THE REMAINS OF LAKE-DWELLINGS FOUND beneath the surface of the water, the belongings of the dead rendered up by recently discovered tombs, a few comments of Roman writers on a people with whom their armies had come into hostile contact, a detailed description, finally, by the hand of Tacitus, of Germany and the Germans as they were in his day, – such are the sources from which modern historians have reconstructed the first period in a great nation’s history.
No idle whim drove our forefathers out into the lakes and caused them to erect their houses on posts driven into the mud. Here alone in a wild age could they find refuge from beasts of prey and from the greed of man; here they could readily supply themselves with fish, while not debarred from making hunting expeditions to the shore. None too restricted was the area of these watery homes, for in some of the settlements the superstructures rested on no less than from twenty to thirty thousand posts. One enemy, indeed, could not be avoided, for almost every one of the buildings of which the ruins remain ended by being burnt to the water’s edge. Charred and broken the piles stand there to this day, while from the mud at their base have been extracted many a tool and weapon – chisels of bone, axes and saws of stone, daggers and arrowheads made from the stag’s horn or the tooth of the wild boar.
The first traceable information concerning the Germans was brought to southern Europe by a Marseilles merchant named Pytheas, who, in the days of Alexander the Great, visited the shores of the Baltic and discovered great quantities of the useful product known as amber. From this period, the fourth century before Christ, seem to date many of the graves that have furnished such interesting relics. The age of stone and bone implements was passing into an age of bronze and iron. A certain striving for elegance and luxury becomes evident – we find necklaces of amber beads, of ivory, and of colored stones, while bits of yellow ochre lead to the inference that paint was not unknown as a means of personal adornment. Owing to the great number of graves laid open, and to the richness and variety of their contents, the museums of Germany are full to overflowing with these implements and trappings of prehistoric man. From the tomb discovered near Hallstatt in the Salzkammergut in 1846 there have been taken six thousand objects of various kinds, while with regard to the human remains themselves, the interesting fact is made apparent that about one-half of the bodies had been burned, one-half buried in their natural state. Strangely enough, in these old burial places, bodies laid to rest in oaken coffins have been found to be better preserved than those in stone chests. The tombs themselves are of every size and shape, the largest measuring some two hundred and fifty feet in length, by thirty-five to forty in height; some are regular chambers of stone covered each with an enormous slab; one such discovered near Luneburg measures some eighteen by fourteen feet.
These graves furnish information of more than antiquarian interest. The fact that the wives and servants of great personages were immolated with them is proved beyond dispute; one group has been found consisting of a single upright figure surrounded by eight others in a crouching position. Bones of animals mixed with those of human beings lead to the assumption that war-horses, also, followed their masters to Walhalla. The shape and material of the implements and utensils, the uses for which they were evidently intended, the character, finally, of the ornamentation, all throw light on the civilization of the time. Where razors and combs are found we can infer that attention was paid to personal appearance; while the curious urns with human face discovered in West Prussia point to an interesting attempt at symbolical and artistic expression. Eyes and nose are clearly marked, the cover of the urn is the top of the head, while in the ears hang bronze rings with drops of amber, and around the neck circlets of bronze and iron. Another class of inferences can be drawn from the fact that implements made from a certain kind of stone are found miles away from places where such stone abounds; an extensive trade in such objects must have been carried on, and, indeed, traces can be found of the very workshops in which they were doubtless manufactured. Leaving the antiquarian’s field for more solid ground, we find various items of interest in the works of Latin authors. Cæsar, Strabo, and Tacitus all mention the Germans as spreading out toward the south. To this they were driven by pressure from the rear, as also by insufficiency of territory resulting from superficial and extravagant methods of agriculture. Much that we hear is mere rumor, as when Pliny gravely asserts that the dwellers on the Baltic islands have horses’ hoofs, and ears large enough to cover their bodies.
Of the clashes at arms with the Germans, Roman writers have more to say. In the days of the Consul Marius the flood-gates of the North seemed opened, and the Cimbrians and Teutons rushed in, making the Romans tremble for their very capital. A few details of the two great battles fought by Marius, one in southern France and one in northern Italy, have come down to us: how the barbarians were completely outwitted by superior tactics, allowing the Romans to fall upon them simultaneously in front and rear; how the burning sun of the South helped to weaken the power of resistance of the children of the North; and how, in both cases, defeat meant utter annihilation. On the field of Aquæ Sextiæ none were left but the faithful German dogs, who mounted guard over the bodies of the slain.
The first great organizer among the Germans was a certain Ariovistus with whom Cæsar came in contact; Roman discipline eventually prevailed, Ariovistus was worsted, and, after the flight of the formidable leader, a short era of friendliness and peace ensued. Germans entered the Roman service and even came to form the imperial bodyguard, learning valuable lessons of strategy which they were afterward able to turn to telling account. Differences arose between Augustus and the tribe of the Sigambrians, who, joining with others, made an inroad into Gaul, defeated the legate, and even secured a Roman eagle. Peace was eventually restored, but the emperor, determined that his provinces should never again be exposed to such danger, prepared for an invasion of Germany on a large scale. Year after year he sent his stepsons, Drusus and Tiberius, to tame this stubborn people. Fortresses were built, of which one, the Saalburg near Homburg, has remained to our own day, and is about to be reconstructed on the old lines; a canal was dug through which Roman fleets swept from the Rhine to the Yssel, passing thence through the Zuyder Zee, then an inland lake, into the North Sea.
