Part 8
Such a state of affairs could not last; and the Emperor, who treated his friends as badly as his foes, was captured by one of his own generals, and, after having his nose cruelly slit, was exiled to the Crimea. Mutilation was supposed to be a final bar to the right of wearing the imperial crown; but Justinian II was the type of man to be ignored only when dead. After some years of brooding over his wrongs he fled from the Crimea and took refuge with the King of the Bulgars.
On his sea-journey a terrific storm arose that threatened to overwhelm both him and his crew. ‘My Lord,’ exclaimed one of his attendants, ‘I pray you make a vow to God that if He spare you, you also will spare your enemies.’ ‘May God sink this vessel here and now,’ retorted his master, ‘if I spare a single one of them that falls into my hands,’ and the words were an ill omen for his reign, that began once more in 705 when, with the aid of Bulgar troops and of treachery within the capital, Justinian II established himself once more in Constantinople.
During six years the Empire suffered his tyranny anew; and those who had previously helped to dethrone him were hunted down, tortured, and put to death. Like Nero of old he burned alive his political enemies, or he would order the nobles of his court who had offended him to be sewn up in sacks and thrown into the sea. At last another rebellion brought a final end to his reign, and that of the house of Heraclius, for both he and his young son were murdered, and the Eastern Empire given up to anarchy.
[Sidenote: Leo the Isaurian]
The man who did most to save Constantinople from the next Mahometan invasion was one of the military governors of the Empire called Leo the Isaurian. Conscious of his own ability he took advantage of his first successes to seize the imperial crown; and then, having heard that the Mahometan fleet was moored off the shores of Asia Minor, he secretly sent a squadron of his own vessels that set the enemy’s ships on fire. In the panic that ensued more than half the Arabian ships were sunk. About the same time a Mahometan land force was also defeated by the King of the Bulgars, who had allied himself with the Emperor on account of their mutual dread of an Eastern invasion. The result of these combined Christian victories was that the Caliph Moslemah, whose main forces were encamped beneath the walls of Constantinople, grew alarmed lest he should be cut off from support and provisions. He therefore raised the siege, embarked his army in what remained of his fleet, and retreated to his own kingdom, leaving the Christian capital free from acute danger from the East for another three hundred years.
Elsewhere the Mahometans pursued their triumphant progress with little check. After the fall of Carthage in 697 North Africa lay almost undefended before them; and the half-savage tribes such as the Berbers, who lived on the borders of the desert, welcomed the new faith with its mission of conversion by the sword and prospects of plunder.
It was the Berbers who at the invitation, according to tradition, of a treacherous Spanish Governor, Count Julian, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and descended on the plains of Andalusia.
Spain, when the power of the Roman Empire snapped, had been invaded first by Vandals and then by Visigoths. The Vandals, as we have seen,[2] passed on to Africa, while the Visigoths, like the Lombards in Italy, became converted to Christianity, and, falling under the influence of the civilization and luxury they saw around them, gradually adapted their government, laws, and way of life to the system and ideals of those whom they had conquered. Thus their famous _Lex Visigothorum_, or ‘Law of the Visigoths’, was in reality the Roman code remodelled to suit the German settlers.
In this new land the descendants of the once warlike Teutons acquired an indifference to the arts of war, and when their King Rodrigo had been killed at the disastrous battle of Guadelete and his army overthrown, they made little further resistance to the Saracen hordes except in the far northern mountains of the Asturias. From France we have seen[3] the Mahometans were beaten back by Charles Martel, and here, established in Spain and on the borders of the Eastern Empire, we must leave their fortunes for the time. If Mahomet’s life is short and can be quickly told the story of how his followers attempted to establish their rule over Christendom is nothing else than the history of the foreign policy of Europe during mediaeval times.
VIII
CHARLEMAGNE
Just before his death Pepin the Short had divided his lands between his two sons, Charles, who was about twenty-six, and Carloman, a youth some years younger. As they had no affection for each other, this division did not work well. Carloman gave little promise of statesmanlike qualities: he was peevish and jealous, and easily persuaded by the nobles who surrounded him that his elder brother was a rival who intended to rob him of his possessions, it might be of his life. There seems to have been no ground for this suspicion; but nevertheless he spent his days in trying to hinder whatever schemes Charles proposed; and when he died, three years later, there was a general breath of relief.
Enumerating the blessings that Heaven had bestowed on Charlemagne, a monk, writing to the King about this time, completed his list with the candid statement: ‘the fifth and not least that God has removed your brother from this earthly kingdom’.
