Part 6

11. His next expedition was against Bavaria, which was soon reduced to subjection. This war was caused by the insubordination of duke Tassilo, whose wife, a daughter of Desiderius, urged him on to avenge the overthrow of her father. Tassilo made an alliance with the Huns, his neighbors, and prepared to attack the king. Karl, incensed at such presumption, immediately led an army in person to Bavaria, encamping on the river Lech, which separates Alamannia and Bavaria. Before invading the province he sent an embassy to the duke, who, seeing the hopelessness of attempting to oppose the king, immediately made his submission, offering hostages (among them his son Theodo) and swearing never again to revolt. Thus this war, which in the beginning threatened to be a serious affair, was brought to a rapid and successful conclusion.{46} But the king later summoned Tassilo to his presence and kept him a prisoner, not permitting him to return to his duchy; and from that time on the province was not ruled by a duke, but was divided into counties over which Karl placed counts of his own choosing.

12. This rebellion having been put down, the king next made an attack upon a tribe of the Slavs, whom we call the Wiltzi, in their own tongue, Welatabi.... The cause of this war was the attacks which the Welatabi were making upon the Abodriti, who were formerly allies of the Franks, and their refusal to desist from these attacks at the command of the king. There is a great gulf [Baltic Sea] extending east from the western ocean [Atlantic], whose length is unknown, but whose width nowhere exceeds one hundred miles, and is in many places narrower. Many tribes dwell along its shores: on the northern shore and in the islands, the Danes and the Swedes, whom we call Northmen; on the southern shore, the Slavs and the Aisti, and other tribes, among whom are these Welatabi. These latter were defeated in a single campaign and have never dared to revolt again.

13. The greatest of all the wars of Karl except the Saxon war, was that against the Avars and the Huns.... The king himself led one expedition against them into Pannonia, where they dwelt, but intrusted the later ones to his son Pippin and to the dukes and counts of the neighboring regions. The war lasted for eight years, and the bloody character of it is shown by the fact that to-day Pannonia is uninhabited and the site of the Khan's palace is a desert, containing no trace of former human habitation. The whole nobility of the Huns was destroyed in the course of this war, and all the treasure of the Avars carried away by the Franks.{47} ...

14. ... His last war was waged against the Danes or Northmen. Beginning with small piratical raids, they had grown so bold that they attacked the shores of Gaul and Germany with large fleets, and their king, Godfrid, planned the conquest of Germany itself. He already claimed the Frisians and Saxons as his subjects, and had subjected the Abodriti and made them tributary. He even boasted that he would shortly proceed to Aachen and attack Karl himself. And indeed there was real danger that he might undertake this, but he was slain by one of his own followers and the danger passed.

15. These are the wars waged by this mighty king during the forty-seven years of his reign. Through his conquests the kingdom of the Franks as he had received it from his father Pippin was almost doubled in area. When he came to the throne it included only a part of Gaul and of Germany; in Gaul, that part bounded by the ocean [Atlantic], the Rhine, the Loire, and the Balearic Sea [Mediterranean]; in Germany, that part bounded by the Rhine, the Danube, the land of the Saxons, and the Saale, ... with the overlordship of Bavaria and Alamannia. Karl added by his wars Aquitaine and Gascony; the Pyrenees and the land south to the Ebro; ... all of Italy as far south as lower Calabria; ... Saxony, which forms a considerable part of Germany; ... Pannonia and Dacia; Istria, Liburnia, and Dalmatia, except the maritime cities which were allied with the emperor of Constantinople; and, finally, all the barbarous tribes inhabiting Germany, between the Rhine, the Danube, the Vistula, and the ocean [Baltic], ... of whom the most important are the Welatabi, the Sorabi, the Abodriti, and the Bohemians.

16. The glory of his reign was also greatly enhanced by his alliances and friendships with foreign kings and peoples. Thus Aldefonso, king of Gallicia and Asturia,{48} was his ally, and spoke of himself by letters and ambassadors as the man of Karl. The kings of the Scots also were wont to address him as master, calling themselves his subjects and servants, of which expressions there are evidences in letters still existing which they have written to him. He was also in close relations with Aaron [Haroun-al-Raschid],{49} king of the Persians, who ruled almost all of the east outside of India, and who always expressed the greatest friendship and admiration for Karl. On one occasion, when Karl sent an embassy with gifts for the holy sepulchre of our Lord and Saviour, he not only permitted them to fulfil their mission, but even made a present of that holy spot to Karl, to rule as his own. And when the embassy of Karl returned, it was accompanied by ambassadors from Aaron, bearing presents of fine robes, spices, and other eastern treasures. A few years before he sent to Karl at his request an elephant which was the only one he at that time possessed. The emperors of Constantinople, Nicephorus, Michael, and Leo, were his friends and allies and sent many embassies to him. Even when they suspected him of desiring to seize their empire, because he took the title of emperor, they nevertheless entered into alliance with him, to avoid a rupture.

