CHAP. XI.] BRUNECHILDE. ' 227 was dashed to pieces against a stone. The triumph, however, of this barbarous queen over her descendants, was shortly followed by her own ruin. Chlothaire II., the son of her mortal enemy, had grown to manhood in an obscure district of Neustria, to which he had been driven by his more powerful cousins. The great lords of Austrasia, and amongst them the ancestors of the house of Charlemagne, who began to distinguish themselves in their paternal possessions on the banks of the Meuse, were in- censed at the thought of falling under the yoke of Brunechilde, and they had recourse to Chlothaire II. to effect their delive- rance. Thierry II. suddenly died in the midst of his victories^ for the terrible science of poisons is the first branch of chemistry which is successfully cultivated by barbarous nations. The army which Brunechilde collected for the defence of her four great- grandsons, to whom she destined the crown, already meditated her destruction. The Austrasians, together with the Burgun- dians, met the Neustrians between the Marne and the Aisne in 613^ but, at the first call of the trumpet to battle, the whole army of Brunechilde either took to flight, or passed over to the enemy's side. The queen herself, with her grand-daughter and her great-grandsons, was brought before Chlothaire II., who im- mediately condemned to death all the remaining descendants of Clovis, so that he himself was the sole survivor of that race. Brunechilde underwent various torments for three days, and was led about on a camel in the presence of the whole army. Chlo- thaire afterwards ordered her to be tied by the hair, by one leg, and one arm, to the tail of a wild horse, and abandoned her to the kicks of the frantic animal, so that the fields were strewn with the lacerated limbs of .the wretched mother of a line of kings. ( 228 ) CHAPTER XI Obscurity of the History of the seventh Century. — Want of histoi-ical Sources. — Estabhshment of the Lombards in Italy. — Their rapid Civiliza- tion. — Extent of the Frankic Empire under Chlothaire IF.; its commer- cial Prosperity. — Dagobert; his Character, his Cruelties, his Liberahties to the Monks. — St. Eloi and St. Ouen. — Succession of thirteen Faineans Kings; their premature Deaths. — Struggle between the Nobles and the Freemen. — Ebroin. — St. I.eger. — Pepin of Heristal. — Battle of Testry. — Change of Dynasty. — Restoration of German Language and Institutions. — The East exhausted by religious Wars and Persecutions. — Greek Em- perors. — Wars of Justin II. with Chosroes Nushirvan. — Virtues of Tibe- rius II. — Talents of Maurice. — His Campaigns against the Avars and the Persians; his Assassination. — Heraclius; his extraordinary Character; his Successes against Persia. There are certain periods in the history of the world, when a thick veil appears to overspread the earth; when all authentic documents and impartial witnesses disappear, and we are at a loss for a clew by which to trace the course of events. "We are now arrived at one of these obscure periods — the seventh centu- ry; when the historians of the Eastern and Western empires are mute; when vast revolutions are in preparation, or drawing near to their accomplishment, without our having the means of detect- ing their peculiar circumstances, or their progressive steps. The night which shrouds in one common darkness the history of the Franks or Latins, and that of the Greeks, lasted till the moment when a new and unexpected light broke from Arabia; when a nation of shepherds and robbers appeared as the depositary of letters, after they had been allowed to escape from the guardian- ship of every civilized people. The principal historical luminary of the West, after the fall of the Roman empire, was Gregory, bishop of Tours, who died in 595. His ecclesiastical history, carried down to the year 591, is the only source from which, notwithstanding his ignorance and intolerance, and the want of order in his narrative, we derive any knowledge of the manners, the opinions, and the form of government of the period of which he treats. After him, ano- ther author, far more barbarous, and more concise, whose name CHAP. XII.] LOMBARDS. 229 is believed to have been Fredegaire, continued the history of the Franks to the year 641; and he, like his predecessor, has shed a feeble light, not only upon Gaul, but upon Germany, Italy, and Spain. After Fredegaire, nothing is to be found which deserves the name of history, until the time of Charlemagne. A century and a half passed away, during which we possess nothing con- cerning the whole empire of the West, except dates and conjec- tures. For the East, in like manner, after the disappearance of the great light thrown upon history by the two contemporaries of Justinian, — Procopius and Agathias, — our only resource is the narrative of Theophylact Simocatta, which is diffuse, without being complete; inflated and loaded with superfluous ornaments, while it is barren of facts; and, as it ends about the year 603, we are then obliged to descend to the chronicles and abstracts of Theophanes and Nicephorus, both of whom died after Cliar- lemagne, and who resemble each other in being occupied solely with chronology, not with the causes or effects of events. This long and almost unknown period was not, however, with- out importance either in the East or in the West. Italy, under the dominion of the Lombards, whose first historian, Paul War- nefrid, was contemporary with Charlemagne, slowly recovered from its calamities. The Lombard kings, who were at first elec- tive, and afterwards hereditary, showed some respect for the li- berty of their subjects, whether of Roman or Teutonic origin. Their laws, considered as the laws of a barbarous people, were wise and equal; their dukes, or provincial rulers, early acquired a sentiment of pride and independence, which made them seek support in the aftection of their subjects. We shall not here set forth the chronology of the one and twen- ty Lombard kings, who succeeded each other during the space of two hundred and six years— from the conquest of Alboin in 568, to the renewal of their monarchy by Charlemagne in 774. Their names would soon escape from the memory, and their history is not circumstantial enough for us to fix them in our minds by re- flections suggested by facts. We only know, that during this period, the population of Italy began once more to increase; that the race of the conquerors took root and throve in the soil, without entirely superseding that of the conquered natives, whose lan- guage still prevailed; that the rural districts were cultivated anew, 30 230 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [CHAP. XII, and towns rebuilt — ^particularly Pavia, the capital of the kingdom, and Benevento, the capital of the most powerful duchy of Lom- bardy, extending over great part of the kingdom of Naples 5 — ' that those arts which sweeten life were once more exercised by the inhabitants of Italy; and that the Lombards, who began their career of civilization later than the Franks, outstripped them in^ it, and soor brought themselves to consider their neigbours as bar- barians. This period would be still more important in the history of the Franks, if it were better known. Ghlothaire II., the son of Chil- peric, and the great grandchild of Clovis, had been proclaimed- king, in 613, by the whole monarchy. His power extended not only over all the Gauls to the Pyrennees, but was acknowledged throughout Germany, even by those Saxons whom Charlemagne had afterwards so much difficulty in subduing. The kingdom of the Franks had become the boundary of the new empire which the Avars had established in Transylvania and Hungary, and which, at Constantinople, threatened the Greeks with total ruini During the fifteen years of his reign over this vast Frankic em- pire, (a. d. 613 — 628,) Chlothaire seems to have been little dis- turbed by foreign war. He reposed upon his strength, his neigh- bours feared him, and the Lombards themselves had consented to pay him a tribute. From the number of temples and convents with which the piety of Chlothaire and his son covered the king- dom, and from the silk, stuffs, and jewellery with which these buildings were decorated, it appears that the arts had made con- siderable progress in Gaul. Commerce had also acquired fresh activity: a desire for the spices of the Indies, and the manufac- tures of Greece, was universally felt by those magnates among the Franks whose wants were not satisfied by the natural pro- ducts of their immense domains. Some of these chiefs undertook to carry on trade with arms in their hands, and to establish a com- munication between France and Greece by the valley of the Danube. The merchants set out from Bavaria, which was at the extremity of the empire of the Franks, and advanced to the Euxine, passing between the Avars and the Bulgarians, inces- santly threatened with pillage, but always ready to defend with the sword the convoys which they escorted across those wild countries. A Frank merchant, by name Samo, was conspicuous for bravery in protecting these caravans: he rendered important services to the Venedi, a Slavonic people, who inhabited Bohe- CHAP. XII.] DAGOBERT. 231 miaj they rewarded him by making him their king, in which of- fice he continued thirty-five years. But notwithstanding the vast extent of the Frankic empire, the royal authority was hardly felt out of the presence of the king. All the Germanic nations had hereditary dukes, who paid an obe- dience, scarcely more than nominal, to Chlothaire, and his suc- cessor Dagobert. The southern provinces of Gaul were governed by the audiority of their dukes, whom the king undoubtedly pos- sessed the right of changing, but whom, in fact, he rarely ven- tured to dismiss. It was only in the two provinces of Austrasia and Neustria that he felt himself completely king. He resided in the latter, generally at Paris; and, to maintain his authority in the former, he sent thither the elder of his sons, Dagobert, whom he created king in 622, when this young prince was but fifteen years of age. Dagobert fixed his residence at Metz, under the protection of Arnolf and Pepin, two of the most powerful lords of Austrasia beyond the Rhine, and ancestors of the Carlovingian line. In 628, Chlothaire II. died, and Dagobert succeeded him. Chlothaire allotted the kingdom of Aquitaine to a younger son, named Charibert, whom he had by another wife; but he did not retain it. Dagobert had sole dominion over the empire of the Franks from 628 to 638, and exercised a degree of power almost equal to that which Charlemagne possessed at a later period. Dagobert is described as having qualities which it is impossible to reconcile: first, we hear of his extreme moderation, of his mildness, of his deference to the authority of Pepin and St. Ar- nolf, bishop of Metz; yet, at the very same period, we find him causing the assassination of Chrodoald, one of the dukes of Ba- varia, who had been powerfully recommended to him by his fa- ther. Mention is made of a progress which he undertook through- out his kingdom on taking possession of it, and of the manifesta- tions of his love of justice and humanity; but let us attend to the words of Fredegaire himself. *' From thence he took the road for Dijon and St. Jean de Losne, where he abode for some days, with a firm resolution to judge the people of his kingdom according to justice. Full of this beneficent desire, he yielded not his eyes to sleep, nor did he satisfy himself with food; having no other object of his thoughts, than the hope that all might re- tire from his presence satisfied after having obtained justice. The same day, when he was leaving St. Jean de Losne for Ch4- 232 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. QcHAP. XII. Ions, he went into the bath before it was well day; and, at the same time, he ordered Brodulf, the uncle of his brother Chari- bert, to be put to death." The same historian declares Brodulf to have been one of the most estimable men of his kingdom. In like manner, we are told of his wisdom, and the purity of his morals; but, it is added, that a great change took place in this respect within the first year of his reign, when, according to Fredegaire, *' he gave himself up to voluptuousness, and had, like king Solomon, three queens and a great number of concu- bines. The queens were Nantechilde, Wolfegonde, and Ber- childe; as for the names of the mistresses, as they were very nu- merous, I have shrunk from the fatigue of inserting them in this chronicle." Two cruel actions of Dagobert, which are not accounted for, have left a deeper stain upon his memory than the licentiousness of his manners. On the death of his brother, he caused his ne- phew, who was still a child, to be killed, lest he should one day claim his inheritance. The other is a deed of still greater atro- city: in one night he massacred nine thousand Bulgarians to whom he had granted hospitality, lest his sheltering them should give offence to the Avars, from whose sword these unhappy fugi- tives had escaped. Dagobert was the benefactor of the abbey of St. Denis, and the founder of a great number of rich convents. Of course, his piety has been celebrated by the monks: but it was piety accord- ing to the interpretation of tlie seventh century, and displayed itself in nothing but in the largesses he bestowed on convents. This piety had united Dagobert to two saints whom France still venerates, though little acquainted with their claims to canoni- zation. The first was St. Eloi, the king's jeweller; who, under his eyes, and according to his orders, made all the ornaments of the church of St. Denis, and who thought himself permitted to commit saintly robbery upon the royal treasury, in order to en- rich the convent of Solignac, which he himself had founded. The second was St. Ouen, formerly referendary of the court, afterwards bishop of Rouen. Dagobert lived alternately with these two holy men, whose counsels he blindly followed; with the monks of St. Denis, in whose choir he sang; and among his numerous mistresses. His devotion to St. Denis was so ex- clusive, that he several times countenanced the pillage of other churches in his states, in order to enrich his favourite saint. CHAP. XII.] FAINEANS KINGS. 233 At the death of Dagobert begins the succession of the Faine- arts kings, which lasted for a hundred and fourteen years, (a. d. 638 — 75%) during which period thirteen sovereigns reigned suc- cessively over the whole of France, or over a part of that mo- narchy; though only two of them attained to man's estate, and not one to the full development of his intellectual powers. The great justiciary, the Mord Dom, commonly called the mayor of the palace, and whose office had been instituted at a very early period in the three monarchies of Austrasia, Neustria, and Bur- gundy, could not, like the king, be a minor or an idiot, since he was elected by the people. The increase of his power was com- mensurate to the incapacity of his nominal chief. The minority «f the two sons of Dagobert afforded a favourable opportunity to the mayor of making himself known to the nation, and of in- creasing his own influence. The inactivity in which the sove- reign lived, the corrupting influence of power, and the example x)f his predecessors, soon led him into the most shameless ex- cesses. There was not a Merovingian king that was not a father before the age of fifteen, and decrepit at thirty. This great sti- pendiary of the nation, who took no part in the government, ex- cept in as much as the uncontrolled disposal of the lands and estates of the crown was concerned, lived in a state of continual intoxication: he was known to his subjects only by his vices; yet the rapidity with which one child succeeded another upon the throne, appears to have excited no suspicions in the minds of the Franks as to the causes of this constant recurrence of premature deaths. A new subject of discussion began about this time to divide the Frankic nation: the small land-owners, who were called Arimans, or freemen, had hitherto allowed the nobles and the dukes to usurp their rights. They had for a long while submit- ted to be plundered, one by one; and had even aided the cause of their oppressors, becoming their leudes or followers, upon a promise of mutual assistance. But, about the middle of the se- venth century, some more open aggression on the part of the nobles, or some more audacious attempts to rob the freemen of their estates and of their rights, drove them to combine for their common defence. They had already given up the struggle in Austrasia, where the family of Charlemagne (which, as it has no other name, we shall henceforward style the Carlovingian race) was at the head of the high aristocracy. This family had ac- 234 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. QcHAP. XII* quired immense power; and had succeeded in rallying the ma- jority of the freemen around its standard, in the capacity of leudes: in Neustria, on the contrary, the freemen had preserved their independence; they attended the national assemblies, and decided the election of the Mord Dom, who seems to have been appointed for the express purpose of protecting the lower orders, and who was, perhaps, chosen from their ranks, like the Justiza of Arragon. In 656, they succeeded in raising Ebroin to this important station; a man of great talents and energy, and a de- termined foe to the increasing influence of the aristocracy, whose sole object, as judge, as general, and as statesman, was to weaken the dukes, and to ruin the nobles. The two factions soon perceived that it was expedient to ex- tend their alliances from one kingdom to the other. The free- men of Austrasia, being oppressed by the mayor Wulfoad, who was of a ducal family, had recourse to the protection of Ebroin, and frequently joined his standard: whilst the dukes of Neustria and Burgundy, and the leader of their party, Leger, bishop of Autun, intrigued against Ebroin, and kept up a correspondence with the nobles of Austrasia. They turned their attention par- ticularly towards young Pepin of Heristal, maternal grandson of Pepin, the minister of Dagobert, and grandfather of Pepin le Bref, king of France. The administration of Ebroin (a. d. 656 — 689) was marked by frequent wars in both the'kingdoms. Se- veral kings were deposed on both sides, although, from their ten- der age, they had scarcely taken any other part in passing events than the giving them the sanction of their name. The nobility, however, were not satisfied with dethroning a sovereign who was displeasing to them. Their victories in Austrasia and Neustria were followed by regicide. Dagobert II. was attacked by the nobles in Austrasia, in 678, and being condemned by a council, was put to death. St. Wilfrid, who had offered him hospitality in his infancy, was arrested by the army of Austrasians who re- turned from accomplishing this revolution; and a bishop who re- cognised him, addressed him thus: — "With what rash confi- dence do you venture to traverse the land of the Franks, you, who are worthy of death for having contributed to send back from his exile that king, who was the destroyer of our cities, and the contemner of his nobles' counsels; who, like Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, oppressed the people with exactions; who respected not the churches of God, nor the bishops. — Now he GHAP. XII.] CHILDERIC II. 235 has paid the penalty of his crimesj he is slain, and his body lies unburied on the earth." The same party, headed by the bishops and nobles, were equal- ly merciless to Ciiilderic II. At the period when this Neustrian king arrived at the age of twenty-one, and gave himself up to that unbridled love of pleasure which was the hereditary propen- sity of his race, Ebroin, and Leger, bishop of Autun, who were the chiefs of the two parties, were confined in the same convent at Luxeuil, the superior of which had compelled them to be re- conciled. But, within the walls of a cloister, the^ holy bishop did not abandon the cause of his party. He planned a conspira- cy, of which his brother Gaerin was the leader. Childeric II. was surprised (in 673) as he was hunting in the forest of Livry, and, with his wife and infant son, put to death. This seemed to confirm the power of the aristocracy. Ebroin, however, who had been released at the time of the Revolution, found means to reassemble an army of freemen, and surprised the nobles at Pont St. Maxence: he defeated them several times, and took prisoner almost all those who had borne a part in the death of Childeric II., which he avenged by putting them to the torture. St. Leger, after being exposed to cruel torments, was preserved alive; his biographers assert that all his wounds closed^ instantaneously and miraculously, and that, when his lips and tongue were slit, he spoke with greater eloquence than before. Deprived of sight, and mutilated in all his limbs, St. Leger was already venerated as a martyr by the people. Ebroin's anger redoubled, when he perceived that all the evil he had inflicted on his enemy redound- ed to his gloiy. He resolved to have St. Leger degraded by the bishops of France, whom he assembled in council in 678, and cited the saint to confess before all the prelates that he was an* accomplice in the murder of Childeric II. The holy St. Leger neither chose to stain the close of his life by an act of perjury, nor to bring upon himself new sufferings by avowing his partici- pation in the regicide; he, therefore, made no other answer to alF the questions put to him, than that God alone could read the se- crets of his heart. The bishops, being able to extort no other* answer from him, tore his tunic from top to bottom, as a mark o^ degradation, and delivered him up to the count of the palace, w^ho ordered him to be beheaded. The commemoration of the- martyrdom of the holy regicide is kept on the 2d of October; and* 236 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [CHAP. XII. there are few of the cities of France in which some church has not been raised in honour of him. After the death of Ebroin, which took place in 681, the mayors, who were appointed his successors by the free party, possessed neither the same energy nor the same talent. War was renewed between Austrasia and Neustria. From the time of the murder of Dagobert II., the former had been without a king, and had obeyed Pepin of Heristal, who took the title of duke, and governed with the assistance of the nobility. A great battle was fought between the two nations and the two parties in 687, at Testry, in Vermandois. The nobles were triumphant. The mayor of the freemen was killed, and their king, Thierry III., fell into the hands of the nobles. Pepin, who thought it still ne- cessary that there should be the phantom of a king, instead of dethroning him, attached him to his own party, and caused hrm to be acknowledged in Austrasia, as well at in Neustria, at the some time retaining all authority in his own hands. He elevated his son to the dignity of mayor of Neustria, and reduced the king to the condition of captive of his own subject. The great revolution, which transmitted the sovereignty of the Franks from the first to the second race, takes its date from the battle of Testry. In the year 687, the royal power was vest- ed in the second Pepin, although his grandson, the third of the name, was the first who assumed the crown, (a. d. 752.) This revolution has been erroneously considered as a usurpation on the part of the mayors of the palace: it was, on the contrary, their defeat^ their old adversaries were victorious, and decorated themselves with their title. The Mord Dom, or elective head of the freemen, chief magistrate of Neustria, and representative of a country in which the Franks had begun to blend with the Romans and adopt their language, gave place to the hereditary duke of Austrasia, captain of his leudes, or men voluntarily de- voted to a service equally hereditary, and requited by grants of land. This duke was seconded by all the other dukes who fought for aristocracy, and against royalty and the people. His victory was signalized by a second triumph of the Teutonic language over the Latinj by the re-establishment of diets or assemblies of the nation, which were, from that period, held in a far more re- gular manner, and gradually got possession of all the rights of sovereignty 5 but in which the nobles alone represented the na- CHAP. XII.] HISTORY OF THE EAST. Q5T tion: lastly, by the almost entire dissolution of the national bond. The dukes who had seconded Pepin had in view, not to become his subjects, but to reign conjointly with himj accordingly, all the nations beyond the Rhine .renounced their obedience to the Franks: Aquitaine, Provence, and Burgundy, governed by their several dukes, became, in some sort, foreign provinces 5 and Pe- pin, satisfied with leaving either his son or one of his lieutenants at Paris to watch the king, transported the actual seat of govern- ment to his duchy of Austrasia, and fixed his residence by turns at Cologne, and at Heristal, near Liege. It was towards the close of the administration of Pepin of He- ristal that the Musulmans began to threaten Western Europe. They conquered Spain, between the years 711 and 714, and Pe- pin died on the 16th of December, 714, after having governed France twenty-seven years and a half, from the day of the battle of Testry. But, before we attempt to trace the rise and pro- gress of the Musulman empire: before we examine how Charles Martel, the son of Pepin, saved the West from their dominion, we must follow the obscure revolutions of the Eastern empire up to the time when her mortal struggle with the invaders began. It is not the only disadvantage attending the study of the arid period which now engages our attention, that we are forced to carry our eyes over the whole world, from its eastern to its west- ern bounds, and to pass in review persons who had no relation to each other. The brief chronicles to which we are reduced, de- void of all historical criticism or judgment, heap up before our eyes events of which we cannot see the connexion, and which appear rather to contradict than to support each other; becoming, of course, difficult to remember, in proportion to their barrenness and obscurity. The history of the East, during the five reigns of Justin 11., Tiberius II., Maurice, Phocas, and Heraclius, (a. d. 567 — 642,) presents us rather with the phantoms of a bad dream than with a train of real events. The three former, it is true, offer a con- trast in which we ought to be accustomed, — that of sovereigns virtuous, or represented as being so, and a miserable people. It is, indeed, generally thus that the historians of monarchies have performed their tasks. But the tyranny of Phocas, the defeats and afterwards the victories of Heraclius, have no resemblance to any course of events with which we are acquainted, and afford no internal explanation. In a war, of which the details are 31 238 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XII. wholly unknown to us, the Persians, under the orders of Chos- roes II., conquered all the Asian provinces of the Eastern em- pire. Heraclius, in his turn, conquered the whole of Persia, up to the frontiers of India; and, after expeditions, the narratives of which wear the air of fables, the two empires, equally ex- hausted, were unable to contend with a new enemy, whose ex- istence they had not even suspected. Though reduced to conjecture as to the origin of these sud- den revolutions, we can, at least, discover, that a great cause of weakness had arisen in the Eastern empire, along with the new systems of religious belief, and the unrelenting persecutions they engendered. The minds of men became irritated against each other, and ill-disposed towards their government. The oppressed sects not only refused to defend their country, — they intrigued with their country's enemies, and delivered into their hands the strongest and richest provinces of the empire. In the discus- sions on the mysteries of the Christian faith must be sought the key to the Persian and Musulman conquests. The groundwork of the new revolutions which broke out at the end of the sixth century was laid in the reign of Justinian. The ancient dispute between the catholics and the Arians con- cerning the divinity of Jesus Christ had been succeeded by others far more frivolous and unintelligible, more foreign to all human actions, and to the influence of faith upon conduct, — those con- cerning the union of the two natures and two wills in the person of the Saviour. It was not without reason that the question, whether the Re- deemer was God, or whether he was a created being, was re- garded as fundamental in the Christian religion. For, according to the explanation given of this mystery, one sect reproached the other with refusing, if not to Deity itself, certainly to one of its manifestations, the worship which is its due: while the opposing sect accused its adversaries of violating the first of the command- ments, the very basis of religion, by adoring him who had ex- pressly taught them to worship the Father only, the King of kings. But, though the dogma of the divinity of Christ had prevailed in the catholic church, the explanation of the incom- prehensible union of the Deity with man was absolutely null as to its consequences: it might be enounced in words, but human reason was unable to grasp it; still less could it have any effect in guiding the actions of men. CHAP. XII.] THEOLOGICAL DISSENSIONS. 239 Nevertheless, two expianations of this mystery had been brought forward; the one, that of the Monophy sites, represented the Deity as being the soul which animated the human body of Je- sus Christ. According to this system, the soul of the Saviour pos- sessed but one nature, and that divine; his body, also, was of one nature, and that human. This system, which did not escape the charge of heresy, had been embraced by Justinian, and, more warmly still by his wife Theodora, in whom licentiousness and cruelty had not extinguished theological zeal. The bishops, the monks, and the laity, who refused to subscribe to it, were ex- posed to a bloody persecution. The orthodox system, on the contrary, acknowledged in Jesus Christ the union of two com- plete natures; that is, of the human soul and human body of Jesus the son of Mary, with the divine soul and divine body of the Christ, one of the three persons of the Deity. These two complete and distinct beings were, however, so intimately united, that nothing could be attributed to the Man, which was not, at the same time, attributed to the God. From this explanation, arose a new dispute about words. It was asked, whether this twofold Being was animated by a single will; the divine soul prevailing so completely over the human, as undividedly to govern the actions of Christ. In the opinion of the Monothelites it was so. This was declared heretical, and the orthodox dogma was established, that the human soul of Jesus had a full and entire will, but that it remained in perpetual con- formity to the full and entire will of the divine soul of Christ. With the utmost stretch of attention, we are scarcely able to seize these subtle distinctions, which aim at setting in opposition unknown causes, whose effects are always the same. The exa- mination of them fatigues the reason, and appears a sort of blas- phemy against that inscrutable Being, who is thus submitted to a kind of moral dissection. With more difficulty still should we pursue the different shades of these opinions, and all the various sects to which they gave rise. But the influence of these subtle questions was fatal to the empire: every sect persecuted in its turn, and the orthodox,-— that is to say, the victorious — abused, more cruelly than the others, the power which they were longer able to retain. The first dignitaries of the church were expelled from their seats; many perished in exile, many in prison, many were even sentenced to death. Those who held the forbidden opinions were denied the liberty of worship; while the property of the condemned churches was seized, and thousands of monks, 240 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XII. fighting with staves and stones, excited tumults in which rivers of blood was shed. Large towns were given up to pillage, and to all the outrages of a brutal soldiery; and all this as a punish- ment for an attachment to words rather than to ideas. At the end of the sixth century, the greater part of the empire, especially the eastern, longed for a foreign deliverer, — ^even for the yoke of a heathen or a magian, so that they might escape fi om the intole- rance of the orthodox party and of the emperors. The Nestorians, who carried farther than the orthodox them- selves the separation between the two natures 5 who placed in stronger opposition than the catholics the Man Jesus and the God Christ, were the first objects of persecution: they completely abandoned the empire, and several hundred thousands of the sub- jects of Justinian emigrated into Persia, carrying with them arts and manufactures, and a knowledge of Roman tactics and en- gines of war. The conquests of Chosroes were seconded by their arms, and by the treachery of their secret adherents, who deli- vered up to the enemy several of the fortresses of Asia. The Eutychians, the most zealous of the Monophysites, who, in order to maintain the unity of Christ's nature, denied that his divine soul had been invested with a human body, were crushed by persecution. They have survived only in Armenia, where their church flourishes to this day: but this heresy destroyed the ancient attachment of the Armenians to the Greeks, and produced in these old allies of the empire an implacable hatred, which has also been perpetuated. A modified sect of Monophysites, the Jacobites, sought refuge in Persia, in Arabia, and in Upper Egypt. They, too, united with the enemies of their country. In the mountains of Lebanon, the Monothelites, or those who admit only one will in Christ, raised the standard of revolt. These are still known by the name of Maronites. The Monophysites, who were oppressed and destroyed in the rest of the empire, raised an invin- cible resistance in Egypt, where the whole mass of the people shared their opinions. But these people, persecuted, stripped, and doomed to see the dignities of their church, their own pos- sessions, and all their civil rights, torn from them, gave up at once the language of the Greeks, and their adherence to its church. Then arose the Coptic sect, and its independent church, which spread over Abyssinia and Nubia. They seconded with all their might the arms of Chosroes; and when he, in his turn, was con- quered, they implored the aid of the Musulmans. Such was the state of the East, and such were the only passion? CHAP. XII.] JUSTIN II. TIRERIUS.^ 241 which seemed to agitate the people, during the five reigns which filled the interval from the death of Justinian, in 567, to the con- quests of the Musulmans, in 632. We shall now give a succinct account of these five reigns, on which our scanty materials would not permit us to enlarge, even if we desired it. The sceptre of Justinian had been transmitted, in 56T, to his nephew Justin II., a prince of a mild and benevolent disposition, but weak: he saw the errors of his uncle's administration, and promised to remedy them; but he was constantly confined to his palace by bodily infirmity, and surrounded by women and eu- nuchs. Counsellors like these gave to his government a charac- ter of intrigue, of feebleness, of distrust. During his reign, Italy was lost by the conquest of the Lombards. The Avars, being driven by the aboriginal Turks from the neighbourhood of Thi- bet, and becoming conquerors as soon as they had passed from Asia into Europe, had founded their empire in the valley of the Danube, nearly on the same spot which Attila had formerly chosen as the seat of his government. From thence they extend- ed their devastations throughout the Illyrian peninsula. To- wards the end of the reign of the great Chosroes Nushirvan, the Persians carried their ravages to the very outskirts of Antioch, and reduced to ashes the city of Apamea. At the end of his reign, however, Justin II. realized the hopes which he had ex- cited at its commencement. He chose a successor, not in his own family, but in his people. Finding in the captain of his guards, Tiberius, the most virtuous, brave, and humane of his subjects, he raised him to the crown in December, 574, and re- signed to him the reins of government, without any attempt, during the four years which he survived this act of abdication, to recover the power he had resigned. It is supposed that the empress Sophia, wife of Justin II., had some influence upon the choice of her husband. Tiberius was not only the bravest, but the handsomest of the courtiers. It was not known that he was married; and though Justin, as he placed him on the throne, said, "' Reverence the empress Sophia as your mother," Sophia is thought to have indulged a hope that she should attach him to herself by a different tie, and should bestow her hand, as well as a crown, upon the new emperor. But Ti- berius now brought forward his wife Anastasia, whose existence had been hitherto concealed. From this time he strove, by his respectful attentions and filial affection to the empress, to make her forget the mortification she had endured. He found excuses 242 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XII. for her resentment, and pardoned even the conspiracies into which her irritation led her^ and he granted, — what was then without example in the history of the empire, — a complete amnesty to all tliose who had taken up arms and proclaimed another emperor, as well as to the rival whom they had decorated with the purple. The reign of Tiberius is the first, since the conversion of Con- stantino, which gives us an idea of Christian virtues adorning the throne: — mildness, moderation, patience, charity. — Unhappily, this excellent prince survived Justin only four years: but, find- ing himself attacked by a mortal disease, he chose, in the same way in which he had been chosen, — not one of his family, but the man he thought most worthy, to inherit the supreme power. The successor and adopted son of Tiberius was Maurice, (a. d. 582 — 602,) a general who had commanded the army in the war against the Persians. He was then forty-three years of age^ and, though his virtue was less pure than that of his predecessor, and his character had some taint of pride, of cruelty, of weak- ness, and of avarice, he was, nevertheless, worthy of the prefe- rence which had been given to him. Maurice, who owed his elevation to his military character, and who had so deeply studied the art of war as to write a treatise upon tactics which has come down to our own time, did not at- tempt to lead his armies in person^ so completely had the effe- minate life of Constantinople rendered the profession of the sol- dier incompatible with the dignity of the sovereign. He opposed but a feeble resistance to the Lombards, and was satisfied with merely strengthening the garrisons in the small number of towns which he still held in Italy. His most formidable enemy, there- fore, was Baian, the Khan of the Avars, (a. d. 570 — 600,) who seemed to have taken Attila for his model, and occupied his country, if not his palace. In the vast plains of Bulgaria, of Wallachia, and Pannonia, where he prevented all cultivation of the earth, it was almost impossible for a regular army to check or chastise the ravages of his wandering troops: they penetrated with impunity into the richest provinces of the empire, and al- most every year carried terror to the walls of Constantinople^ plundering, in their course, the treasures of the Greeks, and carrying off thousands of captives. After having insolently bar- tered peace for a tribute, and insulted the messengers of the em- peror in his own country, — insulted Constantinople through the lips of her own ambassadors,' — Baian made it his sport to vio- late the treaties which he had sworn to keep. CHAP. XII.] MAURICE. 243 The relations of Maurice with the Persian empire were more advantageous. The great Chosroes Nushirvan had died in 579, having lived upwards of eighty years. His son, Hormouz, who succeeded him, (a. d. 579 — 590,) rendered himself odious by every vice which could exhaust the patience even of orientals. His avarice disgusted the troops; his caprice degraded the sa- traps of Persia, and his pretended justice had immolated, as he himself boasted, thirteen thousand victims. An insurrection broke out against him in the principal provinces of Persia: Mau- rice seconded it by sending a Roman army into Mesopotamia and Assyria; the Turks of Thibet advanced at the same time into Khorasan and Bactriana; and the monarchy of the Persians seemed already on the brink of ruin. Bahram, or Varanes, a general who had distinguished himself, under Nushirvan, by his skill and valour, saved the state by disobeying the orders of Hor- mouz. Alone, he undertook the wars against the Turks and against the Romans: he conquered the former, and, although he was less fortunate in his enterprise against the latter, he still pre- served his influence over the Persians. Hormouz having sent him an insulting message, implying that his services were no longer wanted, he raised the standard of revolt, took his sove- reign prisoner, and exhibited to Persia the unwonted sight of a public trial, at which the captive son of Nushirvan pleaded his own cause before the nobles of the land. The unfortunate prince was, by their orders, deposed, blinded, and cast into prison, where he was strangled a short time afterwards by a personal enemy. (a. d. 590.) One party among the Persians wished to transmit the crown to Chosroes II., son of Hormouz; but Bahram refused to recognise him, and he was obliged to flee at the peril of his life, and to take refuge with the Romans. Maurice received the fugitive in a manner no less politic than generous, and spared him the fa- tigue and humiliation of a journey to Constantinople. He col- lected a considerable army on the frontiers of Armenia and Sy- ria, the command of which he intrusted to Narses, a general of Persian origin, who is not to be confounded with the conqueror of Italy. The popular passions of the Persians were already kindled for a counter-revolution; the magi had declared them- selves against Bahram; an army of the partisans of Chosroes had joined that of the Romans, which advanced to Zab on the fron- tiers of Media; and the standards of the declining empire pene- 244 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [^CHAP. XIi. trated into regions which the Roman eagles had never beheld, either during the republic, or the reign of Trajan. Bahram was conquered in two battles, and perished in the eastern extremity of Persia: Chosroes was seated upon the throne, and, according to the custom of oriental despots, he cemented his restoration with the blood of numerous victims. He, however, still retained the army of auxiliaries with which Maurice had furnished him. He assumed the title of adopted son of the Roman emperor; he restored several contested fortresses to Maurice; he granted to the Christians of Persia that liberty of conscience which the magi had always refused them; and the Greeks exulted in the part they had taken in this revolution, as one of the most fortunate occurrences in their history. They soon perceived, however, that a solid alliance must be based upon the friendship of nations, not merely on that of sove- reigns. In the month of October, 602, Maurice attempted to reduce the pay of his soldiers, and to make them winter in the country of the Avars; a sedition instantly broke out, and the in- furiated soldiers invested with the purple one of their centu- rions, named Phocas, who was only distinguished by the violence of his imprecations against the emperor. The monarch still hoped to defend himself in Constantinople: but the people were no less exasperated at his parsimony than the army, and received him with a shower of stones. A monk ran through the streets sword in hand, denouncing him as the object of the wrath of God. Maurice, however, was accused of no heresy; and, in an age where the affairs of the church were mingled with those of the state, he alone seems to have kept aloof from ecclesiastical quarrels. He fled to Chalcedonia, where he was soon taken by the officers of Phocas, who had just entered Constantinople in triumph. His five sons were butchered before his eyes: he him- self perished the last; and the six heads were exposed to the in- sults of the populace in the Hippodrome of Constantinople. A few months afterwards, the widow of Maurice and his three daughters were slaughtered in the same manner: but this was only the prelude to the execrable tyranny which Phocas was about to exercise over the empire for eight years, (a. d. G02 — 610,) during a reign not less remarkable for atrocity than those of Nero and Caligula. Chosroes might, possibly, consider himself bound in gratitude to avenge the prince who had restored him to his throne. Be CHAP. XII.] PERSIAN WAR. 245 that as it may, his policy eagerly seized this pretext for declaring War on the Romans,* and the most opulent cities of the empire were laid waste by the sword of the Persians, to expiate a crime in which they had in nowise participated. Chosroes II. employed several campaigns in rendering himself master of the border towns; and, as long as Phocas reigned, he did not pass the limits of the Euphrates. But Phocas himself fell; the crime whicli Chosroes aifected to avenge, met its punishment: Heraclius, son of the exarch of Carthage, sailed with an African fleet, and was received in the port of Constantinople on the 5th of October, 610, with the title of Augustus. Phocas was given over to the most cruel tortures, and was afterwards beheaded; but the new emperor in vain demanded of the Persian monarch a restoration of that peace between the two empires, which he had now no just cause for withholding. It was precisely at this period that Chosroes, leaving the shores of the Euphrates, undertook the conquest of the Roman empire; whilst Heraclius, whose long reign, (a. d. 610 — 642,) we are only acquainted with through imperfect documents, passed twelve years in a state of inactivity and depression, which forms a strange contrast with the brilliant expeditions by which he af- terwards distinguished himself. In 611, Chosroes occupied the most important cities of Syria,^ — Hierapolis, Chalcis, Bersea, and Aleppo. He took Antioch, the capital of the East; Caesarea, the capital of Cappadocia, fell shortly afterwards. Chosroes de- voted several campaigns to the conquest of Roman Asia; but history does not furnish us with the details of any battle offered to check his progress, nor of any obstinate siege, nor with the name of any Roman general, distinguished even by his reverses. In 614, Palestine was invaded by the Persian armies; Jerusalem opened its gates; the churches were pillaged, 90,000 Christians were massacred, and the fire of the magi succeeded to the wor- ship which had been offered on the altars of the true God. In 616, Egypt was also conquered: the Persians advanced into the deserts of Libya, and destroyed the remains of the ancient Greek colony of Cyrene, in the neighbourhood of Tripoli. During the same year, another army crossed Asia Minor, to Chalcedonia, which yielded after a long siege; and a Persian army maintained its position for ten years, within sight of Constantinople, on the Bosphorus of Thrace. The whole empire seemed to be reduced within the walls of the capital; for, about the same time, the 246 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XK., Avars recommenced their ravages with more ferocity than ever,- and occupied or laid waste the whole European continent, down- to the long wall, which, at a distance of only thirty miles fronv Constantinople, separated that extremity of Thrace from the: mainland. Certain maritime towns, sprinkled at vast distances over all the coasts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, still recognised the nominal authority of the emperors; but their own situation, was so precarious, that they could neither furnish money nor troops for distant expeditions. The final overthrow of the throne. of Heraclius seemed only to be deferred for a few years. Then it was that the man, whose effemlnale habits and de- pressed spirits had hitherto inspired nothing but contempt, all at once displayed the vigour of a young soldier, the energy of a hero, and the talents of a conqueror. The meagre chronicles which relate the annals of the reign of Heraclius, neither ex- plain his successes, nor throw light on his previous reverses: they neither tell us why he seemed to slumber for twelve years upon a throne which was crumbling to dust beneath him, nor why he suddenly awoke, in all the greatness of his energy, to crush the Persians in the course of six years, (a. d, 622 — 627;) nor how he came to relapse into the same apathy, and to lose, by the arms of the Musulmans, during the last fourteen years of his reign, all that he had before regained, (a. d. 628 — 642.) Reduced, as Ave are, to a merely conjectural solution of this historical problem, we are led to imagine that the reverses of the empire were owing to the universal discontent of its subjects; ta the prevalence of religious animosities, and to a resentment for unjust persecution, which induced the heretics of every province to desire a bold avenger even more than a good king. But aftec the Monophy sites, the Monothelltes, the Eutychians, the Nesto- rians, the Jacobites, and the Maronites, had gratified their hatred of the church and of tlie state by delivering their fortresses and their country into the hands of the magi, the ruin of their for- mer enemy soon ceased to console them for their present oppres- sion. They regretted that national independence and that coun- try which they had lost; they appealed to that Heraclius whom they had betrayed. The emperor had been destined by nature for the part of a great man; and, although the pomp of royalty, the influence of courtiers, eunuchs, and women, had lulled him in the lap of luxury, he readily perceived the real weakness of an empire whose resources were weakened by conquest. He tJHAP. XII.] HERACLIUS. 247 saw that it was impossible for the Persian armies, which were "dispersed over the immense extent of the Roman provinces, to arrive in time to succour each other? that they must be in con- stant dread of a rebellion? and that the troops would not dare to leave their remote quarters to support the central forces. In- stead of attacking the Persian army, which lay before his eyes in Chalcedonia, at the very gates of his capital, he embarked with all the soldiers he could muster, and landed in Cilicia, at the angle which Asia Minor forms with Syria. Ten years of magian oppression had taught the inhabitants to regret the sway of the Eastern empire. Heraclius re-enforced his army with such of the natives as had courage to shake off the yoke. In- stead of seeking to meet the Persians, he attempted to cut them off in their rear; and, with a degree of skill and boldness which deserves to be better known, he long avoided them, and ravaged the very countries which they had left behind them. Whilst the whole empire of the East was occupied by the Persians, he led the Roman armies into the heart of Persia: he even pene- trated into regions of whose existence the Greeks had hitherto been ignorant, and where no European conqueror had ever set foot. After having laid waste the shores of the Caspian Sea, he successively attacked, took, and burned, the several capitals of Chosroes, even as far as Ispahan: he extinguished the eternal fire of the magi? he loaded his troops with an enormous booty? and he retaliated on Persia the same disasters which Chosroes had, for ten years, inflicted upon the empire. Heraclius did not cease to offer peace, even in the midst of this career of destruction: while the haughty monarch as con- stantly rejected it in the midst of his disasters and defeats. The Persians at length refused to submit to the extreme sufferings which were the consequences of his obstinacy and of his weak- ness. An insurrection broke out against the king on the 25th of February, 628, and Chosroes was assassinated, with eighteen of his sons. One only of his offspring, Siroes, was allowed to live, and to occupy his father's throne. Peace was restored between Constantinople and Persia? and the ancient boundaries of the two empires on the Euphrates were recognised by both parties. But the whole of Asia had been devastated by this double inva- sion : and the conqueror, who, mean time, was gathering strength in Arabia, met with but slight resistance, when, in the following year, (629,) he began to inundate the exhausted land with the victorious torrent of the Musulman armies. ( 248 ) CHAPTER XIII. Physical Geography of Arabia. — Yemen. — Kepublics of the Red Sea. — Arab Character, Institutions, Poetiy, and ReHgion. — Worship of the Kaa- ba at Mecca. — Birth of Mahommed. — His Marriage. — His Rehgious stu- dies. — Publication of the Koran. — Character of his Religion. — His Public Preaching. — His early Disciples. — Irritation of the Inhabitants of Mecca. — Flight of Mahommed to Medina; Hegira, or Era of the Musulman Reli- gion. — Commencement of his Reign. — His military Talents. — Conquest of Mecca. — Conquest of the rest of Arabia. — Declaration of War with the Empire. — Decline of Mahommed's Health. — His last Words. — His Death, (a. d. 569— 632.) The great peninsula of Arabia, which extends from the Per- sian Gulf to the Red Sea, and from the frontiers of Syria to the shores of the Southern Ocean, forms a distinct world, in which man and beast, the heavens and the earth, wear a peculiar as- pect, and are governed by peculiar laws:- — every thing recalls the eternal independence of an autochthonous people: the an- cient traditions are purely national, and a civilization of a cha- racter entirely peculiar, has been attained without any impulse or assistance from foreign nations. The extent of Arabia is nearly four times that of France; but this vast continent, through which no river takes its course; in which no mountain raises its head high enough to collect the clouds, or to disperse them in rain, or to garner up the snows for the refreshment of these burning plains, is scorched with perpe- tual drought. The very earth is parched; scantily clothed with a short-lived vegetation during the rainy season, it is reduced to dust as soon as the sun regains his unclouded power. The winds, which sweep across its boundless plains, bear along moun- tains of sand, which constantly threaten to swallow up the works of man, and often bury the traveller in a living grave. A few springs, which the industry of man, or the instinct of animals has discovered, and whose waters have been carefully collected and sheltered in cisterns or deep wells by that antique charity, that disinterested benevolence, which prompts an individual to labour for an unknown posterity, mark, at long intervals, the spots where the life of man may be preserved. They are as distant as the cities of Europe; and, in the itinerary of the va- rious caravans, more than half the daily stations are without wa- CHAP. XIII.] ARABIA. 249 ter. Besides these cisterns, however, other springs which have escaped the eye of man, or have not been sheltered bj his la- bours, preserve their waters for the wild beasts of the desert; for the iions and tigers whose thirst is more frequently quenched with blood; and for the antelopes which flees at their approach. The mountains, seared and stripped by the fervour of the sun and the violence of the wdnds, here and there rear their naked heads; but if any of them are lofty enough to attract the clouds and to draw down refreshing showers, or if any sl-ender rivulet trickles down its barren sides before it loses itself in the boundless sands, a luxuriant fertility marks its whole tract: there, the power of a burning sun vivifies what it elsewhere destroys; an island of verdure arises in the midst of the desert; groves of palms cover the sacred source; all the lower animals assemble there, unawed by man, whose empire appears to them less formidable than that of the desert from which they have fled, and they submit to his control with a readiness unknown in other climes. These moun- tains, these living springs, these oases, are scattered but rarely over the vast surface of Arabia; but along the coasts of the Red Sea some spots are marked by more abundant waters, and here flourishing cities have arisen from the earliest antiquity; whilst, at the extremity of the peninsula, on the shores of the ocean, the kingdom of Yemen, and the part called by Europeans Arabia the Happy, are watered by copious streams, carefully cultivated, co- vered with coffee trees, and spice and incense bearing shrubs, whose perfumes are said to be wafted out to sea, and to salute the approaching mariner. The race of men who inhabit this region, so unlike every other, are gifted by nature with the vigour and endurance necessary to triumph over the obstacles and the evils with w^hich they have to struggle. Muscular, agile, sober, patient, the Arab, like his faithful companiotf the camel, can endure thirst and hunger: a few dates, or a little ground barley, which he steeps with water in his hand, sufiice for his nourishment. Fresh and pure water is for him so rare, it seems to him so great a bounty of Heaven, that he thinks not of ardent liquors. His faculties are employed in becoming thoroughly acquainted with the region he has to sub- jugate; and the pathless desert, the moving columns of sand, the parching and poisonous breath of the Samum, strike him neither with amazement nor with dread. He boldly traverses the desert in search of whatever riches are to be found in it; he subdues all 250 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XIII. the animals that dwell in it; or rather, he shares with them, as friends whatever can be wrested from a niggard nature. He guides their intelligence to collect and to preserve the scanty food which Arabia produces; and while he profits by their labours, he preserves the nobleness of their character. The horse lives in the midst of his children; his intelligence is constantly called forth by the society of man, and he obeys rather from affection than from fear. The camel lends him his strength, and his pa- tience, and enables him to carry on an active commerce in a country which nature seemed to have cut off from all communi- cation with the rest of the world. It is only by the triumph of industry and of courage that man can exist in Arabia, in a constant struggle with nature; he could not exist if he had likewise to struggle against despotism. The Arab has always been free, he will always be free; for, with him, the loss of liberty would be almost immediately followed by the loss of existence. How could the maintenance of kings or of ar- mies be extracted out of the labour which scarcely suffices to sup- ply himself witli the means of subsistence? The inhabitant of Arabia Felix alone has not received from nature this stern secu- rity for freedom. In Yemen there are absolute kings. Indeed, this country has more than once been exposed to foreign con- quest; but the cities on the banks of the Red Sea are republics, and the Arab of the desert knows no other government than the patriarchal one. The scheik, the patriarch of the tribe, is regard- ed as father; all the members of it call themselves his children; a figure of speech adopted by other governments, but in Arabia alone, little removed from reality. The scheik counsels his chil- dren, he does not command them; the resolutions of the tribe are formed in the assembly of elders; and he who dissents from them, turns his horse's head to the desert, and goes on his solitary way. It is but here and there that a spot of Arabia is susceptible of cultivation. There alone can territorial property exist. Else- where the earth, like the air, belongs alike to all, and the fruits which she bears without culture are common to all. The fre- quent conflicts of the Bedouin, who acknowledges no territorial property, with those who portioned out fields, enclosed them and claimed them as their own, have accustomed the former to pay lit- tle respect to the laws of property in general. Indeed, he acknow- ledges none but those which govern his tribe; the property of his brother, or that for which his brother has pledged liis word, is alone CHAP. XIII.] ARAB CHARACTER. 251 sacred in his eyes: all other he regards as lawful prey 5 and he exercises the profession of a robber without injury to his self-re- spect, or to his own sense of morality or of law. He assails and partitions whatever foreign property comes within his reach. With him the^ords stranger and enemy are synonymous, unless the stranger have acquired the claims of a guest, have eaten salt at his table, or have come to seat himself with generous confi- dence at his hearth. Then the person of the stranger becomes sacred in his eyes; he will share his last morsel of bread, his last cup of water with him, and will defend him to the last moment of his own life. Among other nations nobility is only the transmission of an- cient wealth and power; but the Bedouin has none but moveable wealth, which he seldom long preserves; he scorns to obey, and does not seek to command; if, then, he respects antiquity of blood, if he carefully preserves his own genealogy, and that of his noble horses, it is only from reverence for the past, from the power of memory, and that force of imagination which is nourished by long solitude and leisure. The Arab is, of all mankind, the one whose mind is kept in the most constant activity. The history of his tribe is the rule of his conduct. Thrown by his wanderings into contact with men of all nations, he never forgets the evil or the good which his fathers have received at the hands of the fa- thers of those he encounters. In the total absence of all social power, of all guarantee for personal security afforded by magis- trates or by laws, gratitude and revenge become fundamental rules of his conduct. Education and habit have conspired to place them beyond the domain of reason, under the guardianship of honour and of a kind of religion. His gratitude is boundless in its devotion, his vengeance unchecked by pity; it is as patient and artful as it is cruel, because it is kept alive by a sense of duty rather than by passion; the study of past times, even the record of the genealogies of his race, serves as fuel to these two sentiments. But the memory of the Arab is enriched by other recollections. The most intense of all the national pleasures is that of poetry; a poetry very different from ours, breathing more impetuous desires, more burning passions, and uttered in a language more figurative, adorned with an imagination more unbridled. We are bad judges of its beauties or of its defects; we ought, however, to admit that it is not the poetry of an uncivilized nation, but of a nation which, following a road to civilization different from that we have trod. 252 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XIII. has advanced as far as climate and other insurmountable obstacles would permit. The Arabic language has been constructed and polished with care, and the wanderer of th« desert is sensible to the slightest want of delicacy, of purity, of expression. Eloquence had been cultivated as well as poetry; and before that of the ex- positors of the law had acquired its full maturity under the reigns of the caliphs, political eloquence had attained to a high perfec- tion, both in the councils of the republics of the Red Sea, and under the tents of the desert, where the chieftains needed its aid to persuade those whom they knew it to be impossible to command. Religion had still deeper influence over the imaginations of the Arabs than poetry; this grave and ardent people, incessantly struggling with difficulties, having death always before their eyes, often exposed to those long and austere privations which exalt the soul of the cenobite, had, from all times, turned their meditations towards the remote and mysterious destinies of man, and his connexion with the invisible world. The eldest religion of the earth, Judaism, had its birth almost within the limits of Arabia. Palestine is on its frontiers; the Hebrews long inhabited the desert; one of the sacred books (that of Job) was written by an Arab, in his native tongue; and tlie origin of the Arabic na- tion, the descent from Ismael, the son of Abraham; flattered the national pride. Numerous and powerful colonies of Jews were scattered over Arabia, where they freely exercised their religion. Still more numerous colonies of Christians had been successively introduced, by the furious persecutions set on foot in the empire against all the sects which had successively fallen off from ortho- doxy in the long dissensions on the Arian controversy, and that of the two natures. Arabia was so completely free, that abso- lute toleration necessarily existed; and all these refugee sects, and all the proselytes they could make among the Arabs, were on a footing of perfect equality. Finding it impossible to injure each other, they were forced to live in peace; and those who on the other side the frontier were incessantly occupied in de- nouncing each other to the tribunals, in reciprocally stripping each other of the rights of citizens and of men, seemed in Ara- bia to be restored to some feeling of charity. But though Arabia had received M'ithin her bosom Jews, Chris- tians of all sects. Magi, and Sabeans, she had, also, a national religion, a polytheism peculiar to herself. Its principal temple was the Kaaba at Mecca, where a black stone which had fallen CHAP. XIII.] MAHOMMED. 253 from heaven was the object of veneration to the faithful, and the temple in which it was deposited was likewise adorned with three hundred and sixty idols. The guardianship of the Kaaba was intrusted to the family of the Koreishites, the most ancient and most illustrious race of the republic of Mecca; and this sa- cerdotal dignity conferred on the head of the family the presi- dency over the councils of the republic. Pilgrims from all parts of Arabia devoutly repaired to Mecca to adore the sacred stone, and to deposite their offerings in the Kaaba; and the inha- bitants of Mecca, whose city, deprived of water, and surrounded by a steril region, had owed its prosperity to superstition rather than to commerce, were attached to the national faith with a zeal heightened by personal interest. In the year 569 of our era, was born, of one of the most dis- tinguished families of Arabia, a man who combined all the quali- ties which characterize his nation. Mahommed, the son of Ab- dallah, was of the race of the Koreishites, and of the particular branch of Hussein, to which the guardianship of the Kaaba and the presidency of the republic of Mecca were attached. Ab- dal-Motalieb,the grandfather of Mahommed, had held these high dignities; but he, as well as his son Abdallah, died before Mo- hammed arrived at man's estate. The presidency of Mecca passed to Abu Taleb, the eldest of his sons; and Mahommed's portion of the paternal inheritance was reduced to five camels and a single slave. At the age of twenty-five he engaged in the service of a rich and noble widow, named Khadijah, for whose commercial interests he made two journeys into Syria. His zeal and intelligence were soon rewarded with the hand of Kha- dijah. His wife was no longer young; and Mahommed, who was reputed the handsomest of the Koreishite race, and who had a passion for women vv'hich Arab morality does not condemn, and which polygamy, established by law, has sanctioned, proved the sincerity and tenderness of his gratitude, by his fidelity, during a union of twenty-four years. As long as she lived, he gave her no rival. Restored by his marriage to opulence and repose, Mahommed, whose character was austere, whose imagination was ardent, and whom his extreme sobriety, exceeding that of most anchorets, disposed to religious meditations and lofty reveries, had now no other thought, no other occupation, than to fix his own belief, to disengage it from the grosser superstitions of his country, and to 33 254 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XIII. elevate his mind to the knowledge of God. Grandson and ne- phew of the high priest of an idol, powerful and revered for his connexion with the temple of the black stone, Mahommed beheld the divinity neither in this rude emblem nor in the idols made by the hand of man which surrounded it. He sought it in his soul 5 he recognised its existence as an eternal spirit, omnipresent, be- nificent, and incapable of being represented by any corporeal image. After brooding over this sublime idea for fifteen years in solitude, after ripening it by meditation, after, perhaps, exalt- ing his imagination by reveries, at the age of forty he resolved to become the reformer of his nation 5 he believed himself — so, at least, he affirmed — called to this work by a special mission of the divinity. It would be an act of extreme injustice to persist in regarding as a mere impostor, and not as a reformer, the man who urged a whole nation onwards in the most important of all steps in the knowledge of truths who led it from an absurd and degrading idolatry, from a priestly slavery which compromised morality and opened a market for the redemption of every vice by expia- tions, to the knowledge of an omnipotent, omnipresent, and su- premely good Being; — of the true God, in short; for, since his attributes are the same, and he is acknowledged the sole object of worship, the God of the Musulmans is the God of the Chris- tians. The profession of faith which Mahommed taught to his disciples, and which has been preserved unaltered to this day, is, that there is but one God, and that Mahommed is his prophet. Was he an impostor because he called himself a pro- phet.? Even on this head, a melancholy experience of human weak- ness — of that mixture of enthusiasm and artifice which, in all ages, has characterized leaders of sects, and which we might, perhaps, find in our own times, and at no great distance from us, in men whose persuasion is undoubtedly sincere, and whose zeal ardent, yet who assert or insinuate a claim to supernatural gifts which they do not possess — ought to teach us indulgence. An intense persuasion is easily confounded with an internal revela- tion; the dreams of an excited imagination become sensible ap- pearances; faith in a future event seems to us like a prophecy; we hesitate to remove an error which has arisen spontaneously within the mind of a true believer, when we think it favourable to his salvation; after sparing his illusions, the next thing is to CHAP. XIII.] THE KORAN. Q55 encourage them, and thus we arrive at pious frauds, which we fancy justified by their end, and by their effect. We easily per- suade ourselves of what we have persuaded others^ and we be- lieve in ourselves when those we love believe in us. Mahom- med never pretended to the gift of miracles j we need not go far to find preachers of our own days, who have founded no empires and yet are not so modest. But the most perfect probity affords no security against the dangers of fanaticism, the intolerance which it engenders, nor the cruelty to which it leads. Mahommed was the reformer of the Arabs; he taught them, and he wished to teach them, the knowledge of the true God. Nevertheless, from the time he adopted the new character of prophet, his life lost its purity, his temper its mildness; policy entered into his religion, fraud min- gled more and more with his conduct; and, at the close of his career, we can hardly explain to ourselves how he could be in good faith with himself. Mahommed could not read; letters were not essential in Ara- bia to a good education : but his memory was adorned with all the most brilliant poetry of his native tongue, his style was pure and elegant, and his eloquence forcible and seductive. The Ko- ran, which he dictated, is esteemed the masterpiece of Arabian literature; and the sublimity of the language affords to Musul- mans sufficient evidence of the inspired character of its author, though, to readers of another faith, the traces of inspiration are not manifest. An admiration acquired in the earliest infancy for a work constantly present to the memory, constantly recalled by all the allusions of national literature, soon creates the very beauty it seems to find. The rarity of literary education seems to have inspired Mahommed with a sort of religious reverence for every book which pretended to inspiration. The authority of The Book, the authority of every thing written, is always great among semi-barbarous people; it is peculiarly so among the Musulmans. The books of the Jews, of the Christians, even of the Magi, raise those who make them the rule of their faith, above the rank of infidels in the eyes of the followers of Ma- hommed; and he himself, while he claimed the character of the greatest prophet of God, the Paraclete promised in Holy Writ, admitted six successive divine revelations — those of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Christ, and, as the final accomplish- ment of all, his own. 256 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XIII. The religion of Mahommed does not consist in belief in dog- mas alone, but in the practice of morality — in justice and chari- ty. He has, it is true, shared the fate of other legislators who have tried to subject the virtues of the heart to positive rules; — the form has taken the place of the substance. Of all acts of religious legislation, the Koran is the one which has erected alms- giving into the most rigorous duty, and has given to it the most precise limits: it exacts from a tenth to a fifth of the income of every true believer, for works of charity^ But the rule has been substituted for the sentiment; the charity of the Musulman is an affair of personal calculation, directed entirely to his own sal- vation; and the man who has scrupulously performed the duty of almsgiving, is not the less hard and cruel to his fellow-men. Outward observances were especially necessary in a religion, which, admitting no religious ceremonies, and even no order of priesthood except the guardians of the laws, seemed peculiarly exposed to danger from coldness and indifference. Preaching was the social observance; prayer, ablution, fast, the individual observances, enjoined on Musulmans. To the very end of his life, Mahommed constantly preached to his people, either on Friday, the day he had specially set apart for religious worship, or on solemn occasions, — in all moments of danger, in all mo- ments of inspiration. His inspiring and seductive eloquence con- tributed to increase the number of his followers, and to animate their zeal. After him, the early caliphs, and all who enjoyed any authority among the faithful, continued these preachings or exhortations, often at the head of armies, whose martial ardour they heightened by the aid of religious enthusiasm. Five times a day, the Musulman is bound to utter a short and fervent prayer, expressed in w^ords of his own, unfettered by any form or liturgy. As a means of fixing his attention, he is commanded to turn his face towards Mecca while he prays — towards that very temple of the Kaaba which was consecrated to idols, but wliich Mahommed, after having purified and hallowed it to the true God, regarded with the veneration it had so long command- ed from his nation and his family. Personal cleanliness was prescribed as a duty to the true believer who was about to pre- sent himself as a supplicant before God; and ablution of the face and hands was the necessary preparation for every prayer. Yet, as Islamism was first proclaimed to a nation which dwelt in de- serts where water was not to be found, the Koran permits the OHAP. XIII.] MORALITY OF THE KORAN. 257 faithful, in case of extreme need, to substitute ablutions with sand. The fasts were very rigid, and admitted of no exception; thej bore the character of the sober and austere man who im- posed them on his disciples. At all times, and in all places, he forbade them the use of wine, and of every sort of fermented liquor: and, during one month of the year, the Ramadan, which, according to the lunar calendar, falls in every month in succes- sion, the Musulmans, from sunrise to sunset, may neither eat nor drink, neither enjoy the luxury of the bath nor of perfumes, nor, in short, any gratification of the senses. Nevertheless, Mahom- med, who imposed so rigid a penance on his disciples, was no advocate for an ascetic life 5 he did not permit his companions to bind themselves by vows, nor would he suffer any monks in his religion: it was not till three years after his death, that fakirs and derricks arose, and this is one of the most important changes Islamism has undergone. But the kind of abstinence on which Christian doctors have in- sisted the most, was that to which Mahommed was indifferent, or which he regarded with the greatest indulgence. Before his time the Arabs had enjoyed unbounded license in love and marriage. Mahommed forbade incestuous unions; he punished adultery and dissoluteness, and diminished the facility of divorce; but he per- mitted every Musulman to have four wives or concubines, whose rights and privileges he defined by law. Raising himself alone, above the laws he had imposed on others, after the death of his first wife Khadijah, he married fifteen, or, according to other writers, seventeen wives in succession, all widows, with the ex- ception of Ayesha, daughter of Abubekr. A fresh chapter of the Koran was brought him by an angel to dispense him from sub- mission to a law which, to us, seems so little severe. His indulgence for this burning passion of the Arabian tempe- rament, which he shared with his countrymen, farther displayed itself in the nature of the future rewards he proclaimed as the sanctions of his religion. He described the forms of the judg- ment to come; in which the body, uniting itself anew to the soul, the sins and the good works of all who believed in God would be weighed, and rewarded or punished. With a tolerance rare in the leader of a sect, he declared, or at least he did not deny, that the followers of every religion might be saved, provided their actions were virtuous. But to the Musulman he promised, that whatever might have been his conduct, he would finally be re- 258 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [CHAP. XIII, ceived into paradise, after expiating his sins or his crimes in a state of purgatory, which would not exceed seven thousand years. The picture which he drew of purgatory and of hell differed little from those which other religions have presented to the terror of mankind. But his paradise was painted by an Arab imagination: groves, rivulets, flowers; perfumes under the shade of fresh and verdant groves; seventy black-eyed houris, gifted with immortal youth and dazzling beauty, solely occupied in administering to the enjoyments of each true believer; — such were the rewards promised to the faithful. Although some of Mahommed's most zealous disciples had been women, he abstained from declaring what sort of paradise was in store for them. Among the articles of faith which Mahommed strove to inculcate on the minds of his followers, was one which acquired greater importance when he united the character of conqueror to that of prophet. In his endeavours to reconcile the inscrutable union of divine prescience with human liberty, he had leaned towards fa- talism; but he never denied the influence of human will on human actions: he only taught his soldiers that the houi^ of death was determined aforehand, and that he who sought to escape it on the field of battle, would meet it in his bed. But disjoining this idea from all others, by insisting little on any other kind of constraint imposed by divine prescience on the freewill of man, and incul- cating this single position with undivided force (though fatalism, to be rational, ought to extend to every action of our lives,) he inspired the Musulmans with an indifference to danger, he gave a security to their bravery, which we should seek in vain among soldiers, animated only by the nobler sentiments of honour and patriotism. It was in the year 609, when Mahommed was already forty, that he began to preach his new doctrine at Mecca. He sought his first proselytes in his own family, and the influence he ob- tained over their minds affords sufficient evidence of the excel- lence of his domestic character. Khadijah was his first convert; then Seid, his slave; Ali, the son of Abu Taleb, his cousin; and Abubekr, one of the most considerable citizens of Mecca. Ten years were employed by Mahommed in slowly disseminating the new doctrine among liis countrymen. All who adopted it be- came inflamed with the ardent faith of new converts. The pro- phet — that was the only name by which Mahommed was known among his disciples — seemed to them to speak the immediate CHAP. XIII.] PROGRESS OF MAHOMMEDANISM. 