Charlemagne was exactly the kind of person to seize the fancy of the early Middle Ages. Tall and well built, with an eagle nose and eyes that flashed like a lion when he was angry so that none dared to meet their gaze, he excelled all his court in strength, energy, and skill. He could straighten out with his fingers four horseshoes locked together, lift a warrior fully equipped for battle to the level of his shoulder, and fell a horse and its rider with a single blow.
It was his delight to keep up old national customs and to wear the Frankish dress with its linen tunic, cross-gartered leggings, and long mantle reaching to the feet. ‘What is the use of these rags?’ he once inquired contemptuously of his courtiers, pointing to their short cloaks--‘Will they cover me in bed, or shield me from the wind and rain when I ride abroad?’
[Illustration: The EMPIRE of CHARLEMAGNE]
This criticism was characteristic of the King. Intent on a multitude of schemes for the extension or improvement of his lands, and so eager to realize them that he would start on fresh ones when still heavily encumbered with the old, he was yet, for all his enthusiasm, no vague dreamer but a level-headed man looking questions in the face and demanding a practical answer.
[Sidenote: The Chanson de Roland]
By the irony of fate it is the least practical and important task he undertook that has made his name world-famous; for the story of Charlemagne and his Paladins, told in that greatest of mediaeval epics, the _Chanson de Roland_, exceeds to-day in popularity even the exploits of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. This much is history--that Charlemagne, invited secretly by some discontented Emirs to invade Spain and attack the Caliph of Cordova, crossed the Pyrenees, and, after reducing several towns successfully, was forced to retreat. On his way back across the mountains his rearguard was cut off by Gascon mountaineers, and slaughtered almost to a man; while he and the rest of his army escaped with difficulty.
On this meagre and rather inglorious foundation poets of the eleventh century based a cycle of romance. Charlemagne is the central figure, but round him are grouped numerous ‘Paladins’, or famous knights, including the inseparable friends Oliver and Roland, Warden of the Breton Marches. After numerous deeds of glory in the land of Spain, the King, it was said, was forced by treachery to turn back towards the French mountains, and had already passed the summits, when Roland, in charge of the rearguard, found himself entrapped in the Pass of Roncesvalles by a large force of Gascons. His horn was slung at his side but he disdained to summon help from those in the van, and drawing his good sword ‘Durenda’ laid about him valiantly.
The Gascons fell back, dismayed by the vigorous resistance of the French; but thirty thousand Saracens came to their aid, and the odds were now overwhelming. Oliver lay dead, and, covered with wounds, Roland fell to the ground also, but first of all he broke ‘Durenda’ in half that none save he might use this peerless blade. Putting his horn to his lips, with his dying breath he sounded a blast that was heard by Charlemagne in his camp more than eight miles away. ‘Surely that is the horn of Roland?’ cried the King uneasily, but treacherous courtiers explained away the sound; and it was not till a breathless messenger came with the news of the reverse that he hastened towards the scene of battle. There in the pass, stretched on the ground amid the heaped-up bodies of their enemies, he found his Paladins--Roland with his arms spread in the form of a cross, his broken sword beside him: and seeing him the King fell on his knees weeping. ‘Oh, right arm of thy Sovereign’s body, Honour of the Franks, Sword of Justice.... Why did I leave thee here to perish? How can I behold thee dead and not die with thee?’ At last, restraining his grief, Charlemagne gathered his forces together; and the very sun, we are told, stood still to watch his terrible vengeance on Gascons and Saracens for the slaughter of Christians at Roncesvalles.
The _Chanson de Roland_ is one of the masterpieces of French literature. It is not history, but in its fiction lies a substantial germ of truth. Charlemagne in the early ninth century was what poets described him more than two hundred years later--the central figure in Christendom, the recognized champion of the Cross whether against Mahometans or pagans. ‘Through your prosperity’, wrote Alcuin, an Anglo-Saxon monk and scholar who lived at his court, ‘Christendom is preserved, the Catholic Faith defended, the law of justice made known to all men.’
[Sidenote: Invasion of Lombardy]
When the Popes sought help against the Lombards, it was to Charlemagne as to his father Pepin that they naturally turned. Charlemagne had hoped at the beginning of his reign to maintain a friendship with King Didier of Lombardy and had even married his daughter, an alliance that roused the Pope of that date to demand in somewhat violent language: ‘Do you not know that all the children of the Lombards are lepers, that the race is outcast from the family of nations? For these there is neither part nor lot in the Heavenly Kingdom. May they broil with the devil and his angels in everlasting fire!’
Charlemagne went his own way, in spite of papal denunciations; but he soon tired of his bride, who was plain and feeble in health, and divorced her that he might marry a beautiful German princess. This was, of course, a direct insult to King Didier, who henceforth regarded the Frankish king as his enemy; and Rome took care that the gulf once made between the sovereigns should not be bridged.