25. He was very eloquent and could express himself clearly on any subject. He spoke foreign languages besides his own tongue, and was so proficient in Latin that he used it as easily as his own language. Greek he could understand better than he could speak.... He was devoted to the study of the liberal arts and was a munificent patron of learned men. Grammar he learned from Peter, an aged deacon of Pisa; in the other studies his chief instructor was Alcuin, a Saxon from England, also a deacon, and the most learned man of his time. With him he studied rhetoric, dialectic, and especially astronomy.... He tried also to learn to write, keeping tablets under the pillow of his couch to practise on in his leisure hours. But he never succeeded very well, because he began too late in life.{50}

28. His last visit to Rome was made because the Romans had attacked and injured pope Leo, tearing out his eyes and tongue, and had thus forced the pope to call on the king for aid. And having come to Rome to restore the church which had greatly suffered during the strife, he remained there all winter. It was during this time that he received the title of emperor and Augustus, to which he was at first so averse, that he was wont to say that he would never have entered the church on that day, although it was a great feast day [Christmas], if he had foreseen the plan of the pope. But his great patience and magnanimity finally overcame the envy and hatred of the Roman emperors [of the east], who were indignant at his receiving the title. This he did by sending them frequent embassies and addressing them in his letters as brothers.{51}

29. After he became emperor he undertook a revision of the laws of his empire, which were very defective, for the Franks had two laws [Salic and Ripuarian] differing in many points from one another. But he was never able to do more than to complete the various laws with a few additional sections and cause all the unwritten laws to be put into writing. He also wrote down for preservation the ancient German songs, in which the wars and adventures of old heroes are celebrated. He began also to make a grammar of his native tongue....

30. ... While he was spending the winter in Aachen, he was taken with a severe fever, which the Greeks call pleurisy, and died there on Tuesday, the fifth of the Kalends of February [January 28], in the seventy-second year of his age and the forty-seventh of his reign.

31. On the same day his body was prepared for burial and borne to the church of the Virgin Mary, which he had founded, in the midst of the lamentation of all his people, and there laid to rest. Over his tomb was erected an arch, covered with gold, and having his image and this inscription on it: "Under this tomb lies the body of Karl, the great and orthodox emperor, who greatly increased the kingdom of the Franks and ruled gloriously for forty-seven years. He died when over seventy years of age, in the year of our Lord 814, the 7th indiction, on the fifth of the Kalends of February."

{42} In the late Merovingian period the outlying parts of the kingdom had become practically independent under native rulers, called dukes. One of the first things undertaken by the rulers of the new line was the reduction of these great provinces to subjection as a necessary step in the restoration of the central authority. Much was accomplished in this direction by the mayors, Pippin the Younger (688-714) and Karl Martel (714-741), who attacked the Frisians, the dukes of Aquitaine, Bavaria, and Alamannia. But the work had to be done over and over, and indeed was never permanently accomplished. In Aquitaine Pippin the Short, king from 751 to 768, had several conflicts with the dukes of Aquitaine, Hunold and his son Waifer. This is the struggle which Karl brought to an end as here related.

{43} Pippin had begun his war upon the Lombards for the purpose of freeing the papal domains from their attacks. The Lombards had conceived the ambitious plan of possessing all Italy, and under their kings Liutprand, Aistulf, and Desiderius had begun to carry it out by attacking the exarchate of Ravenna and the lands held by the pope. Pippin had forced Aistulf to give up his conquests (chiefly the exarchate) and had given that territory to the pope (see no. 45). Karl was called into Italy to defend the pope against a new attack by Desiderius, and put a definite end to this danger by conquering the Lombard kingdom and adding it to his own rule. This is a further stage in the connection between the popes and the emperor, between Germany and Italy.

{44} The war against the Saxons and their conquest practically completed the unification of the German tribes on the continent, there remaining outside of the empire of Karl only the Scandinavian peoples in the north and the Angles and Saxons in England. By the conquest of the Saxons a vigorous race of pure German blood was added to the empire; their addition tended to increase the differences between the German and the Gallic portions of the empire, which was the natural basis of the division between France and Germany. The Saxons in the tenth and eleventh centuries were perhaps the chief race of the German kingdom, furnishing the rulers from the accession of Henry I in 919 to the death of Henry II in 1024. Karl's insistence upon the conversion of the Saxons to Christianity is in line with the policy of his predecessors to Christianize all the Germans.