259 word of the Divinitj; he left not a doubt on their minds either as to the truths he revealed, or as to the fulfilment of his pro- mises. In the fourth year of his declared mission he appointed his cousin Ali, then not more than fourteen years old, his vizir; the empire he had to govern did not then extend over more than twenty followers. Mahommed did not address himself to the citizens of Mecca alone. He waited at the Kaaba for the pilgrims who resorted thither from all parts of Arabia; he represented to them the in- coherence and the grossness of the religious rites they came to practise; he appealed to their reason, and implored them to ac- knowledge the one God, invisible, all good, all powerful, — the ruler of the universe, — instead of the black stone or the lifeless idols before which they prostrated themselves. The eloquence of Mahommed gained him proselytes; but the citizens of Mecca were indignant at this attack on the sanctity of their peculiar temple; this blow at the prosperity of their city, no less than at the authority of their religion, by the grandson of their high priest, the nephew of their chief magistrate. They called upon Abu Taleb to put an end to this scandal. Mahommed's uncle, at the same time that he opposed every possible resistance to the spread of his nephew's doctrine, would not suffer his life or his liberty to be attacked. Mahommed, supported by the family of Hashem against the remaining Koreishites, refused to submit to a decree of excommunication pronounced against him and fixed up in the temple. Aided by his disciples, he sustained a siege in his own house, repulsed the assailants, and kept his ground at Mecca till the death of Abu Taleb and of Khadijah. But when Abu Sophyan, Of the branch of the Ommaiades, succeeded to the dignities of head of the republic and of religion, Maiiommed clearly saw that flight was his only resource; for already his ene- mies had agreed that he should be struck at the same instant by the sword of one member of every tribe, so that none might be pe- culiarly obnoxious to the vengeance of the Hashemites. A refuge, however, was already prepared for Mahommed. His religion had made some progress in the rest of Arabia: and the city of Medina, sixty miles to the north of Mecca, on the Arabian Gulf, had declared itself ready to receive him, and to acknowledge him as prophet and sovereign. But the flight was difficult — that celebrated flight called the Hegira, and which forms the grand era 260 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XIII. of the Musulman religion. The Koreishites watched Mahommed with the utmost vigilancej thej were, however, deceived by the brave and the faithful Ali. In the full conviction that he was devoting himself to the poniards of the implacable foes of his lead- er and friend, he placed himself in Mahommed's bed. Mahom- med and Abubekr fled alone. In the deserts of Arabia, where there are few objects to break the monotonous line of the horizon, it is not easy to escape the eye of enemies well mounted and eager in pursuit. The two fugitives were on the point of falling into the hands of the Koreishites, when they found an asylum in the cavern of Thor, where they passed three days. Their pur- suers advanced to the mouth of the cave^ but seeing the web of a spider hanging unbroken across it, they concluded that no hu- man being could have entered, and passed on. It was not till the heat of the pursuit had subsided, that Mahommed and Abubekr, mounted on two dromedaries which their partisans had procured, and accompanied by a chosen band of fugitives from Mecca, made their entry into Medina, on the 10th of October, a. d. 622, sixteen days after they had quitted the former city. From this time Mahommed, who was now fifty-three years of age, was regarded not only as a prophet, but as a military sove- reign. His religion assumed a different spirit; he no longer con- tented himself with the arts of persuasion, he assumed a tone of command. He declared that the season of long-suffering and patience was over; and that his mission, and that of every true believer, was to extend the empire of his religion by the sword, to destroy the temples of infidels, to obliterate all the monuments of idolatry, and to pursue unbelievers to the ends of the earth, with- out resting from so holy a work even on the days specially con- secrated to religion. *' The sword," said he, *' is the key of heaven and of hell; a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a night passed under arms on his behalf, will be of more avail hereafter to the faithful, than two months of fasting and prayer. To whomsoever falls in battle, his sins shall be pardoned; at the day of judgment his wounds will shine with the splendour of vermilion; they will emit the fragrance of musk and of ambergris; and the wings of angels and of the cherubim shall be the substitutes for the limbs he may have lost." Nor were the glories of heaven the only rewards offered to the valour of the Musulmans: the riches of earth were also to be di- CHAP. XIII.] MAHOMMEd's MILITARY TALENTS. 261 vided among them| and Mahommed from that time began to lead them on to the attack of the rich caravans which crossed the de- sert. His religion thus attracted the wandering Bedouin, less from the sublime dogmas of the unity and spirituality of God, which it promulgated, than from the sanction it gave to pillage, and the rights it conferred on conquerors, not only over the wealth, but over the women and slaves of the conquered. Yet at the very time that Mahommed shared the treasures won by the combined force of the believers, in his own person he did not depart from the antique simplicity of his life. His house and his mosque at Medina were wholly devoid of ornament^ his gar- ments were coarse; his food consisted of a few dates and a little barley bread; and he preached to the people every Friday, leaning on the trunk of a palm tree. It was not till after the lapse of many years, that he allowed himself the luxury of a wooden chair. Mahommed's first battle was fought in 623, against the Korei- shites in the valley of Bedr. He had tried to get possession of a rich caravan, headed by Abu Sophyan; the inhabitants of Mec- ca had assembled in a number greatly superior to that he com- manded, with a view to deliver it: 350 Musulmans were opposed to 850 Koreishite infantry, seconded by 100 horse. Such were the feeble means with which a war was carried on, which was soon to decide the fate of a large portion of the globe. The fanatical ardour of the Musulmans triumphed over the nu- merical superiority of their enemies. They believed that the suc- cour of three thousand angels, led by the archangel Gabriel, had decided the fate of the battle. But Mahommed had not made the faith of his people dependent on success; the same year he was beaten at Ohud, six miles from Medina, and himself wound- ed. In a public discourse he announced his defeat, and the death of seventy martyrs, who, he declared, had already entered into the joys of paradise. Mahommed was indebted to the Jews for a part of his know- ledge and of his religion, yet he entertained that hatred of them which seems to become more bitter between religious sects, in proportion as their differences are few, and their points of agree- ment many. Powerful colonies of that nation, rich, commercial, and utterly devoid of all the warlike virtues, had established themselves in Arabia, at a little distance from Medina: Mahom- med attacked them in succession, from the year 623 to 627. He was not satisfied with partitioning their property, he gave up al- 34 262 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XIII. most all the conquered to tortures which, in his other wars, rare- ly sullied the lustre of his arms. But the object of Mahommed's most ardent desires was the conquest of Mecca. This city was, in his eyes, both the future seat of his religion, and his true country. There it was that he wished to restore the glory of his ancestors, and to surpass it by that which he had won for himself. His first attempts had little success, but every year added to the number of his prose- lytes: Omar, Khaled, Amru, who had distinguished themselves in the ranks of his enemies, successively went over to his ban- ner; 10,000 Arabs of the desert swelled his ranks; and, in 629, Abu Sophyan was compelled to surrender to him the keys of the city. Eleven men and six women, who had been conspicuous among his ancient foes, were proscribed by Mahommed. This was little for the vengeance of an Arab. The Koreishites threw themselves at his feet. " What mercy can you expect," said he, "from a man whom you have so deeply offended?" — "We trust," replied they, " to the generosity of our kinsman." — "And you shall not trust in vain," said he; "you are free." The Kaaba was purified by his orders; all the inhabitants of Mecca embraced the religion of the Koran; and a perpetual law prohibited any unbeliever from setting foot within the holy city. Every step gained by the victor prophet rendered the succeed- ing one less difiicult; and, after the conquest of Mecca, that of the rest of Arabia cost him only three years, (from 629 to 632.) It was marked by the great victory of Hunain, and by the siege and the reduction of Tayef. His lieutenants advanced from the shores of the Red Sea to those of the ocean and of the Persian Gulf; and, at the period of Mahommed's last pilgrimage to the Kaaba, in 632, a hundred and fourteen thousand Musulmans marched under his banner. During the six years of his reign, Mahommed fought in person at nine sieges or battles, and his lieutenants led on the army of the faithful in fifteen military expeditions. Almost all these were confined within the limits of Arabia; but, in 629 or 630, Seid marched at the head of a Musulman army into Palestine; and Heraclius, at the moment of his return from his brilliant campaigns, was attacked by an unknown enemy. The following year Mahommed advanced in person, at the head of 20,000 foot and 10,000 horse, on the road to Damascus, and formally de- clared war upon the Roman empire. It does not appear, how- CHAP. XIII.] DEATH OF MAHOMMED. 263 ever, that any battle was foughtj and, perhaps, his declining health induced him to disband his army. Mahommed had now reached his sixty-third year: for four years the vigour of body which he had formerly displayed had seemed to desert him, yet he continued to discharge all the func- tions of a king, a general, and a prophet. A fever, which lasted a fortnight, accompanied with occasional delirium, was the im- mediate cause of his death. As he felt his danger, he recom- mended himself to the prayers of the faithful, and to the for- giveness of all whom he might have offended. " If," said he, in his last public discourse, " there be any one here whom I have struck unjustly, I submit myself to be struck by him in return^ if I have injured the reputation of any Musulman, let him in his turn disclose all my sins; if I have despoiled any one, behold I am ready to satisfy his claims."—'' Yes," replied a voice from the crowd, " thou owest me three drachms of silver, which have never been repaid me." Mohammed examined the debt, dis- charged it, and thanked his creditor for demanding it in this world, rather than at the tribunal of God. He then enfranchised his slaves, gave minute directions for his burial, calmed the la- mentations of his friends, and pronounced a benediction upon them. Till within three days of his death he continued to per- form his devotions in the mosque. When, at length, he was too feeble, he charged Abubekr with this duty; and it was thought that he thus intended to point out his old friend as his successor. But he expressed no opinion, no desire, on this subject, and seemed to leave it entirely to the decision of the assembly of the faithful. He contemplated the approach of death with perfect calmness; but, mingling to the last the doubtful pretensions of a prophet with the lively faith of an enthusiast, he repeated the words which he declared he heard from the archangel Gabriel, who visited the earth for the last time on his behalf. He repeat- ed what he had before affirmed— that the angel of death would not bear away his soul without first solemnly asking his permis- sion; and this permission he granted aloud. Extended on a car- pet which covered the floor, his head during his last agony rested on the bosom of Ayesha, the best beloved of his wives. He fainted from excess of pain; but, on recovering his senses, he fixed his eyes on the ceiling, and distinctly pronounced these, his last words: — *' Oh God, pardon my sins! I come to rejoin 264 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [CHAP. XIII. my brethren in heaven." He expired on the 25th of May, or, according to another calculation, the 3d of June, 632. Despair filled the breasts of his disciples throughout the city of Medina, where he breathed his last. The fiery Omar, drawing his sword, declared that he would strike off the head of the infi- del who should dare to assert that the prophet was no more. But Abubekr, the faithful friend and the earliest disciple of Mahom- med, addressing himself to Omar, and to the multitude, said, "Is it Mahommed, or the God of Mahommed, that we worship? The God of Mahommed lives for ever: but his prophet w-as a mortal like ourselves; and, as he had predicted to us, he has un- dergone the common lot of humanity." By these words the tumult was appeased; and Mahommed was buried by his kindred, and by his cousin, and son-in-law, Ali, in the very spot where he expired. ( 265 ) CHAPTER XIV. Ignorance or Indifference of neig-hbouring- Nations to the Rise and Progress of Islamism. — Its rapid Spread under Mahommed's immediate Successors.—^ Union of the Military and the Monastic Character in the Saracenic War- riors. — Sing-ular Frugality of the Governmeat. — Abubekr elected under the title of Khaliph, or Lieutenant of the Prophet. — His extreme Frugality and Simplicity. — His Death. — He appoints Omar his Successor. — Charac- ter of Omar. — Conquests of the Musulmans during the Reigns of Abubekr and Omar. — Defeat of the King of Persia and of the Greek Emperor. — Conquest of Syria, Persia, and Egypt.— Instructions of Abubekr to the Generals. — State of the Asiatic Provinces of the Greek Empire, and of Persia. — Threefold Alternative offered by the Mahommedan Conquerors before giving Battle. — Summons of Abu Obeidah to the City of Jerusalem. — Successses of Khaled in Persia. — His Recall to Syria. — Siege of Bosra. — Treachery of Romanus. — Desertions to the Musulman Army. — Siege of Damascus. — Fate of the Roman Empire decided at the Battle of Aiz- nadin. — Continued Successes of the Arabs.— Siege of Jerusalem. — Its Sur- render. — Entry of the Khaliph. — Submission of Antioch and Aleppo. — Flight of Heraclius and of his Son Constantine. — Dispersion of the Greek Army. — Submission of the rest of Syria. — Death of Abu Obeidah. — Death of Khaled. — Conquest of Persia by the Musulmans. — Battle of Ca- desia. — Death of Yezdegerd and Extinction of the Line of the Sassanides. — Conquest of Egypt by Amu.— Siege of Memphis. — Surrender of it by the Copts. — Foundation of Kahira, or Cairo. — Siege of Alexandria. — Its Evacuation by the Greeks. — Its Magnificence. — Virtuous Forbearance of Omar. — Alexandrian Library. — Death of Heraclius. — Changes in the Spirit of the Musulman Army. — Assassination of Omar. — Election of Othman, Secretary of the Prophet. — External Successes and Internal Dissensions of his Reign. — His Assassination. — Ah proclaimed Khaliph. — Opposition to him. — Ayesha. — Battle of the Camel. — Election of Moaviah in Syria. — Civil War between Ali and Moaviah. — Origin of the Sects of Shiahs and Sunnis. — Murder of Ali. — His Son Hassan acknowledged by the Shiahs. — Hassan's Abdication in Favour of Moaviah. — Khaliphate made heredi- tary in Moaviah's Family. — Revolt and Death of Hossein. — Destruction of the Family of the Prophet, a. d. 632—680. For twenty-three years Mahommed had sustained the charac- ter of prophet^ for ten, that of sovereign and conqueror; and, in the latter years of his life, he had given to his empire an extent far beyond what the hopes of any but a fanatic could possibly have aspired to at the commencement of his career. But his victories, his doctrine, and the revolution he had effected, had been confined within the boundaries of Arabia. Changes of opinion in an illite- rate nation, whose language had never been studied by its neigh- bours, did not seem of sufficient importance to engage the atten- tion of the world. The revolutions of the little republics of the Red 266 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XIV« Sea had never had the slightest influence over the condition of other countries; and the union of the Arabs of the desert, free as the antelope which bounds over their sands, seemed never likely to be more than transitory. At Constantinople, at Antioch, and at Alexandria, the birth of Islamism was either wholly unknown, or was thought too insignificant to be feared. But the revolution, which, during the life of Mahommed, had been confined to Arabia, made wide and rapid progress during the lives of his earliest disciples and the reigns of his chosen friends. From the death of the prophet, in 632, to that of Ali, his cousin and son-in-law, and one of his first adherents, in 661, twelve years were filled with conquests which astound the ima- gination. During eleven years of weakness and irresolution, the monarchy then seemed to retrograde. Lastly, five years of furious civil war terminated in the establishment of a despotism as foreign to the first institutions of Mahommed, as to the man- ners and the sentiments of the Arabs. Mahommed had founded his military system entirely on the lively faith of his warriors; on the confidence with which he had inspired them, that the battle-field opened the shortest way to eternal happiness, and on the ardour of the Musulmans for ob- taining that new crown of martyrdom, reserved for those who fell by the sword of the infidel. But he had made no change in their armour, nor in their manner of fighting. The troops pre- sented the same appearance which their neighbours had held in constant contempt. The Saracen soldiers were half naked: armed, when on foot, only with a bow and arrows; when on horseback, (and these were the more numerous,) with a light lance and a sabre, or scimitar. Their horses were indefatigable, unequalled in the world for their docility, as well as for their spirit. But they did not manoeuvre in large or regular masses; they knew nothing of those charges of northern cavalry which bear down battalions by their resistless weight. Single-handed warriors advanced in front of the army to signalize themselves by acts of personal prowess, and, after a few lightning strokes of their flashing scimitars, escaped from their enemies by the swift- ness of their steeds, whenever they found themselves inferior in numbers or in armour. Battles were long-continued skirmishes, in which the hostile troops did not engage corps to corps: they frequently lasted several days; and it was not till after their ad- versaries, exhausted by unusual fatigue, were put to rout, that CHAP. XIV.] PROGRESS OF ISLAMISM. 267 the Arabs became terrible in pursuit. Mahommed's brothers in arms do not seem to have made any advance in military science^ and, during the most brilliant period of Saracenic conquest, during the lives of the associates of the prophet, no sort of war- like engine followed the army, and sieges were conducted by them as they are by savages. Soldiers like these, known only as robbers of the desert, had never inspired any serious fears either in the Romans or the Persians, even in the times of the greatest distresses of either empire. Yet these desert-robbers attacked both empires at once, and overthrew both in a few years : their weapons were precisely the same^ their souls alone were changed. The spectacle had never before been exhibited (let us hope that it may never again be witnessed) of a great and entire na- tion, forgetting the present world, and occupied solely with the world to come, while, at the same time, it displayed all the worldly qualities^ the most consummate policy, the most intre- pid bravery, the most indefatigable activity. Never till now had the virtues of the monk been seen united with those of the sol- dier: sobriety, patience, submission, the strict performance of all duties, however humble, or however sublime, joined to lust of carnage, love of glory, and that enterprising energy of mind, so different from the passive courage of the convent. At a later period, in the wars of the crusades, the Christian knights exhi- bited the same qualities, but on a much more limited scale. If the warlike fanaticism of the knights of Malta had been commu- nicated to a whole people, they also would have conquered the world. Never had the revenues of a great empire been administered with the parsimony of a convent, by a government which cost nothing, which wanted nothing for itself, which scorned all lux- ury and all pleasure, and which devoted all the gains of war exclusively to the support of war. This government must be the first object of our attention. Mahommed had not connected any political opinions with his religion; he had not destroyed the freedom of the desert; he had instituted neither aristocratical senate, nor hereditary power, in his own, or in any other family. The liberty of all, the indi- vidual will of each, had been suspended by the power of inspi- ration. In him the people had thought they obeyed the voice of God, and not any human authority. When he died, no organi- 268 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [^CHAP. XIV. zation had been given to the empire of the faithful, no hand seemed prepared to gather the inheritance of the prophet. But the same religious enthusiasm still inspired the Musulmans. Their sword, their wealth, and their power, ought, in their eyes, to have no other destination than the extending of the knowledge of the true God: the part which each took was indifferent, pro- vided he laboured with all his strength to the same end; and the presidency of the republic seemed to consist in nothing save the presidency of the prayers at the tomb or at the palace of Medi- na. It was thought that the early friends of the prophet were the most likely to be inspired by his example, and instructed by his familiar conversation; and, consequently, Abubekr, the first believer in Mahommed's mission, and the companion of his flight, was pointed out by Omar, and proclaimed by the chiefs assem- bled around the death-bed of the prophet, under the title of his lieutenant or khaliph. This title was acknowledged by the cities of Mecca, Medina,, and Tayef, and, more especially, by the army of the Faithful j but the Arabs of the desert, who had been allured far more by the hope of plunder than the revelations of the prophet, already began to desert a cause which they thought a tottering one. The idolaters, who had been thought converted, were in arms for the restoration of the ancient national faith; and a new prophet, named Moseilama, inspired either by genuine fanaticism, or by the example of Mahommed's success, preached a new religion in Yemen. Abubekr, already feeling the w^eight of years, thought himself dispensed from performing any other duties of a khaliph than those of public prayer and exhortation, and deputed the va- liant Khaled, surnamed 'the Sword of God,' to subdue the re- bels who abandoned the faith and attacked the empire of Islam - ism: his victories restored peace and religious unity to Arabia in a few months. Abubekr, mean while, had ordered his daughter Ayesha, the widow of Mahommed, to make an inventory of his patrimony, that every Musulman miglit know whether he had sought to en- rich himself by the contributions of the faithful. He demanded a salary or allowance of three pieces of gold a week for the main- tenance of himself, a single black slave, and one camel; at the end of every week he distributed to the poor all that was left out of this humble pension. Abubekr continued for two years at the head of the republic : his time was exclusively spent in prayer, CHAP. XIV.] MUSULMAN CONQUESTS. 269 penitence, and the administration of justice, which was marked by equity, and tempered by mildness. At the close of this pe- riod, the aged friend of the prophet felt his end approaching; and, with the consent of the faithful, named the intrepid Omar as his successor. " I do not want that place,'^ said Omar. *' But the place wants you," replied Abubekr. Omar, having been sa- luted by the acclamations of the army, was invested with the khaliphate on the 24th of July, a. d. 634. Omar had given brilliant proofs of valour in the wars of Ma- hommed; but he considered the dignity of khaliph as putting an end to his military career, and exacting from him an exclusive attention to religious duties. During a reign of ten years he was solely intent on directing the prayers of the faithful, giving an example of moderation and justice, of abstinence, and contempt of outward grandeur. His food was barley bread or dates; his drink, water; the dress in which he preached to the people was patched in twelve places. A satrap of Persia, who came to do him homage, found him sleeping on the steps of the mosque at Medina; and yet he had at his disposal funds which had enabled him to grant pensions to all the brothers in arms of the prophet. All those who had fought at the battle of Bedr, had five thou- sand pieces of gold a year; all who had served under Mahom- med had, at least, three thousand; and all the soldiers who had distinguished themselves under Abubekr enjoyed some reward. It was during the reigns of Abubekr and Omar that the Mu- sulmans achieved the most wonderful conquests. During these twelve years they attacked, at the same time, the two rivals, Yezdegerd, grandson of Chosroes, king of Persia, and Heraclius, the Roman emperor. They subjugated Syria, Persia, and Egypt; they reduced to obedience thirty-six thousand cities, towns, or castles; they destroyed four thousand temples or churches, and they built fourteen hundred mosques dedicated to the religion of Mahommed. These conquests were achieved by lieutenants ap- pointed by the khaliph. Among them, Khaled, the Sword of God; Amru, the conqueror of Egypt; Abu Obeidah, the pro- tector as well as the conqueror of Syria, peculiarly distinguished themselves: but all jealousy and personal ambition were so en- tirely forgotten by men whose sole object was the triumph and ascendency of Islamism, that they descended in turn from the highest commands to the most subaltern posts; and a private sol- dier or an enfranchised slave was set over the heads of veteran 35 SrO FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XIV. warriors, without exciting a murmur, or the least inclination to resistance. The comrades of Mahommed, being utterly ignorant of geo- graphy; of the interests, the strength, the policy, and the lan- guage of the neighbouring nations whom they attacked; had no idea of laying the plan of a campaign; of strengthening them- selves by alliances, or of establishing secret correspondences in the countries they were about to invade. The instructions which they gave to the commanders of armies were general and simple; those of Abubekr to the two commanders of the army of Syria, Abu Obeidah and Khaled, have come down to us. They will give some notion of the spirit which animated the early Musul- mans. • '* Remember," said he, *^ that you are always in the presence of God; always at the point of death; always in expectation of judgment; always in hope of paradise: avoid, then, injustice and oppression; consult with your brethren, and study to preserve the love and the confidence of your troops. When you fight the battles of the Lord, bear yourselves like men, and turn not your backs upon the enemy. Let your victories never be sullied by the blood of vv^omen or of children. Destroy not the palm trees, neither burn the standing corn, nor cut down fruit-bearing trees. Do no damage to the herds and flocks, nor kill any beasts but such as are necessary for your sustenance. Whatsoever treaty you make, be faithful to it, and let your deeds be according to your words. As you advance into the enemy's country, you will find religious persons who live retired in monasteries, to the end that they may serve God after their manner. You shall not slay them, nor destroy their monasteries. But you will find, also, another sort of men, who belong to the synagogue of Satan, and who have the crown of their heads shaven. To such give no quarter, unless they become Mahommedans, or consent to pay tribute." I know not what was the distinction Abubekr thus intended to establish between the two sorts of monks and priests. But the Musulmans were now, for the first time, about to meet the Christians face to face; and Abubekr, who knew the latter only by report, probably acted in obedience to some prejudice of which we are ignorant. We do not find that, when the Musul- mans had actually entered the various countries of Christendom CHAP. XIV.] STATE OF THE GREEK EMPIRE. 271 as invaders, they did, in fact, refuse to give quarter to tonsured priests. The Asiatic provinces of the Greek empire, and Persia, alter- nately devastated, during the vt^ars of Chosroes and of Heraclius, in the seventh century, underwent a change in their organization and in their population, the causes and the mode of which it is impossible for us to come at any just understanding of, on the very meager and inadequate reports of ancient historians. The fortresses were dismantled j confidence in the strength of the frontiers was gone 5 the administration was disorganized, and obedience to government was irregular and imperfect. But want, the suffering under a foreign yoke, and probably the flight or the abduction of a great number of slaves, had forced the provincials to act with a little more courage and manliness^ to take a more active share in their own affairs^ to withdraw less from the toils and perils of war. It seems that they were once more become soldiers, although very bad soldiers. As we approach the conclusion of the reign of Heraclius, we begin once more to find mention of armies pro- portioned to the extent of his empire^ of armies of a hundred thousand men, though their valour and discipline, indeed, were of a kind which lead us to suppose that they were composed ex- clusively of provincial and Asiatic militia. The names of the officers, which are incidentally mentioned, are not Greek, but Syrian; the towns seem to recover an independent existence; their own citizens roused themselves in their defence; their own magistrates directed all their affairs; and the interests of the empire are forgotten in the interests of the province. It was not in a country in which all vital energy was annihilated by the long and deadly presence of despotism, but in one in which that energy had lost all its ordinary action from the efforts of anar- chy and of foreign occupation, that the Musulman generals had to combat. Hence it doubtless happens, that after victory they invariably found recruits for their own armies from the ranks of those of their enemies. The Musulmans did not attack the Persians or the Syrians by surprise. They always prefaced the battle by a summons, in which they gave their enemies the threefold choice; either to be- come converts to Islamism, and in that case to share all the ho- nours, enjoyments, rights, and privileges of true believers; or to submit on condition of paying tribute; or, lastly, to try the for- 272 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XIV, tune of war. We have the summons addressed to the city of Jerusalem by Abu Obeidah. It is highly characteristic: — " Salvation and happiness to whomsoever followeth the straight path. We require you to testify that God is the true God, and that Mahommed is his prophet. If you refuse to do this, promise to pay tribute, and submit yourselves immediately to us. Otherwise I shall bring against you men who find more pleasure in death, than you find in drinking wine and in eating the flesh of swinej and I shall not depart from you till it shall have pleased God to enable me to destroy those among you who fight against me, and to reduce your children to slavery." In the course of one year, the very year of the death of Ma- hommed, (a. d. 632,) Abubekr sent two armies, the one against Persia, the other against Syria. The former, conducted by Khaled, advanced as far as the banks of the Euphrates, and con- quered the cities of Anbar and of Hira, near the ruins of Baby- lon. The kingdom of Persia was, at that time, torn by intestine wars between the successors of Chosroes IV. But the Musul- mans, instead of pushing their conquests in that direction, re- called Khaled, and sent him to join -Abu Obeidah, who com- manded the second army in Syria. This general, after proposing to the Romans an alternative which they scarcely understood, — to acknowledge the true God and his prophet, or to pay a tri- bute, — had attacked Bosra, one of the fortified cities which co- vered Syria on the Arabian frontier. The Syrians would hardly believe the attack with which they were menaced to be much more formidable than those incursions of wandering bands of Arabs of the desert, to which they were accustomed. Their governor, Romanus, had formed a different judgment; he urged his countrymen to surrender; and when they, in their indigna- tion, deprived him of the command, he treacherously introduced the Arabs by night into the fortress. On the following day, in the presence of his astonished fellow-citizens, he made a public profession of his new faith in the one God and in Mahommed his prophet. This was the beginning of those desertions which in- flicted a deadly blow upon the empire. All the discontented; all those whose ambition or cupidity outran their advancement or their fortune; all who had any secret injury to avenge, were sure to be received with open arms in the ranks of the victors, and to share, according to their several merits, either the equa- lity which reigned among the soldiers, or the offices of command CHAP. XIV.] SIEGES OF BOSRA AND DAMASCUS. 273 and the splendid rewards which awaited their chiefs. Even in those provinces where tlie Romans had never been able to levy a single cohort, the Musulman army was recruited hj fugitives with a rapidity, a facility, which abundantly proves that it is the government, and not the climate, which gives or which destroys courage. The surrender of Bosra was quickly followed by the attack on Damascus, one of the most flourishing cities of Syria, and pecu- liarly favoured as to situation^ although the history of the em- pire, hitherto, scarcely contains a mention of its existence. But the siege of Damascus awakened the attention of Heraclius, who had been returned about four years from his successful wars in Persia, and had relapsed into that luxurious indolence whence we saw him arouse himself for a short time in so surprising a manner. He collected an army, which the Arabs affirm to have been seventy thousand strongj but he did not put himself at its head. His lieutenants endeavoured in vain to raise the siege of Damascus; and, in the disastrous battle of Aiznadin, on the 13th of July, A. D. 633, the fate of the Roman empire in Asia was decided; Heraclius never recovered a defeat in which his army is said to have lost fifty thousand men. The taking of Damascus, after a siege which lasted through a year; the fall of Emessa, and of Heliopolis, or Balbec; the new victory gained over the Greeks on the banks of the Hieromax, or Yermuk, in November, 636, were followed by the attack on Jerusalem, where the rival religions seemed to be brought into more immediate hostility; for the whole of Christendom had their eyes turned towards the holy city, and regarded the spot, sanctified by the life and sufferings of Christ, and, above all, by the Holy Sepulchre, as the outward pledges of the triumph of his religion. During a siege of four months, the religious enthu- siasm of the besieged kept pace with that of the assailants; the walls were thickly planted with crosses, banners blessed by the priests, and miraculous images. But all this zeal was vain and impotent. Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, who directed the efforts of the besieged, was constrained to offer to capitulate. He, however, refused to open the gates of the city until the kha- liph Omar, the commander of the faithful, should come in per- son to receive so precious a deposite, and to guaranty the capi- tulation by his word. Jerusalem, equally sacred in the eyes of Musulmans as in those of Christians, appeared to the vetemn 2r4 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [CHAP. XIV. companions of Mahommed to be a fit object, to the khaliph, of a pious pilgrimage. He set out: the same camel which bore the sovereign of Arabia and a great part of Syria and Persia was also laden with all his baggage 5 namely, a sack of wheat, a bas- ket of dates, a wooden bowl, and a skin of water. When he came in sight of Jerusalem, the khaliph exclaimed, *' God and victorious Lord, grant us a victory unstained with blood!" His attendants pitched his tent of camel's hair cloth^ he sat down on the earthy and there he signed the capitulation by which he promised to leave the Christians not only the full enjoyment of liberty of conscience, but the undisputed possession of the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Having completed this act, he entered the city without precaution and without fear, discoursing with the patriarch by the way. He declined the invitation of the latter to offer up his devotions in the church of the Christians, lest his compliance might be quoted as a precedent by his suc- cessors, who might resort thither to pray, and thus invade the exclusive property in the temple which he had just guarantied to the Christians. He laid the foundation of a magnificent mosque on the ruins of the temple of Solomon^ and at the expi- ration of ten days he returned in the same simple and unosten- tatious manner to Medina, where he passed the remainder of his life in offering up his devotions at the tomb of the prophet. The submission of Jerusalem to the Musulman arms is dated about the year 637, that of Antioch and Aleppo during the cam- paign of 638. At the same time Heraclius, who had not ap- peared at the head of the army, secretly fled from a province which he did not dare to defend, and which he had no hope of revisiting. Escaping by a feint from his courtiers and his sol- diers, he embarked with a few friends for Constantinople. His eldest son Constantine, who commanded at Csesarea, fled as soon as he heard of the emperor's departuref and the army un- der his command dispersed, or went over to the ranks of the enemy. Tyre and Tripoli were given up to the Arabs by trea- chery, and the remaining cities of Syria opened their gates by capitulation. Abu Obeidah, who dreaded for the victors the luxurious delights of Antioch, would not permit his soldiers to remain there more than three daysj but the aged khaliph, who was austere to himself alone, regretted that the Musulmans had not enjoyed a little more of the fruits of their victories. «' God has not forbidden," he wrote to his general, " the CHAP. XIV.] CONQUEST OF JERUSALEM. 2T5 use of the good things of this world to true believers and those who practise good works: you ought, therefore, to have granted them longer repose, and have allowed them to partake of the en- joyments the country offers. Every Saracen who has not a fa- mily in Arabia is at liberty to marry in Syria; and all are per- mitted to buy as many female slaves as they may need." A contagious disease, which attacked the Musulmans shortly after the conquest of Syria, disabled them from taking advantage of the khaliph's indulgence. By this malady they lost twenty- five thousand effective troops; and among them their leader, Abu Obeidah. The valiant warrior who had seconded him, and who in all moments of difficulty and danger assumed the command, which he afterwards surrendered back to his chief, Khaled, ' the Sword of God,' died three years later at Emessa. The conquest of Persia, which Khaled had commenced, had been followed up by other Saracen generals. Yezdegerd, grand- son of Chosroes, who had ascended the throne in 632, and whose reign has been rendered famous, not for any personal merit he displayed, but from its relation to an astronomical cycle, was at- tacked by an army of thirty thousand Musulmans. The battle of Cadesia, a place sixty leagues from Bagdad, decided the fate of the Persian monarchy, (a. d. 636.) It lasted three whole days, and the Saracens lost seven thousand five hundred men: but the Persian army was annihilated, the standard of the mo- narchy was carried off; the fertile province of Assyria, or Irak, was conquered, and the possession of it guarantied by the foun- dation of Basra, or, as Europeans called it, Bussora, on the Eu- phrates, below its junction with the Tigris, twelve leagues from the sea. Seyd, general of the Musulmans, afterwards advanced beyond the Tigris, in the month of March, 637. He entered Madain, or Ctesiphon, the capital of Persia, by assault; and the accumulated treasures of ages were abandoned to the Musulman plunderers. The conquerors, dissatisfied with the site of the ancient capital, founded a new one, to which they gave the name of Kufah, on the right bank of the Euphrates. Yezdegerd, however, who had taken refuge in the mountains, kept together for some time the wrecks of the Persian empire; but, after a se- ries of defeats, just as he was in the act of entreating a miller to transport him in his boat across a river on the last fron- tier of his kingdom, he was overtaken by some Musulman horse- men, and slain, a. d. 651, the nineteenth year of his disastrous £76 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XIV. reign. With him expired the second Persian dynasty, that of the Sassanides. Syria and Persia had been but feebly defended by the Chris- tians and the Magi. Egypt was voluntarily given up by the Copts, who, severed from the dominant church by the dispute concerning the two natures and the two wills of Christ, preferred the yoke of the Musulmans to the persecution of the orthodox. Long before their surrender, even during the lifetime of Maliommed, they had entered into a negotiation with the Arabs, their neighbours^ but the latter, full of the ideas they had imbibed from their assiduous study of the books of the Old Testament, estimated the glory and power of Egypt rather by the grandeur ascribed to the Pharaohs, than by their own eyes. Omar, urged by the valiant Amru, one of the warriors who had contributed the most powerfully to the conquest of Syria, had given his consent to the invasion of Egypt. He, however, quickly repented the having sanctioned so daring an enterprise, and despatched a courier after Amru, who was advancing across the desert with no more than four thousand soldiers, ordering him to retrace his steps, if he was still within the confines of Syria; but to regard the die as cast, and boldly to pursue his way, if he had already crossed the frontiers of Egypt. Amru, distrusting the irresolution of his sovereign, would not open the letter until he was actually on the enemy's soil. He then assembled a council of war, and took all the chiefs to witness that the orders of the khaliph, no less than those of Heaven, bound him to continue his march. It was in the month of June, 638; and Pelusium, which surrendered after a month's siege, opened to the Saracens the entrance to the country. The Romans had transported the seat of government in Egypt to Alexandria; and Memphis, the ancient capital, not far from the Pyramids, had sunk to the rank of a secondary city; neverthe- less, its population was still very considerable, and, as the Greeks inhabited Alexandria by preference, Memphis had remained al- most exclusively an Egyptian or Coptic city. It was before this city that Amru appeared in the summer of 638, or rather before the suburb of Babylon, or Mizrah, which was on the right bank of the river and on the Arab side; while the ancient Memphis, as well as the Pyramids, were on the left or Libyan side. The siege was protracted through seven months, during which period Amru renewed his negotiations with the Coptic Monothelites and their general Mokawkas. A tribute of two pieces of gold for every man CH AP. XIV.] SIEGE OF ALEXANDRIA. 277' above the age of sixteen was the price paid for entire liberty of conscience. Benjamin, the patriarch of the Jacobites, came forth out of the desert to pay homage to the conqueror^ throughout the whole province to the south of Memphis the Copts took arms, attacked the Greeks and their clergy, massacred a great number of them, and put the remainder to flight. The antique Memphis at length opened her gates; but the victorious Saracens preferred the suburb of Mizrah as a residence, on account of its greater proximity to their own country. They gave it the name of Ka- hira,* or the city of victory. The population insensibly passed over from the left to the right bank of the river for the sake of being near the caravans which arrived from the desert; and the ancient city of Sesostris was soon little more than a city of tombs. The conquest of Egypt could be secured only by that of the Delta, whither all the fugitive Greeks from the valley of the Nile had retired; and by that of Alexandria, the secand city of the world for population and for wealth. The port of this metropolis, op'en to the Greek navy, might re- ceive constant re-enforcements, and introduce hostile armies into the heart of the country; whilst tlie inhabitants, inflamed with re- ligious zeal, and exasperated by the treachery they liad just expe- rienced from the Copts, were ready to afford powerful assistance to the garrison. Amru led the Musulman army across the Delta, where his valour displayed itself in daily combats. He laid siege to the city, the circumference of which was, at that time, ten miles: but as it is defended on one side by the sea, and on the other by the lake Mareotis, the ramparts exposed to attack did not exceed two miles and a half in length, at the utmost. For fourteen months the siege was carried an with a fury rarely pa- ralleled in the history of warfare. Amru was carried off* by the besieged in one of their sorties, but was not recognised. His haughty demeanour, however, began to excite suspi, Pepin caused him- self to be raised on a shield at Soissons, and proclaimed king of the Franks^ after which he was anointed by the bishops with a mysterious oil which placed him under the immediate protection of the Deity. Childeric III. submitted without resistance, and was shut up in a convent at St. Omer. His son, whose birth had probably given some alarm to Pepin, was also put out of the way. The profound obscurity which hangs over the history of the latter reigns of the Merovingian line is not dissipated immediate- ly after the accession of the new dynasty. The character of king Pepin is completely unknown to us. We have no means of judging whether his profound deference for the priesthood was the effect of policy or of superstition; yet this is the only re- markable feature of his character of which we have any record. We have not the slightest idea either of his habits, his talents, or of the degree of instruction which he could have acquired; and, during a reign of sixteen years from the time of his coronation, (a. d. 752 — 768,) we gain no farther information concerning him. Yet the coronation of Pepin must be regarded as the final and completing act of the revolution which placed the south of Eu- rope under Germanic ascendency, and renewed the rigorous or- ganization which the conquerors of France had brought from the North. The other Pepin, his grandfather, who conquered the Neustrians and the freemen with the aid of a portion of the great nobles, while he augmented his own power, had disorga- nized the empire. All the dukes, his allies, had looked to the CHAP. XVI.] PEPIN THE SHORT. Sll power of shaking off their yoke as the first fruit of victory. The domination of the Franks had ceased to be recognised by Ger- many and by southern Gaul 5 and, during seventy years, the Carlovingians were involved in a struggle with their former al- lies, the object of which was to strip them of the prerogatives for which they had fought side by side. Pepin the Short, in as- suming the title of king, instantly asserted his claim to the same supremacy which had been enjoyed by the descendants of Clo- vis^ and, so great is the power of names over men, that the pre- tensions he put forth to a predominance over the independent princes began to be recognised as just. A part of the dukes of Germany acknowledged his supremacy. Odilo, duke of Bava- ria, demanded his sister in marriage, and promised to march again under the Frankic banner. The whole north of Gaul obeyed. The submission of the south was the fruit of a con- quest which occupied nearly the entire reign of Pepin. One of the independent dukes, Guaifer, ruled over the whole country lying between the Loire and the Pyrennees. This was the ancient kingdom of Aquitaine, which now bore no higher title than that of dukedom. It was the same country v/hich Clovis had endea- voured to wrest from the Visigoths^ and Pepin, like Clovis, sought in religion a pretext for wresting it from his sovereign, and for inducing the Franks to second his projects. He accused Guaifer of having robbed the churches of a part of their wealth; cited him to make instant restitution of them; and, on his refusing, entered Aquitaine. The war lasted eight years, (a. d. T60 — 768:) it was followed up with intense exasperation, but was at length termi- nated by the death of Guaifer, the entire ruin of his family, and the union of Aquitaine with the crown of France. Pepin had profited by the dissensions of the vSaracens in Spain, to recover Septimania from them. He had taken Narbonne in 759, and had for the first time united Languedoc, as far as the eastern Pyrennees, to the Frankic monarchy. Burgundy and Pro- vence, overrun by his armies, no longer opposed any resistance. The dukes of those provinces had submitted to the royal authori- ty, without offering battlej and, at the conclusion of his reign, there remained no portion of Gaul which was not subject to the monarchy. Even Italy had once more experienced the bravery of the Franks and the power of their kings. That country, divided for two centuries between the exarchs of Ravenna and the Lombard 312 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XVI. kings, had just undergone a revolution. Astolfo, king of the Lombards, had conquered Ravenna and the towns subject to the Greek emperors along the Adriatic, in the year 752: from that time this province was called Romagna, as being the only one which had remained subject to the Roman empire. The exarchate was abolished, and king Astolfo began to turn his arms against the other small provinces which the Greeks still possessed in Ita- ly, and, especially the dukedom of Rome. The pope was the first citizen of this duchy; and, though he always acknowledged the sovereignty of the Greek empire, he exercised throughout the province a power rendered the more extensive by the attachment of the Italians to the worship of images, and their consequent ha- tred of the domination of the iconoclast emperors. Stephen II., who then occupied the pontifical chair, instead of imploring the aid of Constantine Copronymus, applied to the king of the Franks, and conjured him to protect the apostle St. Peter, and the flock more immediately committed to his care. He even repaired to France in person, in 753, to solicit assistance. He excited a de- gree of enthusiasm which he had not expected; for, while he pre- sented himself as a suppliant, clothed in sackcloth and ashes, he found himself considered as a messenger of the divinity, or rather as a divinity himself, whose orders were to be implicitly obeyed. The Franks, with one accord, declared themselves ready to sacri- fice their property and their lives for his advantage. Pepin asked fresh consecration at his hands, and implored him to anoint his wife and children with the same mysterious oil. In return, he offered to abandon for ever the care of his kingdom, and to devote the whole remainder of his life to warring for the glory of God and of his vicar upon earth. The pope dexterously took advantage of a state of popular ex- citement which he had not anticipated. He immediately shifted his ground, and required for himself, or rather for the apostle Pe- ter from whom he produced a letter addressed to the king of the Franks, the succour which he had at first asked for the Roman republic or the Greek empire. Of his own authority he granted to Pepin and his two sons the title of Patrician; a title which was then appropriated to the lieutenant of that very Greek empire to which the pontiff himself had hitherto been subject. He led Pepin and the army of the Franks into Italy; and after Astolfo had been conquered, he obtained from the generosity of the Frankic king the donation, made in favour of St. Peter, CHAP. XVI.] PEPIN THE SHORT. 313 either of the provinces themselves which had hitherto belonged to the Greeks, or of certain rights over those provinces, which were never very accurately defined, or very clearly understood, either by the donor or the receiver; but which, from their very vagueness and confusion, gave rise to the pretensions of the court of Rome over the sovereignty of a part of Italy. Pepin reigned eleven years as mayor of the palace, and sixteen as king. His father had been the representative of a sovereign army; Pepin constituted himself the representative of a sovereign clergy; but both, by their rare talents, by their energy of will, by their great personal glory, had succeeded in completely pre- dominating over the puissant body in whose name they acted. All that we know of the laws, of the civil acts, of the military achievements, of Pepin, seem to have been calculated to found and to consolidate this sovereignty of the clergy. Nevertheless, so long as he lived, he alone profited by a power which he had laboured to transmit; and when, on the 24th of September, 768, he died, he left behind him a son greater than himself, who, during nearly half a century, continued to rule and to protect that clergy whose authority and influence Pepin had substituted for that of the army. It was not till the reign of his grandson that all the consequences of the revolution he had effected in the monarchy could be estimated. After having so long directed our attention alternately to so- vereigns enervated by luxury and sloth, and by all the vices of courts; or to captains of barbarians, whose energy was chiefly manifested in acts of ferocity; after having turned with equal repugnance from the crimes of the Roman emperors and the crimes of the Frankic kings, we come at length to a great and noble character, — a man who unites the talents of the warrior, the geni- us of the legislator, and the virtues of the private citizen; a man who, born in the midst of barbarism, encompassed with the thick- est darkness by the prevailing ignorance of his age, pours around him a stream of light and of glory; a man who gave a new im- pulse to civilization, and sensibly advanced the condition of the human race, which had so long been retrograding; who created, after ages had been passed in destroying; and who, though much better known than those who came two centuries before or two centuries after him, still inspires us with regret that we know not more of him. The entire reign of Charle- magne, from the year 768 to the year 814, is one of the most 314 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XVI. important periods of modern history. Charlemagne, claimed by the church as a saint^ by the French as the greatest of their kings 5 by the Germans as their countryman^ by the Italians as their emperor^ may be regarded as in some sort the fountain of all modern history. It is to him that we must always refer, in order to understand thoroughly our present condition and institutions. It was not immediately that Charlemagne manifested all the greatness of his genius and of his character. Compelled to edu- cate himself, to re-create for his own use the whole world of morals and of politics, some time was necessary for him to find his way out of the beaten track; to conceive what he owed to himself and to his subjects; to appeal to any other rule or stan- dard of action than those low personal interests which had been the sole guides of his predecessors. He did not succeed alone to his father; at the moment of his death Pepin had divided the monarchy between his two sons. To Charles, who was the elder, and who had then attained the age of twenty-six, he bequeathed the western part of his dominions, from Friesland to the Bay of Biscay; to Karloman, the younger, he gave the east, from Swabia to the sea of Marseilles. The two brothers did not long remain on terms of amity. If Karloman had lived, war would, in all probability, have broken out between them at no distant period: he died in the third year of his reign, a. d. 771. Charles, with a rapacity and injustice which could not have been surpassed by any of his predecessors, stripped the widow and children of his brother of their inheritance, forced them to flee into Italy, nor is his name free from the stain of even darker suspicions as to their fate. In his domestic manners, Charles, too, began by incurring re- ;proach, from which, indeed, he was not wholly free to the end ;of his life. It was not only on account of his numerous mis- tresses, and the scandal which he thus caused, both to his people -and to his daughters, who were brought up in the palace inhabit- ed by his concubines, that he deserved censure. In his mar- riages and divorces he obeyed no other law than his own caprice; he seemed insensible to the suffering of the unfortunate women whom, he repudiated under the slightest pretext, and left a prey to regret and humiliation. But singular strength, both of soul and of intellect, are required to enable a man to raise himself to the comprehension and practice of true and severe morality, when every seductive influence sur- CHAP. XVI.] CHARLEMAGNE. 315 rounds him, every example tends to corrupt him; when even the guides and guardians of his conscience offer him the treacherous resource of compensations, and assure him that all his sins may- be absolved by alms and donations bestowed on monks and on churches. We owe it to Charles to reckon every step he set against the torrent, and to repress all surprise if its impetuosity occasionally hurried him along with it. It is not known whether Pepin, who was entirely illiterate himself, had endeavoured to procure for his son the advantages of a liberal education; or whether Charlemagne began, as well as completed, by his own unaided will and energy, those studies which enlightened his mind and contributed largely to his moral greatness. Eginhard, his friend and secretary, has left us some most curious and valuable details respecting the instruction he acquired. " Charles's eloquence," says he, " was abundant: he expressed with great facility whatever he desired; and, not contenting him- self with his mother tongue, he had taken the trouble to learn those of foreign lands. He had so well learned Latin, that he could discourse in publick in that language almost as easily as in his own. He understood Greek better than he was able to em- ploy it." It is worthy of remark, that Eginhard does not tell us whether Charlemagne understood or could speak that vatois of the lower classes, called Roman, which then began to be formed in Gaul, and which gave birth to the French language; his native tongue was, of course, German. *' Charles," continues Eginhard, " had so much eloquence and fluency of speech, that he might almost be charged with abusing this gift. He had carefully studied the liberal arts; he had a great respect for the teachers of them, and heaped honours upon them. He had learned gram- mar of deacon Peter of Pisa, who gave him lessons in his old age. In his other studies he had, as preceptor, Albinus, surnamed Alcuin, a deacon from Britain, but of Saxon race; a man learned in every sort of knowledge. With him he devoted a great deal of time and labour to the learning of rhetoric, dialectics, and, more especially, astronomy. He also learned the art of calculating, or arithmetic; and applied himself with great assiduity to ascertain the courses of the stars. He likewise exercised himself in writing; and commonly kept under his pillow, tablets and small books, so that when he had any moments to spare, he might accustom his hand to form letters: but he succeeded ill in this work, which was taken up too late and unseasonably." 316 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XVI. It is SO contrary to all our usages to attain to so great a pro- ficiency in language and in science without the power of writing, that people have tried to invent some other explanation for the words of this text, clear as it is; and have conjectured that cal- ligraphy, and not mere writing, is meant. This arises from their having lost sight of the direction which instruction took in bar- barous ages. With few books, and a still greater scarcity of pa- per, writing was a great and costly luxury; lessons were almost all orally given, nor was writing ever used as a mere instrument of study. Charles, it is true, was not constrained to economize parchment; but his masters could never have required the habit, with their other pupils, of making writing the basis of instruc- tion; so that they would not have known how to combine their lessons with the extracts, dictations, and other written exercises now in use: they required of their scholars no notes nor compo- sitions, and they inscribed their precepts not on tablets, but on the memory. Writing was a useful art, and not a branch of science; and a man of active mind found it much more advan- tageous to employ secretaries. Although, therefore, Charles could not write, we may place him, without hesitation, among the most learned sovereigns that ever sat upon a throne. The great man that, at the period we are now contemplating, wielded the sceptre of France with undivided sway, had at his disposal the whole force of one of the most powerful monarchies the w^orld ever beheld. The whole of Gaul was now subject to the Franks, as far as the Pyrennees, the Mediterranean, and the Italian Alps. Helvetia, Rhaetia, and Swabia, were annexed to it; and its northern frontier extended far beyond the Rhine, to the plains of Lower Germany, where the Franks bordered on the Saxons. The population of this vast empire was very une- qually distributed. Throughout the south of Gaul it was still numerous, but disarmed: the inhabitants of Aquitaine, Provence, and Burgundy were also often designated by the name of Ro- mans; their language, out of which arose the modern French, was not understood by their conquerors; they were always re- garded with distrust, were not incorporated in the armies, nor appointed to any places of trust or influence. In the centre of Gaul, though occupied by two nations instead of one — the Franks and the Romans, the former of whom had not learned the lan- guage of the latter, — the population was more thinly scattered; the greater number of husbandmen were reduced to a state of OHAP. XVI.] LOMBARD WAR. 317 slavery; the nobles occupied whole provinces, which they admi- nistered like vast farms; and freemen, dispersed with their small hereditary properties around the borders of a great estate, felt themselves in a state of oppression which often drove them to renounce their allodia, to abandon their freehold property, and submit themselves in voluntary allegiance to some one of their powerful neighbours, who, in return, engaged to afford them pro tection. But, in the provinces situated on the banks of tlie Rhine, which have preserved to this day the use of the German language, the Teutonic race were sole masters. There were few slaves, and, consequently, few great lords; the population mainly consisted of freemen, who cultivated their own allodia; and leudes, or feudatory vassals, who had bound themselves in military service to their lords, and held themselves constantly armed and prepared to perform it. It was in these provinces, of which Aix-la-Chapelle, or, in their own language, Aachem, was, in some sort, the metropolis, that the whole nerve and vigour of the Frankic nation resided. There it was that Charlemagne assembled his armies; there he convoked his states-general. It was with the aid of this Ger- manic portion of his subjects alone that he ruled the rest of his monarchy, and that he attempted conquests beyond its limits. Charles's neighbours were not powerful enough to inspire him with much anxiety. To the v/est, the sea bounded his territory^ and, beyond it, the island of Britain, divided among the petty kings of the Saxon heptarchy, and in a state of absolute barba- rism, exercised no influence, and could awaken no fears. To the south, Spain had detached itself, in the year 755, from the great empire of the khaliphs. A descendant of the OmmiadeSj, Abderrahman, had founded the kingdom of Corduba, which the sovereign of Damascus regarded as a revolted province. The Saracens had ceased to be formidable; and, in the Asturias, Na- varre, and Arragon, obscure Gothic princes began, under the pro- tection of Charlemagne, to emerge from their mountain holds> and to drive back the Musulman&. To the West, the Lombards in Italy, the Bavarians in Ger- many, had already felt the power of the Franks, and dissembled their hatred and their distrust, from the fear of provoking a too potent enemy. On the north alone, the vast regions of Lower Germany were covered with confederations of the Saxons, whose government was very nearly the same as that of the Franks had 41 318 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. []CHAP. XVI. been three centuries before; whose bravery v^as equally formida- ble; but the social bonds between whom were too lax to render them a compact body, fitted to attempt a distant conquest. Each of these neighbouring states felt, in turn, the weight of the arms of Charlemagne. Desiderio, or Didier, had succeeded to Astolfo in 756, on the throne of the Lombards. An attempt of Bertha, mother of Charlemagne, to unite the two royal houses by marriage, had produced the very contrary effect; — the effect, indeed, generally produced by that false policy which founds national alliances on the private affections of sovereigns. In repudiating Desideria, daughter of Didier, Charles had deeply offended his father-in- law, and liad imbittered national rivalries by a domestic injury. The donation which Pepin had made to the Holy see, of the pro- vinces conquered from the Greek empire, had proved, from its vagueness and its non-execution, a source of continual animosi- ties between the Lombards and the popes; and Stephen III., who then occupied the papal throne, incessantly solicited Charles to tread in his father's footsteps, to undertake anew the defence of the apostle St. Peter, whom Stephen always assumed to be di- rectly interested in the temporal prosperity of the church of Rome, and to crush the Lombard nations for ever. The young monarch, who found himself at the head of a warlike people, and to whom the chief of his religion offered eternal salvation as an encouragement to him to follow the dictates of his own ambition, his personal resentments, and his most ignoble passions, readily yielded to these solicitations. He convoked an assembly of the Franks at Geneva. On the 1st of May, 773, his warriors were to repair in arms to this place, so foreign to their language and so remote from their homes. This war, which was destined to secure to Charles one of his first and most brilliant conquests, was not of long duration. His army entered Italy by Mont St. Bernard and Mont Cenis. The Lombards, not daring to meet their enemy in the open field, collected all their forces in Pavia, in the hope that the barbarians, far less skilled than themselves in the art of sieges, would waste their strength before the walls of that strongly fortified place, or would fall victims to the diseases which a foreign climate and their own intemperance would not fail to produce in their lines. But it appears that already Charles had found means to intro- duce into his camp a better discipline than had hitherto prevailed CHAP. XVI.] SAXONS. 319 in the Frankic armies. He was not discouraged during a siege, or rather a blockade, which lasted nearly a year. He had even sufficient confidence in his lieutenants, to quit his army, while he went to celebrate the festival of Easter at Rome, where he was received by the pope with all the honours which the church ever delights to render to a powerful sovereign. Pavia was at length obliged to open her gates, in the beginning of June, 774. Desi- derio was given up to Charles, with his wife and daughter, and sent prisoner to Liege 5 whence, it appears, he was afterwards transferred to Corbie. The remainder of his life was conse- crated to fasting and prayer — the sole consolations of his capti- vity. His son, Adalgis, who had been at the same time be- sieged in Verona, had escaped a similar fate by flight. He sought a refuge at the court of Constantinople. The rest of the nation had submitted to the victory and Charles united the crown of Lombardy to that of the Franks. The war with the Saxons had not for its object, like that of Italy, the conquest of a country enriched with all the gifts of nature, and the labours of man; it seemed to promise much less glorious results. It was longer, far more inveterate and fero- cious, and demanded far greater sacrifices of men and money. The end, however, which Charles proposed to himself, was not less important, nor were the consequences of his successes less durable. The free and warlike Saxons already possessed those advan- tages over the Franks, which nations entirely barbarous have over those which begin to be civilized and have acquired more of the vices than the virtues of refinement and prosperity. The confederation of the Saxons was as yet little formidable; but nothing was wanting, save the fortunate accident which might raise up an able chief among them, to unite all the forces of their various leagues, lead them into the South, and once more overrun and conquer Gaul and Italy, as the Visigoths, the Bur- gundians, the Franks, the Ostrogoths, and the Lombards had successively done. The experience of several centuries had proved, that barbarous nations followed in each other's track; that one which had achieved its conquests, never continued in a condition to I'esist a new invader; that, in this constant and ine- vitable disproportion of strength, not only Europe was exposed to a renewal of the same calamities, but that all progress became impossible: the darkness of barbarism grew thicker every day; 320 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XVI. and the moment in which any degree of order or tranquillity seemed about to be established in a newly conquered country, might be almost infallibly regarded as the forerunner of a still more terrible convulsion. We are in a position to judge of a futurity which Charlemagne could not foresee^ since we know the character of his successors, and the state of the empire during their reign. This knowledge leaves no doubt as to what would have been the final result of the war between the Franks and the Saxons, if, instead of break- ing out in the time of Charlemagne, it had been deferred till the time of Louis the Debonnaire, or Charles the Bald. Charles ci- vilized Northern Saxony: a century later, the Saxons would have replunged Gaul into complete barbarism^ they would have repeated the times of Clovis and of his successors, till, enfeebled in their turn by the delights of the South and the vices of their slaves, they would have given place to new conquerors. Charles may be reproached with having suffered himself to be carried away, during this war, by vengeance and intolerance; with having exhibited instances of cruelty which are at variance with the ge- neral bent of his character; but his main object seems to have been consistent with wisdom; and to this day, we probably en- joy the fruits of his success. The Saxons, whom Pepin and Charles Martel had already combated, with whom Charlemagne was destined to be involved in a much longer conflict, were divided into Ostphalen, or East- phalians, to the east; Westphalen, or Westphalians, to the west; and Engern, or Angarians, in the centre. Their northern fron- tiers extended to the Baltic sea, their southern to the Lippe. Like the other Germanic nations, they were not subject to a sin- gle master; but to as many chiefs or kings as they counted can- tons, and almost villages. They held a general diet every year, on the banks of the Weser, at which they discussed their public affairs. At one of these meetings, probably that of ^7SL^ the Priest St. Libuin presented himself before them, and exhorted them to be- come converts to the Christian faith; announcing to them at the same time the approaching attack of the greatest sovereign of the West, who would soon ravage their country with fire and sword, and would exterminate the population to avenge his God. The assembled Saxons were strongly inclined to massacre the saint who addressed them in such menacing language. One old CHAP. XVI.] SAXON WAR. 321 man, however, took him under his protection: he represented to his fellow-countrymen, that the priest was the ambassador of a strange, and, probably, hostile divinity; and, that, however offen- sive the language in which he delivered the substance of his em- bassy, they were bound to respect in bis person the privileges of an ambassador. The Saxons, in consequence, abstained from avenging the provocations given them by St. Libuin; but, in ha- tred to the God of whose threats he was the bearer, they burned the church of Deventer, which had just been erected, and mas- sacred all the Christians whom they found assembled there. At the same time, the Frankic diet was assembled at Worms, under the presidency of Charles. They considered the massacre of the Christians at Deventer as a national aggression, and im- mediately declared war on the Saxons. This war, the most fe- rocious, the most terrible, that the Franks ever maintained, en- dured for thirty-three years. Wedekind, one of the petty kings of the Westphalians, was distinguished from his countrymen by his courage, his perseverance, and his implacable hatred of the Franks: he deserved to be regarded as a worthy antagonist of Charlemagne; and, though he did not unite all his countrymen under his sway as a monarch, he soon obtained the foremost rank in their councils and their armies. But few pitched battles were fought between the two nations: when Charlemagne advanced across the country, with forces infinitely superior to those which the Saxons could collect, Wedekind, with his bravest followers, re- treated behind the Elbe, and even into Denmark; while the remain- ing Saxons promised submission, gave hostages, and consented to receive baptism, — for that, in the eyes of Charlemagne, was the sign of obedience and of civilization. Indeed, in other respects, the Frankic monarch scarcely changed the organization of Saxony. He left to the people their petty kings, with the title of Counts; their laws and internal government, which were very nearly the same as those of his own subjects. In proportion as he advanced, however, he built cities, and founded churches and bishoprics, to which he annexed vast grants of land. When the term of military service of the freemen had expired, and Charles retired, Wedekind returned at the head of his body of emigrants, raised the country anew, burnt the churches, and often carried his incursions into France; and, by way of reprisal, cruelly devastated the whole banks of the Rhine. The obstinacy of the Saxons; their contempt of the engagements 322 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XVI. they had entered into; their frequent relapses into the ancient na- tional faith, — to the worship celebrated at the Irmensul, or Heer- mann-Sseule (pillar of the chieftain,) — which, after they had re- ceived baptism, was treated by Charlemagne as apostacy; exas- perated the Frankic monarch, and this part of his history is sullied by two or three acts of detestable cruelty. The first period of the war extended from 779. to 780: it had been terminated by a great victory obtained by Charles at Buchholz, after which the three confederations of the Saxons had accepted terms of peace. The empire of the Franks had been extended as far as the Elbe; and several new cities, particularly Paderborn, indicated the pro- gress of civilization in Northern Germany; but Wedekind, who was in Denmark, returned into Saxony in 782, raised the whole country, and defeated Charles's generals. Charles, victorious in his turn, demanded that all those accused by their countrymen of inciting this renewal of hostilities, should be given up to him. Four thousand five hundred were delivered into his hands, and he caused them all to be beheaded in the same day, in the au- tumn of 782, at Yerden, on the banks of the Aller. This atrocious act served only to exasperate the hatred of the Saxons, and to give to the war a character of ferocity which it had not previously displayed. During three years (a. d. 783-— 785,) more numerous engagements, two great general battles, and frightful ravages, continued even into the heart of the win- ter, desolated Saxony, while, at the same time, they exhausted the army of the Franks: more blood was shed in three years, than in the nine of the preceding war. At length, however, Wedekind saw that a longer resistance would but aggravate the sufferings of his unhappy country: he demanded peace; received baptism; and, trusting to the honour and generosity of Charle- magne, repaired to his palace of Attigny on the Aisne, whence he departed loaded with presents. Wedekind was faithful to the engagements he had contracted, and the war in Saxony was suspended for eight years. In 793, it broke out again, in consequence of a general insurrection of the Saxon youth, who had taken no share in the previous con- flicts, and who thought that it was reserved for them to recover the national independence, and to avenge the national honour. This last revolt was not completely subdued till the year 804. Charles's only expedient for subjugating these haughty and in- trepid people, was, to demand of every village — almost of every CHAP. XVI.] CHARLEMAGNE. 32S family — hostages chosen from among the boldest and most high- spirited of their young men. He transported them into the va- rious half-deserted provinces of Gaul and Italy; where, severed by immense distances from the country and all the associations of their birth, they at length insensibly adopted the manners and sentiments of their conquerors. But the wounds inflicted by the sword, however cruel, heal more rapidly than the wasting ulcer of bad laws. Saxony — a country conquered after such long and desolating wars — will re- appear before us, after the next generation, much more populous, more warlike, and more in a condition to defend herself, than Gaul, which had triumphed over her in such repeated attacks. It was in the midst of these massacres, these ravages, — of all the violences and miseries attendant on military conquest, that the north of Germany passed from barbarism to civilization; that new cities were founded in the midst of vast forests; that laws were recognised by those who had long made it their glory to acknowledge no law; that a certain acquaintance with letters was the result of the spread of Christianity; lastly, that the arts and the enjoyments of private life were introduced as far as the Elbe, by the frequent travels and long residences of rich and powerful persons, whom Charlemagne led in his train to the ex- tremities of Germany. We have hitherto contemplated Charlemagne only in the cha- racter of a successful warrior: his administration, and the re- modelling of the empire, will form the subject of another chap- ter. { 324 ) CHAPTER XVII. Extension of Charlemagne's Empire. — Bavaria, Hungary, Spain. — Friend- ship of Pope Adrian for Charlemagne. — His Death. — Pope Leo IH. — Conspiracy against him. — His Visit to Charles at Paderborn. — Charle- magne's public Entiy into Rome. — His Coronation as Emperor of the West. — Effect of the Government and Nation of the Franks. — Encou- ragement given by Charlemagne to Arts and Letters. — Musical Reforms. —Magnificence of Aix-la-Chapelle. — Administrative and economical Re- gulations in the Capitularies of Charlemagne. — Evils resulting from Sla- very. — Extent of Grants to the Crown Vassals. — Mode of Recruiting the Army. — Its fatal Effects. — Institution of Missi Dominici. — Laws of Char- lemagne. — Frontiers of the Western Empire. — Relations of the three Empires. — State of the Greek Empire. — Constantine Copronymus. — Iconoclast Controversy. — Leo IV. — His Death. — Irene. — Her Ambition and Crimes.— Project of Marriage between lier and Charlemagne. — Di- vision of the Empire of the Saracens. — Ommiades. — Fatin[iides. — Abbas- sides. — Mervan IJ. — Massacre of the Ommiades by Abul Abbas. — Khali- phate of the West. — Kingdom of Fez. — Abbaside, or Eastern Khaliphs. — Harun al Raschid. — His Love of Learning. — His Embassies to Charle- magne. — Division of the Vfestern Empire among his three Sons, by Charlemagne. — His Character as a Father. — Education of his Children. — Eginhard and Emma. — Death of Charlemagne's two Sons. — Change in the Succession. — Louis, King of Aquitaine, proclaimed Emperor and King.