In papal eyes the Lombards had really become accursed. It is true that they had been since the days of Gregory the Great orthodox Catholics, that their churches were some of the most beautiful in Italy, their monasteries the most famous for learning, and Pavia, their capital, a centre for students and men of letters. Their sin did not lie in heretical views, but in the position of their kingdom that now included not only modern Lombardy in the north, but also the Duchy of Spoletum in South Italy. Between stretched the papal dominions like a broad wall from Ravenna to the Western Mediterranean; and on either side the Lombards chafed, trying to annex a piece of land here or a city there, while the Popes watched them, lynx-eyed, eager on their part to dispossess such dangerous neighbours, but unable to do so without assistance from beyond the Alps.
Soon after the death of his younger brother Charlemagne was persuaded to take up the papal cause and invade Italy. At Geneva, where he held the ‘Mayfield’ or annual military review of his troops, he laid the object of his campaign before them, and was answered by their shouts of approval.
It was a formidable host, for the Franks expected every man who owned land in their dominions to appear at these gatherings prepared for war. The rich would be mounted, protected by mail shirts and iron headpieces, and armed with sword and dagger; the poor would come on foot, some with bows and arrows, others with lance and shield, and the humblest of all with merely scythes or wooden clubs. Tenants on the royal demesnes must bring with them all the free men on their estates; and while it was possible to obtain exemption the fine demanded was so heavy that few could pay it.
When the army set out in battle array, it was accompanied by numerous baggage-carts, lumbering wagons covered with leather awnings, that contained enough food for three months as well as extra clothes and weapons. It was the general hope that on the return journey the wagons would be filled to overflowing with the spoils of the conquered enemy.
The Lombards had ceased, with the growth of luxury and comfortable town life, to be warriors like the Franks; and Charlemagne met with almost as little resistance as Pepin in past campaigns. After a vain attempt to hold the Western passes of the Alps, Didier and his army fled to Pavia, where they fortified themselves, leaving the rest of the country at the mercy of the invaders.
Frankish chroniclers in later years drew a realistic picture of Didier, crouched in one of the high towers of the city, awaiting in trembling suspense the coming of the ‘terrible Charles’. Beside him stood Otger, a Frankish duke, who had been a follower of the dead Carloman and was therefore hostile to his elder brother. ‘Is Charles in that great host?’ demanded the King continually, as first the long line of baggage-wagons came winding across the plain, and then an army of the ‘common-folk’, and after them the bishops with their train of abbots and clerks. Every time his companion answered him, ‘No! not yet!’
‘Then Didier hated the light of day. He stammered and sobbed and said, “Let us go down and hide in the earth from so terrible a foe.” And Otger too was afraid; well he knew the might and the wrath of the peerless Charles; in his better days he had often been at court. And he said, “When you see the plain bristle with a harvest of spears, and rivers of black steel come pouring in upon your city walls, then you may look for the coming of Charles.” While he yet spoke a black cloud arose in the West and the glorious daylight was turned to darkness. The Emperor came on; a dawn of spears darker than night rose on the beleaguered city. King Charles, that man of iron, appeared; iron his helmet, iron his armguards, iron the corselet on his breast and shoulders. His left hand grasped an iron lance ... iron the spirit, iron the hue of his war steed. Before, behind, and at his side rode men arrayed in the same guise. Iron filled the plain and open spaces, iron points flashed back the sunlight. “There is the man whom you would see,” said Otger to the king; and so saying he swooned away, like one dead.’
In spite of this picture of Carolingian might, it took the Franks six months to reduce Pavia; and then Didier, at last surrendering, was sent to a monastery, while Charlemagne proclaimed himself king of the newly acquired territories. During the siege, leaving capable generals to conduct it, he himself had gone to Rome, where he was received with feasting and joy. Crowds of citizens came out to the gates to welcome him, carrying palms and olive-branches, and hailed him as ‘Patrician’ and ‘Defender of the Church’. Dismounting from his horse he passed on foot through the streets of Rome to the cathedral; and there, in the manner of the ordinary pilgrim, climbed the steps on his knees, until the Pope awaiting him at the top, raised and embraced him. From the choir arose the exultant shout, ‘Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.’
A few days later, once more standing in St. Peter’s, Charlemagne affixed his seal to the donation Pepin had given to the Church. The document was entered amongst the papal archives; but it has long since disappeared, and with it exact information as to the territories concerned.
[Sidenote: Donation of Constantine]
About this time the papal court produced another document, the so-called ‘Donation of Constantine’, in which the first of the Christian emperors apparently granted to the Popes the western half of the Roman Empire. Centuries later this was proved to be a forgery, but for a long while people accepted it as genuine, and the power of the Popes was greatly increased. We do not know how much Charles believed in papal supremacy in temporal matters; but throughout his reign his attitude to the Pope over Italian affairs was rather that of master to servant than the reverse. It was only when spiritual questions were under discussion that he was prepared to yield as if to a higher authority.