{45} The chief interest of this passage lies in the fact that it is the historical basis of the great French epic, the _Chanson de Roland_. Einhard mentions the death of three men in this attack as of special note; one of them was Hrotland, count of the mark of Brittany, the Roland of the poem.

{46} The overthrow of Tassilo, duke of Bavaria, is a part of the policy of Karl to reduce the great duchies to control. In order to keep these outlying provinces in subjection and to govern them efficiently Karl divided them into counties over which he placed officials dependent directly upon himself and not upon a duke. This policy was carried out in Alamannia, Aquitaine, and Saxony as well, the purpose being to prevent the formation of independent power in the large divisions of the empire. It was successful under Karl, but later the civil wars among his descendants gave opportunity for the rise of similar great rulers in the same provinces (see nos. 24 and 25).

{47} The Avars had come into Europe in the middle of the sixth century, along the Danube. After the Lombards moved into Italy the Avars occupied the whole Danube valley from Vienna to the mouth of the river. The kingdom of the Khan of the Avars probably included the remnants of the Hunnish empire and of the German tribes that had been subject to the Huns.

{48} The kingdom of Gallicia and Asturia was one of the small Christian states in Spain composed of the former inhabitants that had retreated in large numbers to the mountains in the north and west at the time of the Mohammedan invasion (711-720). From these regions they later slowly won back the land from the Mohammedans.

{49} Haroun-al-Raschid was Caliph of the Mohammedan world from 786-809, with his capital at Bagdad. His caliphate is the golden age of the Mohammedans reflected in the "Arabian Nights." The connection of Karl with Haroun and especially the negotiations mentioned here in regard to Jerusalem gave rise to the later legends concerning the crusades of Karl.

{50} The reign of Karl is sometimes spoken of as the Carolingian Renaissance, because of the revived interest in letters and learning that took its impulse from the court of Karl. Here was the famous "palace school" that included such persons as Alcuin, Angilbert, Einhard, Peter of Pisa, Paul the Lombard, etc. The results of the movement were seen in the writings of the time: Einhard's Annals and Vita; the History of the Lombards, by Paul; the poems and letters of Angilbert, etc.; in the formation of the monastery and cathedral schools, and the better learning of the monks and clergy; in the attempts of Karl to revise the texts of the Scriptures and to make new text-books; and in the theological discussions of the ninth century. Evidences of this movement are seen also in some of the letters of Karl that are translated below.

{51} See the note on the coronation of Karl, no. 8. The statement of Einhard that Karl was displeased at this action of the pope has caused considerable discussion; the reason probably was that he was unwilling to arouse the ill-will of the eastern emperors, who would undoubtedly regard the assumption of the imperial crown by Karl as an infringement of their authority and position. See also nos. 13 and 14.

8. The Imperial Coronation of Karl the Great, 800.

Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, II, 7.

Since 476 there had been no emperor in the west, and the emperor at Constantinople had lost control of that part of the Roman empire. The west, however, still regarded itself as a part of the one great empire. The coronation of Karl the Great in 800 is the famous _translatio imperii_, the transfer of the empire, by which according to the papal theory the crown of the Roman empire was taken by the pope from the emperors at Constantinople, and conferred upon the king of the Franks. From this point of view it was the final act in the rebellion of the popes from the control of the emperors of the east. From the point of view of Frankish history, it was the culmination of the connection between the popes and the king of the Franks begun with the coronation of Pippin (see no. 6 and note).

After this, on Christmas day, all gathered together in the aforesaid church of St. Peter and the venerable pope crowned Karl with his own hands with a magnificent crown. Then all the Romans, inspired by God and by St. Peter, keeper of the keys of heaven, and recognizing the value of Karl's protection and the love which he bore the holy Roman church and the pope, shouted in a loud voice: "Long life and victory to Karl, the pious Augustus crowned of God, the great and peace-bringing emperor." The people, calling on the names of all the saints, shouted this three times, before the holy confession of St. Peter, and thus he was made emperor of the Romans by all. Then the pope anointed Karl and his son with the holy oil.