-r-His Coronation at Aix-la-Chapelle. — Death of Charlemagne. — A. D. 800—814. We have taken a brief survey of the history of the two most important conquests of Charlemagne: that v^^hich subjected to his authority the whole of Italy, as far as the frontiers of the duchy of Benevento, with the unimportant provinces in posses- sion of the Greeks 5 and that which, in the first instance, devas- tated, and afterwards civilized, Saxony. The latter extended the frontiers of the emperor of the Franks to the north-east, as far as the Elbe. We shall enter into still less detail respecting the subsequent wars of this great king: they were less impressed with the cha- racter of his genius, and less connected with the history of civi- vilization. Having once attained the vast power which he exer- cised over France, Germany, and Italy, he had no need to plan conquests, which followed of themselves. The power of the surrounding nations bore so little proportion to his own, and so far were they from meditating a struggle with the empire of the Franks, or an attempt at its subversion, that they seemed to CHAP. XVII.] POPES ADRIAN AND LEO III. 325 haive no other object than that of supplanting each other in their master's favour, and of forming a more intimate connexion with the Franks, the more effectually to gratify their mutual spirit of animosity and revenge. Charles would have probably confined himself within the new boundaries which gave a more compact form to his monarchy^ but the Slavonians, who inhabited the other side of the Elbe, summoned each other, with mutual recriminations, before his tri- bunal. It was at their instigation that he marched his army to the Oder, and even beyond it. The duke of Bavaria was also accused by his rivals; and, sentence having been pronounced against him by his peers, at the diet of Ingelheim, he was deposed in 788; Bavaria was united to the rest of Germany; and the Franks, whose territory thus touched the frontiers of the Avars and the Huns, penetrated into the country now called Hungary, and advanced upon the lower Danube, as far as the frontiers of the Greek empire. The petty Moorish or Christian princes of the Spanish border w^ere not less assiduous at the court of Charlemagne, nor less eager to accuse and attack each other for the benefit of France; they, in fact, compelled him to extend to the Ebro the new French province, which was designated by the name of the Spanish Marches. These conquests, which daily became more easy and more stable, and separated the enemies of the Franks from each other by so immense a distance, as to render all union or co-operation against Charlemagne impossible, laid the foundation of the new empire of the West, the name of which was restored by pope Leo HI., on Christmas-day, in the year 800. Since the conquest of Italy in T74, the two popes, Adrian, and after him Leo, had constantly acted as the lieutenants of Charlemagne. They kept up a regular correspondence with him; watched his ministers, and employed spies to discover not only the intrigues, but even the sentiments, of the Greeks and Lombards, against whom they sought to heighten the resentment of Charlemagne, that they might afterwards divide the spoil. Adrian, especially, whose reign was very long, (a. d. 772 — 795,) manifested a degree of enmity to the Lombard dukes, whom Charlemagne had protected in the excercise of their functions, which at length excited his distrust. Whatever was his devotedness to the church, he had sufficient discrimination to distinguish between the passions of 42 326 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. fcHAP. XVII. priests and the interests of Christendom. He had endeavoured to ascertain the truth or falsehood of a scandalous accusation against the pope. The dukes in the vicinity of Rome asserted that the pontiff sold his vassals to Saracen merchants, who sent them as slaves into Spain and Africa. The pope acknowled'^-ed (a. d. 780) that this traffic in Christians had taken place in his port of Civita Vecchia; but he retorted the accusation upon his accusers, declaring that the Lombards had been compelled by famine to sell each other. The question was never satisfactorily cleared up; and Charlemagne, although he treated the pope with every mark of respect, ceased from that time to follow his counsels. Leo III., the successor of Adrian, had neither evinced less devotedness to Charles, nor betrayed less personal ambition. He had, however, excited a violent resentment at Rome. A conspiracy had been formed against him in 799, by some priests. He had been arrested and wounded: it was even reported that the conspirators had torn out his eyes and tongue, and that he had immediately recovered them by a miracle. He escaped, after some hours, from the hands of his enemies, and, on the in- vitation of Charles, visited that monarch at Paderborn — the cen- tre of the recent conquests which he had achieved for Christianity. It was there resolved that Charlemagne should take a new journey into Italy, and punish the conspirators; and there, proba- bly, was arranged the solemn coronation which Leo III. was preparing for Charlemagne; though this project was enveloped in profound secrecy, lest it should disgust the Franks and other barbarian nations, who had hitherto acknowledged Charlemagne a^ their chief. On the 24th of November, a. d. 800, Charle- magne made his entry into Rome. Seven days after, before an assembly of Frankic and Roman lords, he permitted Leo III. to exculpate himself, on oath, from the accusation preferred against him; and upon the authority of this single testimony of his inno- cence, he condemned his enemies to death, as calumniators and conspirators. In return for these marks of favour, on Christmas- day, after performing mass in the church of the Vatican, before Charles and the assembled people, Leo advanced towards him, and placed a golden crown upon his head. Immediately the clergy and the pope exclaimed, according to the formula observed for the Roman emperors, — " Long life and victory to the august Charles, crowned by God great and pacific emperor of the Ro- CHAP. XVII.] CHARLEMAGNE. 327 mans!" These acclamations and this crown were considered as expressing the revival of the empire of the West, after an inter- ruption of 324 years from the period when Agustulus was deposed. In receiving the imperial crown, Charlemagne might be said to adopt the recollections of Rome and of the empire. By this act he declared himself the representative of ancient civilization, of social order, and legitimate authority, and not of the barbaric conquerors, who founded all their rights upon the sword. By thus allowing their chief to receive a Roman dignity in exchange for the rank which he held from them, the Franks unconsciously subjected themselves to be treated like the Romans. The chan- cery of Charlemagne adopted all the pompous titles of the court of Byzantium; and the nobles and counsellors of the new em- peror no longer approached iiim without placing one knee on the ground, and kissing his foot. Whatever opinion may be formed concerning an etiquette, which, perhaps, Charles himself despised, he at least evinced great zeal in his efforts to administer the government of his king- dom according to law, and to revive a taste for science, litera- ture, and the useful arts. He gave a new impulse to that vast portion of Europe which submitted to his sway; and though its action was for a long time suspended or paralyzed, from him may be dated the birth of modern civilization. It was in Italy, more especially, that Charles sought teachers, for the purpose of re-establishing the public schools, which, throughout the whole of France, had fallen into decay. " He assembled at Rome," says his historiographer, the monk of Angouleme, " masters versed in the arts of grammar and arith- metic, whom he brought into France, enjoining them to encou- rage and diffuse a taste for letters; for, before the reign of our lord Charles, no attention had been paid in France to the liberal arts." At the same time, Charles wrote to all the bishops and convents to resume those studies, which had been too much ne- glected. " In the writings," said he, " frequently addressed to us by the convents of late years, while we admired the good sense of the monks, we observed that their style was unculti- vated; that what a pious devotion faithfully dictated internally, they were unable to express externally, without betraying their neglect and ignorance of language. Our wish is," he added, ' that you should all be, what all soldiers of the church ought 328 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XVII. to be, inwardly devout, outwardly learned^ chaste, that you may live well; erudite, that you may speak well." Among the revolutions in art accomplished by Charlemagne, must be mentioned that of music. This may be particularly at- tributed to the importance attached to church singing, and to the substitution of the Gregorian for the Ambrosian chant. It was not, however, without difficulty, that the united authority of the emperor and the pope triumphed over the habits and the obsti- nacy of the Frankic priests: orders, threats, were insufficient; it was necessary to seize and burn, by main force, all the books or antiphonaries of the Ambrosian ritual. Charlemagne went so far as to yield to the solicitations of the pope, and condemned to the flames some of the singers as well as the music. The Frankic priests at length submitted to adopt the Roman mode of singing. *' Only," says a chronicler of that time, " the Franks, whose voices were naturally rough and barbarous, could not exe- cute the trills and cadences, nor the alternately sustained and interrupted sounds of the Romans; they rather broke them in their throats, than uttered them. Two normal schools of reli- gious music were founded for the whole empire: one in the pa- lace of the emperor, which adjoined his chapel, and which was at last fixed at Aix-la-Chapelle — whence, probably, the French name of that city; the other at Metz. The other fine arts were also patronised by Charles; and his taste in this respect is the more remarkable, as every sentiment of art seemed obliterated from the minds of his contemporaries: but the sight of Rome had struck him with admiration; and he felt a desire to transplant to the confines of Germany the beau- ties which so impressively marked the ancient grandeur of Rome, At the beginning of his reign, he changed his residence every winter; nor, since the abandonment of Paris by its kings, had any preference indicated which was the capital of France. As, however, he advanced in age, he became more attached to Aix- la-Chapelle. He adorned that city with sumptuous edifices, pa- laces, churches, bridges, and new streets: he even supplied it from Ravenna with marble, and with statues, the beauty of which had particularly excited his admiration. Hydraulic architecture attracted, in its turn, his attention. He formed a project of connecting the Rhine and the Danube by a navigable canal, and pursued it with great ardour and perseverance; but, after the expenditure of immense sums, he was compelled to relinquish CHAP. XVII.] ADMINISTRATION OF CHARLEMAGNE. it; either because art was not yet sufficiently advanced, or be- cause the measures adopted were not judiciously conceived. Even the details of domestic economy were the objects of the care and the legislation of Charlemagne. His revenues were mainly drawn from landed estates of immense extent. These estates were dispersed through every part of his empire, and in- habited by a numerous class of subjects called Fiscalins. The serfs of the fisc, or royal treasury, were of a rather higher order than tliose of the nobles: Charles published a law, or Capitulary, for their government, which contains the most important infor- mation respecting the civilization of Europe at that period. He as- signed to each royal city a judge, who also filled the office of steward and administrator. The judge received all the produce in kind, and sold it for the benefit of the monarch. As a proof of the attention which Charles paid to the most minute details, the order which he gave to these judges, to breed hens and geese, to sell their eggs, and to cultivate every kind of fruit and vegetables in his gardens and immense estates, has often been quoted. These judges, however, exercised far more important functions, for they fixed the vocation of every man under their authority. The emperor determined that each of his royal cities should con- tain a certain number of men of all the professions and trades spe- cified by him, from the highest to the lowest. Upon the judge de- volved the duty of selecting, among the fiscal slaves, those whom he thought best qualified for each of these occupations, and to bind them out as apprentices, and thus provide a supply of hands for all the trades. On every occasion, rule and authority were substituted for personal interest; and what among us is done from voluntary enterprise, was done by order in the empire of Charle- magne. In a reign which had already lasted more than thirty years, Charles had communicated an impulse which rapidly accele- rated the progress of civilization. Extending his protection equal- ly to public education, to literature, arts, and laws, he could not have failed to raise the character of the nation, had he fixed it upon a broader basis. Unfortunately, the benefit of these improvements was confined to the extremely small minority of freemen, who, lost amid thousands of slaves, soon relapsed into the barbarism by which they were universally surrounded. Slavery' — the con- suming canker of great states — which had already effected the ruin of the Roman empire, was equally destructive to that of S30 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, [cHAP. XYII. Charlemagne, and drew upon it those unparalleled disasters which quickly followed his brilliant reign. Nor ought we, perhaps, to blame the legislator for this: for neither he nor his subjects were more competent to conceive (what had never existed) a society without slaves, than we to conceive a society without poor. In the only form of society known at that period, the exhaustion produced by slavery was the consequence of property itself. The increase of riches was inevitably followed by the absorption of the small properties by the great; by the multiplication of slaves, and the absolute discontinuance of all free labour. When freemen were unable to maintain themselves in idleness by the labour of others, rather than be confounded with slaves in the common employments of husbandry, they sold their little inheritance to some rich neighbour, and joined the army: their families soon be- came extinct. The more the emperor extended his conquests, the greater was the quantity of disposable land with which he could reward his servants: the more their ambition was gratified, the more they thought themselves entitled to still larger grants. According to the notions of those times, jurisdiction — indeed, sovereignty itself —was so blended Vv^ith property, that each of the dukedoms, earl- doms, and lordships that Charles conferred on his captains, was not merely a government, but a patrimony, stocked with slaves who laboured for their masters. In his grants to the convents, we invariably find that he gives them lands *' with all the inhabitants, their houses, slaves, meadows, fields, moveables, and immovea- bles." Several thousands of families were doomed to labour to maintain a courtier; and the learned Alcuin, whom Charles had enriched by his liberality, though he had not raised him to a level with the dukes and bishops of his court, had twenty thousand slaves under his orders. By consulting the collection of the laws of Charlemagne, known under the name of Capitularies, we see more clearly how it was that the free population of his empire necessarily disappeared, to make room for a servile population. One of the principal ob- jects of these laws was to show how every Frank must contri- bute to the defence of his country; march when the heerbann (the summons to the army) was proclaimed, or suffer severe pu- nishment if he failed in this duty. All the proprietors of a manse of land were called out to serve in the army. The manse, va- lued at twelve acresj seems to have been considered sufficient CHAP. XVII.] MILITARY SERVICE. S31 for the maintenance of a servile family; but he only who pos- sessed three or more manses, was obliged to march in person: he who possessed only one, was to join with three of his equals in providing a soldier. This gratuitous military service necessarily led to the ruin of the freemen. The soldier was obliged to pro- cure arms at his own expense: he was required to present him- self with a lance and shield, or with a bow, two strings, and twelve arrows. He was also to bring a sufficient quantity of pro- visions for his subsistence till he joined the army; after which he received an allowance, or rations, for three months, from the treasury. This service was not regarded as excessive under the Merovingian kings, when wars were not frequent, and the sol- dier was not marched to a great distance from his home. But under Charlemagne, when every year was marked by some new expedition, and when the Frankic army, called to take the field against the Saracens, Danes, or Huns, traversed the whole of Europe and underwent the inconveniences of every climate, gra- tuitous service was attended with the most intolerable vexations. Families in circumstances of ease and comfort were soon plunged into poverty; the population rapidly declined; liberty and pro- perty were a burden rather than an advantage. Whoever, after a summons, neglected to join the army, was punished by a fine* of sixty golden sous; and as this sum generally exceeded his means, he was reduced to a state of temporary slavery till he paid it. This law, if rigorously executed, would, of itself, have sufficed to occasion the rapid disappearance of the whole class of freemen. As a mitigation, the legislator allowed the person whose misfortune it was to die in this state of slavery, to be con- sidered as having discharged this fine, so that his property was not seized, nor his children reduced to captivity. The most important political innovation introduced by Charle- magne into the administration of his kingdom, was the creation of the imperial deputies named missi dominici. These were two officers — one an ecclesiastic, the other a layman, both of high rank — -to whom Charles assigned the inspection of a district com- posed of a certain number of earldoms or counties. Their office was to inquire into the conduct of the judges and counts; to re- gulate the finances; to receive and examine the accounts of the royal cities, the revenues of which constituted the principal riches * The fine itself, from a common enough misuse of language, has been com- monly called heribannum. The arriere-ban is a corruption of this. — TVansl 332 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XVII. of the sovereign. They were to visit each county every three months, and hold assizes for the administration of justice. *' They are also," says the legislator, *'to be present in the middle of May, each in his legation, attended by all our bishops, abbots, counts, and vassals, attorneys, and vidames of abbeys. Every count shall be attended by his vicars, centenaries, and three or four of his principal echevins, or aldermen. After having examined into the state of the Cliristian religion, and that of the ecclesiastical orders, the deputies shall inquire in what manner those invested with power discharge their duties^ whether they govern the people according to the will of God and to our orders, and whether they act in concert." Charlemagne had not attempted to give to his people a new civil or criminal code; on the contrary, he confirmed the right which his subjects claimed, to be governed according to their na- tional laws, and convicted solely on the testimony of men, or by the judgment of God; thus excluding all proceedings by inquest or torture, which the example of the ecclesiastical courts intro- duced at a much later period. Charles republished, with some corrections and additions, the ancient laws of the Salians, Ripua- rians, Lombards, Saxons, and other subjugated nations. He pre- served the fundamental principle of all these laws — the compen- sation of crimes by fines — only subjecting some of them to a higher tariff; as, for instance, offences against the clergy; which were punished with increased severity. The examination of all these laws leaves no doubt respecting the frequency of atrocious crimes; and in proportion as either the codes of barbarians, or those of Charlemagne, are studied with attention, we arrive at the conviction that the civilization so often unfavourably con- trasted with the simplicity of the good old times, was the only remedy for the profound corruption of morals which marked the ages of semi -barbarism. The examination of the labours of Charlemagne as a legis- lator, adds, unquestionably, to the idea we have formed of his genius. We find him every where establishing order and regu- larity, and extending his powerful protection to every part of his states; but, in the midst of his greatest glory, it is not difficult to foresee the inevitable ruin of all these institutions, if we keep in view that the nation of the Franks was, at that period, exclusive- ly composed of proprietors of men and of land: they alone were rich and independent, consulted on public affairs, admitted to the discussions of the Champ de Mai, and to service in the army. CHAP. XVII.] GREEK EMPIRE. 333 In proportion as their riches, which were all territorial, increased, their number decreased. The apparent progress of opulence was a symptom of a diminution of real strength, because every new rich man represented and replaced several ancient free fa- milies. It should, therefore, excite no surprise that the mass of the people attracted scarcely any notice^ that they took no in- terest in their aftairs; were conscious neither of energy nor of thought; nor that the nation passed in an instant from the height of power to the last degree of abasement. Some thousands of noblemen, lost among millions of brutalized slaves, who had scarcely a claim to a country or even to the dignity of man, were incompetent, by their own unaided efforts, to preserve to France either lier laws, her power, or her liberty. The frontiers of the new empire of the West in Italy and II- lyria, met those of the Eastern empire. The navigation of the Latins likewise forced them to maintain some commercial inter- course with the empire of the khaliphs of Syria. In spite of na- tional prejudices and religious animosities, the three empires which divided the civilized world considered each other as equals; and the relations of Charlemagne with the courts of Constantinople and of Bagdad, were unquestionable evidences of the rank to which the monarchy of the Franks had raised itself. At Constantinople, three sovereigns of the Isaurian race had successively occupied the throne of the East, from 717" to 780. Leo III. had courageously repulsed the Saracens. Constantine Copronymus, whom the Catholics have represented as a tyrant, was, perhaps, cruel in his persecution of the worshippers of images: but, during his long reign, (from 741 to 774,) he gave ample evidence of activity and courage. He had waged war by turns upon the banks of the Euphrates and of the Danube; he had taught the Greeks, that the ancient prejudice which retained their sovereigns prisoners in the palace, was not less fatal to the princes than to the people; and that a monarch lost nothing of his dignity by heading his legions on horseback, and leading them himself against the enemy. His wise administration had restored plenty to the Greek provinces; and by means of new colonies, he had repeopled the dese^'ts of Thrace. Leo IV., his son, during his shorter reign, (from 775 to 780,) had shown less strength of character; but he was not devoid of the qualities which had distinguished the Isaurian race, and which, after so 43 534 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XVII. long a series of calamities, liad restored, in the eighth century, the glory and power of the Eastern empire. But the three Isaurian emperors, who had seen with indignation Christianity degenerate into idolatry, had been, during the whole of their reigns, involved in a dangerous war against the worship- pers of images; against the monks and priests, who made a scandalous traffic of the protection of these household gods, and of the miracles they pretended to perform by their intercession. The emperors thought they could reform the church by their edicts, and attempted to arrest the progress of this superstition by threats, severity and punishments. The religious passion they combated, derived additional force from opposition: and they themselves, misguided by the animosity excited during a long struggle, transgressed all bounds of moderation, and rendered themselves odious to their subjects by their intolerance. Their reign was unceasingly agitated by seditions: the monks continually incited their subjects to revolt; and when the seditious were pu- nished for their audacity, they were revered as martyrs. Irri- tated by their preaching, their abuse, and their plots, Leo IV. carried his persecution so far as toinflict the punishment of death upon some of the worshippers of images. During the heat of his resentment, he discovered, even in his wife's bed, two images to which she had offered secret worship. (Feb. 710.) Leo took cruel vengeance on those who had introduced into his own palace a superstition which he held in abhorrence: he expressed his in- dignation at the conduct of Irene, and was preparing to take measures for her trial — perhaps for her death— -when suddenly, in attempting to place upon his head a crown consecrated by his wife to the crucifix, his skin became covered with black pustules wherever the crown touched it: he was seized with a burning fever, and died in a few hours. All the ecclesiastical writers have represented this as a miracle wrought to avenge the offended deity. Irene, who, there is every reason to believe, had assisted in the performance of this miracle, — probably the only means which could liave saved her, — was still not entirely out of danger. She caused herself to be crowned, together with her son, Constantine v., who was not more than ten or twelve years old, reserving to herself the sole authority. But she had against her, all the gran- dees, jealous of the power of a woman; all the partisans of the late emperor, who had not much faith in miracles, which so con- CHAP. XVII.] ICONOCLAST CONTROVERSY. S35 veniently dispose of kings; all the high iconoclast clergy; all the public functionaries raised to power by her predecessors, and all the Isaurians. Irene sought protection in the populace, who were under the guidance of the monks. She re-established the worship of images with great pomp; honoured as martyrs those who had suffered under the iconoclasts; shut up the brothers of her husband in convents; put to death some whom she accused of conspiracy; and thus obtained a high reputation for piety and zeal in the cause of orthodoxy. The popes had invariably taken part against the iconoclast emperors. They had aided Irene with all their power; and the second council of Nice, assembled by this empress, having in 787 re-established and confirmed the worship of images, Adrian, whose legates had presided in this council, transmitted its acts to the assembly of the Western church, which Charlemagne con- voked at Frankfurt in 794, that they might be recognised as pro- ceeding from an oecumenical council, and having the force of ecclesiastical law. The Western churches had abstained neither from the super- stitions nor the subtleties which disfigured Christianity; but they had invariably rejected with horror the worship of images, as an act of idolatry. It is probable that the almost absolute ignorance or neglect of the fine arts had contributed to preserve the Franks and Germans from the adoration of these gods made with man's hands. Images were seldom seen in their churches, while they adorned all the temples of the Greeks. At least, the chronicles of the time, and the lives of the saints, when speaking of the Latin church, never mention that protection granted to a particular per- son or country by a miraculous image, so continually referred to in the history of the church of the Greeks. In the West, all these local miracles were attributed to relics, as they were in the East to images. The worship of the bones of the saints was more in accordance with the barbarism and the gloomy northern imagi- nations of the Teutonic people, as that of their resemblance was with the refinement and taste of the Greeks. The church of Rome availed itself of either, indifferently; and although, even in Italy, images were much more rare than in Greece, they were much less so than beyond the Alps. The popes were indebted to this quar- rel for their sovereignty in Italy; as they were to the adoration of relics for the treasures which they every year received from France and Germany, in exchange for the bones taken from the catacombs. 336 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XVII. But th^ influence of the pope was not sufficient to secure the reception, in the Western church, of the doctrine which he had himself found so profitable. The fathers assembled at Frankfurt expressed their indignation at the idolatry attempted to be in- troduced into Christendom. " It has been thought proper," say they, " to refer to the assembly the question of the new sy- nod of the Greeks, on the subject of the worship of images, in which it is written, that those who refuse to offer to the images of the saints the same worship and adoration as to the divine Trini- ty, shall be anathematized; but our most holy fathers above men- tioned, rejecting, in every respect, the adoration service, (the wor- ship of latria and duUa,) despised and condemned them with one accord." The entire church seemed divided: three hundred and fifty bishops had subscribed to the council of Nice; three hundred sub- cribed to that of Frankfurt. The latter was besides supported by the powerful authority of Charlemagne, who himself dictated a treatise against the worsliip of images, known under the title of the Carolinian Books. Adrian had no mind to expose himself to the displeasure of such a protector. He endeavoured to evade the question; to dis- criminate, where there was no distinction; to show that the infal- lible council of Frankfurt had been still more mistaken as to facts than as to principles; that the council held at Nice (not at Con- stantinople) had not said what the Germans imputed to it; and that, in spite of the contradictory declarations of these two assem- blies, the unity of faith of the church was not shaken; in short, he succeeded in silencing the discussion. The two councils are recognised as having the authority of lav/ in the church. The two doctrines repose in peace beside each, other: for France and Ger- many, although they have not expelled images from their temples, pay them no religious worship; while Italy and Spain have con- firmed the adoration of images, and daily celebrate some miracle of their local divinities. From the beginning of her reign, the empress Irene had sought the friendship of the powerful monarch of the Latins, and had entertained the project of bringing about a marriage between her son and one of the daughters of Charlemagne: but — whether the dispute concerning images had occasioned any coolness between them, or whether Irene, actuated by jealousy towards her son, thought it imprudent to procure him so powerful an ally — the CHAP. XVII.] IRENE. 337 treaty was broken off in an offensive manner. Constantine VI. married an Armenian princess; and some hostilities upon the frontiers of the duchy of Benevento were the consequences of this rupture between the Greeks and the Franks. On the other hand, the ambitious Irene, who had so exactly chosen the favourable moment for getting rid of her husband, that she might reign in the name of her son, could not submit to share the authority with him, when he had attained the age of manhood. A long protracted struggle ensued between the mother and the son, during which Irene was banished to Athens, the place of her birth. By feigning unconditional submission, she at lengtn induced Constantine to recall her to the court of Constantinople, where she employed her ascendency over him in leading him into oblique and perilous courses. In the year 792, the emperor had punished a conspiracy of his uncles against him, by depriving two of their sight and cutting off the noses of the other four. In January, 795, he repudiated the Armenian Maria, whom he charged with conspiracy, and married in her place one of her attendants, named Theodora. Irene herself had urged him to gratify this new passion; while at the same time she denounced him to the clergy, and especially to the monks, over whom she preserved unlimited influence, for having violated the laws and discipline of the church. By these artifices, she succeeded in exciting the priests and bigots to sedi- tion, and in organizing plots both m the capital and provinces. At last the conspirators, under her direction, seized the unfortu- nate Constantine, on the 15th of June, 797; dragged him into the chamber in which he was born, and tore out his eyes with such barbarous violence, that he expired a short time after in horrible agonies. Irene was then placed on the throne; and, for the first time, the Roman world was governed by a woman, who ruled not as a regent or guardian, but in her own proper right. The church shut its eyes to Irene's crimes, in consideration of her having re- established the worship of images, v/hich her son had lately in- terdicted; and the Greeks assigned her a place among the saints in their calendar. But the supposed weakness of a female reign was probably what imboldened Leo III. to dispose of the crown of the East, as if it had been his own; or suggested to him a scheme more extravagant still, — that of uniting by marriage the empire he had just re-established, with that which had stood the S38 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XVH, shock of ages. In 801, whilst Charles, who had passed a year in widowhood, was in Italy for his coronation, he demanded the hand of Irene; and though this ambitious princess was far from intending to compromise herpower, by dividing it with a husband, the negotiation, which continued for a long time, contributed to preserve peace between the two empires. The relations which subsisted between the empire of Charle- magne, and that of the Saracens, form a characteristic part of his history. His territories bordered upon theirs in Spain; he found them again in Africa, along the whole line of coast opposite to the shores of France and Italy; and his subjects carried on an extensive commerce with them in the Levant. But the Saracens had ceased to form a single empire. Just at the time when the Carlovingian dynasty succeeded the ancient royal line of France, the house of the Abbasides had succeeded that of the Ommiades in the East. The colossus that had bestridden the whole South was now broken, and the Musulmans were no longer objects of terror to all their neighbours. This revolution did more for the deliverance of Europe from the Musulman arms, than even the battle of Poictiers. Romance writers are therefore guilty of an anachronism, in making Charlemagne the champion of Christen- dom; for, in his time, the perils to which it had been exposed were past. The Ommiades, who, for the space of ninety years, (661 — 750,) had ruled v/ith so much glory in the empire of the faithful, had nevertheless always been considered, by a large party in the East, as usurpers; they were reproached with being descendants of the most inveterate enemy of the prophet, wliilst there still remained legitimate descendants of the branch of Hashemides, and even of his own blood. The Ommiades were distinguished by their white standards; the colour of the Fatimides, descendants of Ali and of Fatima, the daughter of Mahommed, was green. At the time we speak of, their chiefs had either not sufficient ability or sufficient ambition to enforce their rights. But the descendants of Abbas, the uncle of the prophet, called Abbasides, whose banner was black, ultimately raised the whole East in their favour. After long and cruel civil wars, Mervan II., the last of the Ommiades, in spite of tlie talents and virtues imputed to him, was defeated and killed in Egypt, on the 10th of February, 750. Abul Abbas, the first of the Abbasides, was appointed his successor by Abu-Moslem, the real chief of the party, the king-maker, as he CHAP. XVII. ] OMMIADES AND ABBASIDES. 3S9 is called, or the autlior of the vocation of the Mbasides. The throne of the new khaliph was strengthened by the victories of Abu -Moslem. The defeated Ommiades accepted the peace that was offered them, and relied with confidence on the oaths of their rival. Four and twenty members of the family were invited to Damascus, to a feast of reconciliation, which was to be the seal of a new alliance. They met without suspicion: they were massa- cred without mercy. The festive board was placed over their palpitating bodies while they yet breathed, and the orgies of the Abbasides were prolonged amidst the groans and agonies of their expiring rivals. One only of the Ommiades escaped this butchery; he quitted Syria, and traversed Africa a fugitive: but in the valleys of Mount Atlas, he learned that the white flag was still triumphant in Spain. About the middle of August, therefore, 755, he presented himself to his partisans on the coast of Andalusia, and was saluted by them as the true khaliph; the whole of Spain was soon subject to him, and his seat of government was fixed at Corduba. There he took the title of Emir al Mumenin, Commander of the Faithful; which the people of the West converted into the barbarous name Miramolin. He died after a glorious reign of thirty years. His son and his grandson, Hesham, (a. d. 788 — 796,) and Al Hacam, (796 — 822,) were the contemporaries of Charlemagne, and fought with success several times against his generals, and against his son Louis le Debonnaire. The Ommiades of Spain retained the so- vereignty of the Peninsula for two hundred and fifty years: their dynasty expired in 1038; and the division, at this period, of the Western khaliphate into a great number of small principalities, contributed much to facilitate the conquests of the Christians. Towards the middle of the eighth century, an independent monarchy arose in Africa, that of the Edrisides of Fez, who de- clared themselves descendants of the Fatimide branch, and who recognised neither the Western nor the Eastern khaliph. In the year 801, Charlemagne received an embassy from their emir, or sultan, Ibrahim; and being then at war with the Ommiades in Spain, he was disposed to ally himself to their rivals in Africa and the East. These latter, the Abbaside khaliphs, notwithstand- ing the loss of so many vast provinces in the West, still retained a degree of power not unworthy the first successors of Mahom- med; and the splendour of their court presented a remarkable contrast to the severe austerity of the first believers. The victo - rious Almanzor, (754 — 775,) his son, and two grandsons, Mahdi, 340 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XVII. (77-5—785,) Hadi, (785, 786,) and Harun al Rashid, (786—809,) were the contemporaries of the early Carlovingians. These were the monarchs who introduced the arts and the cultivation of science among the Arabs, and under whose influence their progress in the career of literature was as rapid as that which thej had recently made in arms. Translations of all the scientific books of the Greeks into Arabic were undertaken, and liberally rewarded by the khaliph. Harun al Rashid was always surrounded by learned men, and in all his travels he was attended by a numerous body of them. He made it a rule never to build a mosque without at- taching a school to itj and his munificence is the source whence sprung those numerous Arabic writers by whom his age was il- lustrated. The memory of the two embassies from Harun al Rashid to Charlemagne, has been preserved to us by the writers of the West; the one in 801, the other in 807. The first am- bassadors of Harun, with chivalrous politeness, bore the keys of the holy sepulchre as an offering to the greatest monarch profess- ing the religion of Christ. The second brought as a present from the khaliph to Charles, a clock ornamented with automaton figures, which moved and played on various musical instru- ments, very much resembling those which are now made at Ge- neva for the Levant market. This is a proof, among others, that the seat of the mechanical arts, as well as of literature and science, has, in the course often centuries, been wholly changed. After the reign of Harun al Rashid, the empire of the khaliphs, the seat of which had been removed to Bagdad, by Almanzor, in 757, still maintained for several ages the glory of pre-eminence in literature and the arts, though it almost entirely relinquished its triumphs in arms. The foundation of the new dynasties of the Aglabides in Africa, the Fatimides in Egypt, the Taherides in Khorasan, the SofFarides in Persia, would soon throw us into absolute confusion, if we attempted to follow out such a laby- rinth of almost unknown names and countries. Mean time, Charlemagne, dreaded by his enemies, respected by the whole v/orld, became sensible of the approach of old age. He had three sons arrived at manhood, among whom he divided his monarchy, in presence of the diet of Thionville, in 806. To Charles, the eldest, he gave France and Germany; to Pepin, the second, Italy, Bavaria, and Pannonia; to Louis, the youngest. Aquitaine, Provence, and the marches of Spain. At the same time he provided for his daughters: he had seven, perhaps eight, all remarkable for their beauty, and whom he had always treated OHAP. XVII.] FAMILY OF CHARLEMAGNE. 341 with great tenderness. " He had devoted," says Eginhard, ** much attention to the education of his children, and was desi- rous that his daughters, as well as his sons, should addict themselves to the same liberal studies which he had himself pursued. When his sons were of sufficient age, he accustomed them, according to the usage of the Franks, to ride on horseback, and to exercise them- selves in arms and in the chase. To form his daughters to habits of industry, and counteract the pernicious influence of a life of ease and luxury, they were taught to work in wool, to handle the distaff and the spindle, and to employ themselves in all the works be- coming their sex and age. His children always supped with him. His sons accompanied him on horseback when he travelled, his daughters followed j and the whole train was closed by the guards, who protected them. As they were very beautiful, and greatly be- loved by him, it is strange that he never gave them in marriage to any of his nobles or allied princes. He kept them always with him till his death, declaring that he could not dispense with their society: yet, however happy in every other respect, through them he felt the malice of fortune. It is true, he dissembled his grief, and appeared as if slander had never raised its voice, or breathed the slightest suspicion upon them." It is said that the historian, from whom we borrow these particulars, was not a stranger to the failings to which he alludes; and that the fair Emma, one of the daughters of Charlemagne, carried her lover, Eginhard, on her shoulders, in the morning, that his footsteps in the snow might not betray his nocturnal visits to her pavilion. This anecdote has been preserved in the convent founded by Eginhard himself. If Charlemagne bore with resignation the misconduct of his daughters, to whom he had always set a dangerous example, he betrayed the feelings of a true and tender father, when he had the misfortune to lose, successively, his eldest and favourite daughter, Rotrude; his second son, Pepin, who died at Milan, on the 4th of July, SIO,* and, lastly, his eldest son Charles, who died at Aix-la-Chapelle, on the 4th of December, 811. Fortitude in sustaining domestic sorrows was at that time regarded as a mark of the greatness of soul which was expected of a hero; hence the profound grief of Charlemagne, and the tears he was seen to shed for the loss of his children, excited more censure than compassion. The emperor, however, hastened to provide for the govern- ment of his states. His eldest son had left no children^ but Pe- 44 342 FALL OF TRE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XVI?, pin, the second, had one son and five daughters. Charles des- tined the son, Bernhard, to inherit the kingdom of Italy; and, having announced this intention in the Champ de Mai, assem- bled at Aix-la-Chapelle, he sent him into Lombardy, accompa- nied by Walla, his bastard cousin, as his counsellor. At the same time he judged it prudent to transmit, during his lifetime, all his titles to his third son, Louis, king of Aquitaine. ** For this purpose, in the presence of the states assembled at Aix-la-Cha- pelle, in September, 813, he presented him," says an ancient chronicle, *' to the bishops, abbots, counts, and senators of the Franks, requesting them to choose him king and emperor. To this all consented vi^ith one accord, saying, it would be well. And it pleased the people also; so that the empire was decreed to him by the delivering up of the golden crown, while the peo- ple cried out,. * Long live the emperor Louis!' " Charles, fear- ing that the pope, who had conferred upon him the title of em- peror, would assert that his authority was necessary to confirm it to another, was desirous that his son, who belonged to the peo- ple of the West, to the army, and to its leaders, and who had been chosen by them, should hold his crown from God alone. He, therefore, caused a crown of gold similar to his own to be made, and to be placed upon the altar of the church of Aix-la- Chapelle. He then desired Louis to take it himself, and place it upon his own head. After this ceremony, he sent him back to Aquitaine. Charles lost his strength earlier than might have been expect- ed from the vigour of his constitution, or the active life he had led. His decline had long been perceptible; when, about the middle of January, 814, he was attacked by a fever on leaving the bath. During the seven days it lasted, he ceased to eat, and took nothing but a little water. On the seventh day he received the sacrament from the hand of Gildebald, his almoner. The following morning, he made a last effort to raise his feeble right hand to make the sign of the cross upon his head and breast; then, composing his limbs for his final rest, he closed his eyes, uttering, with a low voice:—-" In manus tuas commendo spiri- tum meum^^ and expired. This was on the £8th of January, 814. Charles was born in 742, and was in his seventy-second year. He reigned forty-se- ven years: thirty-three over the Lombards, and fourteen over the Western empire. He was buried at Aix-la-Chapelle, in the church of St. Mary, founded by himself. ( 343 ) CHAPTER XVIII. Louis le Debonnaire. — His Character and Popularity. — His Reforms. — Divi- sion of the Government with his Sons. — Vacillations of Louis. — Revolt of Bernhard, King" of Italy. — His cruel Death. — Judith of Bavaria. — Her Beauty and Ascendency. — National Assemblies. — Public Confession and Penance of Louis. — 'Discord between Louis and his Sons, Chlothaire and Louis. — Universal Disorder in the Empire. — Traffic in Christian Children. — External Relations. — Scandinavian Nations. — King's of Denmark. — Re- volts of Bretons and Gascons. — Spain. — Alphonso the Chaste.,— Abder- rahman. — Italy. — Chlothaire. — Duke of Benevento. — Venice. — Eastern Frontiers. — Slavonic Tribes. — Dechne of the liastern Empire. — Musul- man Conquests. — Crete. — Sicily. — Dethronement and Banishment of Irene. — Nicephorus. — Leo the Armenian. — His Death. — Michael the Stammerer. — Theophilus. — His Character and Death. — Cessation of In- tercourse between the Eastern and Western Empires.— Revolt of the three Sons of Louis. — Dethronement of Judith. — Antipathy between the Gauls and the Franks. — Attachment of the latter to the Emperor. — Re- action in his favour. — His ReconciUation with his Sons. — Recall of Judith. — Her Intrigues. — Desertion of the Emperor by all his Followers. — His public Degradation and Penance. — Death of Pepin, King- of Aquitaine. — Conduct of Louis. — ^Intrigues of Judith and Chlothaire. — Attacks of the Normans and the Saracens on the Coasts of France. — Death of Louis le Debonnaire. a. d. 814 — 840, The new sovereign of the empire of the West — whom the Latins, the Italians, and the Germans named the Pious,* the French le Debonnaire,— was thirtj-six years old at the death of his father. He had been married sixteen years to Ermengarde, daughter of Ingheramne, duke of Hasbaigne. She had already borne him three sons^ Chlothaire, (or, as it soon came to be spelled, Lothaire,) Pepin, and Louis. During thirty-three years he had borne the title of king; for he was in his cradle when, in the year 781, his father sent him into Aquitaine, with the view of inducing the people of the south of Gaul to imagine that they had their sovereign in the midst of them. As soon as • The Germans call him either Ludwig der Fromme^ or der Gutige, Fromrrit though it means pious, means, also, amiable, gracious. Gutige is kind, good-natured. In that part of the dominions of the king of England which he inherits from the dukes of Normandy, and where the Anglican ser- vice is performed in French, the words of the Liturgy, " our most gracious king, William," &c., are at this day rendered, "notre seigneur et gouver- aeur tres-debonnaire, Guillaume," hc^TransL 344 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [CHAP. XVIII* he was sufficiently advanced in age to afford any certain indica- tions of his character, it was marked by sweetness, love of jus- tice, beneficence^ above all, by weakness. He had carried on a protracted war in the Pyrennees against tiie Gascons and the Moors, and had conducted himself with honour as a soldier; yet those who remarked his zeal for religion, his constant attention to the discipline of the church, already said of him, that he was better fitted for the convent than the throne; and Louis, who en- vied the devotion of his great uncle Karloman, who had abdi- cated sovereign power to become a monk of Monte Cassino, re- garded their words as the highest praise that could be bestowed on him. For some time his beneficence so far exceeded his pru- dence that his fi.nances were in considerable disorder; but these had been re-established with the assistance of his father, and his good management had enabled him to deliver the rural popula- tion from the destructive privilege claim.ed by the soldiery, of drawing their support from the peasantry. The people had the highest opinion of his virtue; and when, on the news of his fa- ther's death, he proceeded from Toulouse to Aix-la-Chapelle, he was received, in every place through which he passed, as a sa- viour come to put a period to the long-sufferings of the empire. Indeed, during the brilliant reign of Charlemagne, even under the protection of so great a man, disorder and oppression had in- creased in every province: the freemen had been ruined by con- tinual wars; the nobles had abused their favour at court; they had despoiled their poorer neighbours of their inheritances; a great number of them they had reduced to servitude. Many of the small proprietors had even voluntarily renounced a freedom they had no longer the power to defend, and had begged to be ranked amongst the slaves of the nobles, who promised them pro- tection. Louis hastened to send throughout the empire fresh im- perial messengers (missi dominici,) to examine into the claims and petitions of those who had been robbed either of their patrimony or of their liberty; and the number of the oppressed who reco- vered their rights was found to exceed all belief. The mistrust of Charles had deprived the Saxons and the Frieslanders of the right of transmitting their property by bequest to their children. Louis repealed this odious prohibition, and placed them on the same footing with his other subjects. In the Spanish marches many Christian emigrants from Moorish Spain had obtained from Charles the grant of deserted lands recently conquered, and CHAP. XVIII.] Louis's reforms. 345 had brought them into cultivation^ but the fields which had been rendered fertile by their own labours had been quickly seized by powerful nobles, who in some instances had obtained fresh grants from the emperor, in others had taken possession by force. Louis afforded his protection to these unhappy emigrants, and restored their property^ but he had not sufficient power to secure to them its permanent possession: such was the audacity of the nobles, such the weakness of the vassals, that, in spite of every security the monarch could give, the poor man was continually plundered. Another reform effected by Louis was looked upon as indi- cating but little respect for his father's memory. Charles's palace at Aix-la-Chapelle sufficiently attested the dissoluteness of his morals. There he had lived, surrounded, even in old age, by his numerous mistresses. Under the same roof dwelt his seven daughters and his five nieces; all beautiful, and all equally dis- tinguished for their gallantries. Before taking possession of this palace, Louis effected its evacuation by means of a military ex- ecution: he expelled without pity even the female attendants who had waited on Charlemagne in his last illness; he forced his sisters and his cousins to retire to the seclusion of the convent; he condemned all their lovers, as guilty of high treason, either to exile or imprisonment, some of them even to death. By these proceedings he gave a scandalous publicity to the disorders of his family, which had hitherto excited but little attention. The immense extent of the empire imposed a burden on Louis which he found too heavy for him; and he hastened to lighten its weight by sharing it with his children. He confirmed Bernhard, his nephew, in the possession of the kingdom of Italy; he in- trusted the government of Bavaria to the eldest of his sons, and that of Aquitaine to the second; the third was still too young to receive any share of power. The empire of the West, with three subordinate kings on its most exposed frontiers, appeared to be still governed in the same manner as in the time of Charle- magne; and many years elapsed before foreign nations perceived the immense difference between the men of the two generations. The armies of the empire were still as formidable; the neighbour- ing nations, jealous of each other, were still equally active in keeping a reciprocal watch over each other's movements, in an- nouncing them to the emperor, and in obeying his orders. At the pleas of the kingdom, or national assemblies, which Louis le S46 FALL OF THfi HOMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XVIII. Deborinaire convoked very regularly, were to be seen ambassa- dors from the petty Visigothic princes, who were struggling among the strong holds of the Pyrennees to save some part of Spain from the Musulman yoke; from the duke of Benevento, who sent tribute from Italy to the empire; from all the small Slavonic tribes, whether in lUyria, Bohemia, or Prussia, who sought the protection of the Franks; lastly, from the princes of Denmark, at that time distracted by a civil war and by a dis- puted succession to the crown. It could never have been ima- gined by a superficial observer, that this empire, so vast and so formidable, was already nodding to its fall. One of the defects of Louis's character, was irresolution: he imagined he could correct this, and determine his own wavering intentions, by forming continual engagements; he was constant- ly disposing of the future; and presently, from some fresh mo- tive, or some new weakness, he altered what he professed to have irrevocably fixed. In 814, he had made a division of his king- dom amongst his children; in 817, he made a second, and as- signed a share to each of his three sons; he took back from one the portion he had allotted to him, to give it to another. During the whole course of his reign, he was constantly occupied in rec- tifying and changing these partitions of territory among his chil- dren; then, after causing them to be confirmed by oaths of al- legiance, tendered by the people [and the clergy, he overthrew all he had appeared to be building up, and thus inspired his sub- jects with an extreme impatience of his continual vaciHations, a distrust of the future, and a discontent, the effects of which he soon experienced; whilst ill-humour succeeded to the gratitude of his sons, who felt more injured when he reclaimed his gifts, than they had been touched or gratified at receiving them. The person most offended, and not without considerable reason, by the partition of 817, was Bernhard, king of Italy. Towards his uncle he had shown the deference of a vicegerent governing a province in his name; but when Louis granted to his eldest son, Lothaire, the title of emperor, with pre-eminence over the three other kings, Bernhard complained of the injustice done him. Son of an elder brother of Louis, and himself the senior of his cousin Lothaire, the first rank amongst the Frankic princes belonged of right to him; and into his hands the sceptre of the empire should have passed; whether the law of succession, adopted in the present day had been followed, or whether the eHAP. XVIII.] REVOLT OF BERNHARD. ^47 preference had been given to the claim of seniority, the very rule by which his uncle had taken precedence of himself. A great number of bishops and of discontented nobles offered their services to Bernhard, to support his just pretensions. The young prince actually assembled troops: his uncle, on his side, summoned soldiers from Germany^ but Bernhard, who held a civil war in horror, accepted the first terms proposed to him: he hastened to Chalons to meet his uncle, threw himself at his feet, and begged pardon for his offence. It was not without reason that Louis received the surname of Le Debonnaire: he seemed to be incapable of harbouring a feel- ing of resentment or of hatred j he often pardoned where it was his duty not to pardon,- nevertheless, he committed at this time one of the most odious acts which stain the history of France. Bernhard, whose rights were equal to his own, had acknowledged himself guilty, from sentiments of filial deference alonej he had placed reliance on the promises he had received, and was await- ing an act of oblivion for his preparations for war: instead of a pardon, he received sentence of death upon himself and his prin- cipal adherents. It is true that Louis commuted the punish- ment, ordering only that his eyes should be put out: such a com- mutation, however, did but increase the cruelty of his punish- ment. Queen Ermengarde took care that the operation should be performed in so barbarous a manner, that the unhappy Bern- hard died three days after from its effects. Ermengarde, whose motive for depriving Bernhard of life was the wish to divide his inheritance amongst her children, died ere she had had time to reap the benefits of her cruelty, and Louis was not long in filling her place. In the beginning of the year 819, he married the beautiful and ambitious Judith, daughter of the count Guelf, of Bavaria. At an assembly of the most beautiful girls in his empire, which his clergy had advised him to call to- gether, after the example of king Ahasuerus, Louis had distin- guished the pre-eminent charms of Judith. The Frankic nation soon found cause to regret that the daughter of count Guelf was endowed with that singular beauty which gave her so absolute an ascendency over her husband. It is true, the authority of Louis was by no means without re- straints. No monarch of the Franks had more regularly con- sulted the states, which he convoked twice in the year: but only the great barons amongst the laity and clergy were summoned 348 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. []CHAP. XVIII. upon these expensive journeys^ and the dukes and counts, soon perceiving that the principal subjects of discussion were ecclesi- astical affairs, and that, in a language which they did not under- stand, gave up their seats almost entirely to the bishops. The comitiae of Aix-la-Chapelle, in the year 816, had been entirely occupied in reforming, in conformity with the observances of St. Benedict, the rules relating to canons and canonesses. At that assembled at Attigny, in the month of August, 822, Louis chose that the whole nation should be witness to his penance. He publicly declared that he had sinned against his nephew Bern- hard, in suffering him to be treated with so much cruelty; that he had sinned against Adelhard, Walla, against the holy men and the bishops who had been Bernhard's counsellors, and whom he had exiled for taking part in his conspiracy; finally, that he had sinned against the natural sons of his father, when he forced them to enrol themselves members of different religious orders. He entreated pardon for his sins, of those of the prelates in ques- tion who were present, and submitted himself to the canonical penances. At first it was touching to see this profound sentiment of re- morse manifested after the lapse of four years, before an entire nation, — -this voluntary self-humiliation, in one whom no tribunal could reach. But while remorse in a man possessed of great qualities offers to our admiration the noble triumph of conscience over pride, the repentance of a weak man is tinged with the weak- ness of his character. While he recalls his past offence, he ex- cites the anticipation that another is at hand. The one accuses himself because he can find no peace within his own breast; the other, because he cannot obtain absolution at the confessional. The former is actuated by the thoughts of those whom he has made wretched, and of the reparation there may still be time to offer them. The latter thinks of nothing but himself, and the tortures with which he is threatened; repentance in him is but a personal calculation; he would fain combine the hopes of the right- eous with the advantages of guilt. When the self-humiliation of Louis before the preists at Attigny was beheld by the people, they concluded that he was not so much oppressed by grief, as indifferent to honour; and the nation began to feel that contempt for him, of which he had acknowledged himself deserving. Other causes soon sprang up to increase this sentiment. On the 13th of June, 823, after a union of four years, Judith bore him CHAP. XVIII.] STATE OF GAUL. 349 a son, afterwards known bj the name of Charles the Bald: but Judith's general conduct, and her familiarity with Bernhard, duke of Septimania, accredited amongst the Franks the idea that this child belonged to the favourite of the empress, and not to her husband. It is at least certain that the absolute power ex- ercised by Bernhard at the courts the deference shown by Louis for the friend of his wife; the trust which he reposed in him in preference to his own sons, of whom he was beginning to be jea- lous, rendered his government at once ridiculous and contempti- ble. Judith, who already had it in contemplation to get away from the elder sons of her husband such provinces as might be suffi- cient to form an appanage for the youngest, seized every oppor- tunity of insulting those princes; and, if they ever betrayed their vexation, she strove to excite the anger and resentment of her husband against them. On occasion of a disastrous campaign, made by Pepin beyond the Pyrennees, she prevailed on Louis to condemn to death two counts who had been the king of Aqui- taine's advisers; thus indirectly wounding the honour of the com- mander-in-chief, the son of her husband. Though the sentence was not carried into execution, it sufficed to give birth to two opposite factions throughout the empire. The people held the emperor guilty, both of the injustice of which he was the imme- diate cause, and of that, the consequences of which he had endea- voured to mitigate. When once a government has ceased to in- spire confidence, the very punishments with which it visits the great for injuries inflicted on the people, are regarded by that people as a fresh abuse of power. Still the step is wide from these disagreements amongst princes, from these court intrigues, to a civil war. It was not the resentment and disgust excited by the weakness of their fa- ther, or the perfidy of their stepmother, in the mind of Lothaire or of Pepin, that influenced the small proprietors, of whom the Frankic armies were exclusively composed, to arm for war at their own expense, and to attack their fellow-countrymen. But disorder was spread throughout the empire. The feebleness of Louis had imboldened several of the enemies of the Franks — the Musulmans, the Bulgarians, the Normans, to ravage the frontiers; in the interior, the oppression exercised by the nobles on the people was daily becoming more intolerable. A frightful traffic in slaves was secretly carried on in all parts of the empire. The Musulmans have always been accustomed to place great 45 350 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XVIII. confidence in the slaves brought up under their own roofs^ they make them the guardians of their interests, their soldiers, often their ministers. They regarded it, too, as a work of piety and charity to buy the children of infidels, with the view of convert- ing them to the true faith. They were, therefore, always ready to pay a high price for the Christian children brought to them in Spain or in Africa. From the neighbourhood of Verdun they re- ceived more particularly those whom they destined to form the interior guard of their harems. The Jews carried on this horri- ble trade, and the French nobles, ecclesiastical as well as secu- lar, whenever they chanced to be pressed for money, sold them the children of their serfs, with the full knowledge of their destination. A law passed in the year 829, prohibiting the ad- ministration of baptism to the slaves of the Jews, without the consent of their masters, and the violent discussions which it excited in the diet, reveal to us the importance of this nefarious traffic, and the degree of oppression and of misery to which the whole lower class of the population of Gaul was reduced. The external relations of the empire of the West still seemed worthy of the successor of Charlemagne. Northwards, its fron- tier extended as far as the Eyder, which still forms the boundary line between the German empire and Denmark. Beyond this river, and throughout Scandinavia, the Danes or Normans, who had afforded refuge to a great number of Saxon fugitives, and had imbibed their hatred of Christianity and of the Frankic sway, began to seek occasion to wreak their vengeance, to display their daring valour, and to gratify their thirst of plunder. Courage was, in their eyes, the first of virtues: the glory of a hazardous expedition was regarded by every family as an inheritance more precious than perishable riches; the young were eager to mark their entry into the world by daring adventures. Not less ac- customed to brave the wrath of the tempest than the perils of the fight, they ventured forth on the ocean in small open boats: in these they infested the shores of Germany, of France, and of Great Britain; and extended the predatory warfare in which they gloried, to countries apparently the most secure from their at- tacks. But these expeditions were not as yet sanctioned by the national government; they were the exploits of adventurers, over whom the king of Denmark had no control. Indeed, at the time in question, that country was distracted by a civil war car- ried on between several cousins who aspired to the crown. The CHAP. XVIII.] ABDERRAHMAN. 551 pretenders to the kingly dignity referred their claims to Louis le Debonnaire, and wished to make him their arbiter. In the year 826, one of them, called Heriolt,* set out for Mentz, which place the emperor had appointed for their meeting: he was ac- companied by his wife and a numerous suite of his countrymen. They all declared themselves ready to embrace Christianity: Louis, consequently, presented Heriolt at the font of the church of St. Alban, where he was baptized^ and the empress Judith performed the same office for the queen. Within the boundaries of Gaul itself the imperial authority was but imperfectly acknowledged by the Bretons and Gascons. These nations, separated by their language from the Franks and the Gauls, submitted to the imperial government when it had suf- ficient vigour to make them feel that submission was inevitable^ but they habitually despised agriculture and every useful art. Whoever did not speak their language was regarded as an ene- my^ whatever an enemy possessed was looked upon as lawful spoil 5 and the first symptoms of weakness in their neighbours were watched, as the signal for renewed hostilities and renewed pillage. Mervan and Viomark, who both assumed the title of king of the Bretons, repeatedly forced Louis to take the fields for, though he confided to his representatives the command of more distant wars, he invariably conducted in person those in the interior of Gaul. Lupus Centuli, duke of the Gascons, showed no less obstinacy^ his agile hunters of the Pyrennees sallied forth from Beam and the valley of Soule, and spread ter- ror throughout Aquitaine: they escaped the pursuit even of the cavalry; and, at the very moment when their enemies thought them entrapped, they were far distant. Beyond the Pyrennees, Alphonso II., surnamed the Chaste^ king of Oviedo, (a. d. 791 — 842,) was carrying on an unequal struggle against Abderrahman, the victorious king of Corduba. (a. d. 822 — 852.) The former, under whom the half-fabulous hero, Bernardo del Carpio, distinguished himself by his exploits, demanded occasional succours of Louis, and, in return, rendered him occasional homage for the victories he gained in Galicia and the Asturias. The latter hardly noticed this mountain-warfare on the part of a small semi-barbarous nation. He had subdued all the rest of Spain to his government: he had suppressed seve- ral revolts in his own family; he had gained some brilliant vic- ♦ Harold, or Harald, is spelt Heroult by Norman liistorians. — Transl 352 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XVIII. tories over the generals of Louis and his son Pepin, king of Aquitaine. He had driven the Franks from the banks of the Ebro, and reconquered from them the county of Barcelona; but his attention had been chiefly turned to the encouragement of agriculture, of commerce, of arts, and letters, in every part of his domains. The population of Moorish Spain was rapidly in- creasing: her schools acquired celebrity; her scholars multiplied, and her towns and cities began to appreciate the new-felt bene- fits of civilization and refinement of manners. Abderrahman II. was himself a philosopher, a poet, and a musician; and encou- raged by his example and his patronage the studies in which he took an active share. But these pursuits had not the effect of inclining him to renounce the pleasures of the world. Whilst Alphonso II., who, in concert with his wife, had made a vow of monastic chastity, left no children, the philosopher Abderrahman left forty -five sons and forty-one daughters. Italy was almost exclusively under the government of Lo- thaire, the eldest son of the emperor. Louis, who showed the most extreme deference to the papal authority, would, perhaps, have contributed to its elevation, in opposition to that of his son, if the lives of the five pontiffs who succeeded each other in the chair of St. Peter, during his reign, had been of longer dura- tion. This rapid succession prevented the church ft om profit- ing, by the weakness of the emperor, to, grasp at fresh preroga- tives. All the other powers subordinate to the throne acquired, however, greater independence. Lothaire, dreading the enmity of his father and his stepmother, thought it expedient to concili- ate all his vassals. The dukes who owed him allegiance, richer in wealth and in vassals than the nobles of France, began to look upon themselves as independent princes. The duke of Bene- vento, the most powerful of all, who, even under Charlemagne, had been a tributary, but never a subject, once more declared war on his own account; a proceeding not yet ventured upon by any other of the great nobles in the Frankic empire. Towards the end of Louis's reign, (a. d. 839,) it is true, this duchy was divided amongst three independent nobles, the princes of Saler- no, Benevento, and Capua. But so increased was the population and the wealth of these magnificent tracts of country, that this great fief, even when divided, still ranked amongst the most powerful of the empire. At this same epoch, the republics of Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi, Greek cities, which took advantage CHAP. XVIII.] VENICE. S53 of the neglect of the emperor of the East, to recover and strength- en their liberty, had lapidly increased in population j their troops were become warlike; and an extensive trade with the Arabs, the Greeks, and the Latins, spread affluence and prosperity with- in their walls. It is true, the rise of a new power in their neigh- bourhood inspired them with anxiety: the Saracens had esta- blished several military colonies at the mouths of the Garigliano, at Cuma, and at la Licosa. On the other hand, Venice, which had already existed for se- veral centuries under the protection of the Greek empire, was be- ginning to emancipate herself entirely from all foreign shackles. In the year 697, the Venetians had modified their constitution by placing a single head with the title of doge, or duke, over the tribunes of the different confederate islands who composed the government. Pepin, son of Charlemagne, had refused to recognise the independence of the Venetians^ but their vigorous resistance to his attacks, in the year 809, had established their right of pay- ing no obedience to the head of the Western empire. This event had been followed, at no great distance of time, by the foundation of that city on the island of Rialto, which was destined to become the capital of the republic and the queen of the Adriatic. Along the whole eastern frontier of the empire there were small Slavonic nations who acknowledged themselves tributary to Louis le Debonnaire. Sometimes their dukes assisted in person at the diets held by the emperor; sometimes they delegated ambassadors. But it not unfrequently happened, that their own fickleness, or the insolence of the commanders on the frontiers, occasioned a petty warfare between them and the empire. Dukes of Pannonia, Dal- matia, Liburnia, the Abodrites, the Soratians, the Witzi, the Bo- hemians, the Moravians, are mentioned, sometimes amongst the feudatory subjects of the empire, sometimes amongst its enemies^ without affording us a possibility of discovering the interests and the alliances of these small barbarian tribes, who often changed both their name and place of abode. On the same frontier, in Hungary and Transylvania, the Huns and Avars, after having re- sisted the arms of Charlemagne, were become enfeebled by civil dissensions: many of them had embraced Christianity; many had abandoned the country; in short, they were no longer formidable. But, farther to the east, the Bulgarians had raised themselves upon their ruins. This pagan nation, continually at war with the Greeks, inspired univg.'sal dread from the ferocity of their manners and 854 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [oHAP. XVIII. disposition. They did not turn their arms against the empire of the Franks; but several of the smaller Slavonic tribes forsook the alliance of the Franks and sought that of the Bulgarians, and paid tribute to the one or to the other, as they thought they could en- sure themselves protection against that neighbour, whom, at the time, they had the most reason to dread. In 824, the deputies of Omortag, king of the Bulgarians, arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle, to demand some settlement of frontiers between themselves and the Franks. The death of Omortag just at the same period interrupt- ed the negotiations. Peace still subsisted between the empire of the East and that of the West, and the two emperors continued their intercourse by means of embassies: but the simultaneous decay of these two great powers gradually estranged them from each other. In the time of Charlemagne, their territories had touched upon each other throughout the whole line of an extensive frontier; now, they were already separated by several independent or hostile states. The island of Crete had been conquered towards the year 823, by a fleet composed of Ommiad Musulmans from the shores of Andalusia. In 827, Sicily was invaded by a body of Musulmans from Africa, who had been invited to the enterprise by a young Greek who was in love with a nun. Dalmatia and Ser- bia declared themselves independent about the year 826; the lat- ter threw off the yoke of Byzantium, while the Croatians, their neighbours, withdrew their allegiance from the court of Aix-la- Chapelle. The revolutions of the Greek empire had been precipitated by the bitterness of the religious hatred existing between the image- worshippers and the iconoclasts. The ambitious Irene, who had re-established the worship of images, and had found in the monks such powerful allies, fell a victim to a conspiracy of the contrary faction, a short time after the negotiations set on foot between herself and Charlemagne, with the view of uniting the two em- pires by the marriage of their sovereigns. She was surprised and arrested, on the 31st of October, 802, by the orders of Ni- cephorus, her grand treasurer, who was crowned emperor in her place. She was banished to Lesbos, and left exposed to such abject poverty, that this once powerful and haughty empress was reduced to gain a scanty subsistence by spinning. The history of Greece at this period has been transmitted to us solely by writers who w^ere ardently devoted to the mainte- CHAP. XVIII.] GREEK EMPIRE. 355 nance of the worship of images against the iconoclasts ; and as Nicephorus once more abolished that worship, his reign, from 802 to 811, and that of his son Stauracius, are represented as dis- gracefulj whilst Michael Rhangabe, who succeeded the latter, (a. d. 811 — 813,) is painted as an excellent and truly orthodox prince. Nicephorus, it is true, was unsuccessful in the war which he undertook against the Bulgarians^ but as he himself was killed in the great battle he fought against them, and his son was mortally wounded, we must at least do justice to their per- sonal courage; while, on the contrary, their successor gave nu- merous proofs of weakness and incapacity. Michael was un- seated by a new revolution, which once more placed the power in the hands of the iconoclasts, and raised Leo the Armenian to the empire. So slight was the alarm with which Michael Rhan- gabe inspired the new emperor, that he was permitted to retire to a convent, where he survived his deposition thirty-two years. The Greek emperors contemporary with Louis le Debonnaire, — Leo the Armenian, (a. d. 813 — 820|) Michael the Stammerer, A. D. 820— 829,-) and his son Theophilus, (a. d. 829—342,)—. persisted in their horror of image-worship; and they are all, in consequence, represented by clerical historians as tyrants. The coronation of Michael the Stammerer, and the death of Theo- philus, are equally calculated to strike the imagination. The former, after having been the friend of Leo the Armenian, had repeatedly conspired against him: he had been condemned to be burnt alive, and was imprisoned in a dungeon of the palace. The eve of the day fixed for his execution, his friends, habited as priests and penitants, with swords hidden under their long robes, entered the chapel where the emperor Leo was performing matins, on Christmas-day, and attacked him at the moment he was chanting the first psalm. Leo, who had been a soldier, and who had ascended with glory, step after step, in the career of arms, having no other means of defence, seized a massive cross from the altar, and endeavoured to repulse the assailants, at the same time imploring their mercy. " It is the hour of vengeance, and not of mercy," was the answer of the conspirators; and he fell beneath their swords. His prisoner, Michael, was instantly brought from his dun- geon, and placed upon the throne, where he received the homage of the nobles of the empire, of the clergy, and the people, be- 356 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XVIII. fore a smith could be found to take off the fetters which still bound his feet. His son Theophilus was surnamed bj the Greeks the Unfortu- nate, from his constant want of success in every war he con- ducted in person, spite of his brilliant valour and great activity. He seems to have united the merits and defects of those eastern despots, whose justice, vigilance, and bravery, historians cele- brate 5 forgetting that the vigour, the promptitude, and arbitrary caprice of their decisions destroy in the people themselves all notions of law and justice; that their vigilance takes the form of vexatious espionnage, inspiring their subjects with continual dis- trust: that their courage, not being enlightened and guided by a regular study of the art of war, serves only to expose their sol- diers to danger. The Greek nation already held but the second rank in the East. The opinions of their neighbours the Musulmans had in- fluenced their morals and their habits^ and the emperors of Greece were dazzled by the glory of the khaliphs. Theophilus, the rival of Motassem, the son of Harun al Rashid, seems to have taken the commander of the faithful as his model. The death of Theophilus is even more stamped with the oriental cha- racter than his life. He had given his sister in marriage to a brave captain of the ancient race of the Persian kings, Theophobus, who, with a great number of his countrymen, had renounced a country bowed down under the Moslem yoke: he had embraced Christianity, and served in the armies of the empire. He had given his brother-in-law signal proofs of his fidelity, at a period when a numerous faction called upon himself to ascend the throne; and the emperor, attacked, in the flower of youth, by a mortal disease, which, it was evident, would rapidly tear him from his wife and his infant son, and would thus leave them un- protected, might have been expected to rejoice at the prospect of confiding them to the hands of so faithful a guardian as Theo- phobus. Such, however, would not be the opinion of a Turk of the present day in similar circumstances; neither was it that of Theophilus; for despotism assimilates men of every race and every religion. With feelings of sombre jealousy he reflected that his brother-in-law would survive him. On his death-bed, he gave orders that the head of Theophobus should be brought to him. He grasped it with his expiring hands, and exclaimed, " I recognise thee, my brother, and yet already thou hast ceased CHAP. XVIII.] LOUIS LE DEBONNAIRE. S57 to be Theophobus; soon, too soon, I shall cease to be Theophi- lus." He then fell back upon his bed, and expired. During the first sixteen years of the reign of Louis le Debon- naire, frequent embassies between the two empires kept up the remembrance of the ancient unity of the Roman world; and the question of the worship of images was debated afresh in the West, on the invitation of the emperor of the East. But, dating from the year 830, we find the whole attention of the Franks concentrated upon themselves; their relations with foreign powers were dissolved; and the history of the times presents us with no - thing but internal dissensions and the quarrels of the Carlovin- gian family. At the assembly of the states held at Aix-la-Chapelle in the spring of the year 830, Louis had called together the Frankic army to carry war into Britany. This war, in which the sol- diers had no hopes of getting plunder, and in which they knew they must undergo all the inconveniences and dangers of roads fatal to their horses, an unwholesome climate, and great suffer- ing, was regarded with extreme repugnance by the freemen of whom the army was to be composed. This discontent; the ig- norance of the freemen, who, in most instances, suffered without understanding the cause of their suffering; the absence of all public opinion; the w^ant of any communication between the provinces which could serve to enlighten them; were so many instruments seized upon by the sons of Louis to incite to revolt; the armies marching under them to the general rendezvous. Pepin, king of Aquitaine, and Louis, king of Bavaria, united their troops at Verberie. Their father, perceiving that he was abandoned by the greater part of his soldiers, resolved on put- ting himself at the head of those who continued faithful, and marching to Compiegne, three miles distant, where he entered into negotiations with his sons. A promise was immediately ex- acted from him, that he would dismiss from his court Bernhard, duke of Septimania, the reputed lover of his wife. The empress Judith was conducted to the camp, and confessions corroborative of public suspicions were extorted from her, together with a pro- mise that she would take the veil at the convent of St. Rade- gunde at Poictiers. Judith was so acted upon, either by terror or by repentance, that she entreated tlie emperor to abdicate the crown, and to retire to a convent; but he refused to bind himself by monastic vows, and demanded time for deliberation. In the 46 S58 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XVIII. mean time, the aged monarch found himself a prisoner in the hands of his three sons: for Lothaire had arrived from Italy; he had approved every thing done by his two brothers, and was re- cognised as the head of the malecontent party. It was the wish of the clergy of his party that the emperor should be formally deposed by a national council. But such severity did not ap- pear necessary to his sons, who were not resolved on depriving him of all authority. The feeble Louis had always been led by those about him: henceforward their rivals were removed from his person, and he remained entirely in their hands; they ima- gined he would submit implicitly to their wishes, while his name, and the respect it still inspired, would be of use, without im- posing any restraint upon them. But jealousy of power aroused the mental energy of the old emperor. He readily gave himself up to a favourite, but that fa- vourite must be of his own choice; and, to regain possession of power, he displayed a degree of address and perseverance which he had never before exhibited. The house of Charlemagne had reached its elevation by the arms of the people of Germany. Charles had lived almost entirely amongst them; and had chosen them exclusively to fill his army and to discharge the most emi- nent functions both of church and state. The inhabitants of Gaul felt humbled and oppressed: under the reign of Charlemagne they had not dared to make any attempt to free themselves; they were imboldened under that of Louis (of whom, however, they had fewer reasons to complain,) and they took advantage of the dis- sensions amongst the royal family to shake off this Germanic as- cendency: they united their own cause to that of the malecontent princes, and seconded every attack made upon the imperial au- thority. The empire of the West was thus divided between two nations whom their language rendered it impossible to blend, and in whom difference of origin and customs engendered mutual antipathy. On the one side were seen all the inhabitants of either bank of the Rhine, who till that time, had been almost exclusively desig- nated by the name of Franks,* but to whom, at this period, the more generic name of Germans was again beginning to be ap- plied: on the other were found all who made use of the Roman * It should be remarked, tliat Franken was not the name of a tribe or gens, like Sachsen Bajoaren (Bayern,) &c. but of an association, originally formed for the deliverance of Germany from the Roman yoke,— Transl. CHAP. XVIII.] LOUIS LE DEBONNAIRE. 