When he had reduced Pavia Charlemagne left Lombardy to be ruled by one of his sons and returned to France; but it was not very long before he was called back to Italy, as fresh trouble had arisen there. The cause was the unpopularity of Pope Leo III in Rome and the surrounding country, where turbulent nobles rebelled as often as they could against the papal government. One day, as Leo was riding through the city at the head of a religious procession, a band of armed men rushed out from a side street, separated him from his attendants, dragged him from his horse, and beat him mercilessly, leaving him half dead. It was even said that they put out his eyes and cut off his tongue, but that these were later restored by a miracle.
Leo, at any rate, whole though shaken, succeeded in reaching Charlemagne’s presence, and the King was faced by the problem of going to Rome to restore order. Had it been merely a matter of exacting vengeance, he would have found little difficulty with his army of stalwart Franks behind him; but Leo’s enemies were not slow in bringing forward accusations against their victim that they claimed justified their assault. Charlemagne was thus in an awkward position, for he was too honest a ruler to refuse to hear both sides, and his respect for the papal office could not blind him to the possibility of evil in the acts of the person who held it, especially in the case of an ambitious statesman like Leo III.
He felt that it was his duty to sift the matter to the bottom; and yet by what law could the King of France or even of Italy put Christ’s vice-regent upon his trial and cross-examine him?
One way of dealing with this problem would have been to seek judgement at Constantinople as the seat of Empire, a final ‘appeal unto Caesar’ such as St. Paul had made in classical times: but, ever since Pepin the Short had given the Exarchate of Ravenna to the Pope instead of restoring it to Byzantine Emperors, relations with the East, never cordial, had grown more strained. Now they were at breaking point. The late Emperor, a mere boy, had been thrown into a dungeon and blinded by his mother, the Empress Irene, in order that she might usurp his throne; and the Western Empire recoiled from the idea of accepting such a woman as arbiter of their destinies.
Thus Charlemagne, forced to act on his own responsibility, examined the evidence laid before him and declared Leo innocent of the crimes of which he had been accused. In one sense it was a complete triumph for the Pope; but Leo was a clear-sighted statesman and knew that the power to which he had been restored rested on a weak foundation. The very fact that he had been compelled to appeal for justice to a temporal sovereign lowered the office that he held in the eyes of the world; and he possessed no guarantee that, once the Franks had left Rome, his enemies would not again attack him. Without a recognized champion, always ready to enforce her will, the Papacy remained at the mercy of those who chose to oppose or hinder her.
In the dramatic scene that took place in St. Peter’s Cathedral on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, Leo found a way out of his difficulties. Arrayed in gorgeous vestments, he said Mass before the High Altar, lit by a thousand candles hanging at the arched entrance to the chancel. In the half-gloom beyond knelt Charlemagne and his sons; and at the end of the service Leo, approaching them with a golden crown in his hands, placed it upon the King’s head. Instantly the congregation burst into the cry with which Roman emperors of old had been acclaimed at their accession. ‘To Charles Augustus, crowned of God, the great and pacific Emperor, long life and victory!’ ‘From that time’, says a Frankish chronicle, commenting on this scene, ‘there was no more a Roman Empire at Constantinople.’
[Sidenote: Foundation of Western Empire]
Leo had found his champion, and in anointing and crowning him had emphasized the dignity of his own office. He had also pleased the citizens of Rome, who rejoiced to have an Emperor again after the lapse of more than three centuries. Charlemagne alone was doubtful of the greatness that had been thrust upon him and accepted it with reluctance. He had troubles enough near home without embroiling himself with Constantinople; but as it turned out the Eastern Empire was too busy deposing the Empress Irene to object actively to its rejection in the West; and Irene’s successors agreed to acknowledge the imperial rank of their rival in return for the cession of certain coveted lands on the Eastern Adriatic.
Other sovereigns hastened to pay their respects to the new Emperor, and Charlemagne received several embassies in search of alliance from Haroun al-Raschid, the Caliph of Bagdad. Haroun al-Raschid ruled over a mighty empire stretching from Persia to Egypt, and thence along the North African coast to the Strait of Gibraltar. On one occasion he sent Charlemagne a present of a wonderful water-clock that, as it struck the hour of twelve, opened as many windows, through which armed horsemen rode forth and back again. Far more exciting in Western eyes was the unhappy elephant that for nine years remained the glory of the imperial court at Aachen. Its death, when they were about to lead it forth on an expedition against the northern tribes of Germany, is noted sadly in the national annals.