9. General Capitulary about the Missi, 802.

M. G. LL. 4to, II, 1, no. 33; Altmann und Bernheim, no. 2.

The attempts of Karl to create a permanent central government are reflected in the great amount of legislation which has come down to us from his reign. This legislation is mainly in the form of capitularies, _i.e._, edicts or instructions, covering a wide range of subjects and interests. The general capitulary of the year 802, a portion of which is translated here, was issued by Karl after his imperial coronation and his return from Italy. It embodied a great number of instructions to his officials and subjects in regard to their relation to him in his new capacity as emperor. The publication and the enforcement of these instructions were intrusted to the _missi_, who appear now for the first time as regular officials of the empire. These officials were chosen from the counsellors, officials, and great men of the court, both ecclesiastic and secular, and were assigned to definite districts, two _missi_ to each district. The districts were large administrative divisions of the empire including many counties (the regular divisions), and the two _missi_ were to travel through the district assigned to them, looking into the general condition of the people, the administration of local officials, the condition of the royal lands, etc. They held four public courts a year in their district, at which they heard complaints, tried cases, etc. They had authority to control the regular officials and to depose them if necessary. They were supposed to report to the emperor the condition of the empire and to refer to him such cases as they were not able to decide. By means of these officials Karl kept in closer touch with, and maintained a firmer hold upon, the various parts of his empire than was possible merely by his own oversight over the counts, and at the same time avoided the other danger of creating independent rulers in the large districts, by changing the _missi_ every year.

1. Concerning the representatives sent out by the emperor. The most serene and Christian emperor, Karl, chose certain of the ablest and wisest men among his nobles, archbishops, bishops, abbots, and pious laymen, and sent them out through his realm, and through these, his representatives, he gave his people rules to guide them in living justly. He ordered these men to investigate and to report to him any inequality or injustice that might appear in the law as then constituted, that he might undertake its correction. He ordered that no one should dare to change the prescribed law by any trickery or fraud, or to pervert the course of justice for his own ends, as many were wont to do, or to deal unjustly with the churches of God, with the poor or the widows and orphans, or with any Christian man. But he commanded all men to live righteously according to the precepts of God, and to remain each in his own station and calling; the regular clergy to observe the rules of monastic life without thought of gain, nuns to keep diligent watch over their lives, laymen to keep the law justly without fraud, and all, finally, to live together in perfect peace and charity. And he ordered his _missi_, as they desired to win the favor of Almighty God and keep the faith which they had promised him, to inquire diligently into every case where any man complained that he had been dealt with unjustly by anyone, and in the fear of God to render justice to all, to the holy churches of God, to the poor, to widows and orphans, and to the whole people. And if any case arises which they can not correct and bring to justice with the aid of the local counts, they are to make a clear report of it to the emperor. They are not to be hindered in the doing of justice by the flattery or bribery of anyone, by their partiality for their own friends, or by the fear of powerful men.

2. The oath of fidelity to the emperor. He has also commanded that every man in his kingdom, clergyman or layman, who has already taken the oath of fidelity to him as king, shall now renew it to him as emperor; and that all persons over twelve years of age who have not yet taken the oath shall do so now. The nature and extent of the promise should be made known to all, for it includes not only, as some think, a promise of fidelity to the emperor for this life, and an engagement not to bring any enemy into the kingdom nor to take part in or conceal any infidelity to him, but includes all the following:

3. First, that each one shall strive with all his mind and strength on his own account to serve God according to the commandments and according to his own promise, for the emperor is not able to give the necessary care and oversight to all his people.

4. Second, that no one shall ever wrongfully claim, take, or conceal anything that belongs to the emperor, such as lands or slaves, by perjury or fraud, or through partiality or bribery; and that no one shall take or conceal fugitive serfs from the royal lands, by perjury or fraud....

5. That no one shall do any violence or harm to the holy churches of God, to widows and orphans, or to strangers; for the emperor, after God and his saints, is constituted their special protector....

10. Selections from the Monk of St. Gall.

Monachus Sangallensis, M. G. SS. folio, II, pp. 731 ff.

The following documents, nos. 10-12, are intended to illustrate the interest and activity of Karl in the revival of learning in his realm. See also no. 7, Einhard's Life of Karl, ch. 25. The disappearance of classical culture in the west through the disorders incident upon the decline of the Roman empire, the migrations, and the civil wars of the Merovingian period, was shown not only in the general ignorance among the common people, but also in the decline of learning and culture in the church. The selection from the Monk of St. Gall throws light upon the palace school of Karl and his court, the other numbers illustrate the interest of Karl in the education of the clergy and the reformation of the church services. The Monk of St. Gall is the unknown author of a chronicle account of the life and times of Karl, written in the latter part of the ninth century. It contains many tales and stories which are popular and in part legendary, showing how the figure of Karl was being magnified in the imagination of posterity.