359 tongue, or the different patois which were already growing out of corrupted Latin^ the Gauls, the Aquitanians, the Italians. The Gauls, however, were not willing to renounce their share of the glory which for three centuries had hung around the conquerors of their country; they therefore assumed the name of Franks, and gave to their country that of France. As, however, from the period in question, this name denotes a new language (the same spoken by the French of the present day, as contradistinguished from the Teutonic language of the ancient Franks,) we shall henceforth give to the Gauls, among whom it was in use, the modern name of French. The aversion of the French, and the attachment of the Ger- mans, to the son of Charlemagne, furnishes an explanation of the long civil wars which troubled the end of the reign of Louis le Debonnaire, and the whole of that of his sons. Louis having succeeded in obtaining that the next assembly of the states should be convoked at Nimeguen, found himself surrounded there by a far larger number of Germans than of French : Lothaire, frightened at the desertion of his partisans, repaired to his father's tent; and whilst his followers, alarmed by the length of the conference, imagined he had met with some violence, and were preparing at the peril of their lives to rescue him by main force, he had effect- ed his reconciliation after the manner of princes: — he sacrificed the men who had exposed themselves for his sake; he accused them as the instigators of all his rebellious acts; and consented to the condemnation of all his friends to death. The good-natured Louis, however, abstained from carrying into execution any one of the sentences pronounced upon them; his sole desire seemed to be to recall his wife from the convent whither she had retired, and to prevail on the church to authorize him in taking her back. The misfortunes of the aged emperor had had the effect of ex- citing the enthusiasm of the people, and especially of his own countrymen, bound to him by the tie of a common language. His humility might be extolled by the monks; his clemency and juster claims on universal approbation: but no sooner did he re- sume the reins of the government, than his incapacity increased the general disorder, and his very virtues became a source of evil to the people. Accordingly, a year had hardly elapsed after power had been restored to him, when discontent burst forth on all sides. Always under the dominion and the guidance of the person most constantly about him, and especially of the em~ 560 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [CHAP. XVIIJ* press Judith, the most futile motives influenced his most impor- tant determinations: he altered the order of the succession to the crown, rather than support for an instant the ill-humour of bis wife; he appointed military governors over the largest pro- vinces as the price of a caress, and changed the boundaries of his kingdom in return for the slightest favour. The instability of every established division; the apparent contempt for all set- tled arrangements; the violation of every oath intended as a guarantee, kept alive the agitation of the people. The sons of Louis, seeing that their interests were incessantly sacrificed to that of their youngest brother, repeatedly endeavoured at resist- ance, either openly or by intrigue; at last they met in arms in Alsace, in the month of June, 833, with the design of compel- ling their father to adhere to his own ordinances and his own di- visions of territory. Louis, on his side, advanced as far as Worms to resist them. He was surrounded by numerous prelates, nobles, and soldiers, who inspired him with full confidence; but who, though united under his standard by their sense of allegiance, probably lament- ed that they were obliged to turn their arms against their fellow- countrymen, merely to abet the ambition of a woman, or to com- ply with the dotage of a king no longer in a state to know his own will. During the night of the 24th of June, 833, each bat- talion successively passed over to the camp of the young princes: all the great nobles, all the prelates, and soon after all the cour- tiers, one after the other, abandoned the old monarch, whose im- becility daily became more evident. The spot where the empe- ror experienced this universal defection, previously known under the name of the Rothfeld, (the red field,) from that time bore the name of Lugenfeld^ (the field of a lie.) Louis, always eager to submit, dismissed the small number of faithful adherents still at- tached to him, went in person with his wife and his youngest son to the camp of his eldest sons, and resigned himself to cap- tivity. The universal defection which took place on the Lugenfeld may be considered as a solemn judgment pronounced by the na- tion on the premature dotage of Louis le Debonnaire. But the resentment of the people is never long-lived; that of the French people, least of all. No sooner was the court which had caused such universal mischief broken up, than the people, led rather by imagination than by reason, felt no other sentiment towards CHAP. XVIII.] INTERNAL REVOLUTIONS. 361 their old monarch than that of pity for his humiliationj and the sons of Louis were no sooner victorious than they lost all their popularity. They thought they should render their father inca- pable of ever reascending the throne by a solemn act of degra- dation, namely, by depriving him of his knightly belt. The bi- shops, on their side, drew up a general confession, consisting of eight articles, in which Louis was made to accuse himself of nu- merous crimes, and to declare himself unworthy of the throne. The facile monarch did not hesitate to recite it in the church of Soissons, (November 11, 833.) He afterwards demanded that a public penance should be imposed on him, that he might furnish an example to that people to whom he had been a scandal. With his own hands he unbuckled his knight's belt, and placed it on the altar^ then, taking oif his accustomed dress, he received from the bishops the dress of a penitent. The bishops imagined that, after this degrading ceremony, Louis would become an object of contempt in the eyes of all. But the aged emperor had resigned himself to disgrace from a feeling of monk -like humility,— a sentiment in which the people of that day could well sympathize: far from losing any of his partisans by his contrite submission, he only inspired greater pity. The two younger sons of Louis separated from their eldest brother, and complained of the rigour with which their father had been treated^ and Lothaire, abandoned by all his par- tisans successively, was soon reduced to yield to the conditions imposed on him by public opinion. It is worthy of remark, that these revolutions, so rapidly and frequently occurring, which alternately deprived the emperor or his sons of the sovereign power, and restored it to them, had been hitherto accomplished without any bloodshed. It is true that the princes were backed by armies, but these had appeared to give the law much more by the weight of their opinions than by their arms. The officers and the troops passed judgment on the conduct and the sentiments of their kings. Accordingly, they were constantly negotiating with the opposite camp, and passing without scruple from the one to the other. When a de- cision was taken, it seemed to be the consequence of the de- clared and evident unanimity of the nation, to which kings felt obliged to submit. At the beginning of the year 834, Lothaire was recognised sole emperor by the whole army, and by all the provinces: he was master of the persons of his adversai-ies, Louis, S62 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [CHAP. XVIII. Judith, and Charles: in less than two months he abandoned all these advantages, without even drawing his sword to defend them. In the early days of March, he set at liberty his father, who was at the convent of St. Denisj he took no measures to keep the empress and her son in his power; he fled from Paris, and retired to Vienne upon the Rhone, where he endeavoured to assemble his partisans. Dating from this time, and during the last six years of the reign of Louis le Debonnaire, it is true the quarrels of his family were more often disgraced by bloodshed; still they were not marked by any great battle, nor by any ex- ploit demanding our attention. No civil wars present a more degrading spectacle, or one more disgraceful to the hupcian race, than those of the Carlovingian family: they call forth neither great virtues, great talents, nor great passions: they do not even display great crimes; but every class in the state, every portion of society, seems struck with a mortal languor. The death of Pepin, king of Aquitaine, which took place at Poictiers on the 13th of December, 838, changed the politics of Louis, or rather those of the ambitious Judith, who absolutely directed his councils. Pepin, the second of the emperor's sons, left two sons and two daughters. According to a division of the kingdom, sanctioned by the monarch and the nation, the crown of Aquitaine passed of right to the elder son: but J^ouis immediately took the determination of despoiling his grandson in favour of his son by Judith: and he consecrated the remnant of a life now drawing to a close, to the conduct of this unnatu- ral war, whilst the Aquitanians generously embraced the defence of the son of the king whom he had given them. On the other hand, though Lothaire, the emperor's eldest son, was the one of the three who had caused him the most vexation, Judith, judging that his protection would be the most useful to Charles the Bald, sought to effect her reconciliation with him at any price. She, accordingly, entered into an agreement with him, that Bavaria alone should be given up to the emperor's third son, who, like his father, was named Louis, and that the whole remaining em- pire should be divided between Lothaire and Charles. Such was the price of the reconciliation between the two emperors, pro- claimed at the diet of Worms, on the 30th of May, 839. While these dissensions were passing within, the increasing weakness and universal anarchy which they occasioned, left the empire a prey to the attacks of all its neighbours. Those on the CHAP. XVIII.] DEATH OF LOUIS. 363 Slavonic frontier, now neighbours only to Louis of Bavaria, were already forgotten by the French. The record of no single event has come down to us, of all that passed throughout that long eastern frontier which Louis le Debonnaire had defended in the beginning of his reign. But it was by sea that the barbarians now gained entrance into France^ and, on this element, none dreamed of repelling them. Every year the Northmen pushed their ravages farther on every shore of the ocean. The Medi- terranean coasts were also beginning to suffer from the devas- tating incursions of the Saracens: a body of the latter, in 838, surprised and pillaged Marseilles, the most opulent of the cities of the south; while others of their countrymen established them- selves in southern Italy. At last Louis le Debonnaire, who had grown old both in mind and body long before the appointed period of man's decline, was attacked, towards the beginning of June, in the year 840, with water on the chest. By his own command, he was transported to the palace of Ingelheim, built on an island in the Rhine, above Maintz: there he still displayed that monk-like piety, sometimes touching, but always weak, which had conciliated the love of the people, notwithstanding the ignominy of his reign. His natural brother, Drogo, bishop of Metz, attended him in his last mo- ments, and prevailed on him to extend his forgiveness to every one, even to Louis of Bavaria, his third son, at that time in arms against him, and whom he accused of bringing his gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. When he was on the point of expiring, he was twice heard to exclaim in the German tongue, " AusI aus!" — "Out! out!" as if exhorting his soul to burst forth from its terrestrial abode. But it was the belief of his attendants that these words were addressed to the devil, whom he beheld at his window. " For, with his company," says the chronicle of St. Denis, *' he had naught to do, either dead or alive Then he turned his face to the right side; raised his eyes toward heaven, and in this manner he passed from this mortal life to the joys of paradise, June 28, 840." ( 364 ) CHAPTER XIX. Division of the Empire into distinct States. — Rapid Degeneracy of the Carlo- vingian Race. — Successors to Louis le Debonnaire. — Charles the Bald. — Government of the French Monarchy. — French and German Languages. — Battle of Fontenai. — Defeat of Lothaire and Pepin. — Partition of the Empire. — Peace. — Incursions of the Northmen on the Coasts of France. — Their Bravery and Love of Plunder. — Oscar. — Pillage of Rouen. — Pusil- lanimity of the People. — Raegner Lodbrog. — Flight of Charles the Bald and his Court. — Sack of Paris. — Hastings. — Defenceless State of France. — Attacks of the Saracens and Moors on Rome and Naples. — Sack of Mar- seilles by Greek Pirates.— Burning of Bordeaux by the Normans. — Sack of Aix-la-Chapelle, Treves, and Cologne. — State of the Population of France. — Devastation of Normandy. — Second Sack of Paris. — Cowardice and Decay of the French Nobility. — Increasing Wealth and Power of the Church.— Conduct of the Clergy. — Trial by Ordeal. — Superior Power of the Bishops in France, of the Dukes in Italy, of the People in Germany. — Division of the Kingdom of France among the three Sons of Lothaire. — His Abdication and Death. — Division of the States of Charles the Bald. — Marriage of Lothaire the Younger and Theutberge. — Violent Opposi- tion of the Clergy to their Divorce. — Appeal to Pope Nicholas I. — Lo- thaire's Journey to Rome. — His Reception by Adrian II. — Adrian's Denun- ciations. — Death of Lothaire and his Companions, a. d. 840 — 869. So far as we have been able to penetrate the obscurity of the ages which have just passed in review before us, we have beheld all the nations of the West subjected to common revolutions, hurried along in a like career; we have seen them combining, first under the Romans, then under the Franks, and under the Arabs, towards the formation of a universal monarchy. It was sufficient, with a view to render intelligible the general course of the nations of Europe, to fix our attention on a single empire, and to follow out the relations either of its parts with the whole, or of its ene- mies with the one dominant and united state. In the middle of the ninth- century the scene changes. The partition of the West among the sons of Louis le Debonnaire gave birth to independent states; to nations of strange language, laws, manners, and opinions, which we see keep their ground in Europe. The period on which we are now about to enter, cala- mitous in many points of view, shameful and degrading to sub- jects and to kings, was yet, after long anarchy, productive of the most important and beneficial results; — the birth of popular rights and institutions. This we are about to witness; and it is the final act of the grand drama which it was our design to exhibit to our CHAP. XIX.] CARLOVINGIAN RACE. 365 readers. But no small number of years were required for the completion of this act: long efforts, pertinacious struggles, were needed to change all the opinions of men; to turn the course of their affections; to detach them from the body of which they had always learned to consider themselves as forming a part, and to persuade them that they formed a whole of themselves. Long after the power of Charlemagne and his descendants had ceased, the recollection, or the idea, of the empire still dwelt in the minds and the memories of the people of the West. Long after independent sovereigns, a difference of language, an opposi- tion of interests, had detached, the Franks, the Germans, the Ita- lians, from each other, and broken again into many fragments their newly formed monarchies, the three nations continued to regard each other as fellow-countrymen; all their sovereigns con- tinued to take the title of Frank princes, and to think them- selves qualified candidates for all the crowns of the West indiffe- rently. The revolution which separated the members of the em- pire began in the year 840, at the death of Louis le Debonnaire; in 987 it was scarcely accomplished, when Charles of Lorraine, brother of Louis V., the last of the Carlovingian line, was deprived of the throne in the last of the kingdoms which had remained subject to his family. Among the causes which precipitated the fall of this mighty body, we must, doubtless, place in the foremost rank, the inca- pacity of its rulers. The degeneracy of the Carlovingian race is one of the most striking examples of that rapid deterioration of the species which menaces royal families, and which seems an almost inevitable consequence of the seductions with which ab- solute power surrounds them. When these families attain to the possession of absolute power in a semi-barbarous age; when the fathers have not endeavoured to correct in their children, by the most careful education, the disadvantages of their situation; when the culture of the mind, of letters, and of morals, do not give a new direction to the activity of those who seem to have nothing- left to wish or to aspire after, the successive occupants of the throne can have no other thought than that of enjoying the sen- sual pleasures placed within their reach by the success of the founders of their dynasty: they are corrupted by all the vices which power and riches can minister to; corrupted by the ab- sence of all obstacle and all restraint, which, of itself, is often sufficient to turn the strongest head; corrupted, often, by the 47 366 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XIX. false direction given to their superficial studies, or by the false aspect under which religion is presented to them, as a means of expiating the vices she fails to prevent. The Carlovingian family, which was divided into so many branches, which occupied for nearly a century all the thrones of Europe, and which exercised so decisive an influence over the calamities of that quarter of the globe, had, at its rise, produced a series of great men^ Pepin of Heristal, Charles Martel, Pepin the Short, Charlemagne: never had so many able and distin- guished leaders been seen to succeed each other in a right line. It must, however, be remarked, that the earlier among them were little more tiian party chieftains, or commanders of armies; and that even the last-mentioned was not born in a royal station. On the contrary, dating from the revolution which placed them on the throne, all the sons and grandsons of these heroic ances- tors; all those princes, lapped from their birth in the purple of the Western empire, were, without a single exception, despised and despicable. In the second generation, even, we do not find one deserving of interest, or capable of exciting affection; and the annihilation of the strength of their immense empire, its rapid fall, — without precedent or parallel in the world, — was the work of their vices and their imbecility. Louis le Debonnaire had, indeed, paved the way towards this enfeeblement of the Carlovingian race. With extensive acquire- ments, goodness of heart, and amiable qualities, which were mis- taken for virtues, he ruined, in a few years, the magnificent in- heritance he had from his heroic predecessors. Seduced by the intrigues of his second wife, and by his foolish partiality for his youngest son, he overthrew the laws of the empire, and those which he had himself enacted; confounded all rights, and ren- dered the duties of the people unintelligible by contradictory obligations; taught his sons and his subjects to violate the treaties and the oaths he exacted from them, and which he himself vio- lated; and thus rendered necessary a civil war after his death, to regulate, by force of arms, what he had thrown into confusion by his infirmness and vacillation. At the moment of his death, Louis le Debonnaire had not one of his children near him. His eldest son, Lothaire, governed Italy with the title of emperor; the second, Pepin, was dead, and his son, Pepin II., was acknowledged king by a part of Aqui- taine; the third, Louis, called from that time the Germanic, CHAP. XIX.] CHARLES THE BALD. S67 reigned in Bavaria; the fourth, Charles, was at Bourges, endea- vouring to induce the Aquitanians to recognise him as their so- vereign. The claims of these four princes, the eldest of whom wanted to remain head of the monarchy, as his father and grand- father had been, not one of whom was contented with the portion allotted to him, could only be adjusted by a higher tribunal — either the voice of the whole nation, or the decision of the sword, which in public and in private quarrels was thought to pronounce the judgment of Heaven. The four princes prepared to submit their claims to both: but their respective rights were so confused; their interests were so ill understood, even by themselves; the alliances they might have been able to contract were in a state of so little forwardness, that they were not ready either to plead or to fight. A national diet had been convoked at Worms, even be- fore their father's death: they did not attend it. They assembled their armies, though their armies were, as yet, little disposed to take the field. The youngest son of Louis, Charles the Bald, was only seven- teen years old. He had done nothing, nor certainly did he ever do any thing, which could justly endear him to the people. The right which he claimed to strip Pepin II., to invade the possessions of his elder brothers, or to render himself independent of the head of his family, could be founded only on those feminine intrigues to which he owed his elevation, or on the fondness of a father who had sunk into dotage. These same intrigues had for ten years past involved the nation in scandalous intestine wars, the very memory of which was, one would think, sufficient to alien- ate the affections of the people from the young man who had been made the cause of so many miseries. Spite of all these disad- vantages, Charles's cause was maintained with constancy, with pertinacity, and he triumphed. The consequences of his success may perhaps contribute to enlighten us as to its causes. With the reign of Charles the Bald commenced the real French mo- narchy; or the independence of that nation which created the lan- guage still spoken in France: it was the epoch of the separation of that country from Germany and Italy. The war of Charles against his two brothers was maintained by the Gaulish people; or rather, by the nobles of Roman extraction, who wished to shake off the German yoke. The insignificant quarrel of the kings was taken up with ardour, because it was identified with the quarrel of the races; and all the hostile prejudices which always S68 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. fcHAP. XIX, attach to differences of language and of manners, gave obstinacy and bitterness to the combatants. The first conquests of the Franks had scattered the two tongues, the Teutonic and the Latin, throughout the whole extent of Gaul. The barbarian and the Roman had each his dialect: the one had been reserved for the army, the other for the church and the go- vernment. All the nobles and great men spoke both languages indifferently; but in the south, the Latin, which daily became more and more corrupt, and which began to be designated by the name Roman or Romanz, was the mother tongue: German was the taught language. The reverse of this was the case in the north. The revolution which had transferred the whole power to the dukes of Austrasia, the ancestors of Charlemagne, and their ar- mies, had diffused the German language over the south, and had rendered it absolutely necessary for those connected with the go- vernment to acquire it; but at the same time the seat of the court had been transferred to the Germanic provinces — to Aix-la-Cha- pelle. Worms, Cologne; and Paris, formerly the capital of the kingdom, had become more and more attached to the Roman lan- guage, in proportion as it was more and more deserted by the Franks. At the time of the death of Louis le Debonnaire, the frontier line between the region of the two languages was pretty much what it is at present. It was the boundary which, in his last partition treaty, that emperor had sought to establish be- tween the government of Lothaire and that of Charles. For the first time since the fall of the Roman empire, all who spoke the Roman dialect of France were united into one single body; for the first time they could express their sentiments of dislike to those barbarians who affected to be their masters, and whom their language alone sufficed to prove of another race. The young man whom fortune gave them as a leader, showed, ere long, how little he deserved their attachment or their sacrifices: but if they could have been induced to abandon him, they would certainly never abandon themselves. A whole year was spent by the four princes in assembling their armies, in strengthening the attachment of their partisans and in binding themselves by mutual alliances. Thus Lothaire promised his support to the youthful Pepin, while Louis the Germanic be- came the ally of the young Charles. After many skirmishes be- tween the several parties, the four princes at length marched in the direction of the centre of France, about the close of the spring CHAP. XIX.] BATTLE OF FONTENAI. S69 of the year 841. Louis and Charles then sent a message to Lo- thaire and Pepin to this effect: that they must choose whether they would accept their last propositions, or await them in the field ^ for that, on the morrow, the 25th of June, at the second hour of the day, 'they would come to demand the decision of Al- mighty God, to which those princes had forced them to appeal against their will. In this spirit was fought the battle of Fontenai, the most bloody and furious conflict which had taken place in the civil wars of France for many years. A contemporary Italian writer affirms, that the loss of Lothaire and Pepin amounted to forty thousand men: this calculation is most likely exaggerated^ it is a more pro- bable supposition that forty thousand men was the amount of the loss on both sides; for the conquerors, Louis and Charles, suf- fered little less than the conquered. Even this number is doubt- less very large, but it betrays a great ignorance either of the mo- ral causes which govern great states, or of the habitual effect of war on population, to attribute, as has often been done, to this carnage alone, the ruin of the Frankic empire. The terrible battle of Fontenai did not give a sufficiently de- cided advantage to one party over the other, to occasion an im- mediate occupation of new provinces, or a change in the respec- tive forces of the two leagues. Each people, and each prince, while bewailing their respective losses, began to think seriously of the means of preventing the recurrence of a similar calamity, the rather, as the empire was at the same time devastated by other enemies. The people, the dukes, the prelates, demanded peace with the utmost urgency; the princes felt the necessity of sincerely and earnestly endeavouring to obtain it. Lothaire was the first who sent to propose to his brothers a treaty of peace, of which he consented to admit, as the basis, the independence of their kingdoms of his imperial crown. Italy, Bavaria, and Aqui- taine were to be considered as the hereditary portions, respective- ly, of Lothaire, of Louis, and of Charles; for Pepin II. was uncon- ditionally abandoned by his uncle, who had promised to protect him. After severing these three kingdoms from the mass, the remainder was to be divided into three equal parts, of which Lo- thaire, as elder, was to have his choice. Although these primary conditions were agreed on, and the three brothers had held an amicable conference, in the middle of June, 842, in a little island in the Saone above Ma9on, a long time was still required before 370 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XIX. their commissaries could come to an understanding. They soon began to discover that they had not sufficiently exact information as to the extent or the comparative riches of the several provinces of the empire, to make an equal division of them. They had no geographical maps, no statistical tables to refer to, and were com- pelled to see every thing with their own eyes. They then asked for assistants, till at length the total number of commissaries amounted to three hundred. They allotted out among themselves the whole surface of the empire, and they engaged to traverse it in every direction, and to make a complete report upon it before the August of the following year. On this report, the final division of the empire of Charlemagne was decided on in the month of August, 843. All that part of Gaul situated to the west of the Meuse, the Saone, and the Rhone, with the part of Spain lying between the Pyren- nees and the Ebro, were abandoned to Charles the Bald. This constituted the new kingdom of France. The whole of Germany, to the Rhine, was allotted to Louis the Germanic. Lothaire united to Italy the whole eastern por- tion of France, from the sea of Provence to the mouths of the Rhine and the Scheldt. This long and narrow strip, which cut off all communication between Louis and Charles, and which in- cluded all the countries speaking German in the interior of Gaul, was called Lotliaringia, or the portion of Lothaire^ whence the German Lothringen, and the French Lorraine. The motive which had mainly determined the Carlovingian princes to put an end to the war, and to lend an ear to the uni- versal complaints of their subjects, was the invasion of the coasts of France and Germany by adventurers from the North, who were called Northmen, (Nordmcinner,) or Danes; and who re- turned each succeeding year in greater numbers, and renewed their ravages on the defenceless countries. It was not from the small kingdom of Denmark alone that these formidable swarms issued forth: the whole of Scandinavia, all the shores of the Bal- tic sea, all the regions lying along the rivers which empty them- selves into the sea, furnished recruits to these bands of sea-rob- bers. It was a new direction which the migration of the north- ern hordes had taken: instead of advancing across the continent, they poured down upon the coasts. They fancied they acquired a double glory — as they incurred a double danger — in braving the tempests of the north in their frail barks, before they en- CHAP. XIX.] INCURSION OF THE NORTHMEN. 371 countered the enemies whom they went in search of. Without any other pretext for war than the love of plunder; without any other offence, on the part of those they attacked, than their riches, they still imagined that they were in quest of honour as well as of booty; and if they lost thousands of men annually by storms at sea and combats on shore, their population increased with a rapidity commensurate with the drain upon it, and the numbers of the Norse invaders seemed to multiply with their perils and disasters. In the year 841, Oscar, duke of the North- men or Danes, ascended the Seine as far as Rouen, took and pillaged that great city, to which he set fire on the 14th of May, and continued to lay waste and plunder the banks of the Seine during a fortnight. Not an individual appeared to resist him. The inhabitants of the country were confounded in one common state of degradation and servitude with the cattle, which aided them in their labours; those of the towns were vexed, oppressed, and unprotected: all were disarmed; all had lost the requisite determination, as well as physical strength, to defend their lives as well as the slender remnant of property which the nobles had left them. The monks, who had already got the greater part of the soil into their hands, and who had mainly contributed to the complete decline of the military spirit, thought of nothing but how to hinder the relics, which they regarded as the treasures of their convent, from falling into the hands of the pagan invaders; and as, in the finest provinces of France, there was not a single spot within thirty leagues of the coast, in which they could think themselves in safety, they bore them in procession farther into the country. Every one of the following years was marked by some expedi- tion equally disastrous to France, and by the pillage of some great city. Nantes, Bordeaux, and Saintes, fell successively into the hands of the Normans. The ancient walls of the cities appear to have been totally abandoned; nor, indeed, could they have afforded any protection to citizens so debased and disheart- ened; who, instead of attempting to defend themselves, flocked, together with their priests, into the churches, where they suffered themselves to be butchered without resistance. In 845, Rsegner, duke of the Northmen, entered the mouth of the Seine with a hundred barks, and ascended the river with matchless audacity, laying waste both banks in his passage, though Charles, with his army, was then encamped on the right bank. 572 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. C<^HAP. XIX. Paris, which had been the capital of the Merovingian kings, had lost that prerogative under the Carlovingian dynasty. But that great city was still more important than any of those which had fallen to the lot of Charles the Bald; was adorned with a greater number of churches and of convents than any other; and, in the midst of the universal misery, she boasted the im- mense treasures collected in her churches. When Charles learned the approach of the Northmen, who had encountered no obstacle or resistance, he left the citizens exposed to all the hor- rors which threatened them: while he and his nobles established themselves in the convent of St. Denis, with a view to defend that sanctuary; and the servants of the church of St. Gene- vieve hastened to carry off the relics and the treasures of the saint to a remote farm which belonged to them. Rsegner, continuing his passage up the Seine, arrived before Paris on Holy Saturday, the 28th of March, 845. The city was deserted: all the inhabitants had fled. The Northmen expe- rienced no resistance; yet they massacred or hanged, in sight of the king's army and as a mark of their contempt for him, all the unhappy fugitives who fell into their hands. At the same time, without hastening, or without appearing to apprehend the slightest danger from their delay, they loaded their vessels with all the wealth they found remaining in Paris, — even to the timber of the houses or the churches which they thought applicable to the purposes of ship-building; while the grandson of Charlemagne, having neither courage to fight himself, nor finding any in the nobles by whom he was surrounded, bargained with the Northmen for the price of their departure, and, at length, promised them seven thousand pounds' weight of silver. A new leader of the Norse warriors, Hastings, who for thirty years led them on to victory, and who, above any other, contri- buted to reduce the fertile coasts of France and of England to a depopulated waste, began, about this time, to acquire celebrity. It is asserted that he was born among the most barbarous of the peasants of the diocess of Troyes; but that, finding it impossi- ble to endure the state of oppression to which he saw himself and those around him condemned, he had fled to the pagans of the North, embraced their religion, adopted their manners and their language, and distinguished himself by so much ability and daring, that he rapidly rose to consideration among them, and at length became their leader. Their cupidity was actively second- CHAP, XIX.] AfTACKS ON IRANCE. O/O ed by his thirst of vengeance, which he wreaked with peculiar fury on the nobles and the priests. Thus it was, that the exe- crable administration of the empire had brought about the al- most universal extinction of resolution and energy in the people 5 and if, by any accident, one escaped the poisonous influence of slavery, he turned against society those qualities, which, under good government, would have made him its most valuable de- fender, and now rendered him its most terrible scourge. The Carlovingian princes, far from occupying themselves with the means of defending their subjects, recalled from the mouths of rivers the coast-guards stationed there by Charlemagne, to employ them against each other; for, in the midst of the general devastation, their civil wars continued; and Charles, the most exposed of them all to the. incursions of the Normans, seemed to have no other object in view but to rob his nephew Pepin II. of Aquitaine. Mean while barbarians of every clime and region seemed to have learned that the Franks might be attacked with impunity at every point. The Saracens of Africa began to ravage the south, in the same manner as the Normans had devastated the west. In the month of April, 846, a mixed body of Arabs and Moors ascended the Tiber, took possession of the church of St. Peter of the Vatican, which was at that time without the walls of Rome, carried oiF the altar placed over the tomb of the apos- tle, together with all the ornaments and treasures of the church, and then turned their course towards Naples. At the same time Louis the Germanic, who had tried to repel an invasion of the Slavonians, had been defeated, less from the bravery of his ene- mies than from the dissensions of his own troops. The progress of cowardice and debasement among the sons of Charlemagne's soldiers,— among the French, in whom courage seems generated . by the very air they breathe, — is one of the most remarkable phenomena, but also one of the best attested, of the age we are contemplating: it proves to what a degree slavery can annihilate every virtue, and what a nation may become in which one caste arrogates to itself the exclusive privilege of bearing arms. Of all the cities built on the shores of the Medi- terranean, Marseilles was the most opulent, the most populous, and the most important as a commercial town. Marseilles was taken, in 848, by the refuse of Europe, — a handful of Greek pi- rates, who landed without resistance, and, after sacking the city, 48 374 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [CHAP. XIX. retired with impunity. At the same time, the Northmen took possession of Bordeaux, which they gave up to the flames. The cities of Friesland and Flanders in Lothaire's domains were no better defended. The walls of St. Omer alone inspired some confidence, and the relics and conventual wealth of the whole province were, consequently, brought thither for security. Experience had too clearly shown that these sacred treasures did not defend themselves from the insults or the rapacity of the pa- gans,* yet the popular faith in them continued unshaken. The princes and the g-overnors of provinces not only opposed no resistance to their enemies, but frequently invited them, and employed their arms to intimidate domestic foes, or to avenge pretended offences. Nomenoe, duke of the Bretons, is accused of having repeatedly introduced the Normans into the region ly- ing between the Loire and the Seine. Pepin II. of Aquitaine, and William, son of Bernhard, duke of Septimania, were not more scrupulous in calling in the Saracens: they introduced them not only along the whole marches of Spain, and in Septimania or Languedoc, but even into Provence, In an age which is called religious, the crime, in a Christian, of delivering up his country to pagans or to Musulmans, seemed of a deeper dye than that of betraying it to an ordinary enemy: and yet, never did the princes or powerful men hesitate to commit it, if it pro- mised to aiFord a means of gratifying their ambition or their ven- geance. Scarcely was there an individual among the distin- guished persons of this age who did not enter into some dis- graceful treaty with the enemies of his faith. In the early part of the autumn of 8^, a fleet of two hundred and fifty large Danish boats appeared off the coast of France,, and, dividing themselves into parties at the mouths of the rivers, ascended at the same time the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Seine. One of the divisions reached Aix-la-Chapelle, and no attempt was made to defend the ancient capital of Charlemagne, — the capital of Lothaire: the imperial palace was burned by the north- ern pirates, and the richest convents were given over to pillage. Nor was this all: this band of hardy adventurers, daring at once the power of France and that of Germany, pursued their route to Treves and Cologne, massacred almost all the inhabitants of these two celebrated cities, and set fire to their buildings. Another division, after leaving their boats at Rouen, had advanced by land as far as Beauvais, and had spread deso- CHAP. XIX.] DEGRADATION OF THE CITIES. ST5 lation throughout the adjacent country. The Danes passed two hundred and eighty-seven days in the country lying on the Seine 5 and when they quitted it, with their ships laden with the spoil of France, it was not to return home, but to transfer the scene of their depredations to Bordeaux. Yet, we do not hear what either Lothaire or Charles the Bald were doing during this period^ nor why those nobles who had reserved to themselves the exclusive right of bearing arms, could not draw a sword in defence of their country. Those ambitious chiefs, who had de- stroyed at once the power of the king and of the people, seemed now to rival each other only in abject pusillanimity. Europe still contained a great number of veteran warriors, who had beheld Charlemagne master of an empire which extended from the shores of the Mediterranean to those of the Baltic, and from the Krapack mountains to the ocean. No unforeseen cala- mity had befallen that vast empire; no powerful nation, no confe- deration of various tribes, had taken arms against it: it had fallen by the vices of its government alone. Never were the French summoned by the public authority to take arms, except for the purpose of slaughtering each other in the name and on the behalf of royalty. The nations united under the sceptre of Charlemagne were regarded by his descendants as a numerous herd, which they shared among them in the most capricious manner, without the least regard to the interests of the people, or the means of de- fending the states. The race of freemen, already exhausted by Charlemagne's wars, had become extinct under the feeble reigns of Louis le Debonnaire and of his son. The inhabitants of the towns, despised, ruined, disarmed, were no longer possessed of any means of defence. Gaining an humble subsistence by a few of the mechanical trades, or living on the charity of the monks, they were not in a condition to inspire the nobles with any jea- lousy: nevertheless, these overbearing lords were indignant that men of such low birth and menial occupations should not be slaves; and, far from protecting them, they delighted in their suf- ferings and misfortunes. Hence the walls of the cities were suf- fered to go to decay; their civic guard or militia had ceased to assemble; the treasury of their municipal courts was empty; their magistrates commanded no respect. The largest cities were con- sidered only like villages, as the dependency of the neighbouring castle; and when a handful of pirates appeared before their gates, and threatened them with pillage, slavery, and death, the citi- 376 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XIX. zens knew of no other resource than to fly to the foot of the altar, or to the protection of the church, where the brutality of the conquerors soon overtook them. The rural population, re- duced to the most abject state of slavery, and become almost in- diiFerent to life, were hunted like wild beasts by the Normans and the Saracens, and perished by thousands in the woods. They had no heart to till or sow the fields they had so little hope of reapingj and every year brought with it a fresh pestilence or fa- mine. "The cities of Beauvais and Meaux are taken," wrote Emen- tarius, a contemporary historian; *' the castle of Melun is devas- tated; Chartres is taken; Evreux is sacked; Bayeux and all the cities of that district are invaded; not a hamlet, not a village, not a convent, remains untouched; every one takes to flight; for rare- ly, indeed, do we find any one who dares to say, stay, resist, fight for your country, for your children, for the honour of your race." The Normans took advantage of this universal cowardice; and on the 28th of December, 856, they sailed up the Seine as high as Paris, which they entered and began to pillage. They first set fire to the churches of St. Peter and St. Genevieve; they then pillaged and burned all the others, with the exception of three, which were ransomed by a large sum of money. "Who would not be afflicted," cries Almoin, a contemporary monk of St. Germain des Pres, " to see the army put to flight be- fore the battle has begun? to see it terrified before the first arrow has fiown? to see it overthrown before the shock of bucklers? But the Normans had perceived, during their sojourn at Rouen, that the lords of the country (we cannot say it without a profound grief of heart) were cowardly and fearful in battle." The same author, in another place, introduces duke Raegner Lodbrog rendering an account to Horic, king of Denmark, of the taking of Paris. " And he related to him," says he, *' how good and how fertile, and how filled with all good things he found the country; and how base and trembling the people who inhabited it were in the moment of the fight. He added, that in this country the dead had more courage than the living; and that he had met with no other resistance than that which had been opposed to him by an old man called Germain, long since dead, whose house he had entered." Such is the antithesis by which Almoin introduces the recital of a miracle of St. Germain, who drove the Norse pi- rate out of his temple. CHAP. XIX.] POWER OF THE CHURCH IN FRANCE. 377 The immense growth of priestly power and influence, during the reign of the Carlovingian sovereigns, was not one of the least among the causes of the universal decay of the Western empire, and the extinction of its military spirit. The importance of the priesthood had increased, not only by the increase of their num- bers and their wealth, but by the progressive weakness of the other orders of the state. For four centuries the most distinguished families of the Franks, — those who began to be considered superior to the others in blood as well as in riches, and who were called the nobility, — had become rapidly extinct 5 sometimes from the fury of foreign and domestic wars; sometimes from unbridled debauchery, (the sole enjoyment of the rich in a barbarous state of society;) or, lastly, from devotion, which, suddenly succeeding to the grossest licentiousness, consigned those to the walls of a convent who ought to have perpetuated their race. The chasms caused by the extinction of these noble families were not filled by a succession of nev/ families raised from the in- ferior ranks; there was scarcely any communication between the different classes of society, nor was any gradual approximation possible. When an opulent family became extinct, a part of its property went by inheritance to some other family already pos- sessed of large landed property; so that the estates of the re- maining families became more and more extensive. The rest, often the largest part, according to the degree of piety of the testator, went to the church; and this church, which was inces- santly acquiring, and had no power of alienating, saw the boun- daries of the lands over which she claimed a right, enlarging with every succeeding generation, nay, with every succeeding year. It is impossible to read the early French chronicles with- out being struck with the progressive diminution of the number of personages they introduce on the stage. The farther we ad- vance, the more are we surprised to see all the nobles, — we might almost say all the citizens, — of a great kingdom, of whom we have obtained any knowledge, dwindle away to four or five counts and as many abbots. As we continue our researches, we soon remark that the abbots gradually hold a larger place in history than the counts. The ec- clesiastical benefices were become too rich not to excite the ambi- tion and cupidity of the most powerful lords. As the same fa- milies furnished recruits both to the army and the church, it 378 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XIX. sometimes happened that the abbots vied with the counts in fero- city, brutality, and debauchery. It was, however, more com- mon to see the most thoughtful, sedate, and crafty youth of a fa- mily destined to the ecclesiastical profession; so that, with an ambition equal to that of the soldiers, the priests had a greater chance of success. When they met their brothers in the coun- cil, they would, of course, be superior to them in policy and in cunning. They had nearly succeeded in excluding them from the assemblies of the field of May, which they had converted into councils: they shared with them the command of the armies^ for the abbots and prelates, disregarding the sacred canons, had arrogated to themselves the right of wielding the sword. They, however, generally felt that they were ill qualified for the pro- fession of arms I and this diffidence of their military talents na- turally led them to give a constant preference to negotiations over forces to neglect all that would have conduced to foster a warlike spirit among their vassals^ and rather to enervate the population in every district which fell into their hands. In the domains of the church, — and those domains perhaps then embraced more than half the territory of the Western em- pire, — all the influences of habit, of example, of education, were exerted to extinguish the national courage. It was to the pro- tection of relics and sanctuaries, never to that of their own right arm, that the faithful were exhorted to recur in all seasons of danger. Trial by battle gave place to ordeals quite as absurd and quite as dangerous, — those of fire and of boiling water, for instance, — but which did not tend to excite a warlike spirit among the vassals of the church. Military games and exercises were even forbidden, as profane shows little suitable for Chris- tians. Among the laity, talents found no reward, ambition had no ob- ject,* all individuality of character was obliterated, and a moral lethargy seemed to have taken possession of the nobility, attenu- ated as it was in number and in influence. But the clergy had ga- thered the inheritance of all the secular passions, as well as of all the means of gratifying them: they united sacred learning to policy, and secured to those who distinguished themselves by their talents, their knowledge, or their character, an in- fluence, a power, a glory, far superior to any that could have been acquired by the same individuals in ages the most favour- able to letters. CHAP. XIX.] POWER OF THE CHURCH IN FRANCE. 379 It must be observed, however, that the three portions of Charle- magne's empire had not experienced a fate precisely similar. France, under Charles the Bald, had fallen into the power of the bishops: the nobility was feeble; the army spiritless, the rural population almost annihilated. In Italy, under Lothaire and his son, Louis II., the prelates had not succeeded in gaining posses- sion of so large a share of influence, or so large an extent of ter- ritory: but powerful dukes had established vast and wealthy go- vernments, which they had rendered almost hereditary in their families; and though the country did not prosper under their ad- ministration, they had maintained a free and martial population in their castles and strong places, and some opulence in the cities. Lastly, Germany, under Louis the Germanic, had pre- served more of a military spirit than either of the other two di- visions; a population proportionally more numerous, and more freemen in proportion to the serfs. Thus France was become a theocracy, Italy a confederation of princes, and Germany an armed democracy. It appears to us, that our readers would find little interest and less profit in a catalogue of the family wars which troubled this period. Charles the Bald, who never defended his states from aggression, was incessantly occupied in endeavours to wrest Aquitaine from his nephew, Pepin II.; nor did he keep the peace better with his brothers Lothaire and Louis the Germanic, nor with their sons: but these wretched struggles, though sufficient to rum provinces, did not deserve to be considered as national wars. They had no political results, save that of adding to the general stock of misery; and made n?o change in the distribution of empires. In the beginning of the year 855, the emperor Lothaire, then about sixty years of age, was attacked by a slow fever, from which he was sensible he should never recover. He divided his states among his three sons, then of mature age. To Louis IL he gave Italy, with the title of emperor; to Lothaire II. the pro- vinces situated between the Meuse and the Rhine, which had long been known under the name of Austrasia, but which were now called Lothringen, or Lorraine, from the names of their so- vereigns. Charles, the youngest son, had the provinces lying between the Rhine and the Alps, which were then called the go- vernment of Provence. After making this partition, the em- peror Lothaire assumed the monkish habit, in the abbey of Prom, S80 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAF. XIX. in the Ardennes, where he died on the 28th of September, 855. It appears that Charles the Bald had, on his side, given the titles of kings of Neustria and of Aquitaine to his two sons^ and Louis the Germanic, those of kings of Bavaria, Saxony, and Swabia, to his three sons. So that the Carlovingian family, at this time, numbered a large body of crowned heads. The part played by the clergy in the wars between these dif- ferent monarchs, the arrogance of their reprimands, and the hu- mility and submissiyeness of the kings, would be worthy of par- ticular attention^ and more minute details would prove the just- ness of our remarks on the general state of Europe^ but, pressed by time, and restricted w^ithin the proportions we are bound to observe between the various parts of our narrative, we shall con- tent ourselves with offering, in the most succinct manner in our power, one example of his domination,' — the history of the quarrels of the young Lothaire, king of Lorraine, with the court of Rome, on the subject of his marriages. It was a great step gained by the popes when they succeeded in establishing their jurisdiction over monarchs in matters relating to their dissolute pleasures. In the year 856, Lothaire had married Theutberge, daughter of count Boson of Burgundy, but the next year he put her away, accusing her of incest with her brother, abbot of the convents of St. Maurice and Luxen. As the queen had purged herself from this allegation by the ordeal of boiling water, out of which her champion had come unharmed, Lothaire had been compelled to take her back in 858. Nevertheless, not only had he another attachment, but he pretended that he was under solemn engage- ments to another woman. He affirmed that, before his union with Theutberge, he had been betrothed to Walrade, sister of the archbishop of Cologne, and mother of the archbishop of Treves; that he had quitted her, in consequence of constraint alone, (during a civil war,) and that he had never ceased to look upon her as his lawful wife. Theutberge had been taken back by her husband; but, per- haps in order to escape the humiliations she had to experience in a palace in which she had been reinstated by force, perhaps as a homage to truth, she made a voluntary confession, in the month of January, 860, of the incest of which she had been accused. The bishops assembled in council at Aix-la-Chapelle, before whom she made this confession, pronounced sentence of divorce, and condemned her to be confined in a convent. Shortly after, CHAP. XIX.] MARRIAGE OF LOTHAIRE. 381 she found means to escape, and the whole priesthood of Christen- dom now took cognizance of this quarrel. We have no means of determining whether the zeal with which they opposed the divorce of Theutberge arose from an esprit de corps, which ren- dered them anxious to save the reputation of the abbot of St. Maurice; or merely from the desire of the clergy to preserve an absolute jurisdiction over marriage, and to keep all sovereigns in a state of dependence upon them. The Merovingian kings had had several wives at a time, (not to mention their numerous mis- tresses,) and had repudiated them according to their own ca- prices: Charlemagne had followed their example. Louis I. had adopted a morality more in conformity with the laws of religion and the injunctions of the clergy. It appeared to them that the attempt of Lothaire to shake off their yoke, ought to be punished in a manner so exemplary as to strike terror into all others. Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, took upon himself to prove that, even though Theutberge should have been guilty of incest before her marriage, it was not a sufficient reason for pronouncing sen- tence of divorce. We cannot follow out the history of the different councils, which alternately dissolved the marriage of Theutberge, and forced Lothaire to take her again. We shall pass over the details of this scandalous affair, which for fifteen years occupied the at- tention of all Christendom. We need scarcely say, that the forced union of Lothaire and Theutberge increased the hatred and resentment of each towards the other. Lothaire ceased not to solicit permission to repair to Rome, to explain and justify his conduct; whilst Nicholas I., who then occupied the papal throne, haughtily refused his request. Theutberge, on her side, peti- tioned to be allowed to separate herself from a husband whom she rendered miserable, and with whom she could enjoy no happiness. The reply of pope Nicholas was as follows: — *' We are equally astonished at the expressions contained in thy letters, and in the discourses of thy deputies, and at remarking so complete a change in thy style and in thy demands. We do not forget that in for- mer times thou laidst before us nothing of the like kind. Every body attests to us that thou art borne down by an unceasing af- fliction, by an intolerable oppression, by a hateful violence; whilst thou, on the contrary, affirmest that no one constrains thee when thou demandest to be stripped of the royal dignity. As to the testimony thou offerest in favour of Walrade, declaring 49 382 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XIX. that she had been the lawful wife of Lothaire, it is of no avail that thou labourest to establish this point. No one needs thy testimony concerning it. It is for us to know what is just; it is for us to decide what is equitable; and even wert thou thyself reprobate or dead, never would we permit Lothaire to take his mistress Walrade to wife." After the death of Nicholas I., however, the moment arrived in which the Holy See permitted Lothaire to repair to Rome, in order to justify himself. He thought he had merited special fa- vour in consequence of his having led an army against the Sara- cens, who laid waste the south of Italy, and had menaced even the papal dominions, then governed by Adrian II. But the heads of the church judged it more important to prove that, even in this world, the highest dignities did not shelter sinners from her judgments. About the end of July, 869, Lothaire made his entry into Rome. Already he might have perceived that the vengeance of the church was suspended over his head. But we shall confine ourselves to a report of the words of archbishop Hincmar, the au- thor of the annals of St. Bertin, and shall leave- the reader to draw the conclusions which the facts may appear to him to warrant. *' When pope Adrian returned to Rome, Lothaire, who followed him, airived at the church of St. Peter; but not a single priest presented himself to receive him, and he was alone with his own followers when he advanced to the tomb of the apostle. He af- terwards entered some rooms, close to that church, which he was to inhabit, but they had not even been swept for his reception. He thought that on the following day, which was Sunday, mass would be performed before him; but this he could by no means obtain from the pope. Nevertheless he entered Rome the next day, and dined with the pope himself in the palace of the Lateran, where they gave each other presents." Adrian afterwards invited Lothaire and all his court to a so- lemn communion; but it was accompanied with circumstances, which were calculated to strike him with terror. " After the mass was concluded," says the contemporary author of the an- nals of Metz, " the sovereign pontiff, taking in his hands the body and the blood of the Lord, called the king to the table of Christ, and spoke to him thus:—* If thou knowest thyself to be innocent of the crime of adultery, for which thou wert excommu- CHAP. XIX.] DEATH OF LOTHAIRE. 383 nicated by our sovereign lord Nicholas, and if thou art thoroughly determined in thy heart never again in thy life to hold criminal commerce with Walrade thy mistress, approach with confidence, and receive the sacrament of redemption, which shall be to thee the pledge of the remission of thy sins, and of thy eternal salva- tion. But if thou hast proposed in thy soul to yield again to the blandishments of thy mistress, beware of taking this sacrament, lest that which the Lord hath prepared as a remedy for his faith- ful servants, be converted into a chastisement for thee.' " Lothaire, confused and agitated by this address, received the communion from the hands of the pontiff, without any retraction 5 after which Adrian, turning to the companions of the king, of- fered to each the communion in these words: — " * If thou hast not given thy consent to the sins of thy king Lothaire, and if thou hast not held intercourse with Walrade, nor with the others whom the Holy See hath excommunicated, may the body and the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ be to thee eternal life!' Every one of them, feeling himself compromised, took the communion with a rash boldness. This was on Sunday, the 31st of July, of the year 869; and every one of them died by a judgment of hea- ven, before the first day of the next year. There were a very small number who avoided taking the communion, and who thus saved themselves from death." Lothaire, himself, on quitting Rome, was attacked with the disease with which the pontiff had threatened him as a chastise- ment. He, however, dragged himself as far as Piacenza, where he expired on the 8th of August. From the time he quitted the gates of Rome, all his followers, all who had received the holy elements from the hands of the pontiff, fell at his side; there were but very few who reached Piacenza with the king; the rest died on the way. Adrian acknowledged the judgment of God in this calamity, and announced it to the kings of the earth, as an awful lesson of submission to the church. This appeal to the judgment of God was then universally re- sorted to for the discovery of every sort of crime. When it was invoked, it was indifferent whether a poison or a wholesome be- verage was offered to the accused. For the innocent, the poison became innoxious: after an invocation like Adrian's, the bread of life would, to the guilty, be transmuted into poison. ( 384 ) CHAPTER XX. Character of Charles the Bald. — His Reign. — Death of Pepin II. — Sons of Lothaire. — Wars among the Carloving"ian Princes. — Charles's Cruelty to his Sons. — Pope John VIII. — Weakness of Charles's Government. — In- vasions of the Saracens and Normans. — Norman Settlements in France. — Their Ravages. — Death of Charles the Bald. — Invasion of Italy by Karlo- man of Bavaria. — His Coronation. — His Death. — Charles the Fat crowned Emperor at Rome by Pope John VIII. — Louis of Saxony. — Charles the Fat. — His Character. — Conversion of Countships into Hereditary Offices. — Increased Power of the Aristocracy and the Church. — Louis the Stam- merer. — His Sons and Successors. — Boson, Count of Burgundy. — His Ele- vation. — Fate of Louis III. and his Brother Karloman. — Succession of Charles the Fat to the whole Western Empire. — Siege of Paris. — Depo- sition and Death of Charles. — Extinction of the legitimate Carlovingian Line. — Division of the Empire into many States. — General Degradation and Depopulation of France. — Incursions of the Northmen, Saracens, and Huns. — Rise of Feudal Institutions. — Consequent Increase of Popu- lation and Strength. We have beheld the establishment of a universal monarchy^ and, as far as it was possible within our narrow limits, we have marked what were the fatal consequences of that establishment to the po- pulation and to the character and courage of the nations incorpo- rated into so huge and ill compacted a mass. We have seen, af- ter the neglect and violation of national interests, the disgraceful quarrels of rapacious princes kindle wars in which patriotism could have no share. We have seen the deplorable feebleness of this immense empire, exposed without defence to the violence of every predatory horde. In the two years which conclude the ninth century we shall see it fall to pieces, and an infinite num- ber of new monarchies and small principalities arise out of its ruins5 at the same time we shall see the rapid extinction of the Carlovingian dynasty, every branch of which disappears, with the exception of one single offset, whose claims to the throne were long disowned and rejected. This last remaining heir of all the glo- ry of the founders of his line, and of all the infamy of its later monarchs, Charles the Simple, did, it is true, recover the crown of France after the lapse of some years; and the Carlovingian dynasty is said to have reigned a century over the French, after it had lost the thrones of Germany and of Italy. But this cen- tury of lingering struggles of the royal line was rather a long in- terregnum, during which the title of king was preserved by men CHAP. XX.] DISMEMBERMENT OF THE EMPIRE. 385 who were in fact no more than petty lords; while the nation, left to itself, began its work of self-reform, and new social bodies sprang out of the ruins of the mighty empire. France required a century more than its neigbours to reconstitute itself, because, of all the countries subject to the rule of Charlemagne, it was the one in which the power of the people had been the most complete- ly annihilated, and, consequently, the one in which the fewest ele- ments for the reconstruction of a new social fabric remained, after the dissolution of the old one. In the period we have gone through, the different parts of the empire seemed to have no feeling of their separate interests, no peculiar recollections, no distinct rights. No illustrious name, no remarkable family, nothing provincial, individual, or local, attracts our attention. If this universal sameness and apathy has rendered the history we have treated of less dramatic, it has, on the other hand, left our minds at full liberty to follow the main current of common disasters, the general convulsions of the empire, undistracted by the varied and animated incidents which complicate, while they adorn, the history of a more fortu- nate age. But this monotony is soon to cease. We are arrived at the point whence we begin to descry the rise of all modern gran- deur, — of all the powerful families, all the provincial sovereign- ties, all the privileges, which, for eight centuries, have been set in opposition no less to the claims of the crown, than to the rights of the people. The name of nobility may have heretofore occurred in history; but a real nobility, such as it has existed under the monarchies of modern times, such as it has maintained itself in the character of an order in the state, can trace its ori- gin no higher than to this era of the total disruption of the hi- therto existing forms of society. In like manner, we have seen the names of fief and henejiciumy and indications of some feudal obligations; but the feudal sys- tem, strictly speaking, did not arise till after this period of anar- chy: it was the principle of a new order of things, which was substituted to a state of confusion and of suffering a hundred times worse than those which this system introduced or tole- rated. Of the thirty-two years which elapsed after the death of Lo- thaire the younger, to the end of the century, nine (a. d. 869-=- 877,) were filled by the disasters which raised Charles the Bald 386 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [CHAP. XX, to the disgraceful possession of the imperial throne^ eleven, (a. D. 877 — 888,) by the rapid mortality which carried off all the heads of the Carlovingian house, and the extinction of all the legitimate branches^ twelve, (889 — 900,) by the civil wars which gave birth to the independent monarchies of Italy^ Germany, France, Burgundy, and Provence. We should despair of being able to throw any light or any interest over the whole of this period, in which the characters become dim and colourless in proportion to the increase in the number of names. We must, however, take a summary view of it; for, however dense the cloud which obscures the circumstances of this revolution, the revolution itself was not the less important. Fortune seemed to delight in elevating Charles the Bald, only to render more insupportable the humiliations to which she ex- posed him; she heaped crowns upon the head from which she tore laurels. Incapable either of governing or of defending his kingdom; suffering his vassals to strip him of his provinces, and a handful of pirates to devastate the whole line of his coasts, his only chance of satisfying his ambition was from the calamities of his own kindred: and this kind of good fortune was not de- nied him. His brother Pepin had left two sons; Pepin II. king of Aquitaine, and Charles: the whole reign of Charles the Bald was one continued scene of aggressions upon them. Two seve- ral times he succeeded in taking them prisoners: the first time he only confined them in convents; but the second, Pepin having been betrayed into his power by Rainulf, count of Poictiers, the meeting of the states of France held at Pistes, in the month of June, 864, condemned the king of Aquitaine to death as an apos- tate and traitor to his country. The sentence was, however, not executed, and Pepin II. died in the dungeon of a convent at Senlis. The emperor Lothaire, elder brother of Charles, had left three sons; the youngest of whom, Charles, king of Provence, died in 875; the second, Lothaire, king of Lorraine, died in 869; lastly, the eldest, the emperor Louis II., who had inherit- ed Italy, died at Brescia, on the 12th of August, 875. Charles the Bald claimed to inherit the dominions of all three: he did not, however, obtain tranquil possession of them till after the death not only of his last surviving nephew, but after that of his own brother, Louis the Germanic, who died at Frankfort, on the 28th of August, 876. So long as Louis lived, he contended CHAP. XX.] ^ CHARLES THE BALD. 387 that he had an equal claim with Charles to the inheritance of his nephews: the frequent wars between them had given up the West to the incursions of barbarians, while those who ought to have been its defenders, were occupied in shedding each other's blood. Louis the Germanic left three sons, among whom he di- vided his states. He gave to Karloman, Bavaria; to Louis, Saxonj and Thuringia; and to Charles the Fat, Swabia. Charles the Bald at first flattered himself that he should strip his Ger- man nephews of their birthright, as he had stripped those of Ita- ly and Aquitaine: but he was beaten on the 7th of October, 876, by Louis of Saxony, at Andernach, and the following year put to flight in Italy by Karloman; so that, in this instance, his in- justice and rapacity brought him nothing but defeat and disaster. Even his own sons furnished occasion for the scandalous and atrocious exploits of a prince whose whole life was passed in acts of hostility and usurpation towards his nearest relations, while he shrank from encountering his own and his subjects' real and formidable foes, — the Normans and the Saracens. To his two elder sons, Louis and Charles, he had given the two crowns of Neustria and Aquitaine: both of them revolted, and were con- quered. The younger, Charles, died soon after of a wound re- ceived in a mock engagement: Louis the Stammerer survived his father, but with a ruined constitution and an enfeebled intel- lect. His two younger sons, Charles the Bald had shut up in convents, where they were condemned to do penance, in confor- mity with the opinions of the age, for the sins of their father. Karloman, however, impatient of restraint, and averse from a religious life, escaped from the cloister, and committed various acts of violence and disorder in Lorraine. He was at length retaken by his father, who caused his eyes to be put out, in order that he might support his captivity with more patience. (a. d. 874.) Such were the steps by which Charles the Bald ascended the imperial throne; his right to which was confirmed by pope John VIII. at the end of the year 875. *' We have elected him," wrote the pontiff to a synod assembled at Pavia, " we have ap- proved him with the consent of our brethren the bishops, of the other ministers of the holy Roman church, of the Roman senate and people. " . Thus did the pope claim the right of disposing of the imperial crown. He pretended to be the substitute for that whole nation of senators and warriors whose representative he 388 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XX. called himself, and in whose name he invoked the names and the institutions of antiquity to sanction the domination of a mo- dern autocrat. Never had the greatest of the Frankic princes been eulogized or held up as a model to mankind, as was the feeble Charles the Bald. In fact, he, who during his whole life had trembled in abject subservience to the prelates of his own kingdom, must needs have appeared to John YIII. the best of sovereigns, inasmuch as he was the most submissive to the power of Rome. It was not long, however, before the very pope who had crowned him began to perceive that it was not enough to give to the empire a chief pious, timid, and obsequious; who would resist no usurpa- tion, who would check no abuse; that it stood in need of an en- ergetic ruler. Every one wanted to free himself from the nation- al power wielded by the monarch, though at the same time every one would have desired that this national power should exist for his own defence. It was soon proved that all the force which had been committed to the hands of Charles the Bald had fallen to utter destruction. The Saracens, whom Louis II. had resist- ed with an honourable persistency in the duchy of Benevento, since the king of the Franks had become emperor, menaced the capital of Christendom. " The heathens," says John in a letter to Charles the Bald, *' and wicked Christians, who are without the fear of God, overwhelm us v^ith such a multitude of evils, that nothing comparable to it can be found in the memory of man. The remnant of the people have retreated within the walls of the holy city; there they struggle against inexpressible poverty and want, while the whole region without the walls of Rome is laid waste, and reduced to a solitude. There remains to us but one evil to fear, and may God avert that from us, — the loss and the ruin of Rome itself." It was less with the view of carrying to the pope the succours he demanded, than for the sake of escaping from the sight of the ravages the Northmen were committing throughout the west of France, that Charles the Bald resolved to march a second time into Italy. The Northmen had established military colonies on the Seine, at a place called Le Bee d'Oisel; on the Somme, the Scheldt, the Loire, the Garonne, and, lastly, in the island of Camargue in the Rhone. Hither they retired with their vessels; here they deposited their booty; and hence they issued forth again to carry their ravages into the heart of the kingdom. CHAP. XX.] CHARLES THE FAT. 389 " There was not a citj, not a village, not a hamlet," says the contemporary author of the account of the miracles of St. Bene- dict, " which had not in its turn experienced the frightful barba- rity of the pagans. They scoured these provinces at first on foot, for they were ignorant of the use of cavalry, but afterwards on horseback, like our own people. The stations of their vessels were so many storehouses for their plunder: near these ships, which were moored to the shore, they built huts, which at length seemed to form large villages, and in them they kept their troops of captives bound with chains." Charles, who had assembled a numerous army to accompany him into Italy, instead of attempting to expel these piratical in- vaders, contented himself with fixing the tribute which certain provinces should pay to the Normans of the Seine, others to the Normans of the Loire, to put a stop to their depredations. As to the Normans of the Garonne, they had reduced Aquitaine to so abject a state, that the pope transferred the archbishop Fro- thaire from the diocess of Bordeaux to that of Bourges, alleging that " the province of Bordeaux was made entirely desert by the pagans." But scarcely had Charles met the pope at Pavia, when the news of the approach of his nephew, Karloman, with an army levied in the provinces which now constitute Austria, struck him with terror. The German historians, indeed, accuse him of ha- bitual cowardice. He fled across Mont Cenis; and in that Alpine region was attacked with a violent fever, and died at a place called Brios, on the 6th of October, 877. Karloman, whose mere approach had sufficed to put to flight his imperial uncle, had yet no reason to congratulate himself on the issue of his Italian expedition. He was crowned at Pavia with the consent of the Lombard nobles, and from that time bore the title of king of Italy. But the plague broke out in his army, and he himself was attacked with a complaint which was attend- ed by extreme debility, followed by paralysis, and, finally, brought him to the grave, on the 22d of March, 880. He left only one son, a bastard, Arnulf, whom he had made the duke of Karnthen, or Carinthia: he had no legitimate children. Two brothers had divided with him the inheritance of their father Louis the Germanic: they watched the course of his long illness, and awaited his death to partition the kingdoms of Bavaria and Italy, over which Karloman had reigned: their attention was thus 50 590 FALL or TME ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XX* in some measure diverted from France, on which, however, they made some attempts. After the death of Karloman, Charles the Fat entered Italy at the head of an army. At Pavia he received the crown of Lombardy; and at Rome, about the end of the year 880, he was invested with that of the empire by Pope John VIII. He united both to Svvabia, his original inheritance. The other bro- ther, Louis of Saxony, annexed Bavaria, which he acquired at Karloman's death, to the dukedom he had received from his father. Louis had only one legitimate son, who, while still a minor, fell from a windov/ of the palace of Regensburg, and was killed: he had also a natural son, named Hugo, who was slain about the same time in an engagement with the Normans near the forest of Carbo- naria. Having thus survived both his sons, Louis of Saxony, who had probably not yet attained his fiftieth year, fell ill, and died at Frankfurt, on the 20th of January, 882. "By the death of his cousins, to each of whose territories he be- came heir in succession, Charles the Fat — whose surname, Cras- sus, would be still better rendered by the Gross** — acquired an elevation to Vv'hich he had little claim on the score of merit. His enormously corpulent body was, in fact, the covering of a sluggish and imbecile mind. He appeared scarcely susceptible of any other desire, of any other thought, than those engendered by his im- moderate love of eatings and the higher the dignities which for- tune shov/ered upon him, the more glaring did his supineness and incapacity become to his people. Yet he was decorated with the imperial ciov^^n; he was sovereign of Italy and of the whole of Germany, before his time divided into three powerful kingdoms; and of that part of France called Lorraine. The rest, by that fa- tality which seemed attached to, the whole Carlovingian race, was soon destined to devolve to him. One only son had survived Charles the Bald: he was known by the name of Louis II., or the Stammerer. He was thirty years of age at the time of his father's death. His health was always pre- carious; his intellect was thought to be feeble, and his character more feeble still. Perhaps no energy, no ability, could have re- vived the empire from that state of languor and exhaustion in which Charles the Bald had left it. The Northmen were encamped in all the provinces, while the • The author's word Is Epais. We can hardly say Charles the Thick: though thicky doubtless, originally meant fat, as its German cognate dick still does. Charles was called by lus subjects Karl der dicke,—Transl. CHAP. XX.3 GROWTH OF FEUDALISM. S91 prelates were the virtual sovereigns of the kingdom. The great- er part of the territory belonged to the church, and the councils and convocations of the bishops and powerful abbots were the only bodies possessed of any authority. In the very year in which Charles the Bald died, he signed the edict of Xiersi, (June 14, 877,) by which he renounced the last fragment of his authority over the provinces. According to the capitularies of Charle- magne, the sovereign was to be represented in every province by a count, whom he nominated or dismissed at pleasure. These counts executed the royal commands; they were the commanders of the militia of freemen, and presided over the local courts and assemblies. But during the feeble government of the son and of the grandsons of Charlemagne, the monarch had scarcely ever dared to exercise his right of dismissing the counts. He had allowed them to confound the delegated power which they held from him, with the patrimonial government of their feudal domain and vassals. This weakness Charles carried still farther. By the edict of Xiersi he bound himself always to bestow on the son of a count, and as a lawful inheritance, the honour of the count- ship [Phonneur du compte,) which had been held by the father. By this edict the condition of the freeholders was rendered still more deplorable than before, since they had no longer any pro- tection or appeal against the tyranny or oppression of the great pro- prietors; while the latter, getting possession of almost all the coun- ties, France was soon divided into as many independent sove- reignties as there had been lord-lieutenancies held at the king's pleasure. None of the counts, however, any more than any of the seig- norial proprietors, had as yet presumed to claim the right of waging war. There had been an habitual want of obedience in the provinces; there had been occasional acts of disorder and violence, as was to be expected from the anarchical state of the kingdom; but no count or lord had as yet imagined that his rank or dignity authorized him to right himself with his sword: and some of them having tried to fortify their houses, as a means of securing themselves against the predatory attacks of the Nor- mans, and to surround them with a wall which gave them the ap- pearance of a castle, the edict of Pistes, of the month of June, 864, ordered that every castle constructed without the express permission of the king should be razed to the ground before the 1st of August then following. 592 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. j^CHAP. XX. But hardly had the edict of Xiersi rendered the countships hereditary in the families of the nobles, when the crown ceased to be so in the royal family. A part of the counts and abbots of France refused to acknowledge Louis the Stammerer as successor to his father. They assembled in arms at Avenay in Champagne, and it was not till after considerable negotiation that they con- sented to meet him at Compiegne. They obliged him to confirm all the ancient laws and privileges of the church and the nobles; they exacted from him an amnesty in favour of all who had taken arms against him; they made him promise to maintain the disci- pline of the church; to style himself king hy the grace of God and the election of the people; and at length they consented, in the name of the bishops, abbots, nobles, and others, to his coro- nation, which took place on the 8th of December, 877. Louis the Stammerer did not reign two years under the pro- tection of this aristocracy and that of pope John VIII.> who had repaired to France, where his demeanour was far more that of a sovereign than the king's. In obedience to his father's com- mands, Louis had divorced his first wife, by whom he had two sons, Louis and Karloman; and had married a second wife, by whom he had a third son, Charles, afterwards surnamed the Simple. The king applied to the pope to sanction a divorce which had been compulsory, and thus to settle the question of the legitimacy of his children; but John VIII. chose to declare himself for the first wife and against the second; thus intro- ducing fresh confusion into the royal house. While things were in this posture, and after the pope had taken his departure, Louis the Stammerer died at Compiegne on the 10th of April, 879. His two sons, the eldest of whom was not above seventeen, were again the sport of that ecclesiastical aris- tocracy which assumed the right of disposing of the crown; and, after stripping themselves still farther of their prerogatives, the princes were at length crowned, at the abbey of Ferrieres, near Paris, by Ansegise, archbishop of Sens. At the same time, however, a count of Burgundy, named Bo- son, brother of the second wife of Charles the Bald, and to whom that monarch had granted several governments in Lombardy and in Provence, intrigued with pope John VIII. to secure his own elevation to the throne. Spite of all the influence of that pon- tiff, who declared that he adopted him as a son. Boson did not succeed in Lombardy. He was more successfid in Provence, CHAP. XX.] ELECTION OF COUNT BOSON. 393 where he distributed a great number of abbeys and benefices among the bishops and archbishops, having bound himself to guaranty them in such a manner that they might unite them to their pastoral duties. Having thus secured their suffrages, he convoked them for the month of October, 879, to a diet vt^hich he held at the castle of Mantaille, between Yienne and Valance. The six archbishops of Vienne, Lyons, Tarentaise, Aix, Aries, and Besan^on, met there, together w^ith seventeen bishops of the same provinces. Counts and other lay lords appear also to have attended this meeting; but such vras their state of subjection to the prelates, that they were not even called on to sign the acts of the diet, nor was any mention made of their names. The prelates of the diet or council of Mantaille adjudged the crown to count Boson, in order, as they said, that he might de- fend them against the attacks of Satan, and those of their visible and corporeal enemies. The strangest thing, however, is, that they assigned no limits to the kingdom they thus founded — that they gave it no name, either of a nation, or of a province. We should look in vain through the acts of the council for the name of the kingdom of Aries and Provence, which this state after- wards bore. We find, however, the speech addressed by Boson to the assembly. It may serve to give us some idea of the new theocracy to which France was subject. ** It is the fervour of your charity," said he, " which, inspired by God, induces you to raise me to this office, in order that, with my feeble powers, I may combat in the service of my holy mo- ther — the church of the living God. But I know my condition: I am but a frail earthen vessel, entirely unworthy of so exalted a charge. And, therefore, I should not have hesitated to refuse it, were I not convinced that it is the will of God, who has given you but one heart and one soul for this determination. Seeing, then, that I am bound to obey priests inspired by Heaven, and my own friends and faithful servants, I do not resist — I should not dare to do so, or to rebel against your orders. And as you yourselves have given me the rule which I ought to follow in my future government, and have instructed me according to the holy precepts of the church, I undertake this great work with confi- dence." Louis III. and Karloman, the young sons of Louis the Stam- merer, tried in vain to defend Provence, which formed a consi- derable part of their inheritance, against the aggressions of Bo- 394 TALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XX. sonj or to repel the Normans, who had poured down with fresh fury on the coasts of Neustria and Aquitaine. Their term of life was not sufficiently extended to allow them to carry through any of their enterprises, nor even to give France an opportunity of judging of their characters and talents. Louis III., riding one day, met the daughter of a Frankic nobleman, named Gor- mond, and was struck by her remarkable beauty. He called her: and the young girl, terrified at his discourse, and at the royal tone of familiarity he assumed, instead of answering him, fled to the shelter of her father's house. Louis determined to follow her; and, putting spurs to his horse, dashed forward, in- tending to ride through the door, which stood open. He had not, however, taken accurate measure of the height of the door- way. He received a blow on the head, which, at the same time, threw him against his saddle bow with such violence as to break his back. In this state, he ordered his attendants to carry him to the convent of St. Denis, where he hoped to be restored by the intercession of the saints. There, however, he died, on the 5th of August, 882. Karloman, who now united his brother's inheritance to that portion of France which he already possessed, survived him only two years. As he was one day hunting the wild boar in the forest of Baisieu, he was accidentally wounded in the leg by the sword of one of his companions. The wound gangrened, and, in seven days, on the 6th of December, 884, he died, aged only eighteen. The two young princes died without issue. Their half bro- ther, Charles the Simple, not only was still an infant, but was regarded as a bastard, his mother's marriage having been de- clared null by the pope. Charles the Fat was the sole remaining heir of the blood of Charlemagne; and on the head of that mo- narch, brutified as he was by intemperance — to whom no one would have intrusted the care of the most insignificant of his private affairs — descended the united crowns of Bavaria, Swabia, Sax- ony, France (eastern and western,) Aquitaine, and Italy. The whole extent of the empire subject to the sway of Charlemagne was equally subject to him; and the Germanic part of it was far more populous, far more civilized, and perhaps, far more power- ful, than it had been under the great conqueror. It seemed as if the whole West was confided to hands so utterly weak and incompe- tent, for the sake of furnishing to mankind a striking proof of the CHAP. XX.] SIEGE OF PARIS. 395 fatal effects of a universal monarchy, and of a corrupting form of government. The entire Western empire, united under one head, and with not an enemy save a handful of sea-robbers, could not defend itself against them on a single point. Paris was besieged by the Northmen for a whole year, (a. d. 885, 886,) during which the whole Gallic nobility did not march a single soldier to its defence^ during which the monarch did not fight a single battle for the deliverance of the capital of one of his greatest kingdoms. The citizens, however, seeing no re- source but in their own despair, resisted with their unassisted strength, and they repulsed the Normans. At this same time Rome was menaced by the Saracens^ and the troops of Charles the Fat, instead of defending the capital of Christendom, pillaged Pavia, in which they were quartered. Every thing seemed to conspire to render the last of the Carlo- vingian emperors ridiculous and despicable, — even to the charges he brought against his wife at the diet at Kirkheim, and the re- velations she was obliged to make in her own defence. The pre- carious and declining health of Charles the Fat might have in- clined the people to await the near termination of hislife^ but the evident decay of his reason rendered it imperative on the nobi- lity and leading men to settle the future government of the king- dom. A diet of the Germanic states was convoked at the palace of Tribur, on the Rhine: they came to a resolution to offer the crown to Arnulf, duke of Kiirnthen, or Carinthia, a natural son of Rarloman, and nephew of the emperor. In three days, Charles the Fat was so completely deserted, that he had hardly sufficient servants about his person to render him the common offices of humanityj and Liutberg, bishop of Maintz, v/as obliged to suppli- cate Arnulf to secure the means of subsistence to his uncle. Some church property was accordingly set apart for that purpose, which Charles needed but for a few weeks: he died on the 12th of January, 888, at a castle called Indinga, in Swabia. If the subjects of Charles— those whom the imbecility of this great-grandson of Charlemagne had reduced to the most deplo- rable state, — avenged themselves by heaping contempt and scorn upon his memory, the clergy had a very different standard by which to try the virtues of a king. They honoured Charles the Fat almost as a saint. " He was," says Rhegius, contemporary abbot of Pruem, *'a most Christian prince, fearing God, and obeying his commands w4th all his heart. He also obeyed the S96 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [CHAP. XX, precepts of the clergy with the most profound devotion. He gave abundant almsj he was constantly occupied in prayer and in chanting of psalmsj he was indefatigable in repeating God's praises, and he put all his hope, and all his trust, in the Divine grace. He therefore regarded the tribulations of his later years as a purifying trial, which was to secure to him the crown of life." The annals of Fulda even relate, that " the heavens were seen to open to receive him, so that it might be made evident, that he whom men had despised, was the sovereign the most acceptable to God." The people of Europe had been so long accustomed to the he- reditary descent of monarchical power, that, at the extinction of the family of Charlemagne, they hesitated for some time before they would choose rulers who were not of that line. Neverthe- less, Arnulf, the bastard son of Karloman, to whom the crown of Germany had been offered, was not recognised by the other western states. The most powerful of the dukes and counts, especially those who could claim some kindred with the family of Charlemagne, either through an illegitimate or a female branch, called together diets in all directions, bought the suffrages of their partisans by ample concessions, and got themselves crowned with the title of kings. In the course of the same year, (888,) Eudes, count of Paris, who had displayed some bravery in the defence of that city •against the Normans, was crowned at Compiegne and acknow- ledged by Neustria. Rainulf II., count of Poictiers, with the ap- probation of another diet, took the title of king of Aquitaine. Ouido, duke of Spoleto, who had fiefs ami partisans in France, was proclaimed by a diet of the kingdom of Lorraine, assembled at Langres, and was anointed and crowned by the bishop of that tityj but finding, in a short time, that his followers were luke- warm in his cause, he returned to Italy, where, in 890, he ob- tained the crown of Lombardy and that of the empire, which he shared with his son Lambert. Another diet had adjudged the crown of Lombardy to Berenger, duke of Friuli, in 888. Be- tween the Jura and the Alps, a count Rudolf, who governed Helvetia, assembled a diet at St. Maurice, in the Valais, caused himself to be crowned, and founded the new monarchy of Trans- jurane Burgundy. At Valence, Louis, the son of Boson, was crowned, in 890, king of Provence. At Vannes, Alain, sur- named the Great, was crowned king of Britany. In Gascony, CHAP. XX.] RISE OF NEW MONARCHIES. 397 Sanchez, surnamed Mitarra, contented himself with the title of duke; but, at the same time, disclaimed all allegiance to France. At the moment of the formation of all these new kingdoms, the torch of western history seems suddenly quenched. For nearly half a century all the chronicles are mute. Wars be- tween these numerous sovereigns, (to whom we have to add Charles the Simple, crowned at Rheims on the 28th of January, 893, and Zwentibold, natural son of Arnulf, crowned king of Lorraine, at Worms, in 895,) filled the twelve remaining years of the century; but they were languidly carried on by sovereigns without troops, dependent on vassals with whom they were al- ways obliged to compromise, and whom they did not dare to command. A universal confusion reigned throughout the West, but no individual character is sufficiently striking to excite our curiosity; and, perhaps, we ought to be grateful to the chroniclers whose silence prevents us from involving ourselves in such a labyrinth. The deposition of Charles the Fat, and the extinction of the legitimate Carlovingian race, overthrew the colossal empire reared by Charlemagne; and in the partition of the provinces of which it was composed, gave occasion to continual wars; to an anarchy, a confusion of rights and claims, which we are led, at first sight, to think must have aggravated the sufferings of the already miserable people. And we, accordingly, find, that al- most all modern writers agree in representing the deposition of Charles the Fat, and the first interregnum which followed it in the Western empire, as a calamity which replunged Europe into the state of barbarism whence Charlemagne had begun to raise it. We are, likewise, left without the guidance of historical docu- ments at this period, and we have to grope our way through a century in darkness almost as complete as that which precedes the reign of Charlemagne. Nevertheless, it was in the midst of this obscurity that new and numerous states came into existence; that a population which had been almost destroyed began to recover itself; that some vir- tues, the virtues of feudalism at least, were once more held in ho- nour; that national courage, which seemed extinct, regained all its loftiness and splendour, at least among the aristocracy. The first century of the government of the Carlovingians destroyed old France; the second, which equally bears their name, though the 51 398 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XX. power of Charles the Simple and of his children was but a sha- dow, recreated modern France. The period which we have just passed through is probably without a parallel in history for its calamities, its weakness, and its infamy. Although military courage be far from the first of so- cial virtues, its complete annihilation is, perhaps, the most certain indication of the extinction of all others. It throws a nation into such a state of abject dependence on every vicissitude and on every oe, that if it were possible to unite all the advantages of the most perfect government with the cowardice of a whole people, all those advantages would be utterly valueless, since they would be utter- ly without security. But the history of the world presents us with no example of pusillanimity comparable to that of the subjects of the empire when they allowed themselves to be plundered, made captive, and slaughtered by the Northmen. It was not a great people which poured down upon them; it was not those successive waves of northern barbarians that inundated the Roman empire. It was, on the contrary, handfuls of pirates; adventurers who landed on the coasts of France in open barks, lightly armed, and almost without horses. In times less remote we have seen the flourishing empires of Peru and Mexico ravaged, and ultimately conquered, by bands of warriors scarcely more numerous. But the Spaniards had fire- arms, cuirasses, and helmets impenetrable to the arrows of the In- dians; while, on the other hand, their finely tempered sabres cut through all the Indian armour. They had horses trained to war and exulting in battle, which bore their riders with frightful rapidity against enemies who always fought on foot. Lastly, they had ves- sels which the Americans took for winged monsters, vomiting fire and flame. It was not thus that the Northmen disembarked from their wattled boats on the banks of the Seine and the Loire. Their bo- dies were half naked, their weapons were inferior to those of the people of the south, who had so long been masters of the mechani- cal arts. But these northern sea-robbers were superior in warlike virtues to the two other wandering nations who also ravaged the empire. The Saracens had lost their victorious fanaticism and their love of glory, during the decay of the empire of the khaliphs: and their expeditions into Italy and Provence had no longer any in- centive but the love of plunder. The Hungarians, who inspired so CHAP. XX.] INVASION OF THE NORTHMEN. S99 much terror in Germany, rode little horses, which a Frank sol- dier would have disdained; they wore a fur coat instead of a cui- rass, and a light lance stood them instead of a sword or sabre. But Saracens, Hungarians, or Normans, all had to deal with dis- armed and degraded peasants, and a degenerate nobility. They found victims, not enemies, in the empire of the West. The moral explanation of this double revolution, which in the ninth century annihilated the national courage and destroyed the population; and in the tenth, multiplied the people and gave force and elevation to their character, is to be sought less in public in- stitutions than in the personal interest of the great proprietors. The consolidation of the empire of Charlemagne into one body, had delivered the minds of the great proprietors from all expecta- tion of proximate war. They no longer occupied themselves in any degree with the means of defending their domains, or of mul- tiplying the men-at-arms who lived upon them; their whole at- tention was directed to the extracting from them the greatest possible revenues; and in every age and country masters and landlords have been disposed to think that they were enriching themselves when they made harder terms with their serfs or te- nants, when they succeeded in loading them with more onerous obligations and in extorting larger rents. Thus it was that the great mass of the nation became enslaved. But slavery and ex- tortion soon produced their wonted effect; families became ex- tinct, or fled; the population disappeared, and the greater part of France was changed into a desert. The great proprietors saw without regret, that the manses, or habitations, for each of which they were obliged to furnish a soldier to the king, were aban- doned. They thought it more profitable to themselves to turn their arable land into pasture, and to multiply flocks and herds in proportion as men diminished. They could not understand that a country cannot be rich when it ceases to furnish con- sumers, when it no longer contains a nation to feed. They fell into the same error into which we have seen the lairds of the north of Scotland fall in our own days. The rapid extinction of the rural population was the grand cause of the exposed state in which the empire was found by the hordes of brigands who ravaged it. We have, it is true, no ac- curate information concerning this fluctuation in the population. The historians of the time never thought of giving any account or explanation of it; but, in reading their narrative of events, it 400 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [CHAP. XX« is impossible not to be struck with the solitude into which we are introduced. It appears as if nothing was left in France but convents, scattered here and there amid vast tracts of forest. The cities had lost, in the ninth century, the importance they possessed under the first line of kings. We no longer read of intestine factions, nor of popular tumults, nor of municipal go- vernments, nor of the resistance they could oppose to an enemy. Their gates stand open to any who are disposed to enter them. Often, indeed, the chronicles tell us that they were burned by the Normans; but the damage is always represented as less, and the booty carried oif as inferior in value, in these cases, than when the same spoilers attack a monastery. The existence of the peasantry is as completely overlooked as that of the flocks with which they are confounded in one common oblivion: all that we can discover is^ that the distrust of their masters had left them no means of resistance; and, accordingly, the North- men, after carrying off the wives and daughters of the peasants, after massacring the old men and the priests, roamed about the country, alone, or in small parties, wherever their inclination or the chase might lead them, without the slightest fear of the ven- geance of the natives. Even among the higher nobility and clergy we are amazed at the small number of persons who appear at any given time on the stage. A single count unites in his own person the titles of a great number of counties; a single prelate, the revenues of a great number of abbeys; and when the abbot Hugues, of St. Germain PAuxerrois, and of St. Martin de Tours, is called by the historians of the time VEsperance des Gaules, we feel that the French people are degraded to the condition of men owned in main morfe by a convent. So long as the nation was reduced to such a state of feeble- ness, of political ignorance, of opposition between the interests of the higher classes and those of the mass, a central government could be of no advantage to France or to Europe: it could serve only to perpetuate this universal degradation. It was, therefore, a happy event for hum.anity that the tie which held together the social body w^as forcibly broken at the time of the deposition of Charles the Fat, and that the Western empire was divided into several monarchies, which were soon split up again into an infi- nite number of smaller states. When civilization has made great progress, the formation of large states presents great ad- CHAP. XX.] RISE OF FEUDALISM. 401 vantages: knowledge and intelligence are more easily and ra- pidly diffused^ commerce is more active, more regular, and more independent of the errors of politicians^ the power, the wealth, the talents which are at the disposal of government are far great- er^ and, if the rulers know how to make a good use of it, the progress of the species will be much more rapid. But, on the other hand, it is a far more difficult matter to establish a wise, tutelary, and free constitution in a great than in a small state; while it is much more easy to the former than to the latter to dispense with those advantages. A great empire sustains itself by its mass, in spite of almost intolerable abuses; while a small state has no chance of permanent existence unless it be support- ed by some degree of patriotism and of general prosperity. The government of the Carlovingians had survived more cala- mities than would have sufficed to overthrow, ten times over, the governments which succeeded it. It fell beneath them, indeed, at last, but not till it had reached the lowest stage af contempti- ble imbecility. Those who gathered the fragments of the ruin were, perhaps, superior neither in talents, nor in virtues, nor in energy, to the wretched emperors who had suflfered it to fall to decay; but, as their interests were more nearly allied with those of the mass, they were sooner brought to some understanding of them. When, for their own defence, force became of more va- lue to them than riches, no high degree of perspicacity was ne- cessary to perceive that they gained force in proportion as they increased the well being of their subjects. Little more than twenty years had elapsed since the edict of Pistes had caused the total demolition of the fortifications which a few nobles had raised around their houses, as a defence against the Northmen. At that period, property, which gave the right of administering justice to vassals, the right of life and death over serfs, does not yet appear to have existed as a political force; it did not as yet secure to the nobles the means of de- fence and intimidation. But, after the deposition of Charles the Fat, no public authority prevented any individual from providing for his own defence by any means he had at command; from seeking within his own domains, first, security, and then, the power of making himself formidable. The dukes, counts, mar- quesses, and abbots who had shared among them the whole terri- tory of France, consequently soon changed their object and their policy: they substituted ambition for cupidity; and demanded 402 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. LcHAP. XX. of the earth men for the maintenance of their rights and their existence, rather than wealth for the indulgence of their appe- tites. Indeed, money no longer appeared of any value, except in so far as it was convertible into people. The value of an ex- tent of country was estimated, not according to the number of pounds of silver for which its produce could be sold, but accord- ing to the number of soldiers it could send forth to follow the banner of their lord, or to defend his castle from aggression. Thus it was that this period of troubles and disasters which seemed to threaten with absolute destruction the miserable rem- nant of the population of the West, became, in fact, the epoch of a great and beneficent revolution, which raised that popula- tion from its abasement. The lord offered his land to the vassal who appeared disposed to cultivate it, and was satisfied with a small remuneration in money, or in produce^ instead of rent, he required personal services. The terms on which these various services were exacted, were as different as the orders of men by whom they were rendered. Younger sons of noble families, free men, citizens or burgesses, liberated slaves, even serfs, were ad- mitted, in a regular scale of subordination, which they never at- tempted to infringe, to share the soil, and to give the equivalent in service. All these men, the majority of whom would have been destined, under the old order of things, to grow old in celi- bacy, were incited to marry, and could see, with satisfaction, a family multiplied around them. The higher among them formed anew those intermediate or- ders of gentlemen, of leudes, of freemen, which had almost dis- appeared. The latter even rose, instead of sinking, in the scale of society. The vilein or serf was, it is true, in a state of abso- lute dependence on his lord. He had, as against him, no protec- tion for liberty, property, honour, or even lifej and yet he had rarely to dread any violent invasion of them. He regarded his chieftain as his natural judge and protector, and generally felt for him that respect, and even love, which the weak so readily grant to those whom they think of a superior race. The use of arms, which had been restored to him, had raised him in his own eyes, and had enabled him to regain some of those virtues which slavery destroys. He did not, indeed, go to battle on horse- back, as the nobles and freemen did, but, at all events, he took the field with them; resistance was no longer forbidden to himf CHAP. XX.] RISE OF FEUDALISM. 403 and the consciousness of physical strength gave him the measure of the respect he had it in his power to command. The rapidity with which the population increased, from these various causes, between the tenth and the twelfth centuries, is prodigious. Each of the great counties or earldoms split, in the course of two or three generations, into an infinite number of rural counties, viscounties, and seigniories^ each of these was then subdivided in like manner. A village with its lord sprang up in every deserted and uncultivated tracts every community had its fortified place and its means of defence^ and in less than two hundred years a count of Toulouse, a count of Yermandois, an earl of Flanders, became more powerful, and commanded braver, better disciplined, and even more numerous troops, than Charles the Fat, or Louis the Debonnaire, when sole monarchs of the Western empire, could have summoned to the field. But this prosperous state of the rural population lasted only so long as the nobles felt their own need of it. From the time that the great proprietors arrogated to themselves the right of private warfare, the iron yoke of the oligarchy had been lightened, only to fall back with greater violence and weight on the neck of the people, as soon as public order was sufficiently re-established to make it impossible for individuals to refer their differences to the decision of the sword. As soon as the lords ceased to want soldiers, they fell into their ancient greediness of money, and be- gan once more to grind and oppress the husbandman. Then it was that the vileins were reduced to a shameful state of degra- dation: then it was that the feudal system pressed upon the peo- ple as the most intolerable of despotisms. It had introduced some order, some virtue, and some prosperity into a turbulent anarchy^ but, from the time government was re-established, it did but add its own yoke to the yoke of the laws, till the two combined became too grievous for man to bear. Thus, the feudal system, which, for a time, perhaps, contri- buted more than any other human institution to the multiplica ' tion and the prosperity of the lower orders, has come down to the posterity of those very men who owed their existence and their well-being to it, loaded with the responsibility of all the oppression and all the suffering which marked its decays and its name is still mentioned with terror, while the infamy which ought to attach to the name of the Carlovingian monarchs is for- gotten. ( 404 ) CHAPTER XXI. Total Cessation of intercourse between Britain and the Continent. — Invasion of the Picts and Scots, — Vortig-ern. — Invasions of the Jutes and Saxons. — Hengist and Horsa. — Division of England. — Heptarchy. — Witena-Ge- mote. — Britons. — Divisions of Wales and Cornwall. — Ireland. — St. Pa- trick. — Irish Missionaries. — Caledonia. — Extermination of the Picts. — Pope Gregory and the Saxon Slaves. — Reconversion of England by St. Augustin. — Egbert. — Union of the seven Kingdoms. — Invasion of the Danes. — Defeat of Egbert. — Defeat of the Danes. — Death of Egbert. — Ethelwolf.— His Character and Death.— His Sons Ethelbald, Ethelbert, Ethelred, and Alfred. — Descent of I war on Northumberland. — Horrible Death of Rssgner Lodbrog. — Cruelties of the Danes. — Battles between Iwar and Ethelred. — Defeat and Death of Ethelred. — Conquests of the Danes. — Alfred the Great. — His Defeat and Concealment. — His Charac- ter and Accomplishments.— State of the Saxon People. — Battle of Ken- with. — Defeat and Death of Ubba. — Capture of the Raven Standard. — Visit of Alfred to the Danish Camp. — His Reappearance at the Head of a Saxon Army. — Defeat of Guthrum, and Submission of the Danes. — Alfred, Founder of the British Navy. — Witena-Gemote. — His Reforms in Law and Police. — His Learning and Love of Letters. — Oxford. — Death of Alfred. From the time of the death of Honorius, and the recall of the last of the Roman legions sent to defend it, we have hardlj had oc- casion to mention the island of Britain. It has been our endeavour to connect together the history of those countries which exercised a reciprocal influence, which acted and reacted on each other. But the great island of Britain, after having been for awhile drawn into the huge vortex of the world of Rome, had com- pletely escaped from it. From that time, she had formed a world apart, severed from the rest of mankind, a stranger to the hopes and the fears by which Europe was agitated. She had been for- gotten by the other former provinces of Rome, with which she had been associated in a common dependence, and in the ten books of the History of the Franks, by Gregory of Tours, not a single British name occurs. The total oblivion into whidi Britain had fallen among the Greeks is still more extraordinary. Two centuries and a half after the legions of Britain had given to the empire the future founder of Constantinople^ one century only after the final re- call of the Romans^ Procopius, the first historian of the lower CHAP. XXI.] BRITISH HISTORY. ' 405 empire, consigns Britain to a place in the regions of prodigies and fables. He relates, that the souls of those who die in Gaul are nightlj borne to the shores of that island, and delivered over to the infernal powers, by the boatmen of Friesland and Batavia. " These boatmen," says he, ** see no one^ but, in the dead of night, a terrible voice calls them to their mysterious office. They find by the shore strange and unknown boats ready to sail; they feel the weight of the souls which enter them, one after the other, till the gunwale of the boat sinks to a level with the water. Ne- vertheless, they still see nothing. The same night, they reach the coast of Britain. Another voice calls the ghosts one by one, and they land in silence." Such, after a short but total cessa- tion of intercourse, was the only notion of England entertained by the rest of mankind. Britain, however, in her isolation, had shared the fate of the other dismembered portions of the empire. The same strug- gle had arisen between the barbarians, and those who had caught civilization from their Roman masters. But neither the people, nor the circumstances which brought about the overthrow of the continental domination of Rome, were the same as those which caused the destruction of the system she had established in Bri- tain; and if, in her progress from ancient to modern civilization, through barbarism, she underwent nearly the same changes, it is a proof that the fate of Europe was the consequence of internal organization, the operation of which was every where the same, and not of events which varied with each particular country. This total separation of Britain from the rest of the world be- gins from the year 426 or 427, the supposed date of the depar- ture of the last Roman legion from her shores. It ends, or at least becomes less distinct, from the time of the coronation of Alfred the Great, in 872. During these four centuries and a half, the chronicles of Britain contain a prodigious number of facts, of names of kings, of dates of battles; and, perhaps, a writer inspired by an intense spirit of nationality might succeed in imparting some interest to them. But a foreigner is repelled by the frequency of revolutions ending in the most unimportant results, and can hardly be ex- pected to undertake a labour which promises him no adequate recompense. Wherever history leads to the study of man as a moral and a social being; wherever it displays the development of his mind and character, the lofty play of sentiment and pas- 52 406 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXI. sion: narrowness of territorial bounds detracts nothing from the importance of the results to which it leads. The republics of Greece, the free cities of Italy, the cantons of Switzerland^ in the bright and palmy days of their freedom, will doubtless teach us more as to what constitutes the happiness and the dignity of man, than those vast monarchies of Asia, where every error of the ruler decides the destiny of millions. But the small British and Saxon kingdoms, which for four or five centuries existed simultaneously or successively in Britain, afford no field for the display of great qualities or heroic virtues. Nor are their records sufficiently detailed to bring us acquainted with individual character, or with the workings of human pas- sions. Their history is almost conjectural; and even were we to devote this chapter to the repetition of all of it that has come down to us, we should but add to the already copious list of royal crimes, or furnish more disgusting pictures of the sufferings of humanity. We shall, therefore, content ourselves with such a glance ov^r these five centuries as may enable us to catch its ge- neral features. In the year 427, when the Romans abandoned Britain, they left it enervated, like all the other provinces of the empire; without fortifications, without arms, and without courage to use them, even had the natives possessed them. Instead of sur- rounding the open towns with strong fortifications, and orga- nizing troops for their defence, the Britons had contented them- selves with rebuilding the wall of Severus, which, intersecting the island at its narrowest point, was intended to arrest the in- cursions of the Picts and the Scots. But this wall, which might have done good service to regular troops, was of no use to citizens; men who, without quitting their daily occupations and their families, could, perhaps, have defended the ramparts of their cities, but who could not be expected to quit their homes, and post themselves at the foot of a distant fortification, whence they were constantly exposed to be driven. And, in fact, the Romans had hardly quitted the island, when the wall of Severus was passed by the Picts and Scots. The sole honour of these northern tribes, who were pastoral and entirely uncivilized, was the defiance of danger; their sole happiness, the robbery of their more industrious and more timid neighbours. They overran the whole of Britain several times; they devastated the country, laid the towns under contribution, and, finding no advantage in car- CHAP. XXI.] STRUGGLE BETWEEN BRITONS AND SAXONS. 407 rying home slaves to a country already over- peopled, they mas- sacred all their captives. The terror and the desolation of the Britons were extreme. The towns which preserved an appearance of civilization, al- though leagued together, had no means of defence^ they im- plored succour of the Romans, already too much crippled by the calamities of the empire to aiford them any protection. The rural districts, divided among a small number of rich proprie- tors, were become a sort of principalities^ but a man who was owner of thousands of slaves, was not the more able to defend himself. We are assured, that one of these great proprietors, named Vortigern, was acknowledged chief, or king, by all the others, in the year 445. This new monarch is accused of being the first to call in the Saxon pirates as auxiliaries against the Scottish marauders. The maritime Saxons of the mouths of the Elbe^ the Jutes, the Angles, the Frieslanders, and other small nations of the same coasts, had long been in the habit of plundering the coasts of Gaul and Britain. Two of their chiefs, Hengist and Horsa, were received in 449 by Vortigern, in the Isle of Thanet, on the Kentish coast. They fulfilled their part of the treaty, by making a brave and effectual stand against the Scots: after having repulsed them, however, they invited their countrymen to cross over to them, and began to plunder those they had come to assist. Success soon inspired them with the project of sub- jugating the island. Then began a struggle between the Britons and the vSaxons, which lasted a century and a half, and which terminated in the extirpation of the British population, or its expulsion from the whole eastern side of the island. This struggle has been cele- brated by the romancers of the Round Table, and by historians little superior to romancers in credibility. King Arthur, who is supposed to have died in 542, at the age of ninety, was the great British hero of these battles, in which Vortimer, Mordred, Uther Pendragon, and several others, also distinguished themselves. There is no reason to doubt the length and fury of the conflicts, the result of which was the expulsion of an entire nation from its ancient territory; but there are very sufficient grounds for skep- ticism as to the number of the armies and the importance of the battles recorded by old writers. The Saxons, as we have alrea- dy seen, were subject, even in their own country, to as many 408 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXI. chiefs or kings as they occupied villages: in like manner they gave the name of king, or sea-king, to every captain of a ship equipped for piracy, who landed on the coast of Britain; and it is probable that Hengist had but a few hundred men under him during the thirty -five years of continued fighting, which left him master of Kent. Other Saxon, Anglian, and Jutish chieftains, established themselves at the same time in other parts of Eng- land. The petty British lords, the ancient senators of the country, on their side, often assumed, or received from the Saxons, the title of kings. In either case the dominions of the monarch ex- tended to a keep or castle in which he resided, and a few vil- lages inhabited by his vassals and serfs. The traditions of their wars were preserved, and the vanity of the two parties combined to exaggerate their importance. These wars, far from being de- structive to the population, taught the chieftain all the value of the multiplication of his vassals. He was too much in want of soldiers not to endeavour to increase their numbers. The Saxon population spread itself over the east of the island, the British over the west; and those of the latter, who, having inhabited the eastern part, could not escape into Wales, sought refuge from the fury of the Saxons in little Britain, or Bretagne, on the coast of France. At length, after two or three generations in succession had lived in a constant state of bloodshed, after every trace of civilization had been obliterated, after the language, and almost all the arts of the Romans had been forgotten, the island of Great Britain, which then began to bear the name of England, was divided into three parts. To the east, seven independent kingdoms had been formed by the piratical people included under the common name of Anglo- Saxons. The three most extensive were to the north, and were inhabited by the Angles; the four richest and most populous were to the south, and inhabited by the Saxons. The three for- mer were, the kingdom of Northumberland, founded in 547 by Ida; that of East Anglia, in 571, by Ulfa; and that of Mercia, in 585, by Erida. The four Saxon kingdoms were those of Kent, founded in 460 by Hengist; of Sussex, in 491, by Ella; of Essex, in 527, by Er- eenwin; and of Wessex, the most powerful of the southern king- doms, in 519, by Cerdic. The opposite courses of the Thames and the Severn separated the Saxon kingdoms from those of the CHAP. XXI.] SAXON HEPTARCHY. 409 Angles^ nevertheless these two people regarded one another near- ly as countrymen, and the seven kingdoms of the Saxon heptarchy formed, to some intents, but one single political body. The kings whom the Saxons acknowledged as their leaders in war, had but a very limited authority in peaces and the assembly of the elders, or wise men, of each kingdom, the Witena-gemote, was consulted on all important measures, whether legislative or administrative. On some occasions one of the seven kings was acknowledged as chief of the heptarchy, and then a Witena-ge- mote of the seven kingdoms was convened to deliberate on the interests of the whole confederate body. To the west, the ancient Britons, who belonged to the Cymri, one of the two grand divisions of the Celtic race, were limited within the district of Wales, which was divided into three petty kingdoms, and the western point of England, the kingdom of Cornwall. They had retained their original language, they were fervently attached to the Christian religion, and, for the perform- ance of its rites and offices, had preserved some knowledge of the Latin language, and the use of writing, — at least among the clergy. But they had been able to keep up scarcely any commu- nication with Romej and when, after an interval of two centuries, they renewed their connexion with the rest of the church, they had considerable difficulty in submitting to the changes which had taken place in that primitive Christianity they had learned and maintained. Welsh missionaries, and especially the elder St. Patrick, and his nephew of the same name, had converted Ireland at the end of the fifth century. As that was just the time of the greatest ravages of the Saxons, it is very probable that a great number of the more quiet and unwarlike Britons went to seek tranquillity in that island, which was less exposed to storms and convulsions, and carried with them a civilization which the sword was then destroying in Britian. The Irish, separated from the whole world, having enough for their maintenance^ but scarcely acquainted with the luxuries of life, sought food for their activity in the study of sacred letters. This is the brilliant period of their literature; the period in which arose those pious men who undertook the conversion of Scotland, and who, a century later, went forth as missionaries into Germany and the forest of the Ardennes. They afterwards founded the convents of St. Gall, Luxeuil, Anegrai, and, lastly, of Bobbio, in Italy, where we are surprised to trace the footsteps of an Irish missionary, St. Colomban. 410 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXI. The northern extremity of Great Britian was always occupied by the Picts on the west, and the Scots on the east: these two nations were branches of the Gaelic tribe, another great division of the Celtic family. They had never been subjugated by the Romans, and had remained almost entirely ignorant of agriculture, and dependent on the produce of their herds; yet they had, if possible, retrograded in the career of civilization, since all the arts which soften or embellish life had been destroyed among their neighbours. Their incursions had long desolated Britain; but whether it be that their arms were inferior to those of the Saxons, who at the same time invaded the southern part of Scotland, or whether there was no longer any plunder to allure them onward in a country already so devastated, it seems certain that, after the middle of the fifth century, they desisted from their incursions. Their conversion to Christianity dates from about the same time, and was mainly brought about by the labours of Welsh and Irish missionaries. The Picts and the Scots continued to share Caledonia up to the year 839 or 840, when the Picts were de- feated in two battles by the Scots, commanded by their king, Kenneth II., and were finally exterminated. The nation was utterly extinct, and the whole country took the name of Scotland. It was not till the year 597, that Christianity was introduced anew among the Anglo-Saxons. England was at that time one of the greatest European markets for slaves; whenever the Sax- ons felt the pressure of want, they had no hesitation in selling their children. They were extremely numerous in France; Ba- thilde, queen of Clovis II., had herself been a Saxon slave bought by a Frank. Anglo-Saxon slaves were exposed to sale in the markets of Rome. On one occasion, Gregory the Great, after- wards pope, struck with the delicacy of their skins, and the beau- ty of their fair hair, asked of what nation they were. " They are Angles," (Angli,) said the merchant. — *' Say rather angels,"* said Gregory. — " What is their birth-place?" — ** Deiri in North- umberland." — " De irap they must be rescued from the anger of God." Gregory's puns struck him as being a revelation, and he was no sooner seated in the papal chair than he took measures for the conversion of Britain. He intrusted this task to the monk Augustin, afterwards created first archbishop of Canterbury. This Roman priest set out, accompanied by forty missionaries, to whom * " Non, imo, Angli sed Angeli." CHAP. XXI.] INVASION OF THE DANES. 411 Englaird owed the knowledge of what was called Christianity in the sixth century; that is, of the religion which it suited the church to promulgate. The conversion of England began with her kings, and the new faith descended to their subjects. It took root, and was estab- lished without persecution; nor was the change stained with the blood of a single martyr. The popular faith, if not very enlight- ened, was not the less lively; nor was it less efficacious in inclining those who embraced it to great sacrifices. A reputation for sanc- tity was easily obtained, especially by large donations to the church. It is, however, somewhat remarkable, that during the heptarchy, seven Anglo-Saxon kings, seven queens, eight princes, and sixteen princesses of the blood, received the honours of ca- nonization. It is not less so, that, that in the same period of time, ten kings and eleven queens laid aside a crown to devote them- selves to a monastic life. The government of the Saxon heptarchy, or the independence of the seven little kingdoms into which England was divided, lasted three hundred and seventy-eight years, if we reckon from the foundation of the earliest; two hundred and forty-three, if we reckon from that of the most recent, up to the year 827, when the whole Anglo-Saxon people acknowledged the sovereign au- thority of Egbert. This monarch had been driven from his hereditary kingdom of Wessex, and had taken refuge with Charlemagne, who had given him a friendly reception at his court, and had, probably, contri - buted to form his mind, and to elevate his views and his hopes. Egbert had passed twelve years in the society of the great mo- narch, when he was recalled from his court, in the year 800; the very year of the re-establishment of the Western empire, to take possession of the throne of Wessex, — the largest of the four southern kingdoms. By a series of successful wars, Egbert sub- jugated the three other Saxons kingdoms, and united them under the common name of Wessex. He, at the same time, compelled the Anglian kingdoms to promise him obedience, permitting them, however, to retain the government of their feudatory princes. Lastly, he compelled the three British kingdoms in Wales, and the fourth in Cornwall, also to do homage to him as their suze- rain or head. He had been scarcely five years in the enjoyment of peace and of undisputed sovereignty, when the Danes ap- peared on the south of the island, with thirty-five vessels; landed 412 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXI. at Charmouth, met Egbert, defeated him, and loaded their vessels with all the portable wealth of the district, (a. d. 833.) Charlemagne, at the summit of his power, had seen the North- men brave him with impunity on the coasts of Friesland. He is said to have wept over the calamities which awaited his suc- cessors. Egbert, the imitator of Charlemagne on a smaller stage, witnessed the still more humiliating commencement of the mis- fortunes which were destined to afflict the kingdom he had founded. Britain, totally separated as it was from the continent, expe- rienced in the same manner the eff'ects of the same cause. The incorporation of several smaller states into one monarchy, which seemed calculated to constitute its strength, was the source only of its weakness^ and disgraceful calamities arose at the very mo- ment in which the monarch thought he had founded the national power- and glory. Each of the kingdoms which Charlemagne had conquered was able, single-handed, to keep its enemies in check 5 all together were no longer competent to do so after he had united them. Each of the petty kingdoms of the heptarchy had subsisted without fear of foreign invasion j — they fell before it, when they were consolidated into one empire. The North- men or Danes, who made a simultaneous attack on the coasts of France and England, in the ninth century, had been long fami- liar with the coasts of Britain 5 for they were but another branch of the same people who had conquered it three centuries earlier. It appears, indeed, that the Anglo-Saxons of the fifth century came from the country lying between Friesland and Jutland, while the homes of the Norse conquerors of the ninth, reached from Jutland to Norway. The Jutes or inhabitants of Jutland, are mentioned at both periods; and, besides, the conquests of Charlemagne had driven back the southern upon the northern Saxons, so that the same people no longer issued from the same shores. From the time of the decline of the Roman empire, all these northern tribes lying on the sea, had addicted themselves to pira- cy, and exulted in those perilous expeditions in which they braved at once the fury of the northern tempest and the sword of the enemy. Yet so long as, in the countries they attacked, every little province had its chief, its councils, its warriors; so long as every district had its association of free and warlike citizens, re- sistance was always at hand; it was so prompt and efficacious that the Northmen were compelled to abandon piracy, as the Scots were marauding. CHAP. XXI.] ETHELWOLF. 41S As soon, on the contrary, as every district was forced to ap- peal to a king whose seat of government was at a great distance, to implore his assistance, or to await his orders^ as soon as every career open to ambition, transplanted men from their natal soil to the courtj — so that what had been a centre became a mere province or appendage, and a man might make his fortune inde- pendent of all local calamities;— all those small kingdoms, which had been filled with armed men who had for centuries waged a desperate war of resistance against neighbours constantly endea- vouring to invade them, were found incapable of defending them- selves against a few handsful of sea-robbers; and little crews of adventurers in open boats, attempted and achieved conquests in which thousands of brave men had failed. In 835, two years after his defeat at Charmouth, Egbert avenged himself on the Danes. He defeated a fresh body of them who had landed at Hengston, on the coast of Cornwall. He died in 838, leaving only one son, Ethelwolf, who succeeded him. If Egbert exhibits some points of comparison with his illus- trious contemporary and friend Charlemagne, — the resemblance of Ethelwolf to Louis le Debonnaire is much more striking. Like him, he suifered his kindness to degenerate into weakness, and his religion into an abject submission to priests and monks: like him, he hastened to share his power with his son Athelstan, whom he created king of Kent; like him, at an advanced age, on his return from a pilgrimage to Rome, in 855, he married another Judith, a grand -daughter of the ambitious queen of Louis le De- bonnaire: and this young wife embroiled him with his sons, by insinuating into their minds the fear of a fresh partition of his territory, Ethelbald, son of Ethelwolf, took arms against his fa- ther, and the good-natured {debonnaire) monarch of England left behind him, at his death, in 857, a divided empire and a totter- ing throne. Several of these coincidences are accidental, no doubt; but some are dependant on the nature of things. A great man arising in the midst of barbarians perceives the advantages of a liberal edu- cation, and endeavours to procure them for his children; but in such an age he can find no instructers in science but pedants; and it was in fact to monastic pedants that the training of Ethel- wolf and Louis le Debonnaire was confined: both were born in luxury and surrounded by flattery; both degenerated, as the sons of great men so often degenerate; and the fruit of the tree of 53 414 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXI. knowledge, which had nourished and strengthened their fathers, turned to poison in their hands. They learned to believe upon mere assertion; to tremble before a man; to expiate crimes by penances; and, even at an advanced period of life, to contract disproportionate marriages, in order to secure themselves against temptation. Ethelwolf, like Louis le Debonnaire, left four sons; but the custom of dividing the monarchy among the princes of the blood had not gained ground among the Saxons. Etheibald, to whom during his lifetime he had made over the kingdom of Kent, and Ethelbert, to whom he left all the rest of his kingdom, alone suc- ceeded him. It was, however, established, that the four brothers should succeed each other, to the exclusion of children under age; and they did, in fact, reign in succession — Etheibald, from 857 to 860; Ethelbert, from 857 to 866; Ethelred, from 866 to 871; and Alfred the Great, from 871 to 900. The whole of this period, like that embracing the reigns of the four sons of Louis le Debonnaire, is filled with the disastrous invasions of the Danes. The adventurers who issued forth from all the coasts of Scan- dinavia, from all the ports of the Baltic, and who, though dif- fering in language and in origin, were all comprehended under the common name of Danes in England, and of Normans in France, seemed to have formed different projects on these two countries. The coasts and the courses of the rivers of France accessible to their boats, were still enriched by the effects of a long established civilization and industry. Capital accumulated in the preceding centuries was still deposited there; indeed, it had increased during the reign of Charlemagne. On the other hand, the people all along the coasts were total strangers to the Germanic races, nearly unarmed, and wholly unwarlike in their habits; they could hardly oppose any resistance, nor did the Nor- mans seem to have any other object than to plunder them. Eng- land was poorer and more warlike. It had no wealth wherewith to tempt the northern freebooter but that of its fields, which its brave and warlike population was ready to defend. The Danes, therefore, when they attacked England, aimed at conquest rather than at spoil. During the reigns of Ethelwolf and Etheibald, they made some descents on the coasts; but their reception was such as to convince them that the gains of such incursions were not likely to be proportioned to their danger; and from the year 840 to 860, years so disastrous to France, the shores of England were CHAP. XXI.] INVASION OF THE DANES. 415 but rarely attacked. But the profits of the profession of corsair, the glory and the risks of these expeditions, soon attracted to the ports of Denmark adventurers from every part of the North. It was a new channel into which the torrent of emigration forced itself; and the tribes which had been wont to send forth swarms to invade the empire by land, now launched them upon the deep. Bands of Northmen ravaged France from side to sidej they made descents on the coasts of Spain and Portugal, which they disputed with the Saracens; they penetrated into the Medi- terranean, and the mouths of the Rhone received the barks of Drontheim. The Danes appear to have conceived the project of conquering the island of Great Britain, which, by its contiguity to the scene of their spoliation, would afford a convenient recep- tacle for their booty, enable them to refit their vessels, or fur- nish them with new ships, and with hands for their service. About the year 860, they renewed their attacks upon England with the barbarity with which they carried on all their wars, but also with a persistency, with a determination to gain a settlement in the country, which is not perceptible in their invasions of France. It was on the shores of the feudatory kingdom of Northum- berland, that Iwar, one of the sons of the Danish lord Raegner Lodbrog, made a descent with a formidable army. It is affirmed, that he had been invited and introduced into the country by an earl Bruen, whose wife had been dishonoured by one of the Nor- thumbrian kings; while the other sovereign of their little coun- try had exasperated the vengeance of the Danes by an act of cruelty worthy of his age. Having taken Rsegner Lodbrog pri- soner, he had cast him into a deep pit filled with serpents, and left him there to die. The death-song composed by Rsegner in this appalling situation, became the war-song of his countrymen, and has come down to us. The two kings of Northumberland, till then at variance, now vainly united to oppose their terrible enemy: they were defeated, the one before York, the other at EUescross; the country was ra- vaged with atrocious cruelty; those taken in arms found no mer- cy, and the priests and monks, who affected to work miracles, and whom the Danes regarded as formidable enchanters, were not treated with less inhumanity. The nuns had still worse evils to dread. The abbess of Coldingham, having to announce to the sisterhood over which she presided, that the Danes were at 416 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXI. hand, and that they were without defence, set them the example of the only means of escaping outrage. She cut off her nose and upper lip, to render herself an object of horror and disgust to the conquerors. The Danes rushed into the convent^ but meeting only bleeding and mutilated faces, they recoiled in ter- ror. Too savage, however, to be touched with the courage of these unhappy women, they shut the gates of the convent, and kindled a fire around it, in which all their victims perished. The Danes also laid waste the kingdom of Merciaj they con- quered that of East Anglia, and its feudatory king, Edmund, who was regarded as a saint, was massacred by them in a place which still bears his name — St. Edmund's Bury, or Burg. These three kingdoms, whose kings were vassals of Ethelred, were much more extensive than his hereditary sovereignty of Wessex, situated to the south of the Thames and the Severn. This latter country, however, the capital of which was Winches- ter, was much more populous, richer, and, consequently, more important than all the others combined. The Danes had not merely pillaged Northumberland; they had established colonies there, partitioned out lands, and a part of their families had betaken themselves to the peaceful occupations of husbandry! circumstances which seem to prove, that from their very first campaign their intention was not only, as in France, to carry off' plunder, but to make themselves masters of the soil. I war, however, in order to secure himself the more firmly in his conquest, proceeded to attack Ethelred in the king- dom of Wessex. Nine furious and sanguinary battles were fought between the invaders and the invaded in the course of a single year. The English defended themselves like brave men, and their king proved himself worthy to command them. But numbers at length prevailed over their obstinate courage; and in the last of these battles, a. d, 872, Ethelred was killed. On the death of Ethelred, the fourth brother, Alfred, ascended the throne of Wessex, to the exclusion of the sons of his prede- cessor; whether, according to the will of his father, who is said to have thus determined the succession, or, whether, from the choice of the people, who felt that, in a crisis of such peril, they needed a man, and not a child to govern them, is not certainly known. The Danes were now masters of three of the most an- cient kingdoms: they had, it is true, delegated their sceptres to English kings, whom they held in a state of dependence: but CHAP. XXI.] CONqUESTS OF THE DANES. 417 this was merely in order not to reveal too broadly to the original population the servitude into which they had fallen; to preserve for a time the forms of a national government after the substance was destroyed. These kings were useful to the Danes in sanc- tioning their usurpations; in legalizing their levies of money; and perhaps, still more, in rendering odious a government which it was their object to overthrow. The inhabitants of the pro- vinces, indeed, were not long in perceiving that these phantoms of royalty, the slaves and tools of their conquerors, were a bur- den, and not a protection to them. Oppressed as they were by the Danish yoke, they demanded that at least it might be the only one laid upon them. Their prayer was readily heard, and acceded to by Iwar and Ubba, the sons of Rsegner Lodbrog. The feudatory kings to the north of the Thames were suppressed. The Danes mingled with the Saxons, as cultivators of the soil, and as fellow-countrymen; all the cities were open to them: even London, which then belonged to the kingdom of Mercia, fell into their power; whilst their armies penetrated Wessex, which, at that time, reached from the shores of Kent to the bor- ders of Cornwall, on every side. Alfred, having been defeated by the Danes in a battle, had signed a treaty, by which he bound himself to give no assistance to the counties north of the Thames and the Severn, on condi- tion that he was to be left in undisturbed possession of those to the south of those rivers. But no treaty could be binding on the bands of independent adventurers who every spring quitted their northern shores, and who gloried in the cruelties they inflicted on the inhabitants of more temperate climes. New chieftains, who had no connexion with the sons of Rsegner Lodbrog, sur- prised and pillaged Wareham, laid siege to Exeter, which they likewise plundered, gave battle seven times in one year (a. d. 876,) to king Alfred, and thus awakened in the Danes, settled in the north of the island, the hope of conquering the whole of England. The colonists accordingly broke the peace they had sworn to: the possession of London secured them a safe passage over the Thames, in 877 they entered Wessex, took Chippen- ham, one of its largest towns, and thus struck such terror into the English, that Alfred, who strove to assemble his army, found himself suddenly deserted by all his warriors. As the only means of escaping from death or captivity, he assumed the dis- guise of a poor labourer, and sought refuge and concealment in 418 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXI. the hut of a shepherd in the marches of Somersetshire. It was built on a small plot of solid ground, not above two acres in ex- tent, and approachable onlj by a difficult and almost impercep- tible path through a sedgy morass. This small patch of land was afterwards illustrious as the asylum of the noble warrior, and was thence called JEtheling-ey, or the Noble Island. The man who lay hidden from every eye in ^theling-ey, — who was known only to his host, and was regarded by his hostess as an equal, or rather inferior, whom she scolded when he suf- fered her cakes to burn,— -was worthy to save England, and to restore the monarchy. He was nearly thirty years of age; his countenance was handsome, noble, and intrepid; his skill in all bodily exercises, his dexterity in shooting with the bow, would have sufficed, united as they were with consummate bravery, to obtain for him a distinguished rank as a mere soldier. The sweetness and benevolence which characterized all his inter- course with men endeared him to all who came near him: he had successfully cultivated poetry and music; and his mind, fos- tered by the early care of an enlightened mother, was enlarged and adorned by study to a degree unknown among his contem- poraries. All these qualities, however, do not suffice to form a hero; they raise an individual to one of the highest steps in a scale which all may endeavour to climb; but the force of character and of will, the clear judgment which decides what is needed for a nation, the creative genius which finds the means of producing it, are the qualities which alone can constitute a great king; and these Alfred united in a supreme degree. He passed six months in his profound retreat — his very existence unknown to the whole world — deprived of all the conveniences of life; nor, during this long interval of apparently hopeless inaction, did he ever give himself up to despondency. He polished his bow, and kept his arms in order for the field, and he waited with patience and con- fidence the fit moment to emerge from his obscurity. The Saxons, who, in all their battles, had shown that they were worthy to have a country, were, indeed, struck with panic terror; they were dispersed, but not crushed. They had shrunk from engaging again in disastrous and hopeless conflicts; but most of them had retreated into castles or towers which they had buil t for their defence, or into fastnesses in woods or marshes; and if some had bent their necks to the yoke, and had yielded them- CHAP. XXI.] ALFRED. 419 selves up to the Danes, Alfred was convinced that they would not long endure the vexations with which they would be harassed. He waited the first outbreak of their impatience^ he thought that it is sometimes expedient to leave the whole intolerable weight of tyranny to press for awhile on a people, that it may no longer be disposed to grudge the high price, the cruel sacrifices, by which alone deliverance can be bought. Alfred's expectations were not deceived. The Danes had dis- persed themselves over the whole kingdom of Wessex, in order to subdue every part of it^ but Ubba II., son of Rsegner Lodbrog, learning that a party of English had shut themselves up in the fort of Kenwith, in the county of Devon, marched a division of his troops to besiege it. The assailants had so greatly the advantage in point of numbers — their enemies seemed so prostrated by a series of disasters— that Ubba scarcely thought it worth while to be on his guard against them. The besieged had not the slightest hope of succour from any quarter^ they looked for nothing but death or slavery. The earl of Devon, who commanded them, proposed to surprise the enemy by a sortie, and to try to open to themselves a passage to some place of refuge, sword in hand. This desperate project was crowned with far better success than the earl himself had dared to hope*- The Danes were so little on their guard, that Ubba their general was killed. The Raven, the great standard to which they believed the fate of their nation mysteriously attached, ^as taken, and the whole army fled dis- gracefully. Alfred, instructed of their defeat, deemed that the moment for emerging from concealment had arrived. He called his chief friends about him; and after having concerted all his measures, he sent them to various places where he knew that there were parties of Saxons under arms; he fixed a day for their general meeting in the forest of Selwood, in Somersetshire; and, while his very existence was wholly unsuspected by the Danes, he slung his harp over his shoulder, and went to the camp which Gu thrum, the Danish general, had assembled, and entered it alone. All the nations of the North held music in honour, and admitted bards or singers to their banquets. The ancient Britons, however, claimed a pre-eminence above all others as poets and musicians; and the Welsh bards traversed hostile armies, and went unharmed amid the horrors of war, collecting the voluntary contributions of the soldiers. Alfred yielded to no one in musical skill, or in talent 420 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXI. for extempore versification: his harp secured him entrance to the enemy's camp; he was received without distrust, admired, and rewarded; and after carefully observing every thing, he went to meet his countrymen in the forest of Selwood. The Saxons, inspired with new life and courage at the sight of their beloved prince, who seemed to rise from the dead to lead them, fell upon the camp of Guthrum, who did not even suspect the existence of a Saxon army: nearly all the Danes were cut to pieces. Guthrum, and the small band of followers who escaped, were soon besieged in a fortress; where, hopeless of being able long to hold out, they accepted the terms of peace which were oflfered them. Alfred granted to all who consented to become Christians, the privilege of residing in East Anglia; the others were permitted to leave the country, under a promise of seeking their fortune else- where. Those of the Danes who had their wives and children with them, and had established themselves in England, inter- mingled with the Saxons, whose language so nearly resembled their own that they might almost regard them as fellow country- men. These had already begun to lend an ear to the Christian missionaries; and their conversion, sincere or feigned, seemed to meet with no great obstacles. The young men, however, — the more ardent spirits, — could not bring themselves, inconsequence of one check, to renounce a life of piracy and pillage which had such attractions for them, and which formed so essential a part of the national character. Just at this crisis, the Continent, given over to a frightful state of anarchy,, seemed to invite their arms. Charles the Bald died on the 6th of October, 877; the Carlovingian princes who had shared his states, at variance with each other, and despised by their subjects, were attacked by re- iterated fits of illness, which disabled them from taking any mea- sures of defence. Hastings, after having measured himself against Alfred without success, led over to France the greater part of those Danes who had so long desolated England. Troops of these terrific adventurers landed in the mouths of all the rivers, from the Garonne to the Scheldt; others, recent from the North, took the same route; and for twelve years the shores of England were unvisited by their cruellest foes. Alfred took advantage of this season of repose to organize his future defence. The kingdom of Wessex had remained his in undisputed sovereignty; but Guthrum, with his consent, had re- CHAP. XXI.] Alfred's legislation. 421 tired into East Anglia, and the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk were almost entirely peopled by Danes. Others of their country- men occupied Mercia; others Northumberland, to which Alfred at that time did not even think of laying claim. The limit of his conquests to the northward was the city of London; which, it seems, he became master of about the year 880, and intrusted the government of it: to his son-in-law, earl Ethelred. He had, how- ever, lost no time in organizing the troops of Wessex, giving them able officers, building strong places at all points well adapted for the defence of the country, and, above ail, building ships of war. His predecessors had trusted to their troops alone for the defence of the coasts; and the enemy, by threatening several distant points, harassed them with fatigue, gained upon them in point of speed, and eventually always effected a landing in a point where no preparation had been made. The Danish vessels were fitted only for transport. As theirs were the only ships then on the seas, they were not armed; they carried war across the sea, but they had never made the sea the theatre of war: Alfred probably imitated the construction of the galleys of the Greek empire which he had seen in Italy. His vessels had by this time an in- disputable advantage over those of the Danes; they never met without the certain destruction of the latter. It was by means of these ships of war that Alfred secured the tranquillity of Wes- sex. In 893, Hastings made another attempt upon it, and landed on the coast of Kent with a powerful army. Alfred, however, aided by his fleet, so completely routed him, that he appears to have relinquished for ever the desire of disturbing the repose of England. He retreated, accompanied not only by all the troops he had brought over, but also by all he could collect in East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumberland. These three large dis- tricts, weakened by the departure of all their youthful and war- like population, no longer hesitated to acknowledge the authority of Alfred. For the last seven years of his life, he reigned alone in England. The English are fond of ascribing to this great and excellent monarch, either the institution or the confirmation of the laws, privileges, and usages which have tended the most to their pros- perity as a nation. We have seen that he was the founder of their navy — that he was the first to perceive and the first to prove, that it was in these wooden walls that the people of Eng- land ought to put their trust. With him also arose the grandeur 54 42^ FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. tXt* and prosperity of the city of London, which he almost invariably chose as the place of meeting of the annual parliament^ or Wite- na-gemote, with which he always discussed the affairs of the nation. What was the composition of this assembly, at which prelates, earls or aldermen, thanes or barons, and perhaps depu- ties from different burghs, or associations of free men, were pre- sent, has been, and will, probably, remain, a subject of contro- versy. According to the principles and customs of the northern na- tions, every free man had, as matter of course, a share in the sovereignty! but by far the greater part of the population were without either power or freedom. The ceorls, kerls, churls, or in Roman phrase, vileins, were held by their lords in a state of vassalage which amounted to almost absolute dependency; lower still, the bond-slaves or serfs were not masters even of their own persons. Neither class w^as supposed to have any rights as citi- zens, nor any voice in public affairs: neither could be represent- ed in parliament. Alfred caused a fresh publication of the Saxon laws. This collection contained those of Ina, king of Wessex, OfFa, king of Mercia, Ethelbert, king of Kent| to these he added about forty others, framed or sanctioned by himself. Like the Carlovingian kings, he inserted several laws taken from the Judaical ritual into his statutes, as if to give new strength and cogency to the precepts of morality. The Saxon laws, like those of all the peo- ple of the North, established the compensation of crimes or of- ences by pecuniary mulct, according to a regulated scale. The English are also fond of tracing in them the first indications of the glory of their island — trial by jury. The judges underwent at the same time a severe reform. It is difficult to see how the state of dependence on the monarch, to which Alfred reduced this order of men, could be reconciled with liberty. We are only told that Alfred hanged forty -four of them in one year for crimes of malversation. The division of England into counties or shires, (i. e. shares,) appears to have been one of the first acts of the Saxons after their conquest. This was, indeed, but a transplantation of Ger- manic institutions into their adopted country. The counts or earls, civil or military officers holding under the king, and pre- siding over the shire meetings, are mentioned from the very ear- liest times of the Heptarchy. Alfred, however, reformed the CHAP. XXI.3 Alfred's learning^ 42S division of the counties, and made it more regular and equable throughout the kingdom. For the government of them he asso- ciated another officer to the earl, called tlie sheriff, or shire- reeve, often mentioned under the title of viscount. He con- firmed and cemented the system of corporations, which placed all the citizens, in their several relations to society^ reciprocally under the guarantee of each other, by forming a burgh or asso- ciation of ten free householders, with a tithing man at their head; and uniting ten of these associations into a hundred, under ano- ther head; and all the hundreds of each county under its respec- tive earl. Each of these bodies was responsible for the conduct of all its members, and, in virtue of this responsibility, exercised over them a right of inspection and of police; but if the crimi- nal was not discovered, the responsibility fell on the association of the superior degree. The king demanded an account of every breach of the peace, first, of the tithing; next, of the hundred; and, in the last resort, of the county. The universal disorga- nization of society — the infinite number of robbers and outlaws who infested all parts of the kingdom — had compelled Alfred to adopt this rigorous system of police; but even in its vigilance we recognise respect for the rights of freemen. It was not a system under which magistrates, the creatures of despotic power, ruled their inferiors: equals exercised a supervision over equals, and public order was committed to the maintenance of the ci- tizens. The cultivation of letters, which had been absolutely destroyed at the first invasion of the Saxons, and had since made but few and languid steps towards revival, was the object of Alfred's peculiar care. He complained, that, from the Thames to the Humber, there was not a priest who understood the service he had to recite; and from the Thames to the sea — the part of the kingdom in which letters were a little more cultivated — there was not one who could translate the easiest Latin book into Saxon. Alfred was very superior to his clergy in erudition, and understood well the ancient language used by the church; but he had the good sense and good taste to wish to cultivate the vernacular tongue. He, therefore, applied himself to the trans- lation of several books into Saxon: among them are ** Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophise;" and the Ecclesiastical History of the Venerable Bede, a Saxon author of the early part of the eighth century. Alfred likewise founded schools at Oxford, 424 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXI. which are regarded as the first origin of that celebrated univer- sity. He invited from all parts of Europe, the learned men whom he thought best qualified to train and instruct youth; and he set aside a considerable portion of the revenues of his domains for the payment of their salaries, or the maintenance of poor scholars who followed their teaching. After having thus gloriously devoted his life to the defence, the deliverance, the improvement, and the prosperity of his coun- try, Alfred died in the year 900, at the age of fifty-two, after a reign of twenty- eight years and a half. Nor can we discover in his character or conduct, as delineated by writers who have handed down to us tolerably copious details of his life, a vice, or even a fault, which can stain or sully so pure, so lofty, so spot- less a reputation. ( 425 J CHAPTER XXII. Historical Darkness of the tenth Century. — Decline of the Khaliphate of Bag-dad. — Introduction of the Turks. — Creation of the office of Emir al Omara. — Greek Empire. — Macedonian Dynasty. — Basil I. — Assassination of Michael III. — Compilation of the Basilica. — Leo the Philosopher. Constantine Porphyrogenitus. — His Works. — Refusal of the Greek Em- perors to acknowledge those of the West, — Bereng-er King- of Italy. His Murder. — Independence of Itahan Nobles. — Rudolf 11. of Burg-undy. — Hug-ues Count of Provence. — Surrender of Lombardy to Otlio the Great. — Cliarles the Simple crowned King- of France. — Insubordination of the great Nobles. — Robert, Count of Paris and Duke of France His Revolt and Death. — Rudolf of Burgundy. — Betrayal, Imprisonment, and Death of Charles the Simple. — Cession of Neustria to the Normans. — Baptism and Marriage of Rollo, first Duke of Normandy. — Introduction of the Feudal System into Normandy. — Rigorous Justice of Rollo. — Ra- pid Disappearance of the Norse Tongue. — Cessation of predatory Habits. — Saracen Settlements in France and Italy. — Irruption of the Magyars. — Emperor Arnulf — Louis IV. — Increased Power of German Nobles. — Charles the Simple, last of the illegitimate Carlovingians. — Emperor Conrad of Franconia succeeded by Henry of Saxony. — His Ability and Bravery. — His total Defeat of the Hungarians, a. d. 900 — 936. The history of the tenth century, a brief survey of which we are now about to lay before our readers, is far more difficult to reduce to any general character, or to present under any general point of view, than any of the preceding. If we cast our eyes over the whole theatre of the world, we find neither a great em- pire influencing its neighbours, and giving a sort of unity to con- temporaneous history, nor a great simultaneous movement in the minds of men. On every side, states seem to be falling into dis- solutionj on every side, portions are detaching themselves from the mass; dependants or subordinates are throwing off their al- legiance to their superiors. Kings no longer do homage to the emperor as their liege lord; emirs disclaim the authority of the khaliph; dukes and counts declare themselves independent of kings; cities and lords of burghs or castles shut their gates against dukes and counts. Where we have hitherto seen only the impulse communicated to the several members of one great body, we now remark convulsive movements which are clearly not directed by its will. It is difficult to distinguish whether it was only a passive re- sistance that nations opposed to their governments, or whether 426 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [CHAP. XXII. we can trace the development of a new and active willj nor can we gather any light on this matter from the contemporary histo- rians. Almost all the annals of the foregoing periods close; al- most all the chroniclers desert us; scarcely can an age be men- tioned more barren in historical documents. Yet were it a mistake to conclude that Europe was retrograding towards barbarism. There was, on the contrary, an important progress in manners, institutions, intelligence, and population. But the same difficulty in gaining any general views of the his- tory of the period, which we of the present day feel, was still more insurmountable to contemporaries. Those who had the ta- lent of writing (and there were several) could not succeed in ob- taining information as to what was passing among their neigh- bours, — so scanty and interrupted were the means of communi- cation; and, on the other hand, the rise of provincial dynasties, or of free communities, was still too recent for them to assume the rank of subjects worthy the dignity of history. Historians still turned their eyes towards the Empire, which had ceased to exist; and overlooked those infant states which had hardly strug- gled into existence. We shall turn our attention successively to all the portions of this system of the world, whose rise and pro- gress we have hitherto watched. "We shall not, however, endeavour to follow out the decline of the empire of the khaliphs. The frequent revolutions of the throne of Bagdad ceased to have any influence on the rest of the world; in each successive reign, some province detached itself from the ancient monarchy, some new dynasty sprang into exis- tence, and some fresh matter was afforded for what Orientals take for history, — namely, the chronology of princes. To them, indeed, it is but an index to the parricides and fratricides of each reign, or to battles followed by the desolation of certain provinces; without the slightest advancement in the human species towards a better government, towards a stronger guarentee for its rights, towards a greater development of its faculties. The loading the memory with the names of a host of princes, to which not a single useful or interesting idea can be attached, is but a waste of time and an abuse of learning. One remarkable change only, connected with the decline of these sovereigns of Bagdad, who daily saw new provinces escape from their gra&p, deserves a cursory mention. They had remarked the decline of enthusiasm, the falling off in the courage, and even of the bodily CHAP. XXII.] DECLINE OF THE KHALIFHATE. 427 strength, of their own subjects, from the time that all noble ob- jects had ceased to be presented to their ambition or their activity. Motassem, the twenty- seventh khaliph, who died in 842, had en- deavoured to supply this want, by sending to Turkestan to pur- chase young slaves bred in the mountain region of Caucasus, whom he trained to the profession of arms, and formed into a guard, to which he intrusted the protection of his palace. These troops soon became numerous and formidable^ the rivalry which existed between them and the Syrians effectually disgusted the latter with the military career, and the Turks were soon the only soldiers of the khaliphs. The slavery in which they had been reared rendered them less faithful, without being more submissive or obedient. From this time, most of the revolutions in Syria were their work. They hurled from the throne, or they assassi- nated, those khaliphs who were not the obsequious tools of their insolence and rapacity. At length, in the year 936, in the reign of Radhi, the thirty-ninth khaliph, they elected a chief of their own body, whom they called Emir al Omara (or Chief of Chiefs:) this officer was henceforward the true sovereign of the state; he alone disposed of the treasure, the troops, the offices of power or dignity; he kept the khaliph a prisoner in his own palace — reducing him to that life of poverty, penitence, and prayer, which the early successors of Mahoramed had imposed on themselves by choice: nor did he even respect his life, if there was any caprice of the chief or of the soldiers which the commander of the faithful found it impossible to gratify. The Emir al Omara of Bagdad has sometimes been compared to the maire du palais, who was the virtual ruler of France under the kings of the first race. The origin of the power of the two officers was, however, very different, and its abuse was more violent and more cruel on the part of the Turk than on that of the Austrasian; though the thral - dom of the legitimate sovereign to his minister presents some fea- tures of resemblance. We shall also bestow but a transitory glance on the empire of the East, which was daily becoming more wholly separated from our portion of Europe; daily forgetting more and more that Latin world by which it was daily more and more forgotten. The people who inherited the two illustrious names of Greek and Ro- man had preserved no vestige of the sentiments or character of Greece and of Rome. The living generation seemed to be con- scious that it was not worthy to occupy the attention of posterity; 428 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. fcHAP. XXlI. and though it continued to study the works of the mighty and illustrious dead,- it neglected to leave any record of present events. Yet the empire had acquired some fresh vigour from the accession of the Macedonian dynasty to the throne. Basil, thfe founder of that dynasty, v\^as invested with the purple on the 24th of September, 867; he reigned until 886. He was succeeded by his son, Leo the Philosopher, who reigned from 886 to 911; and his grandson, Constantine VII. Porphyrogenitus, from 911 to 959. The former merited some reputation as a legislator; the second and the third distinguished themselves as writers. Basil pretended to be a descendant of the Arsacides of Arme- nia, and to be allied, through his wife, to the line of the ancient kings of Macedonia. Nevertheless, his family had been reduced by the ravages of the Bulgarians to great poverty: nor had he owed his rise from among the servants of the imperial palace to any qualities more elevated than his address in training horses, his physical strength, and his courage. But in despotic govern- ments, where the monarch alone has the power of distinguishing or rewarding merit, and where public opinion is mute, a valet, having nearer access to his sovereign, has a greater chance of ob- taining influence than the governor of a province; and domestic services are often the road to the highest dignities. Basil made his way from the stable to the council of state. The more sur- prising fact is, that he was worthy of his elevation. Michael III., son of Theophilus, at length granted him the title of Augustus. The favour of a prince addicted to every possible vice could be no recommendation: the assassination of this same prince by Basil, who owed his elevation entirely to him, threw the stain of ingra- titude over the character of the new sovereign. Yet no sooner was Basil seated on the tiirone, than he merited the respect and attachment of his subjects by his application to business, by the vigour of his judgment, by the order which he established in the finances and in the administration of the empire. He even found means to reorganize the army, although he had not received a military education. The Musulmans no longer menaced the provinces of the Levant: the Bulgarians, at the same epoch, had become converts to Christianity, and had laid aside their fierce and warlike habits with their idolatry. From this time their monarchy continued to decline, so that the Thracian provinces of the empire enjoyed an unwonted repose, repaired their losses, and, under Basil's fostering care, agriculture and commerce CHAP. XXII.] WESTERN EMPIRE. 429 flaurished anew. He took advantage of the civil wars which distracted the Western empire, and the divisions of the Lombards of Benevento, to make new conquests in southern Italy. The Calabrias and Puglia submitted to his authority; and the city of Bari, the residence of a governer named the Captain, was the capital of the province which the Greeks called the Theme of Lombardy. The Latin tongue, though entirely disused in the East for every other purpose, still remained that of the laws. Already, it is true, the Novels, or the edicts of the emperors, pos- terior to the publication of Justinian's Code, were published in Greek as well as in Latin. Basil thought it was time for the go- vernment to drop a language which was not understood by its subjects. He caused a new compilation of the laws of the em- pire to be made in Greek: they were divided into forty books, called the Basilica. This code he substituted for that of Jus- tinian, and it continued in force throughout the empire up to the period of its fall. The Greeks, indeed, continued to regard it as the rule of their actions even after they fell under the yoke of the Turks, Tiie reign of Leo, son of Basil, and pupil of the patriarch Photius, is scarcely marked by any event save his disputes with his clergy on the subject of his last marriage: it was the fourth, and the Greek church did not permit any man to marry more than thrice. He owed the title of Philosopher to several works com- posed by him, or, at any rate, under his name, on most of the sciences cultivated by the ancient Greeks. His son Constan tine Porphyrogenitus, who was scarcely six years old when he suc- ceeded him, was governed, first by guardians, and then by col- leagues, who seized the purple by violence. Estranged from the business of the state, and almost a prisoner in his palace, no less from the weakness of his health than from the distrust of Ro- manus Lecapenus, whom the army had elected as his associate, he devoted all his time to literature and art; and his voluminous compilations may be regarded as the depositary of almost all the Greek learning and science of his time. We may infer from his works, that if they were still in possession of the discoveries of th^ir ancestors, they had lost all original genius, all fertility of invention, all power of observation. While the new empire of the West was at the summit of its power under Charlemagne and Louis le Debonnaire, the Eastern emperors had not disdained to recognise them as colleagues. 55 430 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [^CHAP. XXII. But the greatness of the Carlovingian house had been of short duration; and Basil the Macedonian disputed the claim of Louis II., son of Lothaire, and sovereign of Italy, to the title of em- peror, which his power no longer seemed to justify. The suc- cessors of Louis appeared to the Greeks still less worthy to be compared to their monarchs. A question of this nature is dif&- cult to decide, where it is impossible to point out what are the real grounds of pre-eminence. The Latin emperor differed in nothing from the other kings of his race: he had no authority over them, though he assumed superiority of rank; nor is it easy to say what constituted an emperor, unless it were the fact of having placed on his head the crown of gold which the pope kept at Rome. This crown was granted successively, in 891, to Guide duke of Spoleto, and his son Lambert; in 895, to Arnulf king of Germany; in 900, to Louis, son of Boson, king of Provence; and, in 915, to Berenger, duke of Friuli and king of Italy. Each of these coronations had been the consequence of the ar- rival of a monarch at Rome at the head of an army. The popes had shown but slight repugnance to sanction what force had gained. Rapid revolutions had repeatedly changed the sove- reignty of Italy. They were universally attributed to the jea- lousy which the high aristocracy felt of royal power. Of the three grand divisions of the empire of the Carlovingians — Italy, Gaul, and Germany — the former was the one in which the dukes, the governors of provinces, and the leaders of armies, were the most influential. From the times of the Lombard conquerors, they had perpetuated their dignities in their families; they were, in fact, become petty sovereigns; they had considerable revenues, and devoted soldiers; their fiefs were of great extent, and the population on them was once more become considerable: they knew that emperors and kings regarded them with jealousy; and, in order to limit the power of the throne, their constant policy had been to divide their suffrages between the two competitors, that the actual sovereign, seeing himself threatened by a rival, might always feel the necessity of buying their support by the concession of new privileges. Berenger, duke of Friuli, proclaimed king of Italy in 888, and emperor in 915, had worn the Italian crown for sixteen years without a rival. In the year 905, he took the emperor Louis of Provence prisoner; and as a punishment for the violation of a preceding treaty by that prince, he had caused his eyes to be put CHAP. XXII.] KINGDOM OF FRANCE. 431 out,' after which he sent him back to his kingdom of Provence, which Louis, now surnamed the Blind, governed for eio-hteen years. Berenger, notwithstanding this act of inhumanly rigid justice, had been much more frequently distinguished for his magnanimity and his forgiveness of injuries than for his severity. Of all the princes who had risen on the ruins of the throne of the Carlovingians, he was the one who had merited in the highest degree the respect and the love of his subjects. He had re- awakened the military spirit of his kingdom, and had displayed no less talent for civil administration than for war. Lastly, he had shown those private virtu es,--that generosity, that frankness, that confidence in the loyalty and honour of others, — which win the heart and elevate the soul of all who come under their influ- ence. But the turbulent nobles of Italy, always jealous of the royal authority, dreaded the loss of their privileges, if they had to defend them against a king who possessed the affections of his people. They looked out for a rival among the Frankic princes^ they offered the crown to Rudolf II. king of Transju- rane Burgundy, who, for about two years, (from 923 to 925,) united the government of Italy to that of Switzerland. The ci- vil wars they stirred up, laid open their country to the ravages of the Hungarians. Berenger defeated both his barbarian invaders and his rivals; but it was only to fall under the dagger of an as- sassin armed by the same faction. Rudolf II. was very soon abandoned by those who had invited him. Hugh, count of Pro- vence, was raised to the throne, in his place, in 926. For half a century, Italy had been a prey to factions which were not ani- mated by any true spirit of liberty; they sprang rather from the ambition of haughty nobles who could not brook submission to any regular government, and who preferred a foreign monarch solely because he was farther from them. At length, fatigued and exhausted by their animosities and struggles, she yielded herself up, though unconquered, as a dependency of the crown of Germany. The submission of the kingdom of Lombardy to Otho the Great was not the consequence of weakness, or of want of courage in the soldiery; still less was it the result of any claim which the Saxon monarch could establish to the crown. It was the fatal effect of the independence to which the high aris- tocracy had attained in this country, above any other; the effect of the greatness, the power, and the ambition of such nobles as the marquesses of Tuscany, the dukes of Spoleto and Friuli, the 432 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXII. marquesses of Ivrea, and other great lords, who sacrificed the independence of their country to jealousy of their countrymen, and to the desire of concealing their encroachments from the monarch, whom it was therefore incoiivenient to have near at hand. The second of the countries detached from the Western em- pire — Gaul, or France — was that of which, in the tenth century, the strength was the most completely broken, the European im- portance the most completely destroyed. After the death of king Eutles, count of Paris, the crown had been restored to Charles, the posthumous son of Louis the Stammerer. He was anointed and crowned at Rheims, with the consent of the nobles of Neustria, at the beginning of the year 898^ but if, on the one side, the people saw with pleasure the sole offspring of the house of Charlemagne seated on the throne of his ancestors^ on the other, their attachment was soon cooled by the profound incapa- city of this young man, to whom they gave the surname of the Simple. Incapable of conducting himself, or of distinguishing friends from enemies, he fell into the hands of successive favour- ites, whom chance brought around his person, and who used his name as a cover for their own acts of injustice and oppression. A man of low birth, named Haganon, who had gained his confi- dence, e?:cited the special resentment of the Franks by his im- prudent rapacity^ and, in the end, occasioned the ruin of his master. The authority of Charles was already greatly circumscribed. Not only did four other princes in Gaul, besides himself, bear the title of king, — those of Lorraine, Transjurane Burgundy, Provence, and Bretagne,' but even in his kingdoms of Aquitaine and of Neustria, puissant dukes and counts — those of Burgun- dy, Toulouse, Vermandois, Poictiers, and Aquitaine — governed their dominions with absolute independence, and scarcely gave any other mark of deference to the crown, than that of inscribing in their acts the year of the reign of Charles the Simple. The feudatories south of the Loire were almost forgotten by the king, and he hardly found occasion to remark that they had ceased to obey him^ but the insubordination of the count of Paris, who, in his reign, also assumed the title of duke of France, caused him more uneasiness. The house of the counts of Paris owed its greatness to Charles the Bald, who, as a recompense to Ro- bert the Strong for the assistance he had aiforded him, gave him CHAP. XXIT.] CHARLES THE SIMPLE. 453 the government of Paris and of the country situated between the Seine and the Loire. A Capitulary, published towards the end of Charles's reign, had rendered this government, like all the others, hereditary. During the disorders which reigned at the end of the ninth century, the provincial authority of these counts had increased, while that of the king had diminished. At the deposition of Charles the Fat, Eudes, the son of count Ro- bert, had assumed the title of king. During his reign he strengthened and extended the hereditary domain of his family; and when, upon the death of Eudes, the crown of France re- verted to the Carlovingian line, in the person of Charles the Simple, the real sovereignty, the substantial power, continued in the hands of Robert duke of France, the brother of Eudes; and of his son, Hugh the Great, count of Paris. Charles, who per- ceived that they were absolute masters in the kingdom which was called his, abandoned his residence in their fiefs, where he felt himself an inferior and a dependant. The city of Laon was almost the only one the government of which had not been be- stowed on some count: thither he removed his court and his seat of government; and his son and grandson, who reigned after him, scarcely ever went beyond the bounds of the Laonnais. Whatever was the incapacity of Charles the Simple, whatever wrongs of commission or of omission he might have to answer to his immediate vassals, his share in the general government of the kingdom was so small, his authority was so little felt or regarded by the great nobles, that they might safely have allowed him to retain, to the end of his life, a title of which he could make no bad use. But at the same time that they had stripped him of all real power or efficiency, they expressed astonishment that he did not protect his kingdom as vigorously as the most puissant and glo- rious of his ancestors could have done; they accused him of abuses to which he was a stranger; they reproached him with hostile in- vasions which they would not furnish him troops to repel. An assembly of nobles, held at Soissons in 920, resolved to depose him; and the lords, using a symbolical custom taken from the newly created feudal system, broke straws and threw them in the air in his presence; thus declaring that they renounced their alle- giance to him. The expression, rompre lapaille, borrowed from this ceremony, and signifying, openly to renounce all friendship with any one, has remained in use to the present day. In spite of this violent proceeding, Charles the Simple continued to reign 434 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [OHAP. XXII. for nearly three years longer: the nobles, who were scarcely con- scious of his existence, took little trouble to complete his down- fal. It was not till he offended duke Robert by an act of private injustice, — the usurpation of an ecclesiastical benefice which he endeavoured to dispose of to the count's prejudice, — that his puis- sant vassal took arms against him, and caused himself to be crowned at Rheims, at the end of June, 922. Less than a year afterwards — on the 15th of June, 923 — Robert was killed in a battle fought against Charles the Simple, between Soissons and St. Medard. But the malecontent party were not disheartened by the loss of their leader. They offered the crown to duke Rudolf of Bur- gundy, who actually wore it from 923 to 936, though he scarcely ever quitted his hereditary fief, or took any share in the govern- ment of France. He abandoned all that still remained of the royal power to Hugues le Blanc, count of Paris, and son of Robert; while Charles the Simple, betrayed by Heribert count of Ver- mandois, to whom he had intrusted his personal safety, was ar- rested at Peronne, and conveyed to Chateau Thierry, where he was kept prisoner more than five years, till, on the 7th of Octo- ber, 929, he died. During this period, which we designate as the reign of Charles the Simple, though he had so small a share in the events by which it was marked; whilst the sovereign authority was in abeyance — residing neither in the king, nor in the national assemblies, which were no longer convoked; whilst France was but a formless col- lection of independent sovereignties, slightly and imperfectly bound together by a feeble federative system — having neither laws whose authority they equally recognised, nor a uniform sys- tem of procedure, nor a common treasury, nor a common army, nor a general currency; one single event of real importance oc- curred. This was the final settlement of the Northmen in that part of Neustria, which received from them the name of Norman- dy; an event which changed the most formidable enemies of France into the best and bravest of her citizens. Among the Norse chiefs, one of the most formidable was Rou, or Rollo, who, in the year 876, had performed his first feats of arms in France with the fierce comrades of his enterprise; and who, from that time alternately falling upon Neustria, Aquitaine, Lorraine, and England, had made himself the terror of the West, the idol of his northern comrades, and at length the supreme CHAP. XXII.] SETTLEMENT OF THE NORMANS. 435 commander of their armies. In 911, quitting the shores of Eng- land with a formidable fleet, he ascended the Seine, and laid siege to Paris. This aggression was suspended by a three months' truce, which Charles the Simple obtained from him by the aid of gold. But scarcely had this period elapsed, when Rollo began to lay waste the provinces with unheard-of cruelty, burning churches, massacring priests, and exterminating the whole population, ex- cepting the women, whom he led away captive. The king, who had no troops to oppose to him, sent the archbishop of Rouen, named Franke or Francon, to offer to cede to him a vast province of France, in which he and his warriors might establish them- selves; if, at this price, he would abstain from ravaging the rest of the kingdom, and acknowledge the sovereignty of the crown of France. Rollo appeared tempted by these offers; and an ar- mistice was concluded in the year 911, between the French and the Normans, to allow time for settling the terms of the approach- ing treaty. The first exacted by the bishops who were in- trusted with the negotiation was, that Rollo and his soldiers should make a public profession of Christianity. The conver- sion of an army and a people who had so long distinguished them- selves by their furious hostility to the churches and the ministers of the Christian religion, did not present the difficulties that might have been anticipated. For near a century the Normans had been living among the Christians of France or of England, and had lost sight of their own priests and the temples of their fathers' gods. They regarded Christianity as the religion of civilization. Several of their chiefs had successively embraced it, when Louis le Debon- naire and his successors had offered them lands in Friesland and on the Rhine, on that condition. Alfred the Great had found equal pliancy among the Danes, to whom he had granted settle- ments in East Anglia and Northumberland. This primary con- dition once agreed upon, Charles showed great facility as to all others. He gave his own daughter Gisele to Rollo in marriage; and ceded to him and his followers the whole province which still bears their name, from the river Epte, which falls into the Seine below Rocheguyon, to the sea. And as this region had been rendered completely desert by the ravages of the Normans; as all traces of agriculture had disappeared, and forests had covered the deserted fields; Charles compelled Berenger count of Rennes, and Alain count of Dol, to bind themselves to furnish, provi- sions for the Normans. It appears that, at the same time, he 436 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXH. ceded to these nobles all the claims of the crown over that part of Britany which no longer acknowledged its allegiance to the king of France. After the conditions of the establishment of the Normans in maritime Neustria were settled, king Charles, accompanied by Robert count of Paris and duke of France, repaired to a place named St. Clair, on the left bank of the Epte^ whilst RoUo, sur- rounded by his soldiers, appeared on the right. Peace was then confirmed by mutual oaths. RoUo swore fidelity to king Charles, who, in return, committed his daughter to his hands, and invested him with the duchy of Normandy. The bishops then told RoUo that he could not receive a gift of such price, without, in return, kissing the king's feet. We find that these servile forms, so alien from the manners of northern barbarians, were invariably ingraft- ed on feudality by the priests. They had transplanted them from the courts of Eastern despots to their own church, whence they taught them again to the kings of the West. It is difficult to say whether this was the result of mere habit, or whether they took a delight in humbling the secular grandees who disputed with them the highest rank in the state. " Never," replied Rollo, "will I bend my knees before any man 5 never will I kiss the foot of any mortal being!" As, however, the bishops continued to urge him, he ordered one of his soldiers to kiss the king's foot in his stead. Tiie soldier instead of stooping down to the king's foot, raised it to his own mouthy and that in so ungentle a man- ner, that he threw the king down backward.* The Normans hailed this affront to royalty with shouts of laughter. The as- sembled people were thrown into a state of agitation and alarm, as if it were the prelude to another attack. Charles's nobles thought it more prudent to disguise their resentment, and the ce- remony continued. The nobles were called in turn, after the king and duke Robert, to swear to guaranty to Rollo and his successors, from generation to generation, the possession of the lands ceded to him. The counts, courtiers, bishops, and abbots, all took the oath; after which the king returned into France, and Rollo, accompanied by duke Robert, set out for Rouen. Robert duke of France had been the mediator and the pacifi- * Robert Wace, a poet conteraporaiy with Henry I., and author of the Romount de Rou (Rollo,) says nothing- of this somewhat rough practical joke being performed by deputy. According- to him, it was the Norse hero him- self who was g-uilty of the irreverence. — TransL CHAP. XXII.] CESSATION OF BARBARIAN INVASIONS. 439 had not passed away before the Romanz French was become their mother-tongue. But the j infused into this language that life and en- ergy which inspired all they did, and which they had likewise com- municated to the military discipline of France. The rustic Ro- man, the patois which ignorance had formed out of corrupt Latin, became, in the hands of the Normans, a regular written language, well adapted for every purpose of legislation or of poetry. One century only had elapsed when they employed it for a code of laws, or a romance of chivalry.* They were the first of the French nation who did so employ itj and the Romanz poetry re- ceived from them its wild and daring character and its aptitude for works of imagination. Other princes had already tried in Germany, in France, and in England, to reclaim the Northmen from their predatory habits, and allure them to agricultural life, by giving up to them a pro- vince where they were permitted to live under their own chiefs and their own laws. But the moment for this conversion had not as yet arrived. In every case they had abandoned their new colonies after a few years, and returned to their wild and adven- turous life, which they regarded as at once more glorious and more agreeable. The change which had taken place in two essen- tial points, determined the followers of Rollo to adopt the habits of civilized life with earnestness and perseverance. These were, first, the desolation of the country lying along the shores of the British Channel j and, secondly, the independence of the feudal lords, and the resistance they began to oppose in each province. When the Normans made a descent on a point of the coast, far from being sure of finding booty wherewith to load their barks, they now often found it difficult to collect provisions enough for their subsistence, and were forced to plunge into the depths of forests which had grown up in these depopulated regions, or into tracts of marshes formed by rivers wliich had been let to over- flow their banks^ to approach mountains, every defile of which * The rapid disappearance of the lang'uag-e of the conquerors is one of the most singular facts in history. Wace says that Louis d'Outremer sent to Willeaume Longue-Espee an ambassador named Cosne, who knew how to speak " Thioiz " (Teutsch) and " Normant," William Longsword, though the son and successor of Rollo, was obliged to send his son, duke Richard I., to Bayeux to learn Norse. ** Richard," says Wace, recapitulating his ac- complishments, could speak '* Daneiz et Normant." — Transl 440 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXII. might conceal an ambuscade; and, as local authorities had univer- sally taken the place of a central administration, there was not a province where they did not encounter a chieftain interested in repelling or cutting them off, and bands of peasants whom de- spair had driven to take up arms, and flock to his standard. The plunder had become both too poor and too dearly purchased; and the Normans had begun to perceive that less toil would suffice to put them in possession of the riches which lay hidden in the soil of Normandy, than to pursue what remained in the hands of the peasants of Burgundy through such formidable obstacles, and such incessant contests. The same causes operated, more slowly, perhaps, on the two other piratical nations, who at the same time devastated the West- ern empire: but they did operate; and towards the end of the tenth century their invasions ceased altogether. The Saracens did not content themselves with occasional descents on the coasts; they had established colonies on the Continent, whence they extended their ravages far and wide. The principal of these were in Campania, Puglia, Calabria, and in Provence. The place which was for the longest time the centre of their de- predations was their colony of Frainer or Frassineto, near Fre- jus. Twenty Spanish Saracens were driven on these shores by a tempest: finding a good landing-place at the foot of Monte Moro, and impervious forests all around, they established them- selves there, and invited their countrymen to join them. At first they hired themselves to Provencal nobles, who hated each other, and, without courage to make war in their own persons, were glad to avail themselves of any instruments of mutual ag- gression. When, however, the Saracens had become more pow- erful, or more secure in the cowardice of their neighbours, they carried their devastations on the one hand into Provence, on the other into Italy. It was, doubtless, by taking advantage of the feuds between the neighbouring kings and nobles that the Saracens ventured to cross their frontiers on either hand, to follow the line of the Alps to a considerable distance from the sea, and at last to fix them- selves in the country the least fitted by its climate, its defensible character, and the ruggedness of its mountains, for the wander- ing tribes of Africa. During the first half of the tenth century we find frequent mention of the Saracens, who were masters of the pass of St. Maurice in the Valais. At a later period they CHAP. XXII.] BAPTISM OF ROLLO. 437 cator of the Normans, and was, therefore, chosen as the sponsor of the new convert. Rollo was presented at the font bj the duke, who gave him his name, and was baptized by Francon, archbishop of Rouen, in the cathedral church of that city, (a. d. 912.) During the seven days that he wore the white robe of a catechumen, the bishops who instructed him in the articles of his new faith, induced him every day to grant some fresh portion of land to some church in Normandy. These were his first in- feudations. As soon as he had received baptism, he divided the rest of his duchy among the officers of his army. Each of these districts received the appellation of county {comte;) and the Nor- man chief to whom it was granted, in his turn, partitioned it among his soldiers. The feudal system had slowly gained ground in the rest of Europe; the reciprocal duties of lord and vassal had begun to be regulated by custom; the authority of the counts, who represented the king, had ceased to be in opposition with that of the lords of the soil; the functions of the niissi da- minici had fallen into desuetude; the different tenures of land, after causing extreme confusion, also began to fall under some classification. By introducing into Normandy the feudal system full grown and complete; by taking advantage of all the lights which experience, up to that time, had furnished; by giving a si- milar origin to all property, Rollo had it in his power to secure to the legislation of his country, a regularity which it had no- where as yet attained to; and this province, the most recently constituted, soon served as a model to all the others. This nation of warriors now set themselves to the cultivation of the land with the same ardour and energy with which they had heretofore ravaged it. Foreigners from all countries were invited to come and establish themselves in Normandy: rigorous laws were promulgated, and were no less rigorously enforced, for the protection of property; all thieves or robbers were pu- nished with death; and, from a sort of bravado, Rollo hung a pair of bracelets of massive gold from the branches of an oak near the Seine, where they remained three years untouched. The new duke also rebuilt the churches his countrymen had de- stroyed; he surrounded the cities with walls, he closed the mouths of rivers with barricades, and put himself in a state of defence against new pirates who might be inclined to follow the track he had traced out for them. Sensible, however, that forti- fications cannot protect a nation without the bravery of its sol- 56 438 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXII. diers, he maintained war on his frontiers in order to keep up the military dispositions and habits of his people. He could not, conformably with his treaty, turn his arms against the French; he, therefore, attacked Gurmhaillon, count of Cornwall, who, in the year 907, had succeeded to Alwin the Great in the sove- reignty of Britany. He defeated him in several engagements, and forced the Bretons at length to submit to a foreign yoke. The conversion of duke Rollo, and his settlement, with his Norman followers, in that part of maritime Neustria which bears their name, is unquestionably the most remarkable event which occurs in the history of France during the tenth century, — the event followed by the most important and the most lasting con- sequences. It put an end to that war of devastation and of pil- lage which, during a whole century, had depopulated western Germany, Belgium, Gaul, and England. It enabled those countries to return to the cultivation of their deserted fields, to apply themselves once more to the arts of peace, to rebuild their ruined temples, and to restore the shattered defences of their towns. Above all, it remodelled the national character. The mixture of another race, vigorous, enterprising, and intrepid, in- fused among them that spirit of adventure which always distin- guished the Normans, from the shores of their native Baltic to their latest conquests in Sicily or the principality of Edessa, which they won during the crusades. The mother-tongue of the Normans, Danish, or more properly Norse, was only a dialect of that great Teutonic language spread over the whole of Germania, another dialect of which was spoken by the Franks. This, though in the dominions of Charles the Simple, abandoned by the later for the corrupt Roman, or em- bryo French, was still understood by the princes, and preserved with a sort of reverence as the language of the victor race. It is, therefore, somewhat extraordinary that the Normans, instead of blending their language with the cognate tongue of the Teuto- nic Franks, should have adopted the Romanz French. We must, doubtless, attribute this phenomenon to the clergy, whom the conquerors found established in Normandy, and from whom they received their new education. The Normans became very sin- cere Christians; and, carrying into their religion the same fervour and earnestness which characterized all their actions, they fre- quented the schools, the catechisms, the sermons of their priests: they laboured to understand what they heard | and two generations CHAP. XXII.] CONRAD I. HENRY THE FOWLER. 443 self. He recommended to the suffrages of the Germans his ri- val, Henry of Saxony, to whom he charged his brother Eberhard to deliver up the regalia of the kingdom. Henry I., surnamed the Fowler, was, consequently, elected soon afterwards, by the diet of Fritzlar. From the year 918 to 936, Germany was go- verned by a great prince, who delivered her from the ravages of the Hungarians, established order and security at home, and made her formidable abroad. The repression of the Hungarians was become the most urgent interest, not of Germany only, but of all Europe. But it could hardly be hoped that states which were too ill-organized to watch over their own interests, to provide for their own defence, would unite their efforts for a common object. The emperor Berenger, after sometimes driving back the Hungarians from Italy by arms sometimes purchasing their retreat, in the latter years of his life, had contracted an alliance with them. It appears that, being ex- tremely pressed by Rudolf of Burgundy, he ceded to them the passes of Friuli. A few months after his death, they took ad- vantage of this opening. One of their most formidable armies appeared before Pavia on the 12th of March, 924. This city, which might then be regarded as the second in the Western empire for population and for wealth, was reduced to ashes5 forty-three churches were destroyed, all the inhabitants were put to the sword, and it is affirmed that only two hundred souls survived out of the immense population it had contained. After this horrible carnage, the Hungarians, instead of returning to Pannonia with their spoil, pushed onward, and, having tra- versed the Alps, spread like a torrent over the plains of Provence. After crossing the Rhone above Aries, they attacked and pil- laged Nismes. From thence they marched to Toulouse, which they visited with all the horrors of fire and sword. Here, how- ever, their army was attacked by a dreadful epidemy, and was at length entirely destroyed by Raymond Pons, count of Tou- louse. About the same time other Hungarian armies, traversing the whole extent of Germany, had reached the banks of the Rhine, had swum across that river, and laid waste Lorraine and Neus- tria, in the same manner as they had formerly ravaged Germany. Charles the Simple, having at his disposal only fifteen hundred soldiers, who had been procured for him by the archbishop of Rheims, had kept them under the walls of Laon, without daring to 444 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXII. encounter so terrible a foe, and waiting till, gorged with plunder and with blood, they should retire of themselves. In fact, after a few weeks, the Hungarians evacuated Champagne. Thej, how- ever, revisited it several times. Henry the Fowler, who had consented, during the civil wars which embarrassed the commencement of his reign, to pay a yearly tribute to the Hungarians, in the year 933 refused any longer to submit to this humiliation. The incensed Hungarians marched into Germany in two formidable armies, one of which encamped on the Saale, at Merseburg, while the other ravaged Thuringia. Henry, having collected around his banner the Sax- ons and the Bavarians, advanced on the former army, and offered battle. The Hungarians hesitated. They kindled large beacon fires, in the hope of bringing to their assistance their companions, of whom they now felt the need; but they were not within reach of their signals. The army of Thuringia had been attacked by the counts of Thuringia and of Saxony, and cut to pieces. The fugitives who had escaped from the field of battle, wandering about the country, hunted and massacred by the peasants, could not reunite. When this great disaster was made known to the Hungarians at Merseburg they endeavoured to escape, by flight, from the vengeance of Henry the Fowler; but terror soon gave them up, a defenceless prey, to the swords of the Germans. It was not a battle; it was a frightful butchery, in which thirty-six thousand of their warriors, as it is aflirmed, perished. This ter- rible defeat put an almost total end to the invasions which had so long devastated France, Italy, and Germany, CHAP XXII.] ARNULF. ^LOUIS IV. 441 totally disappear, nor can we find any record of the causes or means of their expulsion. Three streams, — the Normans from the north and west, the Saracens from the south, the Hungarians from the east, — had poured down with desolating fury upon Europe. Those of the latter tribe, who called themselves Magyars, had been driven from the mountains of northern Asia, where the Tanais has its source, about the year 868. They had traversed the shores of the Black Sea, crossed the Don, forced the passes of the Kra- pack mountains, and had at length fixed themselves in Pannonia, and the countries which the Huns had formerly occupied. Their only dwellings were a sort of covered wagons, in which they con- veyed their wives and children. Mounted on small horses, lightly accoutred with bows and arrows, they were not less for- midable in flight than in attack, and surpassed even the North- men in cruelty; The emperor Arnulf is accused of having opened the gates of the West to them, in the year 894, when he let them loose upon the Moravians, with whom he was at that time at war. Arnulf, who had shown considerable vigour, and had caused the kingdom of Germany to be respected, at a time when all the other west- ern states were nodding to their fall, died on the 8th of Decem- ber, 899. From the time of his death, Germany entered on a period of calamities similar to those which had long desolated France and Italy. His son, Louis IV., who succeeded him, was only seven years old: he died on the 21st of November, 911, having not yet attained the age of twenty. During this long minority, the revolts of the subject Slavonian tribes, and the in- cursions of the Hungarians, rendered Germany a scene of ruin and desolation. Without looking behind them, without thinking of securing a retreat, the latter pushed forward across a country where their course was heralded by terror, and tracked by the blood of defenceless peasants, and the smoking ashes of their crops and habitations. The lightness of their equipments, and the rapidity of their movements, enabled them to escape from the heavily mounted Germans^ and while they avoided all regular combat, they spread death around them. Bavaria, Swabia, Thu- ringia, and Franconia, were ravaged by the Hungarians during the whole reign of Louis IV. The reign of Arnulf had raised the power and dignity of the monarch among the eastern Franks. That of Louis IV., on the 442 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [CHAP. XXII. contrary, annihilated the unity of the monarchy. During his long minority the German nobles suddenly arrogated that inde- pendence which the lords of France had slowly usurped during the reign of Charles the Bald and his successors^ and it was precisely because Germany was more populous, more warlike — because the armies of the king were better disciplined — that the dukes, who, under Arnulf, were only the lieutenants of the king, rendered themselves formidable, under Louis IV., as proprietors of provinces and masters of armies. The eastern Franks or Franconians, the Saxons, the Swabians, the Bavarians, and Lo- tharingians, divided under as many independent dukes, appeared so many distinct nations, ready to declare war on each other. With Louis IV. expired the illegitimate branch of the de- scendants of Charlemagne (November 21, 911,) which had kept possession of the crown of Germany after the extinction of the legitimate branch. Charles the Simple was the sole survivor of the long line of Carlovingian kings; and his faculties were so dull and feeble, that his stupidity had become proverbial. If the long hostilities of the German people against the Slavonians, whom their oppressions had driven to despair; if the attacks of the Hungarians, who had already conquered the whole of the eastern marches, now called Austria, had not forced upon them the necessity of uniting for their own defence, they would, pro- bably, have hesitated to give a new chief to the state. An im- becile chief was out of the question; and, rejecting all idea of submitting to such a monarch as Charles the Simple, the dukes, who pretended to represent the nation, oiFered the crown, first, to Otho, duke of Saxony. He declined it, on the plea of his ad- vanced age, and recommended to their suffrages Conrad, duke of Franconia, who was unanimously elected. Conrad, whose valour and policy have been greatly celebrated, reigned seven years, nearly the whole of which were passed in the field, (a. d. 912 — 918,) at one while to check the invasions of the Hungarians, at another, to quell the insurrections of Swa- bia and of Bavaria; at another, to make war on Henry, duke of Saxony, who succeeded to his father Otho on the 30th of No- vember, 913; or to recall to their allegiance the Lotharingians, who had invited Charles the Simple, and made overtures towards a reunion with the French monarchy. Conrad I., king of Ger- many, died on the 23d of December, 918; and, as he had no children, he imitated the generous conduct of Otho towards him- { 445 ) CHAPTER XXIII. state of Europe in the Ninth Century. — House of Saxony. — Death of Henry the Fowler. — His Choice of Otho I. — Exclusion of Thankmar. — His Death. — Otho's Person, Character, and Government. — His Victories. — His Influence over Louis IV. of France. — Union of Italy with Germany, — Its Causes and Consequences. — State of Italy. — Count Hugh of Provence. — Bereng-er H., King- of Lombardy. — Destruction of the Royal Power in France and Burgundy. — Disgraceful State of the Pontificate. — Ruin of the Cities of France and Germany, and of Stationary Commerce—Travelling Merchants. — Handicrafts exercised by Serfs. — Origin of Small Towns. — DecHne of Municipal Liberties. — Defective State of History. — Lothaire. — His unsuccessful Wars. — Marriage of Louis V. — His Imbecility. — Con- duct of Blanche. — Death of Louis V. — Charles of Lorraine, the last of the Carlovingians. — His Imprisonment and Death. — Usurpation of Hugh Capet. — His Character. — Death of Otho the Great. — Otho II. — His Invasion of France. — His V^ar with the Greeks. — His Capture and Escape. — His Death. — Otho III. — Revolt of the Italians.— Crescentius. — His Death. — Revenge of his Wife Stefania. — Death of Otho III. — Extinction of the House of Saxony. — Dissolution of all the Ancient Monarchies — State of Europe. During the former half of the tenth century, the Christian states of Europe were not united under one supreme controlling will, as at the beginning of the ninthj they did not constitute an association, — a republic of princes, the several members of which, though acknowledging no subordination of one to another, are still aware, that there exist between them mutual relations, duties, and rights, — in short, an association like that formed by the same states in the eighteenth century. On the contrary, this assemblage seemed but the result of a fortuitous arrangement of independent bodies, who, though placed in contact, knew nothing of each other; who nei- ther understood, nor sought to understand, each other's interests and sentiments. It is true, the victory gained by Henry the Fowler over the Hungarians at Merseburg was in some sort, an event of common interest, as it put an end to dangers and calamities felt throughout Europe. Germany, Italy, Aquitaine, Lorraine, and Neustria, had suffered from the ravages of the Hungarian armies; and, though no longer connected with each other, found a com- mon subject of rejoicing in their defeat. From that time the house of Saxony rose in importance in the eyes of all Europe; and Henry the Fowler, being succeeded by a son still more illustrious 57 446 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXIII. than himself, Otho I., and a grandson and great-grandson, Otho II. and Otho III., who were esteemed worthy of treadhig in his footsteps, the whole attention of their contemporaries was fixed upon these successive rulers of Germany. Otho I., after an inter- regnum of thirty-nine years, was adorned with the imperial crown, and thenceforward placed himself at the head of Christendom. Henry the Fowler died in 936, after having prevailed on the princes of Germany to acknowledge as his successor Otho I., the eldest of the sons borne him by his second wife; to the preju- dice of Thankmar, his eldest son, whose mother he had repu- diated, under pretext of a vow she had made. There was no doubt that the crown of Germany was elective; and whatever were the motive which determined Henry to make a choice amongst his children, that choice, once confirmed by the princes of Germany, became legitimate. Still the jealousy and resent- ment of Thankmar, who saw himself thus excluded from his fa- ther's throne, were natural: his revolts against his brother were to be excused; and the beginning of the reign of Otho the Great is stained by his cruelty to Thankmar, who, after the first civil war, was killed in 937, at the foot of tlie altar at Ehresburg. The conduct of Otho, with respect to his children, was also not without reproach; like his father, he preferred those of his second wife to those of his first, and goaded to rebellion his eldest son Ludolf, who died in Italy, in the year 957. Thus, Otho the Great, in common with Charlemagne, began his career with domestic crimes, like all his contemporaries, he act- ed under the influence of the opinions of his age; he felt the same ambition, the same fierce and ungoverned passions as the less illustrious sovereigns whom he succeeded; like them, he sa- crificed his duty to his interest, before his own great genius and noble qualities enabled him to raise himself above the vulgar herd of kings. Let us be indulgent to his memory, for his was the inevitable fate of great men born in a barbarous age. Vast reflec- tion and an extensive study of the world are requisite to enable a man to reconstruct a code of morals for his own use; to attain a perception of the right and the just, at a period when they are un- known; and, above all, to destroy a dangerous code of monkish virtues and compensations for crime, which have been inculcated under the most sacred names, and whose only effect has been, to lull the conscience to rest, leaving to the passions their ancient empire. Otho's morality, like his wisdom, improved with age. CHAP. XXIII.] SUCCESSES OF OTHO. 447" because his actions were more and more swayed by the principles his own heart suggested, in preference to the example or the pre- cepts of the pedants who had formed his youth. Unfortunately, our information concerning the glorious reign of Otho from 936 to 973, — a reign which, more than any other, con- tributed to the civilization of Germany, — is extremely slight. We know, generally, that, from this period, Saxony, though she had not yet emerged from barbarism, beheld the increase of her towns and cities^ that the arts of industry made some progress; that mines of silver and copper were discovered and worked near Gosslar by the inhabitants. But the historians of the time give us few details as to the manner in which Otho governed his vast empire. Perhaps, indeed, there were but few to givej it appears that during his continual journeys, undertaken either for the pur- pose of leading his troops, or of presiding at the comitia of his several kingdoms, he suffered the nobles in the northern states, and the cities in the southern, to manage their provincial adminis- tration in their own way; and that the greater part of the munici- pal institutions and customs of the empire were established during his reign. Otho had the lofty stature, the intrepid and com- manding countenance, the abundance of fair hair, the bright, open, and daring eye, and the ruddy complexion of the north: he wore a long beard: contrary to the usage of his time, he spoke little else but German, though he understood the Uoman dialect used in France, and the language of his Slavonic neighbours; it was not till late in life that he learned to read, and that he acquired some knowledge of Latin. The chase, and the exercises of chi- valry, were his favourite pleasures: he preserved all the vigour of youth up to the time of his death, which took place when he was sixty-one years of age. Otho was not, like Charlemagne, the sovereign of a vast em- pire extending over all Europe, but rather the chief of a confe- deration of princes, sharing the countries which had formed that empire: his rank was recognised in Germany, Gaul, and Italy, as being equal to Charlemagne's, but his power was by no means the same. The union of those independent states which ac- knowledged him as their chief, seemed maintained only by the superiority of his talents and character; accordingly, we find that these states were sufficiently well constituted to maintain their own independence after his death. Charlemagne, on the con- trary, who had concentrated the power in his own person, could 448 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXIII. not have abandoned it without endangering the whole structure of the Western empire. The victories gained by Otho in the civil wars of Germany served as steps by which he ascended to empire. Each of the dukes who governed the great provinces esteemed himself an equal of the monarch. In a succession of battles, Otho taught them obedience: he then gave Bavaria to his youngest brother, Henry; Lorraine to St. Bruno, another brother; the new bishop- rics of Havelberg and Brandenburg to prelates who undertook the civilization of the Slavonian tribes, and the marquisate of Lausitz (Lusatia) to a new feudatory family engaged to defend the eastern frontier. The rest of the duchies of Germany he left in the hands of their ancient hereditary chiefs; not, how- ever, without ascertaining that those chiefs would hereafter be disposed to concur in the defence of their country. Otho had acquired some renown in his struggle with the dukes of Germany; but popular enthusiasm is excited only in favour of the conquerors of foreign nations: this glory was early the lot of the Saxon monarch. He gained constant advantages over the Slavonian tribes, who occupied the whole eastern frontier of Ger- many, and carried on an incessant border warfare; he compelled Harold, king of Denmark, to sue for peace; finally, he defeated the Hungarians on the banks of the Leek, and thus put an end to the ravages of that ferocious nation. Otho was not recognised as sovereign of France; but the weak- ness displayed by the princes who governed that country caused all eyes to be turned upon him. In the year of his accession to the throne of Germany, (a. d. 936,) Rudolf, king of France, ex- pired; and Louis IV., son of Charles the Simple, then only six- teen years of age, was recalled from England, where he had spent thirteen years in banishment, to receive a crown, which conferred little more than the sovereignty of the city of Laon; whilst his powerful vassal, Hugh, count of Paris, who placed that crown upon his head, reserved for himself all the powers and privileges of royalty. Otho 1., as sovereign of Lorraine, and as guardian of Conrad the Peaceful, king of Burgundy and Pro- vence, found, from the beginning of his reign, that it fell to him to exercise a powerful influence over the destinies of Louis IV., surnamed d'Outremer, and of count Hugh, who had each married one of his sisters: that influence he always exercised in a man- ner honourable to his own character and advantageous to the CHAP. XXIII.] UNION OF ITALY WITH GERMANY. 449 neighbouring state. During his whole reign, from 936 to 954, Louis d'Outremer, humiliated bj the contrast between the pomp- ous titles with which he was decorated, and the weakness of his resources, seized every occasion of aggrandizing himself, even at the expense of his brothers-in-law^ nor was his conduct to Otho the Great always consistent with truth and loyalty. He took part in the civil wars of Germany, and accepted with eager- ness every proposal made to him by the enemies of his powerful neighbour. During the beginning of these two reigns, Louis be- came the nominal chief of the malecon tents of Germany, and Otho of those of France. But the latter, far from abusing his own superior power, seemed to use every effort to re-establish peace and order throughout the West. He interposed to recon- cile Louis d'Outremer with his subjects, without in the least abandoning or compromising the interests of the nobles of Neus- tria, who had placed confidence in him; and, in 942, he pre- vailed on the king and the count of Paris to sign a treaty of peace, which he undertook to guaranty. But indisputably the most important event of the reign of Otho I. was the union of the crown of Italy with that of Ger- many; a union which, though the fruit of his virtues, and the consequence of his high reputation, was not the less fatal to the posterity of both nations; a union repugnant to nature, and pro- lific only in wars and calamities; a union which subjected the most civilized nations to the most barbarous,— the masters of every art and science to their least skilled disciples; a union which was offensive in proportion as the manners, the opinions, the languages of the two nations were contrasted; as the slow- ness of apprehension, the avarice, the hardness, and the apathy of the Germans, disgusted a people so lively, intelligent, and impassioned as the Italians; while the very sounds of so harsh and barbarous a language, prevailing in every station of com- mand, seemed formed to offend the musical ear of the people condemned to obey. It has been remarked, that the feelings of resentment arising from war in the minds of neighbouring nations are far less pro- found than those occasioned by injuries inflicted under the shadow of peace. Necessity is the first of all laws, to which man learns to submit; and victory, conquest, those grand mani- festations of human energy, force us to bow to the empire of ne- cessity. In their submission to the Germans, the Italians had 450 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXIII. not even this consolation. Otho the Great became their ac- knowledged sovereign, partly from the imprudence of their lead- ers, partly from the gratitude of the people. They fought no battles^ they underwent no defeat; and, on a sudden, they found their country a dependency of the German crown, before those who proclaimed themselves their masters had been called upon to produce a single title to justify their usurpation; not even that of conquest. The Italian nation began to awaken from its lethargy in the tenth century; its towns were gradually becoming rich and in- dustrious; virtues and talents were beginning to be unfolded in those numerous governments which enjoyed an almost absolute independence, and which spread new life throughout the pro- vinces. But these governments, — those, at least, of the power- ful dukes and marquesses who shared amongst themselves almost the whole country, — were not the work of the nation, and the nation could not be responsible for their faults. It is an accusa- tion brought against these great nobles, that it was their constant aim, during the ninth and tenth centuries, to place two monarchs in opposition to each other, as a means of weakening and cramp- ing both. The marquesses and dukes of Italy appealed to fo- reign sovereigns, not for the purpose of subjugating their country, but for that of limiting the royal power. It was by them that Otho the Great was twice invited; it was they who believed their liberty and their privileges more secure under a distant monarch; it was they who presented to that great man a crown for which he was not indebted to his sword, and which he transmitted to successors unworthy of him. The tyranny of Hugh count of Provence, whom these very nobles had made king of Italy, from 926 to 947, drove them to seek foreign aid. By an artful and dexterous policy, an autho- rity at first very limited, had been changed into absolute power; and the sway of Hugh once established, no part of Italy could have attempted any resistance which would not have been im- mediately suppressed by force. Accordingly, Berenger II., marquis of Ivrea, withdrew into Germany, for the purpose of as- sembling the enemies of Hugh, and of forming the army by whose assistance he expected to deliver his country. This fur- nished Otho the Great with the first occasion of taking an indi- rect part in the revolutions of Italy, by affording protection to the unhappy exiles who begged him to grant them an asylum. CHAP. XXIII.] HUGH OF PROVENCE AND BERENGEK II. 451 The revolution begun by Berenger II. succeeded; he re-entered Italy at the head of the emigrants | he obliged Hugh to retreat, and was speedily recognised as king. But the example he had given was quickly followed 5 fresh malecontents, in their turn, had recourse to Otho the Great, and, unhappily, they, also, could plead well grounded subjects of complaint. Otho I. appeared in Italy as the avenger of wrongs, as the champion of justice. In 951, he re-established peace between Berenger II. and his subjects: but, at the same time, he obliged the former to do him homage for his crown. In 960, summoned afresh by the wishes of almost the whole country, he deposed Berenger, took posses- sion of the crown of Lombardy, and, on the 9th of February, 962, surmounted it with the imperial diadem. Both were elec- tive, and he owed his nomination to those in whom the right to elect resided: he made a noble use of his power; but the fatal example of uniting Germany with Italy was given; and his Ger- man successors looked upon that as a right, which had originally been but a concession on the part of the people. The strength of character and the distinguished talents of Otho the Great, formed a rare exception to the customary laws of nature. The possession of such qualities enabled him to make a more extended and beneficent use of the royal power than any of the other sovereigns of this period. The exhorbi- tant growth of the privileges of the great nobles, the assumption, on their part, of all the prerogatives which seem to constitute royalty, had rendered the kingly office useless; it was no longer any thing but a supernumerary wheel, giving additional intricacy to the machine of the state, while it imparted no additional power; a luxury with which, it seems, the people might well have dispensed. In the family even of Otho the Great, the bro- ther of his wife, Conrad the Peaceful, whose guardian the for- mer had been, during a very long reign, (a. d. 937 — 993,) over Transjurane Burgundy and Provence, remained so completely inactive, that history has hardly preserved any record of him. The other brother-in-law of Otho, his sister's husband, Louis d'Outremer, died many years before him, in 954, and left an in- fant son, Lothaire, who grew up under the protection of Otho and his brother, St. Bruno, archbishop of Cologne. The count Hugh had survived Louis but two years, and his three sons, the most celebrated of whom was Hugh Capet, were also children. The two widows of Louis and of Hugh, sisters of Otho and St. 452 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXIII. Bruno, forgot the rivalship which had subsisted between their husbands, and placed themselves, with their children, under the powerful protection of their brother. The royal authority was thus in abeyance in France and Transjurane Burgundy; it was equally so both in Italy and Germany, after the death of the em- peror Otho, and especially during the long minority of his grand- son, Otho III.; nor does it appear that society experienced any serious inconvenience. In truth, the royal power was not suffi- cient to enable its possessors to be either permanent moderators or umpires of the feuds of their great vassals. They dared not constitute themselves defenders of the laws and of public order; on the contrary, they felt themselves compelled to adhere to the more powerful of two rivals; to sanction with their authority the encroachments of the stronger after victory; to alienate what was inalienable; to perpetrate a legal robbery on the lawful heirs in favour of their oppressors; to trample under foot the statutes which regulated the succession of fiefs; to bestow on secular no- bles bishoprics and abbacies, which, according to the canons, could be given to none but ecclesiastics; in short, from weakness and fear, to commit, in favour of their most formidable vassals, acts as arbitrary as those of the most absolute despotism. Kings were not the protectors of the nobility; since they lent their assistance only to those nobles who were already more pow- erful than themselves, while they refused it to those who really needed support. Kings were not the protectors of the clergy; — not that this powerful order, which, in the preceding century, had possessed the real sovereignty of France, was not sometimes in want of a champion; for the blind piety of kings and nobles had no sooner loaded them with riches and fiefs than their trea- sures and their lands tempted the avidity of the soldiery; or than some knight, uniting the cross and the sword, bore away, as a secular prelate, all the wealth which some former warrior had bestowed upon the church: but the king either tolerated these irregularities, or himself committed them, and the secularizations which caused the greatest scandal almost always obtained his sanction. Finally, kings were not the protectors of a third estate, which they had suffered to be crushed; which, as a na- tional power, no longer existed. Every tie between them and the people was destroyed, and in the serfs of their vassals they could no longer recognise their own subjects. This state of society was, without doubt, less destructive than CHAP. XXIIl.] DECLINE OF THE KINGLY POWER. 453 that bj which it had been preceded j but it is far less favourable to the historian. If we pass in review every topic which proper* ly falls within the province of history, we find that there were, at this period, absolutely none which could furnish matter for ob- servation; especially at a time when all communication was dif- ficult; when no conveyance for letters existed; when no journal, no periodical publication gave an account of passing events; and when the only knowledge of what was done, even in a neighbour- ing state, was conveyed by travelling merchants, or by marching armies. Kings, who had now scarcely any share in the adminis • tration of the countries they nominally governed; having no mi- nistry, no standing army; in short, nothing but a household com- posed of great officers attached to their persons, through whom they carried on the small portion of public affairs that devolved upon them; spent their time chiefly in journeying from castle to castle, or more frequently from convent to convent. We can- not, therefore, wonder, if we find the chronicles of the tenth and eleventh centuries sometimes entirely forgetting them for years together. In many of them, the learned writers only labour to discover if they were still in existence, and what was the place of their abode. No nation any longer possessed the means of carrying on national wars; and, dating from the cessation of the invasions of the Normans and the Hungarians, the whole mili- tary history of the age is almost confined to attacks upon castles in a circle of some leagues around each petty prince. Legisla- tion was as completely suspended as war. In the history of France there are at least four centuries, during which legislative power existed nowhere, — from the last capitulary of the year 882, till a considerable time after the institutions of St. Louis in 1269. And even the latter, with which French legislation re- commences, are addressed only to the royal fiefs. In the em- pire, both in Germany and in Italy, the suspension was shorter or not so complete; but the laws promulgated from the assembly at Roncaglia, by the Othos and their successors, were hardly recog- nised by the states to which they were addressed. Ecclesiastical history itself seemed suspended; since almost all the more valuable benefices of the church were become the property of some temporal baron, who could not read, and who thought himself guilty of no usurpation, provided that, however deeply infected with the passions and the vices of his age, he had received the ecclesiastical tonsure. The chair of Rome, 58 454 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXIII. even, had not escaped these encroachments of the great feudato- ry subjects. Too large a portion of grandeur and of wealth had been accumulated around the papal throne, to allow the powerful nobility in the neighbourhood of Rome to regard it without feel- ings of ambition and envy. Indeed, for some time, it became, as it were, hereditary in the family of the marquesses of Tuscu- lumj its destination was likewise repeatedly determined by two Roman ladies, celebrated for their gallantries — Theodora and Marozia — who successively raised to the sacred chair either their lovers or their children. During the greater part of the tenth century, the heads of the Christian church were young no- bles, hardly past the age of boyhood, from whom no one thought of demanding a decision in matters of faith, and over the histo- ry of whose debaucheries the annalists of the church have ra- pidly passed, as too scandalous for their pens. The active portion of the community — the dukes, the counts, the castellans, or lords of castles — almost completely escaped the notice of history, by their profound ignorance, and their com- plete indifference to the opinions of contemporaries, or to the judgments of posterity. The historical labours set on foot some- what later by this same nobility, in their genealogical researches or the blazonry of their armorial bearings, had not yet begun. The pride of birth itself is a step made by society towards an ap- preciation of the value of the esteem of others, which the men of this age had not yet made; as yet, they attached but slight im- portance to the knowledge of their origin and descent; it was enough for them to feel that they were powerful. We, accord- ingly, find that none of the chronicles of these new dynasties were begun in the tenth century; none of the princely families of that period cared for posterity, or imagined that posterity would care for them. At a later period, history resumed her labours in the towns and cities both of Italy and Spain. Great assemblages of men had not only common interests, but likewise a necessary publici- ty, which permitted authors to seize at least the general features of municipal history, and awoke the attention of the men of the time to the advantages which they would derive from an ac- quaintance with the deeds of former ages; but in the remaining part of the West, in France and Germany, the inhabitants of the towns had little to record but their sufferings. Victims of every invasion; pillaged or burned in every war, whether domes- CHAP. XXiri.] TRADE AND MANUFACTURES. 455 tic or foreign; the towns were reduced to the most deplorable condition. Their population was no longer composed of men of independent station, of capitalists, of merchants, and of manu- facturers; but of a trembling and enslaved populace, who lived from daj to day, and who, if they succeeded in saving any thing, took care to conceal it under an appearance of abject poverty. These towns were no longer either the seat of government or of any subordinate administration. The kingdoms of France, Germany, Lorraine, Transjurane Burgundy, and Italy, were ac- tually without capitals; each province had no longer its metropo- lis; castles were the residence of kings, prelates, dukes, counts, and viscounts; in them were assembled the courts of law, and in them was justice administered; in them were to be found all who enjoyed any independent fortune, all who affected the least elegance or luxury in their dwellings or their attire. It is true, that certain trades were still obscurely carried on in the towns, but almost exclusively for the use of the neighbourhood: this was particularly the case in those of the south of Gaul, which had more commonly escaped the ravages so destructive to all those of the north; but, in general, commerce, as must always be the case, had followed in the track of those who required what she could supply. It was not in the ancient capitals of Gaul that the splendid assortments of armour, and the rich magazines of stuffs, used by the lords and knights, or by the high-born ladies of the castles, were to be found. The merchant had no choice but to be a traveller; as he still is in the Levant, as he still is in every country where the people are oppressed. He went on his way, accompanied by his carriages, and thus transported his goods from the domains of one count or baron to those of another. He had no fixed place of abode, no known warehouse, no fortune, the amount of which could be calculated, except the small quan- tity of goods which he carried about with him. Thus he avoided the avidity and the extortions of a prince against whose power he had no means of defence; and the protection of those amongst whom he made his regular visits was only obtained by their be- ing made to feel the need in which they stood of his services. As to the mechanical arts which required less intelligence, less capital, and which might be exercised indifferently in all places, the powerful took care to have some of their serfs trained to their exercise. Every prelate, every count or viscount, endeavoured to have for his own especial service a set of the same " good ar- 456 TALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [CHAP. XXIII, tisans " that Charlemagne, a hundred and fifty years before, had commanded his judges to provide for each of his castles or royal abodes; viz. " workmen in iron, gold, and silver; stone-cut- ters, turners, carpenters, armorers, engravers, washers; brewers skilled in making mead, cider, and perry, and all other liquors fit to be drunk; bakers, who likewise have the art of preparing millet for our use; net-makers, able to make every thing apper- taining to the chase; and all other tradesmen, whom it would be too long to enumerate." From the time of Charlemagne these artisans were but miserable serfs, who worked on the monarch's account with the materials furnished them by his judges. At a later period, they were equally serfs, but they belonged to the nobles or to the prelates, who had need of their services; and their number was reduced in the proportion which the power or the wealth of a count bore to that of an emperor of the West. Hence it was that the foundation of a convent or of a castle was always followed by the erection of a wretched village, where, under the shadow of the great house, the men whose labour was necessary to the master congregated. In the course of the tenth century, these villages, grown with time into small towns, multiplied as the feudatory families also increased; for every house diverged into a great number of branches, and new counts and viscounts inhabited places before unoccupied. But the progress of these villages contributed to hasten the ruin of the large towns; just as the slavery of the arti- ficers had caused the decline of all mechanical arts. The citizens of Paris, Rouen, Amiens, Tours, who, under the first dynas- ty, had found a certain livelihood in their handicrafts or their commerce; and who, by their labour and economy, could then repair the losses of war and the harassing exactions of the Frank kings, under the second family, could no longer find employment or purchasers. When the Normans, the Saracens, or the Hunga- rians had burned any great town, a few unhappy beings assembled afresh amongst the ruins; but they brought with them no means of regaining their former opulence, of restoring their families, or of repairing the losses which the mass of the population had suffered. The impoverishment of the towns, and the diminution in the num- ber of their inhabitants at this period, had been followed by the loss of all their privileges. In the tenth century, the curiae, or the senates of the cities, and the assemblies of the burgesses, which the first Franks had respected, had totally disappeared. Nor did CHAP. XXIII.] LOTHAIRE. HUGH CAPET. 457 the inhabitants lay claim to any privileges, liberties, or immuni- tiesj nor did any insurrectionary movement, any tumult, indicate their discontent at being deprived of them. Indeed, such rights had been silently renounced at the time when the cities had ceased to contain any men of independent fortune or of education, in the enjoyment of leisure, and possessed of the requisite courage and talents to maintain them. The state of the different classes of the population in the tenth century, explains both the silence and the confusion of the his- torians of that period: but without an actual perusal of these an- cient documents, it is impossible to conceive to how few lines all that has been preserved to us from that age reduces itself, and how much suspicion attaches even to those few. It would be dijHicult to imagine all the errors and anachronisms into which Ademar de Chabannes, or the monk Odorannus, have fallen, though both of them rank amongst the number of the best chro- niclers of France belonging to that epoch; or the profound igno- rance of the affairs of France displayed by Wittikind, in other respects an intelligent historian, and well informed whenever he speaks of Otho I. In the midst of this profound obscurity, we will endeavour to point out in a summary manner the two impor- tant events which marked the second half of the tenth century; — in France, the extinction of the second branch of the Carlovingian dynasty; and in Germany and Italy, that of the house of Saxony. Louis d'Outremer expired on the 10th of September, 954, in consequence of a fall from his horse, which had taken fright at the appearance of a wolf on the banks of the Aisne. He left two children: Lothaire, between thirteen and fourteen years old; and Charles, an infant, who, many years afterwards, was duke of Lower Lorraine. Hugh count of Paris, rival and brother-in-law of Louis IV., died two years after him, on the 16th of June, 956, and left three sons, the eldest of whom, Otho, died in 963; the second, Hugh Capet, was six years younger than the king Lo- thaire; the third was destined to holy orders. Lothaire and Hugh Capet, sons of two sisters, and both protected by Otho the Great and his brother, were brought up by their mothers in great harmony. After they had both arrived to man's estate, it does not appear that this good understanding was troubled, or that the rivalry existing between their fathers was renewed between them- selves. On the contrary, it is remarkable that Hugh Capet, des- tined at a later period to play the part of a usurper, during the 458 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP, XXIII. long reign of his cousin, (a. d. 954 — 986,) afforded no remarkable evidence either of ambition or of talents. He passed his life peaceably, in the enjoyment of the wealth and the vast fiefs vi^hich rendered him far superior in power to his cousin, of whom he was only the first vassal; and when he was afterwards placed on the throne, he was indebted neither to his merit, his reputa- tion, nor his activity, but to the extreme disproportion between the extent of his possessions and those of the royal family. The life of Lothaire appears to have been more active; he felt humbled by the contrast between his weakness or his poverty, and the titles with which he was decorated; he set himself to work to recover either power or influence; but to the want of loyalty shown by his father, he added a want of judgment, which made him fail in all his undertakings. On the death of his uncle Otho the Great, on the 7th of May 973, forgetful of the gratitude he owed him, he thought he might profit by the youth of his cousin Otho II., who was but eighteen years old, and, by the troubles in the family, to strip him of his possessions. He at- tacked him without making any declaration of war, and defeat and shame were all that he gained. By this aggression he pro- voked the Germans to enter France and to advance as far as the walls of Paris; while, even in his own army, he had continual proofs of the contempt in which the French held both his courage and his capacity. He made peace with Otho II.; but at the death of the latter, in 983, he again tried to take advantage of the childhood of Otho III., to rob him of some of his provinces. His success was the same as before. In 985, Lothaire went to Limoges, and spent some months in Aquitaine, to be present at the marriage of his son Louis V., then eighteen years of age, and associated in the sovereignty for the last six years, to a daughter of a count of that country whose name is not known. The race of the Carlovingians was smitten with the same hereditary imbecility which for so long a period had been the lot of the Merovingians. Lothaire, of whom we know very little, seems to have been an object of universal con- tempt. His wife Emma not only partook of this sentiment, but is accused of having increased it by her gallantries. "Blanche, the wife of his son," says Rudolf Glaber, a contemporary author, " seeing that the son had still less talent than his father, and being herself a lady of a rare wit, resolved to seek a divorce. She art- fully proposed to him to return with her into her own province. CHAP. XXIII.] CHARLES OF LORRAINE. 459 to cause her hereditary rights to be acknowledged, Louis, who did not suspect her design, made his preparations for the journey; but as soon as they had passed the frontier of Aquitaine, Blanche abandoned him, and rejoined her countrymen. When Lothaire was informed of this, he set out after his son, and having joined him, brought him home." This fragment, incomplete as it is, is well nigh the most precise information we have of the reigns of Lothaire and his son. The former died on the 2d of March, 986, and was interred atRheims: a vague report prevailed that he had been poisoned by his wife. The following year, his son Louis V., who was surnamed le Fai- neant, having expired on the 21st of May, 987, his wife, who had returned to him, was also accused of poisoning him. But both of these queens must have seen, that, far from reaping any ad- vantage from such a crime, they had nothing to expect but what in reality followed — the total ruin of the Carlovingian dynasty. The race was not, however, extinct. Lothaire had a brother, Charles duke of Lorraine, who had children. Charles, it is true, had displayed a petulance without capacity, an activity without perseverance, which had rendered him no less contemptible than his more indolent predecessors. Still he was acknowledged at Laon, the only town remaining in the hereditary domain of the sovereign; and he entered into negotiation with the bishops to secure his coronation. But Hugh Capet, then forty-two years of age, who had not heretofore distinguished himself by any great quality or any striking action, assembled his own vassals, — the counts and barons who held of the earldom of Paris, the duchy of Neustria, and the duchy of France. Their little army saluted him with the title of king at Noyon; and Adalberon, archbishop of Rheims, anointed and crowned him, July 3d, 987, in the ca- thedral at Rheims. After this pretended election, in which the rest of France took no part whatever, and which several pro- vinces refused to recognise for three or four generations, Hugh Capet besieged Laon, and was repulsed by Charles. Corruption was more successful than arms. The last of the Carlovingians was surprised in his bed by traitors, and thrown into the prison of Orleans, where he died, after many years of captivity. The degradation and fall of an ancient line, the perfidy of the new sovereign, the disloyalty of those who brought about the re- volution, have made this period far from an agreeable subject to French historians: they hurry through it with extreme rapidity, 460 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXIII. and no part of the history of the monarchy is, perhaps, enveloped in greater obscurity. The later events of the house of Saxony, about the same time, are better known, and related in greater detail. Otho I., who died on the 7th of May, 973, had, during the lat- ter years of his life, reformed the administration of Italy; he had restored to the pontifical chair its dignity, by causing pope John XII., who dishonoured the tiara by his youth and his vices, to be solemnly deposed by a council; and had put an end to the scan- dalous proceedings of the counts of Tusculum and their mis- tresses, who disposed of the pontificate. Otho, who had experi- enced the inconstancy and faithlessness of the great feudatories of the crown, had strenuously endeavoured to increase the impor- tance of the cities. Those of Italy, which already surpassed any of the West in number and opulence, obtained from him permis- sion to surround themselves with strong walls; to nominate their own magistrates, who were to perform at the same time the func- tions of judges, of captains of their militia, and of administrators; in short, to limit the power of the counts sufficiently to protect themselves from arbitrary measures. The people of Italy che- rished towards Otho and his family, gratitude proportioned to such vast benefits; and his son, who had been associated with him in the imperial government from the year 967, though only eighteen years old at the death of his father, was recognised without difficulty by the Italians, as their sovereign. Otho II., surnamed the Red, from the colour of his hair, had not the talents, still less the virtues, of his father. The vices of his youth determined his mother Adelheid, afterwards venerated as a saint, to retire from the court. His ambition led him to un- dertake several unjust wars; while his imprudence sometimes brought down defeat upon his arms. He had, however, that ac- tivity of mind, that promptitude of decision, that energy, which subjects are so ready to regard as proofs of a great character in their king; and his reign of ten years' duration, from 973 to 983, was not without glory. Unjustly and traitorously attacked by his cousin Lothaire, he entered France to avenge himself at the head of a numerous army; and, as he had predicted, he reached the heights of Montmartre, where he made his soldiers sing hal- lelujah loud enough to be heard in the church of Ste. Genevieve. In Germany, he gained several advantages over his cousin, Hen- ry, duke of Bavaria, who was indebted to his unjust aggressions CHAP. XXIII.] OTHO II. 461 for his nowise honourable surname of le Querelleur. In Italy, Otho II. had many contests with the Greeks, whom he aimed at depriving of the possession of the provinces of Puglia and Ca- labria. He had wedded a Greek princess, Theophania, sister of the two emperors Constantine and Basil, whose reign was at once the longest (a. d. 963 — 1028) and the most obscure in the whole history of Byzantium. Whilst his two brothers-in-law were engaged in a war against the Bulgarians, which terminated in the conquest of their whole territory, Otho II., who had en- tered Italy with a numerous German array, in 980, and had strengthened himself by the alliance of the duke of Benevento, advanced into those provinces which now form the Ijingdom of Naples 5 an enterprise which the duke of Benevento had greatly facilitated by the cession of all the mountain passes. Capitana- ta, on the Adriatic, Calabria, and a part of Basilicata alone re- sisted his whole force. The Greek emperors, it is true, being unable to send troops into Italy,> had called in the aid of the Sa- racens, who joined their arms to those of the Greeks for the de- fence of southern Italy. After a struggle of two years, the fate of the war was decided by a great battle fought near the sea-coast before the little town of Basentello, in Lower Calabria^ There Otho II. met the com- bined army of the Saracens and the Greeks, who were awaiting him. The first attack of the Germans threw the Eastern troops into disorder^ but, at the moment that the conquerors, in the ar- dour of pursuit, broke their ranks, the reserve of the Saracens fell upon them, and a fearful massacre ensued. After the loss of his army, Otho II. fled along the coast, on which the village of Basentello is built. Hard pressed by the Saracens, who were in pursuit of him, a Greek galley, which he saw at anchor at some distance, aflforded to him in his distress a refuge from fiercer and more implacable enemies. He made himself known to the commander of the galley, and surrendered himself his prisoner. He quickly perceived that the Greek, dazzled by such an unexpected prize, would be willing to sacri- fice the advantage of his country to his own interest. Otho pro- mised him vast heaps of gold if he would conduct him to Rossa- no, where his mother Adelheid then was. The galley set sail for that town. A secret negotiation was entered into by the cap- tain, Otho, and the empress. Whilst several mules, heavily laden, were making their way to the sea- shore, some of the em- 59 463 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXIII. peror's guards approached the galley in a boat, to ascertain whe- ther it were really their sovereign, who was shown to them on the deck, clothed in purple. The Greeks, accustomed to the habits of their own emperors, who could not take a step without the aid of their eunuchs, and intent on their bargain, were keep- ing but a careless watch over their prisoner, when Otho threw himself into the sea, swam to the boat which contained his guards, ordered them to row to shore, and putting his own hand to the oar, reached the port, where the captain of the galley could neither retake his prisoner nor touch the promised ransom. Having escaped from his enemies, he immediately retired into Upper Italy. All the crowns w^orn by Otho II. were elective^ but no sooner had the empress Theophania borne him a son, than he took mea- sures to secure the succession to him. He caused him to be elected king of Germany, by a diet of his states which he called together at Verona. This precaution was justified by the event. Otho II. died at Rome, a few months afterwards (December 983.) The infant Otho III., whom he left under the guardianship of his mother and his grandmother, was, for a long time, the sport of the German factions, which were instigated by his cousins, Henry le Querelleur, and Lothaire, king of France. The affection borne by the Germans to the memory of his father and his grand- father, kept him, however, in possession of the crow^n. When, in 995, at the age of fifteen, the young Otho III. entered Italy with a German army, to receive the united crowns of the empire and of Lombardy^ when, with the help of this same army, he brought about the elevation of his relative, Bruno of Saxony, (who took the name of Gregory V.) to the papal chair^ the Italians perceived with amazement that the Germans, by whom they had never been conquered, treated them as a conquered nationj that they no longer paid any regard to their rights and privileges; that they forcibly appropriated to themselves the tiara of Rome, the imperial crown, and the royalty of Lombardy, to each of which election alone could confer a right. A man, whose heart burned with the remembrance of the ancient glory of Rome, Crescen- tius, took the title of consul, and placed himself at the head of the cause of Roman liberty, of Italian independence. His great character is but dimly seen amid the thick darkness of the tenth century; the historians of the empire and the church have endea- voured to blacken his reputation; but the grateful people have given the names of the Tower of Crescentius, of the Palace of CHAP. XXIII.] DISSOLUTION OF STATES. 463 Crescentius, to the Mole of Adrian, and to a palace on the Tiber, —to objects, in short, which reminded them of a glorious strug- gle, an obstinate though vain resistance. Crescentius was, at last, reduced to capitulate, and to throw open the Mole of Adrian to the youthful Otho III. 5 and the latter, with the perfidy of which the oppressors of the Italians (whom they accuse of want of faith) have given many an example, put to death the champion of Italy, contrary to the capitulation to which he had sworn. But Crescentius left a beloved wife, the beautiful Stefania, who, to avenge her husband, threw aside every other sentiment proper to her sex. She learned that Otho III. had fallen ill on his re- turn from a pilgrimage to Monte Gargano; she contrived that her profound skill in medicine should come to his ear. In obe- dience to his summons she attended on him, dressed in long mourning garments, but still captivating by her beauty^ she ob- tained his confidence, perhaps at the highest of all prices, and made use of it to administer a poison which was soon followed by a painful death. The last of the Othos of Saxony came to Paterno, on the frontiers of the Abruzzi, to breathe his last, on the 19th of January, 1002. Thus expired the house of Saxony, which, fifty years before, had become illustrious from the splendid qualities of its founder. The Cailovingian line had lately gone out in weakness, imbeci- lity, and shame. The family of Basil the Macedonian was on the point of terminating with the prince who then reigned; and, before that event, the great kingdom of the Bulgarians had ceased to exist. Kader, the forty-fourth of the khaliphs, suc- cessors of Mahommed, could no longer command obedience w^ithout the walls of Bagdad. Spain was divided amongst the Moorish kings of Corduba, and the petty Christian princes of Leon, Navarre, Castile, Sobrarba, and Arragon. England was invaded and half conquered by the Danes. Great monarchies were every where broken down; great nations no longer recog- nised a chief, or a common bond of union; society, dissolved by a series of revolutions, exhibited no tendency to reunite into a single whole. Of that great Roman empire, to that colossus which had overshadowed the whole earth, — after repeated convulsions, after sufferings and calamities without example, prolonged through eight centuries, — there remained only the dust. But the work of destruction was accomplished; and even from that dust were to be hereafter moulded the new social structures which divide Europe at the present day. ( 464 ) CHAPTER XXIV. Demand for Unity and Arrangement by the human Mind. — Difficulty of sup- plying this Demand in History. — Peculiar Difficulties attached to the Por- tion treated of in these Volumes. — Cursory Review of Topics. — Reasons for stopping at the Year 1000,-^ — General Belief, at that Period, of the ap- proaching End of the World. — Three distinct Characters of European Na- tions. — 1. Unprofitable Erudition and mental Feebleness of the Greeks. — Works of Photius, Leo the Philosopher, and Constantine Porphyrogeni- tus. — 2. Mental Activity and Love of Liberty of the Italians. — Venice. — Pisa. — Genoa. — Character of their Sailors and Merchants. — Republican Institutions of the Lombard Cities. — Revival of Letters nearly coincident with that of Liberty. — 3. Spirit of Chivalry of the Franks. — This Spirit the exclusive Distinction of the Nobles. — ^Necessity for Self-Defence caused by the weakness of the Government. — Castles. — Body Armour. — Moral Eifects of Feudalism. — Complete Degradation of the human Species during the previous eight Centuries. — Absolute Predominance of the Principle of Selfishness — that Principle incompatible with any Virtue or any Glory. The human mind appears to be incapable of forming a clear con- ception or picture of facts which bear no relation to each other; of unconnected narratives; of results independent of a common cause. When a variety of objects are placed before the mind, it labours to classify them — to reduce them to a system; nor till this is accomplished does it readily grasp, or firmly retain them. We find this principle — this fundamental neccessity for unity and symmetry in all the productions of the mind, displayed in the fine arts; this demand for system, in the arrangement of the sciences. This unity, pervading all the separate portions of a subject, exists, generally, less in things themselves than in our own faculties; nor, till we have mastered it, are our understand- ings in a state to take in new knowledge. The very word, in- deed, to conceive — ^to take together — implies this operation of the mind. But, of all branches of human knowledge, that which appears the most difficult to subject to unity of design, is history. We constantly find events implicated which are, in fact, wholly inde- pendent of each other: causes become confounded with effects, and effects in turn take the place of causes; thousands of inte- rests, foreign to each other, intermingle, without either uniting, or neutralizing each other. The history of one man, or the his- CHAP. XXIV.] DIFFICULTIES IN STUDYING HISTORY. 465 tory of one people, would, however, present a system, an orga- nic whole, to the mind^ — a central point, around which we might arrange all subsidiary objects. But, when we seek to discover truth in a concatenation of facts, we must give up this central pointy for, as no nation, or hardly any, has an isolated existence, the history of any single one cannot be detached from that of the rest: age is enlinked with age — generation with generation j causes are connected together j nations act and react upon each other. The nation, the individual, or the epoch which we detach from all surrounding circumstances, to set it, as it were, in a separate frame and concentrate attention upon it, will appear to greater advantage, as far as the art of the historian is concerned, but will be treated with a less conscientious regard to truth. If it be our object to become thoroughly acquainted with facts, to draw from history every lesson she can afford, we must take her such as she really is; — a varied tissue, whose threads, of which we can dis- cover neither the beginning nor the end, reach from points the most remote, the most independent of each other. If such be the defect of history in general, more particularly is it that of the period upon which we have endeavoured, in this work, to fix the notice of the public. We have passed in review the first thousand years of Christianity, and have especially de- voted our attention to the eight centuries which elapsed from the time that the Antonines united almost the whole of the known earth under a government apparently affording security for order and tranquillity, to the epoch when every successive effort of man to reconstruct a great monarchy failed; and when, at the end of the tenth century, society seemed in a state of general dissolution. We have thought this period worthy of peculiar at- tention, because its influence has been permanent; because it con- tains the germe of the opinions, the feelings, the institutions, the actions which we see in operation under our own eyes; because it has been fertile in experiments, both on forms of government and on the varieties of moral education to which mankind can be subjected. Nevertheless, this period, which we have just exa- mined, is so entirely wanting in unity, that it is nearly impossi- ble to designate it by one common name. When I invited my readers to accompany me in my pilgrimage through these desolate and barren tracts, I dared not indicate with precision the goal towards which we were to tend, or the limits of the region we were about to explore; I dared not tell 466 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [oHAP. XXIV. them that the horizon was bounded on every side by thick dark- ness, and that our way would be marked by little but the streams of blood or of mire which we were likely to meet: I dared not fore- warn them that they were not to expect, as a recompense for their labour, to behold the display of great and noble character, of sub- blime efforts of public virtue, or of those living sketches of man- ners which it is reserved for the historians of the golden ages of literature to trace; aided as they are by the graphic imagination of the poets from whom they take their subjects, and by the accu- rate reason of the philosophers who examined and discussed pass- ing events. On the contrary, I have had to offer to their considera- tion only degenerate or barbarous nations; while the outline it- self had to be borrowed from historians as degraded or as barba- rous. To trace the route we were about to pursue, would perhaps have had the effect of completely discouraging them: if, however, they have had the patience to follow my steps, I venture to con- gratulate them on having traversed this repulsive region. It was a road necessary to be gone over; — the inevitable path from an- cient to modern forms of society, from the heroism of the Greeks or Romans to the chivalry of the crusaders. We should be unable to understand either our forefathers or ourselves, were we to omit this period in our study of history. Heirs of a form of civilization completely different from our own; heirs of the most heterogene- ous social elements, of the most opposite recollections and feelings, it is imperative upon us to go back to the origin of things, and to behold whence we have sprung, that we may understand what we are. But though I did not venture to trace out the plan of such a complicated and unattractive narrative beforehand, it may not be inexpedient, at its termination, briefly to recall its principal fea- tures. The decline of Rome, after the loss of her liberty, has been first submitted to our observation. We have seen what had been the effects of three centuries of despotism upon population, upon wealth, upon the public mind, upon morals, and upon the physical force of the empire. We have seen what were the con- vulsions it had passed through before it was reduced so low, and who were the enemies that, on all hands, threatened this colossus, so formidable even in its weakness. We have seen that it un- derwent a new organization at the beginning of the fourth cen- tury, previous to its engaging in fresh struggles; soon after which, the Goths invaded the East, the Germanic nations the West, and CHAP. XXIV.] SUMMARY. 467 the Tartars, led on by Attila, succeeded in finally crushing the power of Europe. After many dreadful convulsions, the empire of Rome fell, in 478; while a new Rome arose on the Bosphorus, and for almost a thousand years longer feebly kept alive the Ro- man name in a people alien from Rome, both in language, man- ners, and sentiments. After the fall of the empire of the West, we have not entirely neglected that of Byzantium; but our attention to its revolutions has diminished in proportion as their importance has declined. We have endeavoured carefully to examine the only brilliant period of the lower empire,— -that of the legislation and conquests of Justinian; but his immediate successors, as well as the three dynasties of Heraclius, Leo the Isaurian, and Basil the Mace- donian, have not appeared to us to merit much attention: as they plunged deeper and deeper into the night of the middle ages, they became more and more estranged from us. The states which rose upon the ruins of the Western empire, on the contrary, appeared to us to acquire increased importance in proportion as they came nearer to our own times. The power of the Goths and the Franks seemed at first nearly balanced: through more than two centuries we have carefully traced the progress of the decline of the former, and of the aggrandizement of the latter. We have seen it, at the height of its greatness, stained by countless crimes, and apparently tottering on the brink of inevitable destruction, at the very time when a new nation, which threatened the Christian world with universal subjection, issued forth from the deserts of Arabia. We have endeavoured to afford some insight into the character of this people; to explain the powerful springs of action, which, during the lapse of a century, gave them the advantage over all other nations; and have then sought to show how it was that those springs grew lax and powerless, and the Musulman so rapidly lost his formidable attributes. The struggles of the Arabs with the Europeans brought us back to the Franks. We have beheld new vigour imparted to their monarchy by the conquest of the Austrasians, and the accession of the Carlovingians to the throne. We have followed Charle- magne in his victorious career; we have seen him conquer, and begin to civilize. Northern Europe; but we have also marked how quickly a mortal feebleness and decay followed upon his brilliant efforts; and we have sought to explain why the new empire of the 468 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. j^CHAP. XXIV. West fell even more rapidly and ignominiouslj than that of Rome. It is in the very midst of these two centuries of decline, that we have endeavoured to show how the dissolution of all the bonds of society had prepared the birth of new states^ how the obliga- tion imposed on each individual, to defend himself, had restored the respect due to personal courage, and, by consequence, to other virtues which need its alliance and support; how, in short, from the depths of disorder and degradation arose the principles of a new spirit of patriotism — a new nobility of character. After the year 1000, the ground is cleared; it but waits for the erection of the new edifice: it is, however, at the period previous to that in which its foundations were laid, that we have resolved to con- clude our task. Unquestionably there must always be something arbitrary in the choice of these resting-places in the long chain of time; — these knots, intended to separate, and which, on the contrary, often bind together, different periods. The more extensive the general plan that has been followed, the more complicated the interests that have been examined, the more impossible it be- comes that there should be one common catastrophe; that threads so various should be cut short by one common termination. There exists, however, at the end of the tenth century, a cause which would arrest our course, even had we intended to pursue our narrative beyond it: this is, the almost universal expectation then entertained, of the approaching end of the world. So strong was this belief, that it led the greater part of the contem- porary writers to lay down the pen: for awhile silence was com- plete; for historians cared not to write for a posterity whose ex- istence was so doubtful. Pious persons who had endeavoured to understand the Apocalypse and to determine the time of the ac- complishment of its prophecies, had been particularly struck with the twentieth chapter; where it is announced that, after the lapse of a thousand years, Satan would be let loose to deceive the nations; but that, after a little season, God would cause a fire to come down from heaven and devour him. The accom- plishment of all the awful prophecies contained in this book, ap- peared, therefore, to be at hand; and the end of the world was supposed to be indicated by the devouring fire, and by the first resurrection of the dead. The nearer the thousandth year from the birth of Christ approached, the more did panic terror take possession of every mind. The archives of all countries contain CHAP. XXIV.] SUPPOSED END OF THE WORLD. 469 a great number of charters of the tenth century, beginning with these words: " Appropinquante fine mundi," (As the end of the world is approaching.) This almost universal belief redoubled the fervour of religion, opened the least liberal hands, and sug- gested various acts of piety, by far the greater number of which were donations to the clergy, of possessions which the testator alienated without regret from his family, to whom the universal destruction would render them useless. Others, however, were of a more meritorious nature: many enemies were reconciled^ many powerful men granted full pardon to those who had been unhappy enough to offend them^ several even gave liberty to their slaves, or meliorated the condition of their poor and hither- to slighted dependants. We are struck with a sort of affright at the idea of the state of disorganization into which the belief of the imminent approach of the end of the world must have thrown society. All the or- dinary motives of action were suspended, or superseded by con- trary ones; every passion of the mind was hushed, and the pre- sent was lost in the appalling future. The entire mass of the Christian nations seemed to feel that they stood in the situation of a condemned criminal, who has received his sentence, and counts the hours which still separate him from eternity. Every exertion of mind or body was become objectless, save the labours of the faithful to secure their salvation: any provision for an earthly futurity must have appeared absurd 5 any monument erected for an age which was never to arrive, would have been a contradiction; any historical records written for a generation ne- ver to arise, would have betrayed a want of faith. It is almost matter of surprise, that a belief so general as this appears to have been, did not bring about its own dreadful fulfilment; — that it did not transform the West into one vast convent, and, by causing a total cessation from labour, deliver up the human race to universal and hopeless famine. But, doubtless, the force of habit was still stronger, with many, than the disease of the ima- gination; besides, some uncertainty as to chronology had caused hesitation between two or three different periods; and though many charters attest " certain and evident signs," which left no room for doubt of the rapid approach of the end of the world, yet the constant order of the seasons, the regularity of the laws of nature, the beneficence of Providence, which continued to cover the earth with its wonted fruits, raised questions even in 60 470 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXIV the most timid minds. At last, the extreme period fixed by the prophecies was passed^ the end of the world had not arrived 5 the terror was gradually, but entirely, dissipated; and it was universally acknowledged, that, on this subject, the language of the sacred Scriptures had been misinterpreted. It shall also be on the threshold of the long-dreaded thou- sandth year that we will take our stand, to bid a last farewell to the first ten centuries of Christianity, and to pass judgment upon the general character of those nations which, after the fall of the ancient world, were about to lay the foundations of a new one. In the course of the eight centuries which we have made our pe- culiar study, we have, probably, been struck with the monotony of crime; but the nations of whom we are about to take leave, henceforward assume a more varied character. They were al- ready stamped with at least three perfectly distinct impressions, — the Greek spirit of erudition; the Italian spirit of liberty; the Frank spirit of chivalry. We will endeavour to give a slight idea of what was to be expected from this state^ of things, and shall conclude with a few words on the morality of the agea which have passed in review before us. In the tenth century, the Greeks were sole possessors of the inheritance of the learning and science of past ages; indeed, some of their works at this period prove the extent of their eru- dition. That of the patriarch Photius, which appears to have been composed at Bagdad, at a distance from his library, and with the sole aid of a prodigious memory, contains an analysis and critical remarks on two hundred and eighty books: those of Leo the philosopher, and his son Constantine Porphyrogenitus, pass in review almost every branch of human knowledge, from the administration of the empire, military and naval tactics, the ceremonies of the court, — in short, the appropriate science of kings, down to the most humble occupations of trade and agri- culture. Few books seem better constructed to show the vanity of erudition, and to place in strong contrast a vast extent of knowledge, with a total incapacity of deriving any useful results from it. The fact that this constant degeneracy of the Greeks, this an- nihilation of genius, and of all the nobler faculties of the mind, took place whilst they were still in possession of the accumulated treasures of the knowledge and enlightenment of the world, is not one of the least melancholy phenomena in the history of the human race. CHAP. XXIV.] USELESS ERUDITION OF THE GREEKS. 474 We believe, or, at least, we assert, that civilization cannot re- trogradej that no step made bj the mind of man can be lost, and that the conquests of reason and intelligence are secured from the power of time bj the invention of printing. But it was not books that were wanting when the human race began its back- ward course: perhaps it was the wish to read, which books alone do not give 5 perhaps the power of thinkings perhaps the energy necessary to render thought fruitful and profitable. In our own days, we have beheld countries in which the press has been made so entirely the instrument of arbitrary power, that the reader turns with disgust from food which he knows or thinks is imbued with poison: we have seen others, where per- verted notions of religion inspire such a dread of all exercise of the reason, that the believer, surrounded by works which might possibly excite his doubts, trembles before the confessor who warns him against this forbidden fruit, and abstains from touching it as from some abominable crime — a crime, too, which holds out but few and feeble temptations. In vain has printing multiplied books which disclose the horrors of the inquisition, or the absurd barbarity of torture: it were easy to suggest some great nations, and some smaller communities, which are, or have been, sur- rounded by these books, and yet have not even been aware of their existence. The books of the ancients, preserved in manu- script, eluded, far better than our own, the hand of power: they excited less alarm, and were not, therefore, the object of an ever- vigilant censorship; nor had governments yet learned to use the talents of writers as weapons to be turned against society; the clergy had as yet laid no interdict upon reading; yet books were not the less without influence upon the morals and actions of men. The richest stores of books existed at Constantinople, and were accessible to all, in numerous libraries, both public and pri- vate. The labour of the copyist is, it is true, infinitely slower than that of the printer; but this labour had been pursued with- out interruption by a very numerous class of men, and on mate- rials more durable than those now in use, ever since the brilliant times of Greek literature; that is to say, for fourteen centuries, dating back from the year 1000. Constantinople had never been taken by a military force; so that all the stores of antiquity were preserved; while the city had been still farther enriched with those which wealthy land-owners, heads of convents, cathedrals 47^ FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. []cHAP. X XIV and schools, had brought from the provinces invaded by enemies^ and the high price of books had enhanced the care for their pre* servation. Knowledge, too, was still honoured; and the know* ledge of the time consisted entirely in scholarship. Commenta- tors and scholiasts continued to flourish in regular succession; their writings are sufficient proofs of the prodigious extent of their reading. All that the sublimest meditations of philosophy, the noblest inspirations of liberty, had suggested to the founders of Grecian glory; all the lessons afforded by the histories of Athens and of Rome, were within their reach. The citizens of Constantinople might read in their own language the effusion of republican sentiments, poured forth from the breasts of men in- spired and elevated by the enjoyment of all the rights of a free country; their own manners, their own customs, their national recollections, were of farther use to them in explaining what is occasionally obscure to us; but the heart to understand was want- ing. The erudite furnished, with the minutest accuracy, all the details of the mythology, the geography, the manners, the cus- toms, of the ancients; they were thorough masters of the lan- guage of their great progenitors, of the figures of their rhetoric, of the whole mechanism of their versification, the ornaments of their poetry;- — the spirit alone escaped them, and the spirit al- ways escaped them. They knew how many thousands of citi- zens had lived, happy and illustrious, in each state of that very Greece w4iere they now beheld a few hundreds of slaves; they could point out the exact spot where the brave companions of Miltiades and Themistocles had repulsed the countless forces of the great king; they knew each of the laws on which depended that balance of power by which the dignity of man was upheld, in those admirable constitutions of antiquity: yet neither the misery of their country, nor the destructive invasions of their neighbours, nor the shameful tyranny of the eunuchs of the court, had once inspired them widi the idea of searching for practical lessons in that antiquity, the historical details of which they knew by heart. Study, with them, had no other aim than to enrich the memory; their powers of thought lay dormant, or, if they were ever awakened, it was only to plunge into intermi- nable discussions on theology; utility appeared to them almost a profanation of science:— a memorable example, and by no means a solitary one, of the uselessness of the intellectual inheritance of past ages, if the generation on whom it descends want the GHAP. XXIV.] USELESS ERUDITION OF THE GREEKS. 473 vigour necessary to turn it to account. It is not books that we want to preserve, it is the mind of man 5 not the receptacles of thought, but the faculty of thinking. Were it necessary to choose between the whole experience which has been acquired and collected from the beginning of time, the whole rich store of human wisdom, and the more unschooled activity of the human mind, the latter ought, without hesitation, to be preferred. This is the precious and living germe which we ought to watch over, to foster, to guard from every blight. This alone, if it re- main uninjured, will repair all losses^ while, on the contrary, mere literary wealth will not preserve one faculty, nor sustain one virtue. For more than ten centuries the Greeks of Byzantium pos- sessed models in every kind, yet they did not suggest to them one original idea; they did not even give birth to a copy worthy of coming after these master-pieces. Thirty millions of Greeks, the surviving depositaries of ancient wisdom, made not a single step during twelve centuries in any one of the social sciences. There was not a citizen of free Athens who was not better skilled in the science of politics than the most erudite scholar of Byzan- tium; their morality was far inferior to that of Socrates; their philosophy to that of Plato and Aristotle, upon whom they were continually commenting. They made not a single discovery in any one of the physical sciences, unless we except the lucky ac- cident which produced the Greek fire. They loaded the ancient poets with annotations, but they were incapable of treading in their footsteps; not a comedy or a tragedy was written at the foot of the ruins of the theatres of Greece; no epic poem was produced by the worshippers of Homer; not an ode, by those of Pindar. Their highest literary efforts do not go beyond a few epigrams, collected in the Greek Anthology, and a few romances. Such is the unworthy use which the depositaries of every treasure of human wit and genius made of their v/ealth, during an uninter- rupted course of transmission for more than a thousand years. The Italians, like the Greeks, might have been in possession of a store of literary riches bequeathed by their ancestors; but they had neglected them, and no longer knew their value. But, on the other hand, they had the life and activity wanting in their neighbours. In the chaos of the middle ages, their minds ac- quired force and fire; — incalnere animi — the apt motto of the learned Muratori, who has so much contributed to introduce or- 4^4 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXIV. der into that chaos. A strong and universal fermentation was forcing effete and inert matter into new life. The expeditions of the three Othos into Italy are but short episodes in the history of that country; their stay there was short; they came as foreigners and conquerors, and the most extensive views, the highest virtues, in a foreign ruler, cannot prevent the degradation and degeneracy which are the inevitable consequences of his dominion. But, in spite of their German armies, — almost under the swords of their soldiers, — the republican spirit sprang up on every hand. The Italians convinced that they had nothing to hope from the empire, sought support in themselves; they formed associations; they promised mutual aid; and no sooner were they united for their common defence, no sooner had they entered info so noble a league, than they began to awaken to feelings of disinterestedness, patriotism, and love of Liberty; and these generous sentiments were big with the germe of every virtue. Venice, perhaps at that tim.e too nearly assimilated to a mo- narchical governmentby the grant of prerogatives to her doge which in succeeding ages she was constantly trying to limit, neverthe- less preserved the seeds of a democracy in the haughty indepen- dence of her sailors: it was to her navy that she owed her do- minion over the Adriatic Sea, and the reduction of all the cities of Istria and Dalmatia under her sovereignty, in the year 997*. At the same time, Naples, Gaeta, and Amalfi, repulsing the at- tacks of the Lombard princes and of the Saracens, as they not long after repulsed those of the Normans, strengthened their au- thority, covered the ocean with their vessels, collected within their narrow territory an immense population, and wealth enough to excite the envy of Europe; and, in short, gave the world an example of the true dignityof commerce, and of the wise alliance of order and liberty in a well-regulated city. Farther to the north, two other maritime republics, Pisa and Genoa, which were probably also indebted to the Greeks for their municipal in- stitutions, their safety from the barbarians, and their infant pros- perity, appeared similarly animated with that spirit of enterprise, that daring courage, which were necessary to the existence of commerce in an age of disorder and violence. Their merchants traded in armed vessels, and were able and ready to defend the treasures which they transported from land to land: their union formed their strength, and love of their country never deserted them in their most distant voyages. They made it their habitual CHAP. XXIV.] LIBERTY OF THE ITALIAN CITIES. 475 endeavour to inspire princes and nobles with respect for the name of citizen, — a name despised in courts^ thej conceived and ex- emplified to the world a new sort of greatness, wholly different from those which had hitherto obtained consideration. They were thus preparing for those conquests over the Saracens, which a few years later they effected in Sardinia and the Balearic Islesj and for the powerful assistance which in less than a century they afforded to the crusaders. Indeed, at the time of the first cru- sade, these two cities alone, did more for what was looked upon as the cause of Christianity, than the powerful empires who buried half their population in the sands of Syria and Egypt. Nor were the cities in the interior of the country— -in Lombar- dy and Tuscany — strangers to this newly kindled spirit. They also had built up their walls, and armed their militia, to repel the ravages of the Hungarians; they already commanded the respect of those very neighbours v/ho had styled themselves their masters. Milan, Pavia, Florence, Lucca, Bologna, refer the origin of their independence and the memory of their first wars to this epoch j several of their ancient buildings give evidence also that the arts revived almost at the same time with liberty. Hardly had their citizens made a trial of their arms, when they strove to produce within their walls an image of that republic of Rome whose me- mory was at all times so dear and so glorious to Italians. Annual consuls, named by the people, were charged with the command of the army and the administration of justice; the citizens were divided into tribes which usually took their names from the gates of the several cities; the whole people assembled in the public square and were consulted on all important occasions. There they met to determine or declare war, or to elect their magis- trates; while a senate, or council of credenze, was appointed to guard the public welfare by their prudence. The happy results of this new dawn of Italian liberty were long thwarted, long retarded, by the fierce wars of the priesthood and the empire: still, the principle of vitality thus reinfused into the human race was so powerful, that each of the new republics thenceforward produced more great and illustrious citizens, more virtuous men, more patriotism and talents, than can be found in the long and monotonous annals of great empires. A century and a half after the point of time at which we have paused, the Lombard league ventured to set limits to arbitrary power; to raise the authority of law above that of arms; and to oppose its citizens 476 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. j^CHAP. XXIV. to the knights of Germany, led on by the valiant Frederic Bar- barossa. At the same time, these republics afforded a fresh proof of the eternal alliance between moral and intellectual beauty. A new language was assuming shape and consistency, and even before it became sufficiently perfect to express the noble senti- ments working in the souls of the people, sculpture and architec- ture, — themselves languages, — revealed to the astonished view of the barbarous spectator the lofty conceptions hidden in the Italian breast. Three centuries had elapsed since the year 1000; but of these barely one had been a century of liberty to Florence, when Dante appeared, and claimed for genius as lofty a place in letters, as it had gained in arts, in arms, and in the councils of the republics. With the exception of some cities in the south of Gaul, and in Spain, we must not look, throughout the rest of Europe, for that noble spirit of liberty which was the harbinger of siich glorious days to Italy. But another principle, another sentiment, not without grandeur and elevation, pervaded the countries which had made part of the empire of the West, and gave a new character to the approaching ages. This was the spirit of chivalry which dis- tinguished the Franks; not the chivalry of romance, but of history — the exaltation of the sentiment of force and of personal inde- pendence. The spirit of chivalry was peculiar to the nobles; it was in them alone that, at the period we are contemplating, the senti- ment of the dignity of man began to revive amongst the inhabi- tants of the West. We should, however, have a very false con- ception of that barbarous age, were we to attach to the word no- bility those ideas of purity of descent, and antiquity of race, which vanity, aided by the progress of civilization, has since produced or cherished. There was but little thought of genea- logy, when family names did not exist; but little thought of the glory redounding from the exploits of ancestors, when there was no history; but little thought of claims to nobility, when all writings or parchments excited the contempt and suspicion of knights unskilled to read, and who trusted no evidence but that of their sword. Nobility was but the possession of territorial property, and to property, power was always united; when either the one or the other was transferred by usurpations or by bastar- dy, then were the usurper and the bastard admitted into the ranks of the nobility. CHAP. XXIV.] SPIRIT OF CHIVALRY. 4.77 Under the early Carlovingians the nobles had sunk into the lowest degradation; they had desisted from the exercise of arms; abandoning the task of defending the kingdom, they soon became unable to defend themselves; but, from the time that the govern- ment ceased to afford protection to any order of society, they found in their wealth a means of defence and security, not in the reach of any other class of men. It is a remarkable fact, that the pro- portion between the means of attack and of defence always varies in an inverse ratio to the progress of civilization. The more bar- barous the times, the more successful is art m protecting man from the aggressions of his fellow-men; on the other hand, the greater the progress made by society, the more do the means of destruction exceed those of preservation. The wealth which be- longed to the noble, and which gave him the entire disposition of the industry of his vassals, enabled him, in the first place, to put his own place of abode in a state of security from every attack. But he did not content himself with making his castle an inacces- sible retreat; he soon protected his person by moveable fortifica- tions, and, encased in his cuirass, he acquired an immense supe- riority in physical strength over all poorer than himself, and could brave the resentment of those who were no longer on an equali- ty with him, though they might surround him. The chances were hardly one in a thousand that the knight, covered with a coat of mail; with a cuirass jointed so as to cor- respond to every movement of the body; with a buckler which he could oppose to every blow; with a casque which, when its vizor was lowered, enclosed the whole head, could ever be accessible to the sword of a low-born vassal. In combats with men of an inferior class, the knight dealt death around him without running any risk of receiving it; and this very disproportion decided the respective values of the life of a noble, and of a man of mean ex- traction. A single knight was of more importance than hundreds of the plebeians who were unable to offer him the slightest resis- tance. But, to obtain full enjoyment of this advantage, besides the necessity of an immense expenditure, an expenditure equal to the cost of arming four or five hundred peasants, he was obliged to keep his strength and address in constant exercise, and to inure his limbs to the weight and constraint of the armour which he could hardly ever lay aside. The baron was forced to renounce all exercises of the mind, all cultivation of the understanding; to spend his life on horse-back, with harness on his back, and in- 61 478 FALL OF THE KOMAN EMPIRE. [chAP. XXlV. cessantly engaged in military exercises. He was thus rendered an agile, vigorous, and invulnerable soldier, and far exceeded in physical strength and ability the hundreds of retainers by 'whom he was surrounded. He could safely arm them, lead them to battle under his banner, and yet remain their master, since their combined strength was not equal to his. The immense advantage which the impregnable castles and the knightly armour gave to nobles over rotiiriers, was produc- tive of a great moral evil, by destroying all feelings of brother- hood and equality between man and man. But the pride and consciousness of power with which this same armour inspired the knight when face to face with his equals; the sentiment of inde- pendence which it tended to nourish; the confidence in his own importance and in his own rights, with which he became imbued, ennobled the national character, and gave to the Franks, what they had wanted in the preceding century, the consciousness of the dignity of man. Rights equal, independent, and maintained in all their plenitude, soon gave birth to laws provided for their defence, and to a social order calculated for their protection. Tliis new order of things, which guarantied the liberty of the nobles while it secured due subordination on their part; which sanctioned the reciprocal engagements between lord and vassal, was organized towards the end of the tenth century, under the name of the Feudal System. This system maintained itself for nearly three centuries (to the end of the thirteenth,) and, so long as it lasted, produced, in one class of society, the nobles, several effects, which it might have been imagined were to be expected from a republican organization alone. It restored to honour and consideration virtues absolutely exiled from the earth during the preceding ages, — above all, respect for truth, and loyalty to en- gagements; it refined and reformed morals; it confided to the honour of the stronger sex the protection and defence of the weaker; lastly, it dignified obedience, by placing it on the only honourable basis it can own — the liberty and the interests of all. Great deeds were done, and noble characters were formed by this republic of gentlemen, constituted by the feudal system^ but the imagination of romance-writers alone could look for the courtesy and elegance which are the charm of society under these rough and austere forms. The haughtiness of the knight or baron inclined him to a solitary life: without the walls of his castle, whenever he was no longer the first, whenever he received CHAP. XXIV.] ANTAGONIST PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT. 479 the law instead of giving it, his pride was wounded or alarmed. Chivalrous life was a life of mutual repulsion; and, with the ex- ception of the rare occasions when the knight was summoned, to the courts of justice, to the armies of his suzerain for the space of forty days, or to tournaments, equals in station avoided each other; neither friendship nor social pleasures were made for those times. The new period of history which opens on us after the year 1000, promises a more abundant harvest both of v'r ues and of high and brilliant exploits; we may reasonably anticipate more strength and nobility of character, both amongst the republicans of Italy, amongst the knights of France and Germany, and amongst the crusaders. It will, doubtless, be asked, whence it happens that this advantage is well-nigh absolutely denied to the eight centuries we have surveyed; whence it comes, that, amongst a number of nations differing so widely in their cus- toms, opinions, and social condition, — frequently agitated and convulsed by revolutions, — elevated characters are so rare; that virtues are so thinly scattered, that crime is so rev^olting. It will be demanded, what there was then in common between the pagan emperors, the Christians, and the Musulmans; between the Greeks, the Latins, the Arabs, and the Franks; why perfidy was equally frequent in the chiefs of the armed democracies who conquered Gaul, or in the vicegerents of the prophet in Arabia, as in absolute monarchs. We answer, that a grand and fundamental difference separates those governments whose spring of action is virtue, from those which are moved by selfishness. The former, which exalt man, — which propose as their aim his moral education, as well as his immediate prosperity, — -are rare exceptions in the course of ages: the latter, M'hich degrade mankind, are by far the greater num- ber; and among them we may class all those which subsisted during the earlier portion of the middle ages, notwithstanding their almost endless variety. In the republics of antiquity, in every constitution worthy of our admiration, it has been the main endeavour of the legislators to produce and foster noble sentiments in the minds of the citi- zen; to raise his moral dignity; to secure to him that virtue which is dependent on civil institutions, rather than the prospe- rity which always remains subject to chance. To attain this end, they have held up to every individual a subject for noble 480 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [cHAP. XXIV thoughts and generous purposes; an object far more exalted than self, and one to which, they taught him, self was to be sacrificed. This object of the devoted attachment of the ancients, was their country — the united body of their fellow-citizens. Each man lear led to feel how infinitely grander and more important than his own interest was this interest of the whole; each man felt that every faculty, every effort of his M^as due to the body of which he had the honour to form a part; and the sacrifice of self to what is of greater worth than self, is the one grand principle of all virtue. In all the governments, on the contrary, whose struggles have occupied us during the course of the centuries we have just sur- veyed, no political principle or sentiment was raised above per- sonal interest: those in whose hands power resided had no object but their own advantage; those who had framed the institutions of society had been actuated by none but self-regarding motives. The saying of a modern despot, " The state is myself," has been often repeated; but Louis XIV. only expressed the principle of every government whose moving power is egotism. But wo to people and to princes, when the despot of Rqme or of Constan- tinople said, " The state is myself;" when the armed democracy of the Franks, in the sixth century ,^ — when the prelates of the ninth, — when the counts and castellans of the tenth, said, '*The state is ourselves!" And honour to the depositaries of power, be they constitutional kings, senators, or citizens assembled to choose their magistrates, when they say, " We belong to the state," and when they act in conformity with this profession! If we look for heroism in the eight centuries whose history we have traced, we may, perhaps, find it in the martyrs of the various persecuted sects of religion, who sacrificed themselves for what they believed to be the truth; we may find it in Belisarius, who, long after Rome had become enslaved, had still faith in Roman virtue— still feit that his country had a right to all his services; we may find it in the first followers of Mahomet, who braved every danger to spread the doctrine of the unity of God. But all the rest, whether captains or soldiers, whether conquerors or conquered, fought only for themselves; for their own interest, their own advancement. They might be brave, they might be skilful; but they liad no pretensions to heroism. In like manner, kings, ministers, legislators, the founders and the destroyers of empires, might display extensive views, profound policy, a large CHAP. XXIV.J ANTAGONIST PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT. 481 acquaintance with men, or with the timesj they might even oc- casionally do good, and, in doing it, might evince genius or pru- dencej but they did not exhibit virtue, — for the word virtue im- plies self-devotion, or self-sacrifice^ and they saw but themselves: they sought but their own glory, their own greatness, their own security in power, the gratification of their own passions^ they sacrificed not themselves to others, but others to themselves; and they esteemed humanity, loyalty, all the virtues, all the nobler af- fections, of less weight than their personal interests. This fundamental contrast between virtue and egotism — a contrast which abundantly suffices to mark the classification of diiferent governments, as well as individual actions — does not destroy the philosophical application of the principle of utility. As it is true that morality is the principle of all wisdom, it is ne- cessarily true that the greatest welfare of all is the point towards which both the virtues of all, and the self- regarding calculations of all, equally tend; that, if we abstract individual interests, the aberrations of passion and the influence of circumstances, the two roads followed by virtue and by egotism meet and unite at the same point. Thus it is that virtue itself may, in some sort, be reduced to a matter of personal calculation; thus it is that we can and ought to demonstrate that the sacrifices it commands are in accordance with. the general interest. Self-devotion to what may cause the bane, and not the good of mankind, is virtue gone astray; the heroism which sacrifices itself for an end which ought to be avoided, is a dangerous heroism. The moralist and the philosopher may be able to appreciate virtue and heroism so mis- directed, according to the principle of utility, — to rectify their direction towards the greatest good of the species. But this prin- ciple, which, abstractedly, determines what is good in itself, is not fitted to become the immediate spring of our actions, lest ge- neral should give way to personal utility. The governments which have given a vigorous moral education to the human race have begun by showing that the good of all was their object — that its promotion was the duty of every member of the society. While they were inspiring the citizens with this great idea, they called the good of all, their country, and taught them devotion to its cause. Rulers like those who have formed the subject of our inquiry, actuated by no other desire than that of retaining a power which they could turn to their own advantage, — of di- 482 FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. [OHAP. XXIV. viding among themselves the wealth and the pleasures which that power enabled them to engross, — had no purposes or objects which they could hold forth to the examination or the imitation of mankind; thej acknowledged no public utility — the basis of public virtue. Thej could not, therefore, speak to their subjects of their dutie.«, but only of their personal interests, — of punish- ments or rewards; and, if they occasionally borrowed the words country, honour, or virtue, (which, though without meaning to them, had, as they saw, such mighty influence over their neigh- bours,) those words lost their significancy, and produced only a transient illusion amongst their subjects. We have now closed our review of these long and tremendous convulsions — of this desolating revolution in the condition of Europe. We have seen the human race sink from the most brilliant period of glory to that of the most profound degrada- tion; from the period which produced a system of legislation the model of all succeeding lawgivers, down to the most complete absence of law; from the reign of justice to that of brute force. All that constittjtes the grace and the happiness of civilized so- ciety — ^poetry, philosophy, moral and theological speculatiim, the fine arts, the domestic arts — all, after having shone with meri- dian splendour, had been utterly quenched, destroyed, forgotten. The combined efforts of men seemed inadequate not only to the production of any thing new, but even to the preservation of what actually existed. It is at this point of complete dissolution of all the elements of society that other historians must take up the thread of hu- man affairs: it will be for them to show men once more conscious of the tie that binds them to their country; once more devoting their lives to the service of their fellow-citizens, and continually gaining new virtues, from self-sacrifice. The knowledge of what had been swept away before their time will, perhaps, enable us more clearly to understand all that they had to endure and to achieve; but the spectacle of such vast and sweeping destruction suggests other thoughts, more im- mediately applicable to ourselves. All that we possess at this day was also possessed by the Roman world; and this we have beheld crumble into dust. The waters that once covered the earth may overflow it again. Violence was but the secondary cause of the ruin; the vices of self-interest were the primary CHAP. XXIV.] CONCLUSION. 483 cause: they undermined the dam of the torrent, which, when once let loose, nothing could stop. "When the hour was come in which man no longer preferred country before self; when virtue, honour, liberty, were rare prerogatives, without which he learned to exist; then did a world as fair, as glorious, as our own, crum- ble away: nor would it be easy to assign a reason why the decay of those virtues on which the strength of man is built, should not once more be succeeded by as complete a ruin of his works — as total an eclipse of his glory. INDEX. Abbaside khaliphs, 339. Abbasides, the, dynasty of Bag-dad founded by them, 386. Abdallah, father of Mahommed, g-uardian of the Kaaba and presi- dent of the republic of Mecca, 253. Abd-al-Motalleb, g-randfather of Ma- hommed, 253. Abderraliman, King- of Corduba, 351. Abderrahman, g-overnor of Spain, defeats the duke of Aquitaine in two battles, ravag-es Perig'ord, Sainlonge, Angoumois, and Poi- tou, 302. Abdul- Malek, 285. Abu-Musa, 338. Abu Obeidah conquers 83^-13, 269. His summons addressed to the city of Jerusalem, 272. His death, 273. Abu-Sophyan, 259. Abu-Taleb, 259. Abubekr, father-in-law of Mahom- med, 260. Elected under the title of khaliph, or lieutenant of Mahommed, 268. His frug'ality and simplicity; appoints Omar his successor; his death, 269. His in- structions to his g-enerals, 270. Abul-Abbas al Saffah, 286. Abul-Abbas, the first of the Abba- sides, massacre of the Ommiades by him, 339. Abul-Moslem, author of the "Vo- cation of the Abbasides," 339. Abulpharaj, 278. Abyssinia, 55. Actium, the battle of, 42. Adalgis, son of Desiderio, flight of, to Constant nople, 319. Adelheid, empress of Otho I., 460. Adrian, the emperor, his reign from 117 to 138,46. Adrian L, pope, his ambition, 325. Adrian 11., pope, 382. Adrianople, the battle of, 105. ^g-idius, count of Soissons, 161. JEtius, a patrician, chosen by Pla- cidia, to direct her councils and her armies; his influence in Italy and Roman Gaul, 144. His per- fidy to count Boniface, 144. Go- verns the West in the name of Valentinian III., 150. His efforts to arrest the progress of Attila in Gaul, 150. Obtains a victory over him on the plains of Cha- lons-sur-Marne, 151. His death, 156. Africa, extent and prosperity of all the provinces of, 33. Barbaric tribes of, 60. Subject to the children of Nabal the Moor, 121. State of, 140. The conquest of, by the Vandals, 145. War in, for restoring- the legitimate succession to the throne of, 197. The con- quest of, by BeHsarius, 199. Ruin of, after the recall of Belisarius, 199. Governed by an exarch, 206. Invaded by tlie Gsetuli and the Moors, 215. The conquest of, by Akbah, lieutenant of the khaliph Moaviah, 297. Agathias, a Greek writer, 191. Agila, king of the Ostrogoths, 182. Aglabides^ 340. Almoin, a monk of St. Germain des Pres, 376. Aix-la-Chapelle, 317. A school for religious music established at, by Charlemagne, 328. Comitia ofj 348. Sack of, by the Northmen, 374. 62 486 Aiznadin, the battle of, the fate of the Roman empire in Asia decided by, 273. Akbah, lieutenant of the khaliph Moaviah, conquers Africa, 297. Alain, surnamed the Great, crowned king- of Britany, 396. Alan, 137. Alans, the, the fii-st Tartar race known to the Romans, 69. Retreat of into the mountains of Gallicia, 143. Alaric I,, king- of the Visig-oths, in- vades Greece, 122. Appointed master-g-eneral of the infantiy in eastern Illyricum, 123. Invades Italy, 1 24. Is defeated at Polien- tia, 125. Crosses the Alps, and arrives before the g'ates of Rome, 130. Deposes Attalus, aFid again offers peace to Honorius, 132. Taking- and sack of Jiome by, 132. Clemency of, 132. His death, 132. Alaric II,, kingof the Visigotlis, 163. Killed at the battle of Vougle, 169. Alboin, romantic story of, 212. His conquest of the Gepids in 566, 212. He marries Rosamunde, prin- cess of the Gepidse, 213. He in- vades Italy, 213. Assassinatc-d by the orders of Rosamunde, 216. Alcuin, tlie preceptor of CLarle- mag-ne, 315. Alemanni, or Swabians, 184. Aleppo, 245. Alexandria, 276. Sieg-e of, 277. Alexandrian library, 278. Alfred the Great, coronation of, in 872, 405. Succeeds to the throne of Wessex, 415. Defeat of, by the Danes, 416. His concealment at ^theling--ey, 417. His charac- ter and accomplishments, 417. Visits the Danish camp in disg-uise, 419. His reappearance, at the head of a Saxon army, 420. De- feats Hasting-s, on the coast of Kent, 421. His leg-islation, 422. His reforms in law and politics, 422. His learning- and love of letters, 423. His death, 424. Al-Hacam, 339. Ali, cousin and vizier of Mahommed, 259. Proclaimed khaliph, 281. Opposition to, 281. Deposition of, considered illeg-al, 282. As- sassination of, 283. AUemans, the, 75. Defeat of, at the battle of Tolbiac, 165, Alphonso II., surnamed the Chaste, king of Oviedo, 351. Almanzor, 340. Amalaric, king of the Visigoths, establishes his residence at Nar- bonne, 181. Amalasonta, daughter of Theodoric, 181. Marriage of, with Theodo- tus, 201. Assassination of, 201. Ambiza, governor of Spain, 302. Ambrose, St., archbishop of Milan, HI. Ambrosian chant, the origin of, 112. Ammianus Marcellinus, his account of the last words of Julian, 94. Amru conquers Egyjjt, 276. Anastasius, the emperor, 194. Anatolhis, 95. Andoveia, queen of Chilperic, exile and execution of, 220. Anegrai, the convent of, 409. Angles, the, 407. Anglo-Saxons, the, 408. Antharic, king of the Lombards, 216. Anthony, St., 61. Antioch destroyed by an earthquake in 526, 194. Submission of, to the Musiilmans during the campaign of 638, 254. Antistius, Labt o,the juris-consult, 45. Antonia, the wife of Belisarius, her character, 197. Antoninus Pjus, emperor, reign of, (from 138 to 161,) 46. Apamea, the city of, reduced to ashes by the Persians, 160. Apismar, Augustus, 295. Arabia, the peninsula of, 32. Imper- fectly known to the Romans; its extent, 62. The conquest of, by Mahommed, 262. Arabs, character of the, 249. The sheik of the, 250. Genealogy of; hereditary vengeance of, 251. Poe- try and eloquence of, 252. Nation- al rehgion, 253. Successes of, 273, Cultivation of science and letters among them, 289. Arbogastes, general of the Franks, orders the assassination of Valenti- nian II., 114. Arcadius, emperor of the East, imbe- cility of, 119. Demands peace of Alaric, and purchases it by ap- pointing him master-general of the infantry in eastern Illyricum, 123. His death, 140. Arcadius, a senator of Auvergne, the confidential agent of Childebert, 188. 487 Ardaric, king of the Gepidae, 148. Aregunde, one of the wives of Clo- tliaire, 189. Arense, 34. Arians, their doctrine, 87. Con- demned, and their books com- mitted to the flames at the council of Nice, 88. Arius, an Alexandrian priest, founder of the sect calltd the Arians, 87. Arimans, 233. Armenia, the conques't of, by the Parthians, 65. Becomes subject to Persia, 100. Armenians, character of the, 65. Their prosperity under Tiridates, 65. Armorica, or little Britain, abandoned by the Komans, forms a Celtic league, 136. The confederated towns of, become incorporated with the Franks, 1. 166. Arnulf, duke of Carinthia, 389. Arnulf, the emperor, death of, 441. Arsacides, 64. Artaxata, the capital of Armenia, 65. Artaxerxes, founder of the dynasty of the Sassanides, 64. His vic- tories, 65. Arthur, king, 407. Ascaric and Regais, 79. Asia, massacre of the Gothic hostages in, 105. Astolfo, king of the Lombards, 312. Ataulphus (Adolf,) king of the Visi- goths, his reconciliation with the Romans, 133. His marriage with Placidia, sister of Honorius, 134. Assassiimted at Barcelona by one of his own domestics, 142. Athalaric, king of the Ostrogoths, Ihl. Death of, 201, Athanagild, king- of Spain, 298. Athanasius, St., archbishop of Alex- andria, opposes Constantius and the Arians, 89. Athens, 123. Abolition of the schools of, 193- Atlas, Mount, 60. Attalus, a praetorian prefect, chosen emperor by the senate, 132. Is deposed by Alaric, 132. Attila, the scourge of God, king of the Huns, 147. His treaty with Theodosiusir.,147. Subdues the entire of North Europe and Asia, 148. Defeats the Greeks in three pitched battles, 149. He cros^s the Rhine and enters Gaul, 150. He bums the city of Metz, 150. Is defeated in the battle of Chalons-sur-Marne, 151. Invades upper Italy, 152. His death, and fall of his empire, 153. Augustine, St., 145. Augustus (Octavius,) period of his reign from 30 b. c. to 14 a. d. 42. Aurelian, emperor, elected by the soldiery; he subjugates the East, and leads Zenobia captive, 53. xVurelian, a Gaul, the Christian advi- ser of Clovis, 164. Austrasia, progress of aristocracy in, 221. Avars, the, 213. Occupy and lay waste the whole of the European continent, 246. A Vitus, St., archbishop of Vienne, 166. His letter to Gondebert, king of Burg-undy, 186. Ayesha, wife of Mahommed, 257. Taken prisoner at the battle of the Camel, 281. Baderic, king of the Thuringians, 184. Bagdad, foundation of, 2*^6. Splen- dour of the palace of, contrasted with the simphcity of the early khaliphs, 286. Decline of the khaliphat of, 426. Introduction oftlie Turks into, 427. Eahram, a Persian general, his wars with the Turks and Romans, 243.. Defeat and death of, 244. Buian, the khan oftlie Avars, 242. Balasch, king of Persia, 174. Barbary, 145. Baronius, cardinal, 83. Basil I., founder of the Macedonian empire, 4-28. His origin, obtains the title of Augustus, 428. His wise administration, 429. His con- quests in southern Italy, 429. Disputes the claim of Louis II. to the title of emperor of the West, 430. Basilica, the, compilation of, 429. Basra, foundation of, 275. Bavaria, union of, with the rest of Germany, 325. Bavarians, 184. Bedouin, the, 250. Belgium, 32. Belisarius, 191. His early life, 197. Chosen by Justinian to head the expeditions against the Vandals, 198. His victory over the Van- dals, 199. Conquers Africa, 200. Is recalled from Africa, and re- 488 INDEX. ceives orders to prepare for the conquest of Italy, 201. Lands in Sicily, his humanity and modera- tion, he besieges Naples, 202. Oc- cupies Rome, 204. Sent to op- pose Totila, recalled a second time, 205. His victory over the Bulg-a- rians near Constantinople, 207. The fears and jealousy of Justi- nian excited by it, 207. His death, 207. Benevento, the duke of, 352. Berbers, 60. Berea, a city of Syria, 245. Bereng-er I. crowned king" of Lom- bardy in 890, 396. Proclaimed king of Italy in 888, and emperor in 915; his character, 430. As- sassination of, 431. Bereng-er II. deposed by Otho I. in 960, 451. Berenger, count of Rennes, 435. Bernhard, king of Italy, confirmed in the possession of his kingdom, by liis uncle Louis le Debonnaire, 343. Revolt of, 346. His tragi- cal fate, 347. Bernhard, duke of Septimania, his influence at the court of Louis le Debonnaire, 349. Bertha, mother of Charlemagne, 318. Berthar, king of the Thunngians, as- sassinated by his brother Herman- frid, 184. Blanche, queen of Louis V., 439. Bleda assassinated by his brother At- tila, 147. Bobbio, the convent of, 409. Boethius, author of '* De Consola- tione Philosojjhiae," 179. Con- demned and executed by order of Theodoric, 179. Boniface, count, general of the Ro- mans in Africa, 144. Chosen to direct the councils and armies of Placidia, 144. Is driven to rebel- lion by the perfidy of ^tius, 144. Sends an invitation to Genser.c, king of the Vandals, to cross over to Africa, 145. His death, 146. Bordeaux burned by the Northmen, 374. Boson, count of Burgundy, elected to the crown of France in 897; his speech to the council of Mantaille, 393. Bosra, the siege of, 272. Bretons, 351. Britain, extent of, 33. The Roman legions withdrawn from, 134. The cities called on to defend them- selves, 135. The Celtic language preserved in, 136. Abandoned by the Romans in 427; invaded by the Picts and Scots, 406. Invaded by the Jutes and Saxons, 407. Brunechilde, wife of Sigebert, 220. Regency of, in Austrasia and Bur- gundy, as the guardian of her grandsons, Theodebert and Thier- ry, 225. Her character and ta- lents, 225. Her ferocity, 226. Her tragical fate, 227. Bulgarians, the oiigin of, 195. They devastate the Roman empire, 195. Burgundians, religion of the, 137. They call themselves the soldiers of the empire of RomiC, 138. Their condition difierent from that of the Franks, 137. Cadesia, the battle of, 275. Csesarea, the capital of Cappadocia; the fall of, 245. Caffa, a Greek colony on the Cimme- rian Bosphorus, 32. Caligula, the emperor, period of his reign from 37 to 41 a. p., 43. Callinicus, aninliabitant of Heliopolis, inventor of the Greek fire, 293. Camel, the battle of the, 281. Capitularies, the, of Pepin, 309. Of Charlemagne, 330. Caracalla, emperor, issues an edict granting the titles and duties of Roman citizens to all the inhabit- ants of the empire, 36. Cararic, king of 'I'erouane; assassi- nated by Clovis, 170, Carlovingian race, rapid degeneracy of, 365. Extinction of, 397. Carolinian books, a treatise dictated by Charlemagne against the wor- ship of images, 336. Carthage, the capital of all the Afri- can provmces, 34. Taken by the Vandals, 146. h'etaken by Beli- sarius, 199. Final destruction o^ 297. Cassiodorus, secretary to Theodoric; his voluminous letters, 180. Cava, daughter of count Julian, 299. Cecilius and Donatus, two competi- tors for the archbishopric of (Jar- thage, 85. Their respective claims carefully examined into by order of Constantine, and finally decided in favour of the former, 85. Celts, 70. Ancient territoiy of, 75. Ceres Eleusis, the temple of, pil- INDEX. 489 lag-ed by the barbarian soldiers of Alaric, 123. Chalcedonia, besieged by tlie Per- sians, 245. Chalons-sur-Marne, the battle of, 151. Chamavis, 184. Champagne, the battle of, 143. Charegites, the, a sect of Islamism, 280. Charibert, king of Aquitalne, 217. His character and death, 219. Charibert, son of Chlothaire II., 231. Chariot-racing, the favourite amuse- ment of the Romans, 208. Charlemagne, his character, 314. Ex- tent of his empire, 316. His mar- riage with Desideria, daughter of Desiderio, king of the Lombards, 318. His victories over the Sax- ons, 322. His public entry into Rome, and coronation as emperor of the West, 326. His efforts to administer his government accord- ing to law, and to revive a taste for science, literature, and the useful arts, 327. His grants to the vassals of the crown and to the convents, 330. His mode of recruiting his army, 331. Divides his kingdom among his three sons at the diet of Thionville, 340. His character as a father, 341. His domestic sor- rows, 341. His death, 342. Charles, eldest son of Charlemagne; his death, 341. Charles Martel, natural son and suc- cessor of Pepin, 301. His nume- rous wars and victories, 305. Ger- manic character of his government and army, 306. His death, 307. Charles the Bald, birth of, 349. His reign, the commencement of the French monarchy, 367. Flies with his court from Paris, when it was attacked by the Northmen, 372. His character, 386. Defeated by his nephew; his cruelty to his sons, 387. Weakness of his govern- ment, 388. His death, 389. Charles the Fat, 389. Crowned em- peror of Rome by pope John VIII., 390. His character, 390. Suc- ceeds to the whole Western em- pire, 394. Deposition and death of, 395. Charles the Simple, 392. Crowned at Rheims, 397. His authority cir- cumscribed, 432. Imprisonment and death of, 434. Charles of Lorraine, the last of the Carlovinglans, 459. Imprisonment and death of, 459. Charles, king of Provence, his death, 386. Chauci, the, 184. Chemsene, one of the wives of Chlo- thaire, 189. Cherusci, the, 184. Childebert II., king of Neustrla, 221. His ferocity and cruelty, 224. His death, 225. Childeric I., king of Neustrla, 165. Childeric II., his tragical fate, 235. Childeric IIL, his deposition, 310. Chilperic and Gondemar surprised in their residence at Vienne, and killed by their brother Gondebald, 164. Chilperic, son of Chlothaire I., called the Nero of France; his character, 219. Assassination of, 220. Chilperic II., king of Neustrla, 306. Chlodoald, son of Chlodomir, 188. Founds the monasteiy of St. Cloud, 188. Chlodomir, son of Clovls, 185. Killed in the battle of Veserruce, 187. Chlorus, Caesar Constantius, charged with the government of Gaul, 50. Chlothaire I., atrocities of, 188. His death, 190. Chlothaire IL, son of Fredegunde, succeeds to the throne of Neustrla, 220. He condemns to death all the descendants of Clovls, 227. Extent of his kingdom, 230. His death, 231. Chlotilda, her marriage with Clovls, 164. Her address to her three sons, exhorting them to avenge her of her enemies, 187. Her revenge accomplished, 187. Chosroes I., Nushlrvan, king of Per- sia, signs a treaty of peace with Justinian, 196. His death, 245. Chosroes II., king of Persia, 210. Conquers all the Asian provinces of the Eastern empire, 238. His policy, 243. His war with the Romans, 245. Conquers the whole of Roman Asia and Egypt, 245. Assassinated, together with his eighteen sons, 347. Chramne burned alive, together with his wife and children, by order of his father Chlothaire, 150, Christians, persecutions of the, 56. Church, the, disputes in, concern- ing the two natures of Christ, 238. Substitution of the Gre- 63 490 gorian for the Ambroslan chant in, 328. Circoncellians, the, 140. Claudian, the last of the g-reat poets of Rome, 120, Claudius, the emperor, 43. His vic- tory over the Goths, 53. Clef, king- of the Lombards, 216- Clodion, king- of the Franks, 142. Clovis, king of France, 142. His marriage vi^ith Chlotilda of Bur- gundy, 164. His conversion to Christianity, 165. Acknowledged king of the Allemans, 165. Bap- tized, with three thousand of his soldiers, in the cathedral of Rheims on Christmas-day, 496, 166. Ex- tent of his kingdom, 167. His war with the Burgundians, 167. Pursues his ravages into Provence, enters into a compromise with Gondebald at Avignon, 168. De- feats the Visigoths in the battle of Vougle, 169. His authority ac- knowledged over half Aquitaine, 169. Miracles ascribed to him; his zeal for the church and clergy, 170. His death, 172. Coldingham, the convent of, burned with all its inmates by the Danes, 410. Cologne, sack of, 374. Colomban, St., an Irish missionary, 404. Commodus, the emperor, 46. As- sassination of, 49. Conrad I., king of Germany, 442. Death of, 442. Conrad the Peaceful, king of Trans- jurane Burgundy and Provence, 451. Constans I., emperor of Gaul and Italy, 84. Assassination of, 84. Constans II., 292. Constantine, the emperor, crowned by the legions of Britain at York, in 306, 7&. His character; he he- sitates between Paganism and Christianity, 78. He marches at the head of the British legions against the Franks, and defeats them, 79. The title of Augus- tus conferred on him by his father- in-law Maximian, 79. Causes his father-in-law Maximian to be put to death, 80. His victories, 80. He abandons the western pro- vinces for Greece, 81. He founds the city of Constantinople, 81. His cruelty in putting to death his son Crispus, and almost all his kindred 82. His prodigality to the church, 83. His death, 83. Constantine II., eldest son of Con- stantine the Great, 84. Constantine, eldest son of the empe- ror Hei'aclius, 215. Constantine Pogonatus; his govern- ment, 2§2. Constantine Copronymus; his wise administration, 333. Constantine VI., 334. His marriage with an Armenian princess, 337. Murder of, 337. Constantine VII., 428. Constantine Porphyrogenitus, son and successor of Leo the Philoso- pher, 429. His works, 429. Constantinople, founded by Constan- tine the Great, 81. Engages to pay an annual tribute of 700 pounds of gold to the empire of Scythia, 147. Despotism of the emperors of, 173. Siege of, 296. Constantius usurps the inheritance of his two cousins, Dalmatius and Hannibalianus, 84. Devotes him- self exclusively to religious con- troversy, 88. His death, 92. Coptic, the most ancient of the Egyptian tongues, 61. Crescentius, the consul; his character and death, 463. Crispus, son of Constantine the Great; his amiable character; put to death by order of his father, 82. Croatians, 354. Cunimund, the Gepidac prince, 212. Cymri, the, one of the two grand di- visions of the Celtic race, 409. Cyrene, the colony of, destroyed by the Persians, 245. Dacia conquered by Trajan, 47. Dagobert, son and successor of Chlo- thaire I[., 231. His character, 232; his death, 233. Dagobert II., 234; his death, 234. Dalmatius and Hannibalianus, 84. Damascus, the siege of, 273. Damasus, bishpp of Rome, 111. Danes, incursions of the, on the coasts of France and Germany, 410. Rapid increase of their po- pulation, 371. They invade Eng- land, 411. Defeated on the coast of Cornwall, 413. They renew their attack upon England, 415, Cruelties committed by them, 4J.6. Submission of the, 420. 491 Dante, 476. Denmark, civil wars in, 398. Deventer, the church of, burned by the Saxons, and all the Christians massacred, 321. Desideria, daughter of Desiderio, king- of the Lombards^ her mar- riage with Charlemagne, 318. Diocletian, the emperor, divides the Roman empire into four pretorian prefectures, 33. Proclaimed em- peror by tlie army of Persia, 53. His character and talents, 54. Es- tablishes his court at Nicomedia, 55. His violent persecutions of the Christians, 56. His abdication, 57. Didier, or Desiderio, king of the Lombards, 318. Imprisonment of, 319. Dionysius of Syracuse, 155. Domitian, the emperor, 46. Assas- sination of, 46. Donatists, controversy of the, 85. Fanaticism of the, 8&. Donatus, founder of the sect called Donatists, 85. Druids, the, 70. East, prefecture of the, boundaries of, 34. East Anglia, founded by Ulfa, 408. Ebrion elected Mord Dom in Neus- tria by the freemen, 234. His administration, 234. His death, 235. Edecon, minister of AttiTa, 158. Edmund, king of East Anglia, 416. Edrisides, the"; of Fez, 339. Egbert, king of Wessex, 411. His death, 413. Eginhard, 315. Egypt conquei-ed by the Persians in 616, 245. Conquered by Amru, 277. Egyptians, character of the, 287. Eloi, St., 232. Ementarius, the historian, 376. Emessa, the fall of, 273. Emir-al-Mumenin, commander of the Faithful, 339. Emma, daughter of Charlemagne, anecdote of, 341. England, conversion of, by St. Au- gustine, 410. Invaded by the Danes, 411. Divided into counties or shires by the Saxons, 422, Eraric, king of the Ostrogoths, as- sassination of, 205. Ermengarde, queen of Louis k De- bonnaire, 343. Her cruelty and death, 347. Essex, the kingdom of, founded by Ercenwin in 527, 408. Ethelbald, king of Kent, 414. Ethelbert, king of Kent, 414. Ethelred, king of Kent, 414. De- feat and death of, 416. Ethelvvolf, son and successor of Eg- bert, his character, 413. His death, 413. Eudes, duke of Aquitaine, 302. Eucherius, St., bishop of Orleans, vi- sion of, 307. Eudes, count of Paris, 396. Eudoxia, widow of the emperor Va- lentinian III.; her marriage with Maximus, 157. Avenges the death of her first husband by plotting against her second, 157. Eugenius, the grammarian, 114. Euric, king of the Visigoths, 143. Europe, the barbarous tribes of, 70'. Eutychians, heresy of the, 240. Evaria, king of the Ostrogoths, 182. Exarchs of Ravenna, 206. Faineant kings, succession of the, 2.33. Fatima, daughter of Mahommed, and wifeof Ali, 281. Fatimides, entire destruction of the, 284. Fau«ta, daughter of Maximian, 82. Put to death by her husband, Con- stantine the Great, 83. Ferouz, king of Persia, 174.r Firnvus, an able and experienced leader of the Moor.s, 100. Fiscalins, 329. Fontenai, the battle of, 369. France, division of, into four king- doms, 217. Succession of the Fai- neant kings, 233. Separation of, from Germany and Italy, 367. Constitution of the new kingdom, of, 370. Defenceless state of, 373. Decline of kingly power in^ 452. Trade and manufacture of, 455. Decline of monarchical liberties, 456. Franks, the, 51. Daring rebellion of, 41. Their alliance with the Roman empire, 137. No authen- tic account of their kings during the greater part of the fifth centu- ry, 142. Extent of their empire, 1 62 . Their union with the Armo- ricans and the confederates, 166. Limited power of their kings, 171, 492 Their barbarous laws, 182. Bur- gundy and Provence added to their king-dom, 185. They invade Italy, 343. A territorial aristocra- cy formed amongst them, 217. Extent of the empire of, imder Chlothaire II. and Dagobert, 230. They introduce the Mosaic laws into their legislature, 309. Fredegaire, his history of the Fran ks 229. Fredegunde, wife of Chilperic; her infamous character, 220. Frisons, 184. Fritigern, king of the Goths, 106. Gserin, brother of St. Leger, 236. G?etuli, 60. Gainus, the Goth, 120, Galba, the emperor, 46. Galerius Caesar, 55. His death, 80. Galileo, 25. Gallineus, the emperor, 26. Gallus, brother of Julian, execution of, 90. Galsuintha, queen of Chilpericj her death, 220. Gascons, 351. Gaul, 33. Suffers from the incur- sions of the Franks and Allemans, 89. Ravaged by the Germanic tribes, 127. Feebleness of the Roman government in, 138. Pre- valence of paganism in, 139. Pro- gress of arts in; commercial pros- perity of, 230. Becomes subject to the Franks, 315. State of the population of, 316. External re- lation of the empire^ 350. Gelasius, pope, 160. Gelimer, 192. Genevieve, St., the church of, found- ed by Clovis and Chlotilda, 172. Genoa, destruction of, by the Franks, 203. Genseric, king of the Vandals; his person and character, 144. Lands upon the shores of Africa, 145. His excesses, 145. Cupidity of his troops, 157. Takes and pil- lages Rome, 158. His death, 196. Gepidze, the, 73. Germany, 69. Progress of civiliza- tion in, 70. Government of, 73. Different nations and confedera- tions of, 75. The barbarous tribes of, pass the Rhine, and ravage the whole of Gaul, 127. Division of, into four kingdoms, 218. Supe- rior power of the people in, 379. In- cursions of the Hungarians during the minority of Louis IV., 441. Gildo, his sovereignty in Africa, 121. Godegisela, king of the Vandals, 127. Godegesil, 167. Put to death by his brother Gondebald, 168. Gondemar, brother of Sigismund, 187. Gondebald, king of Biu'gundy, 186. His death, 187. Gondecar, king of the Burgundians, devastates the whole of eastern Gaul, 127. His death, 164. Gonderic, king of the Vandals, 144. Gondisca, widow of Chlodomir; her marriage with Chlothaire, 187. Gontram, surnamed the Good, king of Burgvmdy, 219. His efforts to check the progress of aristocracy in Austrasia, 221. Causes of the animosity that existed between him and the Austrasian nobles, 224. Goths, incursions of the, 51. Extent of their dominion, 101. Their pro- gress in social sciences, 102. They establish themselves within the Ro- man empire, 103. They revolt, in consequence of the ill treatment of the Romans, 104. They ravage Eastern Europe, 105. They con- tract an alliance with the Huns and Alans, 106. Their final estabhsh- ment within the eastern empire, 108. Gratian, the emperor, 101. His death, 110. Greece, invaded by Alaric, king of the Goths, 122. Attacked by the Musulmans, 291. State of, after the death of Heraclius, 292. Greek fire, invention of the, 293. Greens and Blues, sedition of the, 208. Gregory Nazianzen, St., patriarch of Constantinople, 111. His zeal for the expulsion of the Arian clergy, 112. Gregory, St., bishop of Toursf his. account of the origin of the French monarchy, 163. His death, 228. Gregory the Great, pope, 410. Gregory V., pope, 362. Grifon, son of Charles Martel, assas- sination of, 307. Grimoald, son of Pepin, 301. Guiafer, duke of Aquitaine, 311. Guido, duke of Spoleto, crowned king of Lorraine, 396. Gunthamond, king of the Vandals, 196. INDEX. 49i Guthnim, the Danish general, defeat of, 420. Gurmhaillon, count of Cornwall, suc- ceeds to the sovereignty of Brita- ny, 438. Harun al Raschid, 340. Harold, king of Denmark, 448. Hashemides, the, 338. Hassan, khaliph of Egypt, 283. Hastings, the Danish chief, 372. His fruitless attacks against Alfred the Great, 418. Heliogabalus, 51. Helvetia, 32. Hengist and Horsa, 407. Henry the Fowler, elected emperor of Germany, 443. His death, 446. Heptarchy, the Saxon, 409. Heraclius, the emperor, 245. His death, 279. Heribert, count of Vermandois, 434. Heriolt, king of Denmark, convei'sion and baptism of, 351. Hermanfrid, king of the Thuringians, 184. Hermanric, king of the Goths, 101. His death, 103. Herodes Atticus, 49. Heruli, 75. Hesham, 339. Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, 381. Hildebald, king of the Ostrogoths, 182. Assassination of, 205. Hilderic, king of the Vandals, 196. Murdered by order of Gelimer, 199. Hoel, 137. Honorius, the emperor, 119. Inca- pacity of, 124, Shuts himself up in Ravenna, 129. His mean and cowardly conduct, 129. His death, 140. Horic, king of Denmark, o76. Hormidas, king of Persia, 89. Hossein, grandson of Mahommed; his defeat and death, 284. Hugh Capet, 451. Crowned at Rheims, 459. Hugh, count of Provence, raised to the throne of Italy, 431. Tyranny of, 450. Hugh, count of Paris, 457. Hugues le Blanc, count of Paris, 434. Hunenc, king of the Vandals, 196. Hungarians, the, 441. Huns, the, 69. Iberia, 100. Ibraham, sultan, 339. Iconoclast controversy, 335. Ida, founder of the kingdom of North- umberland, 408. Illyricum, 32. Ingunde, one of the wives of Chlo- thaire, 189. Ireland, conversion of, 409. Irene, the empress, 334. Re-esta- blishes the worship of images, 334. Her ambition, 336. Causes the murder of her son Constantius, 337. Is dethroned and banished to Le- bos, 354. Irnak, son of Attila, 153. Isidore, bishop of Beja, 303. Islamism, 266. Istria and Dalmatia, the celebrated league of, 215. Italians, the, 312. Italy, 33. The administration of, in- trusted to the Augusti, 55. Invaded by Alaric, king of the Visigoths, 124. Invaded by the Germans, 126. Sufferings of, from the bar- barian yoke, 140. Governed by confederates, 158. Conquered by the Ostrogoths, 174. Governed by exarchs, 206. Invaded by the Lombards, 214. Internal govern- ment of the maritime cities of, 215. Rapid increase of civilization in, under the Lombard kings, 230. Invaded by the Franks, 312. Su- perior power of the dukes, 379. Independence of the nobles, 431. Causes and consequences of its union with Germany, 449. liiber- ty of the states, 475. Revival of letters, 476. Iwar, his battles with Ethelred, 416. Jacobites, 240. Jerusalem, conquered by the Per- sians, 245. The siege of, 273. John of Cappadocia, 192. JohnVIil., pope, 388. Jovian, the emperor, 96. His death, 97. Judith, the empress, 347. Her as- cendency over her husband, 349. Dethronement of, 357. Her in- trigues, 360. Julian, the emperor, 90. His charac- ter, 91. His last words and death, 93. Julian, count, a Gothic noble, 299. Julius, commander-in-chief of the forces in the East, 106. Justin I., emperor, 174. Justin II., emperor, 237. His cha- racter, 241. 494 Justina, regent of Italy and Africa, 112. Justinian I., the emperor, 192. His religious intolerance, 193. His mi- litary policy, 195. His death, 207. Justinian H., emperor; his character, 294. His death, 295. Jutes, the, 407. Kader, khaliph of Egypt, 464. Kalmucs, inhabitants of Tartary, 67. Karloman, son of Charles Martel,- ab- dication of, 308. Karloman, son of Pepin; his death, 314. Karloman, son of Louis, the Germa- nic king of Bavaria, 387. His death, 389. Kenneth H., king of Scotland, 410. Kent, the kingdom of, founded by Hengist in 400, 408. Kenwith, the battle of, 419. Khadijah, the wife of Mahommed, 253. Khaled, surnamed "the Sword of God," 268. His death, 275. Kiersi, the edict of, 391. Koran, the, 255. Koreishites, the, 253. Leger, bishop of Autun, 235. His death, 235. Leo I., pope, 153. Leo HI., pope, 326. Leo III., emperor of Constantinople, 295. Leo IV., empei-or, 333. His death, 334. Leo the Armenian, emperor, 355. Leo the Philosopher, 428. Leontius Augustus, 292. Leovigild, kingofthe Yisigoths, 143. Libuin, St., the priest, 320. Licinius, governor of Ulyricum, 80. Lintberg, bishop of Maintz, 395. Loewegild, king of Spain, 215. Lombards, the, 216. Longinus, prime minister and con- fidant of Zenobia, 64. Longinus, the exarch, 214. Lothaire I., emperor, 352. His in- trigues with the empress Judith, 362. His abdication and death, 380. Lothaire II., emperor, 380. His death, 383. Lothaire, nephew of Otho I.; his un- successful wars, 458. His death, 458. Lothaire, king of Lorraine, 340. Louis, son of Charlemagne, 340. Louis le Debonnaire, 345. His pub- lic confession and penance, 348. Deserted by all his followers, 360. His public degradation and pe- nance, 361. His death, 363. Louis the Germanic, 366. His death, 386. Louis the Stammerer, 387. His death, 392. Louis III., 393. Louis II., king of Italy, 379. His death, 386. Louis of Saxony, 390. Louis, king of Provence, 396. Louis IV., emperor of Germany, 441. Louis IV., of France, 448. His death, 451. Louis v., 459. Lucan, the poet, 45. Lupicinus, the general of Valens, 104. Lupus Centuli, duke of the Gascons, 351. Luxeuil, the convent of, 409. Macedonia, foundation of the dynas- ty of, 428. Macrinus, the Moor, succeeds the emperor Caracalla, whom he causes to be assassinated, 50. Madain, or Ctesiphon, the capital of Persia, taken by assault, 275. Magnentius, emperor, assassinates the emperor Constans, whom he suc- ceeds, 84. Magnorald, duke, 224. Magyars, irruptions of, 441. Mahdi, 340. Mahommed, birth of, 253. Mar- riage of, with Khadijah; his charac- ter; his religious studies, 254. His description of hell and paradise, 257. His preaching; his first dis- ciples; irritation of the people of Mecca against him, 259. His flight; commencement of his reign, 260. Arrival of, at Medina; militaiy spi- rit of, 260. His frugality; his first battle against the Koreisliites, 261, Conquest of Mecca by, 262. Num- ber of his proselytes, 262. His last pilgrimage to the Kaaba; de- clares war upon the Roman em- pire, 262. His last words and death, 264, His political charac- ter, 290. Maison Carree, 34. Mallum, the national assembly of the Germans, 74. Marcian, emperor, 174. INDEX. 495 Marcus Aurelius, emperor, 46. Marcovesa, 219. Marseilles, sack of, by Greek pirates, in 848, 373. Martin, St., archbishop of Tours, 112. His persecution of the Arians, 112. The tomb of, 139. Mascezel, the conquest of Africa by, 121, Maurice, St., convent of, founded by St. Sig-ismund, 186. Maurice, emperor, adopted son and successor of Tiberius; his charac- ter, 242. His campaign ag-ainst the Avars and Persians, 243. Suc- ceeds to the throne of Persia; assassination of, with all his family, 244. Mauritania reduced to a Roman pro- vince by Caligula, 60. Mauronte, duke, 302. Maxentius, emperor, 79. His tyran- ny, 80. His defeat and death, 80. Maximin, the Goth, assassin and suc- cessor of Alexander Severus, 50. Maximian Augustus, an Illyrian pea- sant, accession to the throne of Italy, 55. Abdication of, 57. His death, 80. Maximus, emperor, 110. Defeat and death of, 114. Maximus Petronius, emperor, 137. Killed in a seditious quarrel excited by his wife Eudoxia, 137. Mecca, city of, 253. The conquest of, by Mahommed, 262. Medard, St., the church of, 190. Melun, devastation of the castle of, 376. Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt; the siege and surrender of, by the Copts, 277. Mercia, the kingdom of, founded by Erida in 585, 408. Merobaudes, a Prankish chief, 109. Merovseus, (Meer-wig or Sea Hero,) 162. Merovingian Franks, 29. Mervan IL, khaliph, deposition and death of, 285. Metz, the city of, burned by Attila, 150. Michael Rhangabe, emperor, 355. Michael the Stammerer, coronation of, 355. Michael IH., assassination of, 428. Milan, the destruction of, by the Turks, 203. Missi Dominici, the creation of, by Charlemagne, 331. Moaviah, khaliph, 282. Civil war between him and Ali, 282. The khaliphate made hereditary in the familv of, 283. Moaviah H., 285. Mseso-Gothic language, 109. Mokankas, Coptic general of the Mo- nothelites, 276. Monguls, 67. Monophysites, controversy of, 239. Monothelites, controversy of, 239. Moors, subjugation and conversion of, 297. MordDom, (or chief justiciary of the Franks, 218.) Mordred, 407. Morlachia, 71. Moseilama, 268. Moslemah, 295. Motassem, khaliph, 427. Musa, his successes, 301. Musulmans, the conquests of, 269. Their mode of going to battle, 271. Subjugation of Persia by, 279. Change in the nation of, 287. Nabal, the Moor, 121. Narbonne, the conquest of, 302. Nasamonian Moors, 61. Narses, the eunuch; his victory over the Goths, 206, Accomplishes the total overthrow of the Goths, 206. Governs Italy as exarch, 210. Narses, a general of Persian origin; his victories, 243 . Nectarius, patriarch of Constantino- ple, 112. Nero, emperor, 43. Nerva, emperor, 46. Nestorians, the, 240. Neustria, settlement of the Normans in, 434. Nice, the council of, convoked to try the Arian heresy in 325, 88. Se- cond council of, in 787, 335. Nicephorus, emperor, 355. Nicholas L, pope, 381. Nigritia, 61. Nika, or Victory, a war-cry in the Lower Empire, 208. Nisibis, the fortress of, 89. Nitria, the deserts of, 62. Nomenoe, duke of the Bretons, 374. Noricum, 32. Normandy, (formerly Neustria,) 434. The feudal system introduced into, 437. Rapid disappearance of the Norse language, 438. Normans, settlement of, in France, 389. 496 NDEX. Northumberland, the kingdom of, founded in 547, by Ida, 408. Odenatus, the wealthy senator of Palmyra, 52. Odilo, duke of Bavaria, 311. Odoacer, king- of Italy, 158. His death, 476. Olympiodorus, the historian, 134. Olympius, the favourite of Honorius, 128. Omar, a disciple of Mahommed, 264. His character, 269. Founds a magnificent mosque on the ruins of Solomon's temple, 274. His vir- tuous forbearance at the siege of Alexandria, 278. Assassination of, 280. Ommiades, 259. Oppas, archbishop of Toledo, 299. Orestes, a patrician, father of Romu- lus Augustus, 158. His death, 158. Ormouz, king of Persia, 243. His death, 243. Oscar, duke, 371. Ostrogoths, 75. Othman, secretary of Mahommed, 279. Assassination of, 280. Otho I., the Great, 431. Accession of, to the throne of Germany, 446. His character, 446. Elected king of Lombardy, 451 . His death, 458. Otho II., his character, 460. His cap- ture and escape, 461. Otho III., 462. His death, 463. Otho, duke of Franconia, 442. Owen, St., bishop of Rouen, 232. Oxford, a school founded at, by Al- fred the Great, 423. Palestine, invasion of, by the Per- sians, 245. Palmyra, the city of; its government; its independence, 62. Pannonia, evacuation of, by the Goths, 140. Pava, son of the king of Armenia; assassination of, 101. Paris, meeting of the national assem- bly of Austrasia, 222. Sack of, by the Northmen, 372. Second sack of, 376. Siege of, by the North- men, (885-886,) 395. Increasing authority of its counts, 433. Parthia, 64. Parthians, origin of empire of, 64. The conquest of Armenia by, 65. Patrick, St., the conversion of Ire- land by, 409. Pavia, siege of, 214. Second siege and surrender of, 319. Burning and sack of, by the Hungarians, 443. Pepin of Heristal, grandfather of Pe- pin le Bref, duke of Austrasia; victory of, at Testry ; administration of, 236. Death of, December 16, 714, 237. Pepin, surnamed the Short, son of Charles Martel; his deference for the clergy, 309. Proclaimed king at Soissons, 310. His death, De- cember 24, 768, 213. Pepin, second son of Charlemagne, 340. Death of, July 4, 800, 341. Pepin I., king of Aquitaine, death of^ December 13, 838, 362. Pepin II,, king of Aquitaine, 366. Death of, 864, 386. Persia, the conquest of, by the Mu- sulmans, 275. Persians, character of; religion of, 64. Peter, bishop of Alexandria, 111. Phalaris, 155. Pharamond, 142. Philip the Arab, a robber raised to the throne by the murder of Gor- dian, 50. Phocas, emperor; his ferocity, 244. Phocas, death of, 245. Photius, patriarch, his works, 470. Picts, defeat of, by the Scots; final extemnination of, 410. Picts' wall, 32. Pisa, 474. Pi si stratus, 155. Pistes, the edict of, 391. Placidia, sister of the emperor Hono- rius; marriage of, with Ataulphus, 134. Government of, 141. Death of, 141. Plectrude, the widow of Pepin, 301. Plotinus, the philosopher, commis- sioned by Gallienus to organize a republic on Plato's model, 27, Poictiers, the battle of, 303. Pont du Card, 34. Pontine marshes, 178. Probus, emperor, 53. Procopius, a distant relation of Julian; his attempt to get himself crowned at Constantinople, 101. Procopius, a great writer, 191. Provence, the subjugation of, by the Musulmans, 307. Psallentium, the, 169. Ptolemy, 25. Pulcheria, sister of Theodosius II., 150. 49T Qiiadi, 7-2. Qiiartodecimans, those who cele- brated Easter on the same day as the Jews, 111. Radogast, king" of Mecklenberg", de- feat and death of, 126. R^gner Lodbrog, duke of the North- men; his audacity, 371. Anival of, at Paris, on Holy Saturday, March 28, 845; the sack of Pans by, 372. Horrible death of, 415. Kagnacar, king of the Franks at Cam- bray, joins the standard of Clovis, 162. Eagusa, the city of; its union with Venice in 997, 215. Rainulph, count of Poictiers, crowned king of Aquitaine, 396. Ravenna, city of; description of, 125. Raymond Pons, count of Toulouse, 443. Recarede, 298. Recared, king of Spain, 215, Red Sea, republics of, 250. Remi, St., archbisliop of Rheims, 166. Rhadegunde, one of the wives of Chlothaire, 189. Rhxtia, 32. Rhegius, abbot of Pruem; his charac- ter of Charles the Fat, 395. Rhine, the, 32. Ricimer, the patrician; opposition of the people to Ins assuming the pur- ple; his death, Aug. 20, 472, 158. Robert the Strong, count of Paris, 432. Robert, duke of France j his revolt and death, 434. Roderigo, king of Spain; defeat of, at Gandelete, 300. Rollo, a Norse chief, besieges Paris; peace concluded between him and Charles the Simple, 435. Baptism and marriage of; made duke of Normandy, 435. Rigorous justice of, 437. Roma, Campagna di, 160, Romagna, 312. Romanus, tlie prefect; his tyranny over the Moors, 100. Romanus, governor of Syria; his trea- chery, 272. Romanus Lecapenus, 429. Rome; fall of the empire of, in the West, 30. Boundaries of, 31. Ex- tent of the territories of, 32. Enu- meration of the provinces of, 34. Ancient architecture of, 35. The title and duties of Roman citizens granted to all the inhabitants of tlie empire, 36. State of the po- pulation, 36. Destruction of small proprietors, 39. Debasement of the Roman cliaracter, 40. Military force of the empire, 4:>. Aggre- gate of the legions, 44. Prosperi- ty of the provinces, 45. Fidehty of the army, 46. Flourisiiing state of art during the reign of Adrian, 47. Depopulation of the empire, 48, Soldiers of fortune usurp the empire, 50. Excesses of the sol- diers, 51 . Barbarian incursions on the frontiers, 51. The em])erors elected by the soldiers, 52. A grant made to the see of, by Pepin, 69, The empire ruled by six em- perors together, 80, Downfal of paganism in, 96. Oppre.ssion of the magistrates of the curiae, 98. Corruption and effeminacy of the people, 116. Partitian of the em- pire between the two sons of Theo- dosius, 125, Taking and sack of, by Alaric, April 24,410, 132. Pro- gress of the doctrine of the divine right of king.s, 140. Superiority of the empire in its military skill, 151. The causes which conspired to its overthrow, 155. Taking and pil- lage of, by Genseric, king of the Vandals, 157. The titular consu- late abolished in 541, 193. Iiwa- sion of barbarians; the cities over- whelmed by eartliquakes; attacked bv a plague, which lasted from 542 to 594, 194. Siege and cap- ture of, by Totila, December 17, 546, 205. Cliariot-racing intro- duced into all the great towns, 208. Disgraceful state of the pontificate, 454. Romulus Augustus elected emperor, 158. Roncesvalles, the battle of, 64. Kosamunde, daughter of Cunimund; marriage of, with Alboin, 21^. Causes the assassination of her hus- band, 216. Rotrude, daughter of Charlemagne, 341. Rouen, pillage and burning of, by Ot- tar, duke of the Northmen, 371. Rudolf founds the monarciiy of Trans- jurane Burgundy, 396. Rudolf II., king of Transjurane Bur- gundy, unites the government of Italy with that of Switzerland, 431. Rudolf, king of France, death of, 198. 64 498 INDEX. Rufinus, an able Gallic jurisconsul, prefect of the East; his vices; his murder, 119. llug-ilus, king- of the Huns, 147. Runic, the written character used by the Teutonic tribes, 73. Russians, one of the most powerful of the Slavonic race, 71. Sachsen, 75. Salee, situated in tlie present king- dom of Morocco, 60. Sanchez, surnamed Mitarra, duke of Gascony, 397. Sapor II., king- of Persia, his incur- sions into tlie Roman provinces of the East; his invasion checked by the fortress of Nisibis, 89. The conquest of Iberia and Armenia by, 100. Saracens, military and monastic cha- racter united in tlieir warriors, 267. Their fleet destroyed by the Greek *« Fire,'' 294. Defeat of, at the battle of Poictiers, 305. Division of their empire, 338. Settlements of, in France and Italy, 440. Sarmati, the, 72. Sarmatian horsemen, description of, 72. Sassanides, the, 62. Saxons, the number and character of, 319. Their war with Charlemagne, 321. Submission of; they violate their eng-ag-ement, 321. Massacre of ail the Saxon prisoners at Ver- den, in 287; final subjug-ation of, 322. Invasion of Britain by, 407. State of the people, 418. Scandinavia, 350. Schwaben, 75. Sciences, moral and ])olitical history inseparably connected witli, 22. Social, 25. Scots, different tribes of, march across the whole cxterit of Britain; tiieir cruelties, 99. Scythians, or Tai'tars, their manners and mode of life, 67. Their fero- city in war, 67. Freedom of; sovereignity of, 67. Domestic sla- very, 68. The race of, remarka- ble for their ugliness, 69. Seid, 262. Shah Poor, the Persian monarch; the conquest of Armenia by, 51. Shiahs, origin of the sec't of, 282. Sicambrians, 183. Sicily, invasion of, by the Musulmans, 354. Siegbert, king of the Ripuarians; as- sassination of, by his son, at the in- stigation of Clovis, 169. Siegbert, king of Austrasia, marriage of, with Brunechilde; assassination of, by two pages of Fredegunde, 220. Siegeric, king of the Visigoths; his death, 143. Sigismund, St., king of Burgundy, 186. Founds the convent of St. Maurice, in the Valais; his death, 187. Silingi, the extermination of, 229. Simocatta, Theophylact, 229. Singara, the battle of, 89. Siroes, son and successor of Cliosroes II., 247. Slavonians, extent of their territory; subjugation of, by the Romans, 71. Slavonic tribes, 353. Sogdiana, 68. Soliman, 295. Sophia, empress of Justin II., 241. Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, 273. Spain, division of, 33. Invasion of, by the Suevi, the Vandals, and the Alans; portioned out among its Germanic conquerors, 127. State of the Roman towns of, governed by dukes, 206 Civil wars in, 215. Iiide])endence of the maritime towns of, 215. Conquest of, by the Musulmans, 237. Introduction of the Saracens into, 298. Rapid increase of tlie population of Moor- ish Spain; celebrity of the schools, 352. Spanish Marches, 312. Stauraciiis, emperor of Greece, 355. Stefania, her reveng-e for tlie death of her husband Crescentius, 463. Stephen li,, pope, his application to Pepin; enthusiasm excited by him in the Franks, 312. Stilicho, a soldier of fortune; his greatness of mind, 120. His cam- paign in Greece against Alaric, 123. His victories, 125. Destro}'s the army of Uadogast by famine, 127. His power shaken by court in- trigue, 128. Ingratitude of Hono- rius toward; his policy in endea- vouring to recruit the ranks of the defenciers of Rome; refuses the of- fers of the barbarian Soldiers to avenge and defend him; killed at Ravenna, by order of Honorius, August 21,408, 129. NDEX. 499 Suevl united to the monarcliy of Spain, in 513, 143. Sunnis, orig-in of tlie sect of, 283. Sussex, the king-clom of, founded in 491, by Ella, 408. Syagrius Afranius, count of Soissons; defeat of, by Clovis, 162. His death, 163. Syria, the conquest of, by the Mu- sulmans, 269. Syrians, character of, 287. Tacitus, the historian, 45. Tacitus, emperor, 53. Taherides, 340. Taifalae, a Tartar race, 69. Tarifa, 300. Tarik, a daring- Saracen commander; landing- of, in Spain; liis successes, 299. Tartar}', Independent, 67. Tartary, Grand, 72. Tayef, siege and reduction of, 262. Teia, king- of the Ostrogoths, 182. Death of, 206. Testry, the battle of, 236. Teutonic tribes, 73. Thankmar, son of Heniy the Fowler; his jealousy and resentment agahist Otho I.; his death, 446. Thebais, the monks of, 61. Thendis, king of the Ostrogoths, 182. Thendisdi, king of the Ostrogoths, 182. Theodatus, king of the Ostrog-oths, 182. His marriage with Ama- lasonta, 201. His ingratitude; his cowardice, 201. His death, 202. Theodebald, 185. Theodebert I., 185. Theodebert II., 226. Imbecility of; death of, 226. Theodomir, king of the Ostrogoths, 175. Theodora, wife of Justinian; her in- fluence over her husband; her cha- racter, 197. Theodoric I., son of the great Alaric, elected king of the Visigoths^ death of, 143. Theodoric II., king of the Visigoths; murder of, by his brother Euric, 143. I'heodoric, son of Theodomir, king of the Ostrogoths; his education at the Greek court, 175. Succeeds his father in 475; the conquest of Italy by, 176. His moderation and wisdom, 177. Legislation of, 178. Religious toleration of; death of, August 30, 526, 179. Theoc!osius,a Spanish officercharged with the defence of Britain by'Va- lentinian; his success against the Scots and Moors, 99. Beheaded at Carthage, by order of ValentL- nian, 100. Theodosius the younger, emperor of the east; prudence and moderation of, 108. Theodosius I., the Great; defeats the Ostrogoths and Gruthungians, 1 10. His character; his orthodoxy. 111. Inquisitors of the faith instituted by. 111. His violence, 112, Pe- nance imposed on him by St. Am- brose, 113. His death, January 17, 395, 114. Theodosius IT., emperor of the West, second husband of Placidia, 141. His patience, 149. Death of, 150. Theophanes and Nicephorus, chro- nicles and abstracts of, 229. Theophania, empress of Otho 11., 462. Theophilus, emperor of Greece, 355. His cliaracter and death, 356. Theophobus, brother-in-law of Theo- philus, 336. Thermopylae, 49. Thessalonica, insurrection in, (390;) massacre of all the inhabitants by order of Theodosius, 113. Theutberge, daughter of Boson, count of Burgundy; marriage of, with Lothaire, II., 380. Thierry, eldest son of Clovis, 185. Thierry II. defeats his brother Theo- debert in two great battles, 226. His death, 227." Thierry III., 236. Thierry IV., king of Neustria; death of, 306. Thorismund, king of the Visigoths; assassination of, by his brothel* Theodoric IV., 143. Thuringians, the conquest of, by the Franks, 184. Tiberius, emperor, accession of, (574,) 241. Character and death of, 242. Tiberius II., emperor, 237. Tiridates, king of Armenia; his death, 66. Titus, emperor, 46. Tolbiac, the battle of, 165. Totila, king of the Ostrogoths, be- sieges and takes Rome, December 17, 546, 205. 500 Touloun, khan of the Cieorgians; his victories over the Huns, 125, Tours, domination of tlie priests in, 139. Trajan, emperor, 46. Treves, the sack of, by the Gauls, 374. Tribonian, the legislator of Justinian, 192. Trinitarian controversy, 8T. Turin, 153. Tycho Brahe, 25. Ubba, son of Rsegner Lodbrog-; de- feat and death of, 419. Ulphilas, bishop, the apostle of the Gauls, 109. Usbecs, inhabitants of Tartary, 67. Uther Pendragon, 407. Valens, emperor, his Vv^eaknesSj 100. Marches in person against the Goths; his defeat and death, Au- gust 9_, 378, 105. Valentinian, emperor, his talents; di- vides the empire with his brother Valens, 98. His brilliant victories, 99. His war against the Q.i!adi ; liis death, NovemlDer 17, ^^IS, 101. Valentinian IL, his education, 112. Assassination of, May 15, 392, 114. Valentinian 111., assassination of, 157. Valkyries, 74. Valid, 285. Vandals, a colony of, trans])orted into England, 53. lletreat of, into the mountains of Gallicia, 144. Their cruel persecution in the name of the Arian faith, 126. Their king- dom destroyed, 199. Venetians, independence of, 353. Venice, formation and origin of, 152. Institution of the doge of, in 697, 353. Haughty independence of the sailors, 474. Vcserru<^, the battle of, 187. Vespasian, Flavius, emperor, death of, 79, 46. Vincy, the battle of, 305. Viomark, king of the Bretons, 351. Visigotlis, the provinces of Aquitaine and Narbonnese Gaul ceded to tliemby Honorius, 133. The wan- dering life of; religion of, 138. De-, feat of, at the battle of Vougle, 109/ Vitellius, emperor, 46. Vitiges, king of the Ostrogoths, his courage and ability, 203. He be- sieges Kome; suri'enders himself prisoner to Belisarius, 204. Vortigern, chief or king of Britain, 407. Vortimer, 407. Vougle, the battle of, 169. Walamir, king of the Osti'ogoths, 175. Wallia, king of the Visigoths, makes an alliance with the Romans; re- stores Placidia to her brother, 143. Death of, 143. Warnefrid, Paul, a Lombard historian, 212. Warnes, tiie, 180. Wedekind, one of the petty kings of y/estphaha, his courage and perse- verance; his hatred of the Franks, 321. Submission of, to Charle- magne, 322. Wessex, the kingdom of, founded in 519,byCerdic, 408. White Huns, 196. Widimer, king of the Ostrogoths, 175. Wilfrid, St., 234. William, son of Bernhard, duke of Septimania, 374. Wisigoths, or V/est Goths, 75. Witena-gemote, 409. Witiza, king of the Visigoths of Spain, 299. Worms, the diet of, 323. Wulford, mayor of Austrasia, 225. Wuttrade, 189. Yemen, the kingdom of, 249. Yezdegerd, king of Persia, 269. De- feat and death of, 275. Yezed, son of Moaviah, 283. Zama, 302. Zengis, or Timur the Tartar, his cru- elty, 67. 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It also contains an account of the mythology and litera- ture of the ancient North— the Icelandic language pre- vailing all over the Scandinavian countries until the formation of the present living tongues of Sweden and Di;nmark— an analysis of the Eddas, Sagas, and various chronicles and songs relating to the Northern deities and heroes, constituting the original materials from which the work has been principally composed. It is intended to illustrate the history of France and England during Uie middle ages, and at the same time to serve as an introduction to tiie modern history of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. THE PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIAN PHILOSO- PHY. Containing the Doctrines, Duties, Admoni- tions, and Consolations, of the Christian Religion. By JoH^f Burns, M. D., F. R. S. From the 4th London edition. In 1 vol. 12mo. " The author has unfolded the principles of Christianily with much candor and correctness ; he has explained our personal and relative duties in a just %nd philosophical manner ; and, by (he ease and unaffected simplicity of his style, has rendered his treatise pleasing as well as instiuctive. — His remarks on brotherly love, in that part of h's work embracing the relative duties, possess much to interest."— vj Traveller. " The book has a hi^h reputation in Great Britain, and there is no being cipible of reflection, who has not need, and upon whom it is not incumbent, to obKin light, and bestow concern on the topics which are here discussed. " Every page that directs the mind to what should be deemed the main in terest nf life, and causes operative thought in ulterior destinies, in of inesti- mable value."— A^at. Gazette. PRIVATE MEMOIRS of NAPOLEON BO- NAPARTE, from the French of M. Fauve- LET DE BouRRiENNE, PHvate Secretary to the Emperor. The peculiar advantages of position in regard to his present subject, soleljr enjoyed by M. de Bourri- enne, his literary accomplishments and moral quali- fications, have already obtained for these memoirs the first rank in contemporary and authentic history. In France, where they had been for years expected with anxiety, and where, since the revolution, no work connected with that period or its consequent events has created so great a sensation, the volumes of Bour- rienne have, from the first, been accepted as the only trustworthy exhibition of the private life and political principles of Napoleon. "We know from the best political authority now liv- ing in England, that the writer s accounts are perfectly corroborated by facts."— Zit. Oaz. THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. With coloured plates : elegantly bound, with gilt edges : a beautiful volume for a present. THE HISTORY OF LOUISIANA, particu- larly of the Cession of that Colony to the United States of North America ; with an Introductory Essay on the Constitution and Government of the United States, by M. de Marbois, Peer of France, translated from the French by an American Citizen. In 1 vol. 8vo. SISMONDI'S HISTORY OF THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE: Comprising a View of the Invasion of the Barbarians. RANDOLPH'S LETTERS. Letters of John Ran- dolph to a young relative, embracing a series of years, from early youth to mature manhood. In one vol. "This collection, made by the voung relative himself, is entirely authentic. The letters were selected from among several hundred, as most fit for publication. Every one of them is strongly characteristic. They are made up of excellent instructions to his relative, respect- ing personal conduct and the culture of his mind ; philo- sophical remarks; accounts of his own situation and feelings ; notices of his acquaintance, &c."— .AOat. Oaz. "The letters now published exhibit manv amiable traits of private character, and show how keenly he suf- fered from his own overwrought sensibilities. Thev abound in evidences of good feeling, and good sense. As specimens of epistolary style, they may l>e safely con- sulted; while, as fin-iiishing a closer insight into the views and habits of a man who was misunderstood by many, and whose history is part of the history of his country, they should be read by a]V'—Daihj Chronicle. CLARENCE ; a Tale of our own Times. By the Author of Redwood, Hope Leslie, &c. In 2 vols. AMERICAN QUARTERLY REVIEW, pub- lished on the first of March, June, Septem- ber, and December. Price $5 per ann. */ A few complete Sets of the Work are still for sale. CONSIDERATIONS ON THE CURREN- CY AND BANKING SYSTEM OF THE UNITED STATES. By Albert Galla- tin. THE SUMMER FETE. A Poem, with Songs. By Thomas Moore, Esq., Author of Irish Melo- dies, &c. MISCELLANEOUS. TOUR OF A GERMAN PRINCE, (Puckler MusKAU,) through the Southern and West- ern parts of England, Wales, Ireland, and France. In 8vo. " It contains the least prejudiced and most acute no- tices we iiave read of tlie habits and modes of thinking of Englishmen, and the merits and defects of the country and society."— Olobe. CONVERSATIONS WITH LORD BY- RON ON THE SUBJECT OF RELI- GION. By Kennedy. 12mo. TRAVELS OF AN IRISH GENTLEMAN, IN SEARCH OF A RELIGION. Vv^ith Notes and Illustrations. By the Editor of Captain Rock's Memoirs. In 1 vol. 12mo. "Considering the circumstances under which these volumes are given to the public, we consider their con- tents as amongst tha most interesting records of which the assertion of the human mind ever formed the theme." — Monthly Review. " The masterly manner in which Mr. Moore has brought together his arguments, the great extent and minuteness of his researches into ancient author- ities, his intimacy with the customs and traditions of other times, and his close and critical knowledge of the ancient languages, will surprise the reader of his Trav- els, who may have measured his talents by his songs." — American Sentinel. A GUIDE TO AN IRISH GENTLEMAN IN HIS SEARCH FOR A RELIGION. By the Rev. Mortimer O'Sullivan, A. M. 1 vol. 12mo. Being an answer to Moore's work. THE ECONOMY OF MACHINERY AND MANUFACTURES. By Chares Babbage. 18mo. " Of the many publications which have recently issued from the press, calculated to give a popular and attractive form to the results of science, we look upon this volume as by far the most valuable. Mr. Babbage's name is well known in connexion with the general subject of which he has here undertaken to treat. But it will be diflicult for the reader who does not possess the volume itself, to understand the happy style, the judgment and tact, by means of which the author has contrived to lend almost the charm of romance to the apparently dry and technical theme which he has chosen." — Monthly Rev. OUSELEY'S REMARKS on the STATIS- TICS AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. " The author is a man of solid sense, friendly to this country, and his remarks have t!ie value and interest of which his character and inquiries authorized the ex- pectation." — JVational Gaictte. TWO YEARS AND A HALF IN THE NAVY, or. Journal of a Cruise in the Mediterranean and Levant, on board THE U. S. Frigate Constellation, in the Years 1829, 1830, and 1S3L By E. C. Wines. In 2 vols. 12mo. " The author is a gentleman of classical ed;jcation, a shrewd observer, a lively writer, whose natural manner is always agreeable ; whose various matter is generally entertaining and instructive; and whose descriptions are remarkably graphic. The greater portion of his pages have yielded us both profit and pleasure." — Mat. Gaz. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SEL- BORNE. By the late Rev. Gilbert White, A. M., Fellow of the Oriel College, with additions, by Sir William Jardine, Bart., F. R. S. E. F. L. S. M. W. S., Author of " Il- lustrations of Ornithology." 1 vol. 18mo. "White's History of Selborne, the most fascinating piece of rural writing and sound English philosophy that has ever issued from the press." — Athencpum. The duchess of BERRI in LA VENDEE, comprising a Narrative of her Adventures, with her private papers and secret corres- pondence. By General Dermoncourt, who arrested her royal highness at Nantes. In 1 vol. 12mo. [This edition exclusively contains the important documents and papers which would have led to the seizure of the work in France, had they been published there.] " Upon its high interest we need not enlarge : the personal adventures of the princess, her journeyings on foot and on horseback, in disguise and la her own character, her mental and bodily suflFer'ngs, her hopes and her di s- pair, are a romance, and seem to belong to another age. They recall the wanderings and the perils of our own Charles Edward, with all the addi- tional interest which must attach to the daring and the sufl'ering of a wo- man." — Atlitnxuni. AN HISTORICAL INQUIRY INTO THE PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION OF THE PRECIOUS METALS, from the Earliest Ages, and into the Influence of their Increase or Diminution on the Prices of Commodities. By William Jacob, Esq. F. R. S. In 8vo. " Mr. Jacob's Historical Inquiry into the Production and Consumption of the Precious Metals, i» one of the most curious and important works which has lately is- sued from the press." — Spectator. " It was written at the suggestion of the late Mr. Huskisson, and displays the fruits of much industry and research, guided by a sound judgment, and embodying more learning than is usually brought to bear on sta- tistical or economical subjects. We recommend the book to general attention." — Times, Sept. 2, 1831. NARRATIVE OF A VOYAGE TO THE PACIFIC AND BEHRING'S STRAIT, to co-operate with the Polar Expeditions: performed in his Majesty's ship Blossom, under the command of Capt. P. W. Beechey, R. N., in the years 1825, 26, 27, 28. 8vo. " The most interesting of the whole series of expedi- tions to the North Pole." — Quarterly Review. "This expedition will be for ever memorable as one v/hich has added immensely to our knowledge of this earth that we inhabit." — Blackwood's Mag. " Captain Beechey's work is a lasting monument of his own abilities, and an honor to his country."— Zif. Gaz. A GENERAL VIEW of the PROGRESS of ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY, chiefly during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. By Sir James Mackintosh, M. P. In 8vo. "The best offspring of the pen of an author who in philosophical spirit, knowledge and reflection, richness of moral sentiment, and elegance of style, has altogether no superior— perhaps no equal— among his contempora- ries. Some time ago we made copious extracts from the beautiful work. We could not recommend the whole too earnestly." — JVational Gazette. HISTORY OF ENGLAND, by Sir James Mackintosh. Octavo edition. *^* The first volume of this edition will contain the same matter as the first three volumes of the 18mo. edition. THE INFIRMITIES OF GENIUS, illus- trated by referring the anomalies in the | literary character, to the habits and consti- tutional peculiarities of Men of Genius. By R. R. Madden, Esq. In 2 vols. 12mo. " This is a very valuable and interestins; work, full of new views and curious deductions ; beginning with general remarks on the influence of lit- erary habits on the constitution, and thence proceeding to make the theory more actual by its application to particular instances. " His physical biographies, if we may so term them, of Burns, Covrper, Byron, and Scott, are of a very curious and novel kind ; written with equal feeling and observation. He traces Cowper's malady to its line source, monomania on religious subjects; and the tone of the remarKs is at once so just and so candid, that we cannot do better than give a brief portion." — Literary Gazette CABINET I.IBRARY. No. 1.— NARRATIVE OF THE LATE WAR IN GERMANY AND FRANCE. By the Marquess of Londonderry. With a Map. No. 2.— JOURNAL of a NATURALIST, with plates. No. 3.— AUTOBIOGRAPHY of SIR WAI^ TER SCOTT. With a portrait. No. 4.— MEMOIRS of SIR WALTER RA- LEGH. By Mrs. A. T. Thomson. With a portrait No. 5.— LIFE OF BELISARIUS. By Lord Mahon. MILITARY MEMOIRS OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. By Capt. Moyle Sherer, Author of Recollections of the Peninsula. In 2 vols. 18mo. "The tone of feeling and reflection which per- vades the work is in the characteristic mood of the writer, considerate, ardent, and chivalrous ; his prin- ciples, as might be expected, are sound and independ- ent, and his language is frequently rich in those beau- ties which distinguish his previous writings. To us it appears a work which will not discredit its illustri- ous subject." — United Service Journal. GLEANINGS in NATURAL HISTORY, being a Companion to the Journal of a Nat- uralist. " The Cabinet Library bids fair to be a series of great value, and is recommended to public and private libraries, to professional men, and miscellaneous readers generally. It is beautifully printed, and furnished at a price which will place it within the reach of all classes of society."—- American Traveller. " The series of instructive, and, in their original form, expensive works, which these enterprising publishers are now issuing under the title of the "Cabinet Library," is a fountain of useful, and almost universal knowledge ; the advantages of which, in forming the opinions, tastes' and manners of that portion of society, to which this varied information is yet new, cannot be too highly estimated.'-'— JVafionoiJoMrnaZ. Messrs. Carey and Lea have commenced a series of publications under the above title, which are to appear monthly, and which seem likely, from the specimen before us, to acquire a high degree of popularity, and to afford a mass of various information and rich entertainment, once eminently useful and strongly attractive. The mechanical execution is fine, the paper and typography excellent." — Mashville Banner. MEMOIRS OF THE lilFE OF SIR ^VAIi- TER RALEGH, Avitli some Accoimt of tlie Period in wliicli he lived. By MRS. A. T. THOMSON. With a Portrait. " Such is the outline of a life, which, in Mrs. Thom- son's hands, is a mine of interest; from the first page to the last the attention is roused and sustained, and while we approve the manner, we still more applaud the spirit ill which it is executed."— Literary Gazette. JOURNAL OF A NATURALIST. Plates. ■With 'Plants, trees, and stones we note ; Birds, insects, beasts, and rural things. We again most strongly recommend this little unpre- tending volume to the attention of every lover of nature, and more particularly of our country readers. It will induce them, we are sure, to examine more closely than they have been accustomed to do, into the objects of ani- mated nature, and such examination will prove one of the most innocent, and the most satisfactory sources of gratification and amusement. It is a book that ought to find its way into every rural drawing-room in the kingdom, and one that may safely be placed in every lady's boudoir, be her rank and station in life what they may."' — Quarterly Review, No. LXXVIII. "We think that there are few readers who will not be delighted (we are certain all will be instructed) by the ' Journal of a Naturalist.' " — Monthly Review. " This is a most delightful book on the most delightful of all studies. We are acquainted with no previous work which bears any resemblance to this, except ' White's History of Selborne,' the most fascinating piece of rural writing and sound English philosophy that ever ssued from the press." — Mhenceum. " The author of the volume now before us, has pro- duced one of the most charming volumes we remember to have seen for a long time." — JVew Monthly Magazine, June, 1829. " A delightful volume — perhaps the most so — nor less instructive and amusing — given to Natural History since White's Selborne." — Blackwood's Magazine. " The Journal of a Naturalist, being the second num- ber of Carey and Lea's beautiful edition of the Cabinet Library, is the best treatise on subjects connected with this train of thought, that we have for a long time pe rused, and we are not at all surprised that it should have received so high and flattering encomiums from the Eng- lish press generally." — Boston Traveller, "Furnishing an interesting and familiar account of the various objects of animated nature, but calculated to afford both instruction and entertainment." — J\rash- ville Banner. " One of the most agreeable works of its kind in the language." — Courier de la Louisiane. " It abounds with numerous and curious facts, pleas- ing illustrations of the secret operations and economy of nature, and satisfactory displays of the power, wisdom and goodness, of the great Creator."— PAi/ati. Album, THE MARQ,UESS OF LONDONDERRY'S NARRATIVE OF THE LATE MVAR IN GERUIANY AND FRANCE. With a Map. " No history of the events to which it relates can be correct without reference to its statements."— Literary Gazette. "The events detailed in this volume cannot fail to excite an intense interest." — Dublin Literary Gazette, "The only connected and well authenticated account we have of the spirit-stirring scenes which preceded the fall of Napoleon. It introduces us into the cabinets and presence of the allied monarchs. We observe the secret policy of each individual : we see the course pursued by the wily Bernadotte, the temporizing Metternichi, and the ambitious Alexander. The work deserves a place in every historical library." — Globe. " We hail with pleasure the appearance of the first volume of the Cabinet Library." " The author had sin- gular facilities for obtaining the materials of his work, and he has introduced us to the movements and measures of cabinets which have hitherto been bidden from the world." — American Traveller. "It maybe regarded as the most authentic of all the publications which profess to detail the events of the important campaigns, terminating with that which se- cured the capture of the French metropolis." — JVat. Jour- nal. " It is in feet the only authentic account of the memo- rable events to which it refers."— JVasAriWe Banner. " The work deserves a place in every library."— PAiVa- delphia Album. CLASSICAL LITERATURE. INTRODUCTION to the STUDY of the GREEK CLASSIC POETS, for the use of Young Persons at School or College. Contents. — General Introduction ; Ho- meric Questions ; Life of Homer; Iliad; Odyssey; Margites; Batrachomyomachia ; Hymns ; Hesiod. By Henry Nelson Cole- ridge. " We have been highly pleased with this little volume. This work supplies a want which we have often painfully f:^It, and afibrds a manual which we should gladly see placed in the hands of every embryo under-graduate. We look forward to the next portion of this work with very eager and impatient expectation." — British Critic. " Mr. Coleridge's work not only deserves the praise of clear, eloquent and scholar-like exposition of the prelimi- nary matter, which is necessary in order to understand and enter info the character of the great Poet of anti- quity; but it has likewise the more rare merit of being admirably adapted for its acknowledged purpose. It is written in thai fresh and ardent spirit, which to the con- genial mind of youth, w'lW convey instruction in the most effective manner, by awakening the desire of it; and by enlisting the lively and buoyant feelings in the cause of useful and improving study; while, by its preg- nant brevity, it is more likely to stijnulate tlsan to super- sede more profound and extensive research. If then, as it is avowedly intended for the use of the younger readers of Homer, and, as it is impossible not to discover, with a more particular view to the great school to which the au- thor owes his education, we shall be much mistaken if it does not become as popular as it will be useful in that celebrated establishment."— Qwarfer^y Review. " We sincerely hope that Mr. Coleridge will favor us with a continuation of his work, whicn he promises."— Qent. Mag. " The author of this elegant volume has collected a vast mass of valuable information. To the higher classes of the public schools, and young men of universities, this volume will be especially valuable ; as it will afford an agreeable relief of light reading to more grave studies, at once instructive and entertaining." — Wesleyan Methodist Magazine. ATLAS OF ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY, con- sisting of 21 Colored Maps, with a complete Accentuated Index. By Samuel Butler, D. D., F. R. S. &c. Archdeacon of Derby. By the same Author. GEOGRAPHIA CLASSICA: a Sketch of Ancient Geography, for the Use of Schools. In 8vo. Extract of a Letter from Professor Stuart of Andover. " I have used Butler's Atlas Classica for 12 or 14 years, and prefer it on the score of convenience and correctness to any atlas within the compass of my knowledge. It is evidently a work of much care anil taste, and most happily adapted to classical readers and indeed ail others, who consult the history of past ages. I have long cherish- ed a strong desire to see the work brought forward in this country, and I am exceedingly gratified that you have carried through this undertaking. The beautiful manner in which the specimen is executed that you have sent me does great credit to engravers and publishers. It cannot be that our schools and colleges will fail to adopt this work, and bring it into very general circulation. I know] of none which in all respects would supply its place." "The abridged but classical and excellent work of But- ler, on Ancient Geography, which you are printing as an accompaniment to the maps, I consider one of the most attractive works of the kind, especially for j'oung persons studying the classics, that has come under my notice. I wish you the most ample success in these highly useful publications." MECHANICS, MANUFACTURES, &c. A PRACTICAL TREATISE on RAIL- ROADS, AND INTERIOR COMMUNI- CATION IN GENERAL— containing an account of the performances of the diiferent Locomotive Engines at, and subsequent to, the Liverpool Contest ; upwards of two hundred and sixty Experiments with Tables of the comparative value of Canals and Rail- roads, and the power of the present Locomo- tive Engines. By Nicholas Wood, Colliery Viewer, Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, &c. 8vo. with plates. " In this, the able author has brought up his treatise to the date of the latest improvements in this nationally important plan. We consider the volume to be one of great general interest." — Lit. Qaz. " We must, in justice, refer the reader to the work itself, strongly assuring him that, whether he be a man of science, or one totally unacquainted with its technical difficulties, he will here receive instruction and pleasure, in a degree which we have seldom seen united before." — Monthly Rev. REPORTS ON LOCOMOTIVE and FIXED ENGINES. By J. Stephenson and J. Walker, Civil Engineers. With an Ac- count of the Liverpool and Manchester Rail- road, by H. Booth. In 8vo. with plates. MILLWRIGHT and MILLER'S GUIDE. By Oliver Evans. New Edition, with ad- ditions and corrections, by the Professor of Mechanics in the Franklin Institute of Pennsylvania, and a description of an im- proved Merchant Flour-Mill, with engrav- ings, by C. & O. Evans, Engineers. THE NATURE and PROPERTIES of the SUGAR CANE, with Practical Directions for its Culture, and the Manufacture of its various Products; detailing the improved Methods of Extracting, Boiling, Refining, and Distilling; also Descriptions of the Best Machinery, and useful Directions for the general Management of Estates. By George Richardson Porter. "This volume contains a valuable mass of scientific and practical information, and is, indeed, a compendium of everything interesting relative to colonial agriculture and manufacture." — Intelligencer. "We can altogether recommend this volume as a most valuable addition to the library of the home West India merchant, as well as that of the resident planter."— Lit. Oazette. " This work may be considered one of the most valua-t ble books that has yet issued from the press connected" with colonial interests; indeed, we know of no greater service we could render West India proprietors, than in recommending the study of Mr. Porter's volume."— Spec- tator. TREATISE ON CLOCK AND WATCH- MAKING, Theoretical and Practical. By Thomas Reid, Edinburgh, Honorary Mem- ber of the Worshipful Company of Clock- Makers, London. Royal 8vo. Illustrated bv numerous Plates. THE PHOFLE^S Z.I3RAHY. " The editors and publishers should receive the thanks of the present generation, and the gratitude of posterity, for being the first to prepare in this language what deserves to be entitled not the ENCYCLO- PEDIA AMERICANA, but the people's library." — N. Y. Courier and Enquirer. Just Published, by Carey, Lea, d^ Blanchard, And sold in Philadelphia by E. L. Careij <^ A. Hart ; in New York by G. ^ C. Sf H. Carvill ; in Boston by Carter ^ Hendee ; in Baltimore by E. J. Coale, Sr W. ^ J. Neal ; in Washington by Thompson ^ Homans ; in Richmond by J. H.Nash; in Savannah by W. T. Williams; in Charleston by W.HBerrett; in New-Orleans by W. M'Kean ; in Mobile by Odiorne ^ Smith ; and by the principal booksellers throughout the Union, ENCYCLOPiEEIA AMERICANA: A POPULAR DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE, HISTORY, AND POLITICS, BROUGHT DOWN TO THE PRESENT TIME, AND INCLUDING A COPIOUS COLLECTION OF ORIGINAL ARTICLES IN AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY: On the basis of the Seventh Edition of the German CONVERSATIONS-LEXICON. Edited by FRANCIS LIEBER, ASSISTED BY EDWARD WIGGLESWORTH and T. G. BRADFORD, Esqrs. IN THIRTEEN LARGE VOLUMES, OCTAVO, PRICE TO SUBSCRIBERS, BOUND IN CLOTH, TWO DOLLARS AND A HALF EACH. EACH VOLUME CONTAINS BETWEEN 600 AND 700 PAGES. "THE WORLD-RENOWNED CONVERSATIONS- LEXICON."— £«!2».6m/-^ A Review. " To suparsede cumbrous Encyclopsedias, and put within the reach of iha poorest man, a complete library, equal to about forty or fifty good-sized octavos, embracing every possible subject of interest to the number of 20,100 in ail — provided he can spare either from his earnings or his ex- travagancies, tzoenty cents a week, for three years, a library so contrived, as to be equally suited to the learned and the unlearned, — the mechanic — the merchant, and the pro- fessional man." — JV. Y. Courfer and Inquirer. "The reputation of this valuable work has augmented with each volume; and if the unanimous opinion of the press, uttered from all quarters, be true, v.'hich in this instance happens to be the case, it is indeed one of tlie best of public tions. It should be in the possession of every intelligent man, as it is a library in itself, compris- injr an immense mass of lore upon almost every possible subject, and in the cheapest possible form." — JV. Y. Mirror. "Witnesses from every part of the country concurred in declaring that the Encycloptedia Americana was in a fair way to degrade the dignity of learning, and especially he learning of Encyclopiedias, by making it too cheap — that the multitudes of all classes were infatuated with it n saying in so many words from the highest t'O the low- est the more we see of the work the better we like it.' " — JV* Y. Courie-' and luqziirer. The articles in the present volume appear to us to evince the same ability and research which gained so favorable a reception for the work at its commencement. The Appendix to the volume now before us, containing an account of the Indian Languages of America, must prove higlily interesting to the reader in this country; and it is atonce remarkable as a specimen of history and philology. The work altogether, we may again be permitted to ob- serve, reflects distinguished credit upon the literary and scientific character, as well as the scholarship of our country." — Charleston Courier. '• The copious information which this work affords on American subjects, fully justifies its title of an American Dictionary; while at the same time the extent, variety, and felicitous disposition of its topics, make it the most convenient and satisfactory Encyclopedia that we have ever seen." — JSTational Journal. " If the succeeding volumes shall equal in merit the one before us, we may confidently anticipate for the work a reputation and usefulness which ought to secure for it the most flattering encour.agement and patronage." — Fed- eral Gazette. " A compendious library, and invaluable book of refer- ence."— JV. Y. American. " The variety of topics is of coui-se vast, and they are treated in a manner which is at once so full of informa- tion and so interesting, that the work, instead of being merely referred to, might be regularly perused with as much pleasure as profit." — Baltimore American. " We view it as a publication worthy of the age and of the country, and cannot but believe the discrimination of our countrymen will sustain the publishers, and well re- ward them for this contribution to American Literature." — Baltimore Patriot. " It reflects the greatest credit on those who have been concerned in its production, and promises, in a variety of respects, to be the best as well as the most compendious dictionary of the arts, sciences, history, politics, biogra- phy, &:c. which has yet been compiled. The style of the portion we have read is terse and perspicuous; and it is really curious how so much scientific and other informa- tion could have been so satisfactorily communicated in such brief limits." — JV. Y. Evening Fust. "Those who can, by any honest modes of economy, reserve the sum of two dollars and fifty cents quarterly, from their family expenses, may pay for this work as fast as it is published; and we confidcintly believe that they will find at tjie end that they never purchased so much general, practical, useful information at so cheap a rate." — Journal of Education. " If the encouragement to the publishers should corres- pond with the testimony in favor of their enterprise, and the beautiful and faithful style of its execution, the hazard of the undertaking, bold as it was, will be well compen- sated ; and our libraries will be enriched by the most gene- rally useful encyclopedic dictionary that has been offered to the readers of the English language. Full enough for the general scholar, and plain enough for every capacity, it is far more convenient, in every view and form, than its more expensive and ponderous predecessors." — Ameri- can Farmer. "The high reputation of the contributors to this work, will not fail to insure it a favorable reception, and its own merits will do the rest." — Silliman's Journ. " The Encylopredia Americana is a prodigious improve- ment upon all that has gone before it ; a thing for our country, as well as the country that gave it birth, to be proud of; an inexhaustible treasury of useful, pleasant, and familiar learning on every possible subject, so arranged as to be speedily and safely referred to on emergency, as well as on deliberate inquiry; and better still, adapted to the understanding, and put within the reach of the mul- titude. * * * The Ejcyclopajdia Americana is a work withont which no library worthy of the name can here- after be made up." — Yankee. I ' ENCYCLOPAEDIA AMERICANA. " The work will be a valuable possession to every family | or individual that can afford to purchase it ; and we take pleasure, therefore, in extending the knowledge of its mcri ts." — JVational Intelligencer. "This work appears to improve as it issues from the press. The number of able writers, who contribute ori- ginal matter in all the departments of literature and sci- ence is amply sufficient to give it celebrity and high char- acter. To men engaged in the active pursuits of life — whose time is precious — this popular dictionary is a most valuable and ready mode of reference. It embraces brief views and sketches of all the late discoveries in science — and the present condition of literature, politics, &c. &c. Every merchant's counting-room — every lawyer's library — every mechanic — every farmer ought to possess a copy of this useful and valuable work." — Courier. "From the specimen which has already been given, we have no hesitation in saying, that in regard to intelli- gence, skill, and faithful diligence, it is a work of the very highest order. We know of no similar publication that can bear any comparison with it for the rich variety of valuable information, which it condenses within so small a compass. It is free from all the narrowness of English prejudice, it contains many important and interesting details which can be found in no English production, and is a work which could be written by none but German scholars, more than two hundred of whom were employed in the original compilation." — Boston Observer. " This cannot but prove a valuable addition to the lite- rature of the age." — Mcr. Advertiser. " The vast circulation this work has had in Europe, where it has already been reprinted in four or five lan- guages, not to speak of the numerous German editions, of which SEVEN have been published, speaks loudly in favor of its intrinsic merit, without which such a celebrity could never have been attained. To every man engaged in public business, who needs a correct and ample book of reference on various topics of science and letters, the Encyclopedia Americana will be almost invaluable. To individuals obliged to go to situations where books are neither numerous nor easily procured, the rich contents of these twelve volumes will prove a mine which will amply repay its purchaser, and be with difficulty exhaust- ed ; and we recommend it to their patronage in the full conviction of its worth. Indeed, it is difficult to say to what class of readers such a book would not prove useful, nay, almost indispensable, since it combines a great amount of valuable matter in small compass, and at moderate expense, and is in every respect well suited to augment the reader's stock of ideas, and powers of con- versation, without severely taxing time or fatiguing attention." — Am. Daily Advertiser. "The department of American Biography, a subject of which it should be disgraceful to be ignorant, to the de- gree that many are, is, in this work, a prominent feature, and has received the attention of one of the most inde- fatigable writers in this department of literature, which the present age can furnish." — Boston Courier. " According to the plan of Dr. Lieber, a desideratum will be supplied; the substance of contemporary know- ledge will be brought within a small compass ;— and the character and uses of a manual will be imparted to a kind of publication heretofore reserved, on strong shelves, for eccasional reference. By those who understand the German language, the Conversation Lexicon is consulted ten times for one application to any English Encyclops- dia." — J^ational Gazette. " The volume now published is not only highly honor- able to the taste, ability, and industry of its editors and publishers, but furnishes a proud sample of the accuracy and elegance with which the most elaborate and impor- tant literary enterprises may now be accomplished in our country. Of the manner in which the editors have thus far completed their task, it is impossible, in the course of a brief newspaper article, to speak with adequate justice." — Boston Bulletin. " It continues to be particularly rich in the depart- ments of Biography and Natural History. When we lo«k at the large mass of miscellaneous knowledge spread before the reader, in a form which has never been equalled for its condensation, and conveyed in a style that cannot be surpassed for propriety and perspicuity, we cannot but think that the American Encyclopaedia deserves a place in every collection, in which works of reference form a por- Jion." — Southern Patriot. " By fai in this cc ■jy^^g.t^'^tf'^ offered for sale Nearly all of the volumes of this work are now before the public, and the reception they have met with is the best evidence that the publishers have fulfilled the promises made at its outset. They have now only to promise, for the editors and themselves, that no exertion shall be spared to render the remain- ing volumes equal to those already published, and thus sustain the reputation it has acquired. The sub- scription is large, and increasing ; and in those quar- ters where its circulation is greatest, and where it is best known, there is a constantly increasing demand. The publishers invite the attention of those who may not already have possessed themselves of it, or may not have had an opportunity to become acquainted with its merits, to the following account of the ori- ginal work, upon which it is based, and which is termed by the Edinburgh Review — THE WORLJ)-RENOWNED LEIPZIG CONVERSATIONS- It was intended to supply a want occasioned by the character of the age, in which the sciences, arts, trades, and the various forms of knowledge and of active life, had become so much extended and di- versified, that no individual engaged in business could become well acquainted with all subjects of general interest; while the wide diffusion of information ren- dered such knowledge essential to the character of an accomplished man. This want, no existing works were adequate to supply. Books treating of particular branches, such as gazetteers, &c. were too confined in character ; while voluminous Encyclopaedias were too learned, scientific, and cumbrous, being usually elaborate treatises, requiring much study or previous acquaintance with the subject discussed. The con- ductors of the Conversation Lexicon endeavored to select from every branch of knowledge what was necessary to a well-informed mind, and to give popu- lar views of the more abstruse branches of learning and science ; that their readers might not be incom- moded, and deprived of pleasure or improvement, by ignorance of facts or expressions used in books or con- versation. Such a work must obviously be of great utility to every class of readers. It has been found so much so in Germany, that it is met with every- where, among the learned, the lawyers, the military, artists, merchants, mechanics, and men of all stations. The reader may judge how well it is adapted to its object, from the circumstance, that though it now consists of twelve volumes, seven editions, comprising about ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND COPIES, have been printed in less than fifteen years. It has been trans- lated into the Swedish, Danish and Dutch languages, and a French translation is now preparing in Paris. In the preparation of the American edition, no ex- pense has been spared to secure the ablest assistance, and the editors have been aided by many gentlemen of distinguished ability. The American Biography, which is very extensive, has been furnished by Mr. Walsh, who has long paid particular attention to that branch of our literature, and from materials in the collection of which he has been engaged for some years. For obvious reasons, the notices of distinguished Americans are con- fined to deceased individuals : the European biogra- phy contains notices of all distinguished living char- acters, as well as those of past times. The articles on Zoology and the various branches of Natural Science, and. those on Chemistry and Mineralogy, have been prepared expressly for this work by gentlemen distinguished in the several de- partments. In relation to the Fine Arts, the work is exceedingly rich. Great attention was given to this in the German work, and the Editors have been anxious to render it, by the necessary additions, as perfect as possible. To gentlemen of the Bar, the work will be pecu- liarly valuable, as in cases where legal subjects are treated, an account is given of English, French, Ger- man and American Law. I .^^^ % ^i t.o< .0 ^ ■ >P^^. .0 -^' ' ^j LIBRARY BINDING «0 J» "* * » * "^ \/ S " • , 'V> -o.*^ EB 71i -^<,^ . 5T. AUGUSTINE ^-^ ^ DA ^^^32084 oNo^ -^