A few years later, 9 A.D., came the crucial conflict for land and liberty. It was then that the Cheruscan leader, Hermann or Arminius, fell on the Roman proconsul, Varus, in the Teutoburg Forest, destroying his splendid army. “Varus, Varus, give me back my legions!” was the wail of the distracted emperor when he heard the disheartening news. He dismissed his body-guard and forbade the city to all German visitors. With a few unimportant expeditions the long series of Roman aggressions closed, and Tacitus does not hesitate to call Arminius “the undoubted liberator of Germany.”
From now on, for several generations, there was peace, and the great Roman historian learns to love and honor the country about which he writes. Within the compass of a few pages he gives us a wonderful picture of the Germans of his day; he, the aristocrat, writhing under the imperial yoke, feels strangely drawn toward this simple and innocent people, this “special, unmixed race, like only to itself.”
Tacitus tells of a land full of “bristling” woods and “uncanny” marshes, but rich in cattle, which lacked, however, “a peculiar stately character” and the “proud adornment of its brows.” To have a numerous herd was the “joy of the German, his favorite, his only, source of wealth.” The settlements were made, not in towns as with the Romans, but in open spaces near fountains or groves; the houses stood by themselves – possibly, suggests the historian, through dread of fire, but probably because the people knew no better. Each village had its common pasturage and distributed its arable land in lots or parcels, prescribing rigidly to all its members what land should lie fallow, what crops should be raised, and when and how the seed should be sown.
The “marks,” as they were called from the broad boundary line drawn around them, over which no stranger could come without blowing his horn, were populated by large groups of kinsmen or clans. Strong as in the old patriarchal days were the ties of family; the head of the clan commanded and watched over all the rest, and the Romans wondered at seeing chieftains as anxious to redeem their nephews from captivity as though they were their own sons. Justice was administered in the court of the “hundred,” or district containing some hundred families with their slaves and dependants, and the “centenarius“ or hundred-man, who opened and closed the ‘moot,” remained for centuries the acknowledged mouthpiece of the old Germanic liberties.
The German men as described by Tacitus were a strange mixture of high-mindedness and brutality. Loyalty and bravery were cardinal virtues. Each chieftain was surrounded by a war-band of chosen youths, who were to cover and defend him and to sacrifice their own heroic deeds to his glory; the chieftain fought for victory, the war-band for the chieftain. If, on the one hand, it was disgraceful for a leader to be outdone in bravery by any of his followers, it betokened, on the other, the ineffaceable shame of a lifetime to have deserted a leader or to have thrown away the shield in battle. To supplement these virtuous ideals it must be stated that reverence for old men and hospitality to strangers are mentioned among the characteristics of the ancient Germans. To refuse shelter to one asking it was considered a crime, and when a man’s own stores were exhausted, he accompanied his guest to the house of a neighbor. For persons of distinction entertainments were inaugurated: naked youths would disport themselves in the sword dance among upturned blades and sharpened spear-heads; “pleasure it gave to the lookers-on, pleasure, too, to those who performed,” which is more remarkable. When a chieftain died he was honored to the utmost in his burial, his body being burned amid the fumes of the richest and rarest of woods.
The reverse of the picture is highly unedifying. When not on the war-path the chieftains were wont to lie about like lazy dogs, leaving the care of the fields and all other peaceful labors to the women and slaves. For their own part they passed their time in gambling and in drinking a concoction which was new to the Roman historian, and of which he did not approve, but which we of wider experience have no difficulty in designating as a kind of beer brewed from barley. For successive days and nights these carouses would continue, to the accompaniment of the falling dice, the desire of winning amounting to a frenzy. On one casual throw the players would stake all their earthly possessions, yes, even the liberty of their own persons. Voluntarily the loser submitted to be bound and to be handed over to a neighboring tribe in exchange for merchandise. “Stubbornness in a wrong cause,” is the verdict of Tacitus; but he adds that the Germans themselves consider it pride in keeping the word once pledged.
No less anomalous than the position of these sottish yet courageous chieftains was that of the German women. Legally considered they were chattels, like the slaves, and the very name “Weib” has come down in grammar as of the neuter gender. Their marriage contracts were regular sales, the union not being lawful unless the bridegroom could prove by witnesses that he had paid the required sum. It was a token of subjection when the free, waving hair was bound into a braid and knot.
Yet Tacitus has much to say about the honor and respect shown to these same women, and about their helpfulness and strength of character. They, with their children, stood by in the battles, exhorting or chiding as the case might demand. “In them,” writes Tacitus, “each man sees his holiest witnesses – those best fitted to award him his meed of praise. To his wife or mother he brings his wounds, which they are not afraid to look upon and count. . . . History tells how, by their prayers, the tide of many a wavering and half-despaired-of battle has been turned.” The marriage relation was respected, and polygamy only allowed among the princes, who for state reasons might make family alliances. Infidelity was punished by severe and public scourging: “there among the Germans,” writes Tacitus, “vice is not laughed at, and to do evil with evil doers is not scoffingly called ‘being up to date.’”
With the last page of the Germania the curtain falls for a long period of years, but we can trace developments from the final outcome. The Romans definitively abandoned an aggressive policy and built away at their protecting wall, a monumental fortification, second only in conception and execution to the great wall of China. There are sections of this Limes or Pfahlbau which must have been fifty feet broad at the base and as high as sixteen feet. The whole was some three hundred miles in length, flanked by hundreds of camps and towers, the latter near enough to each other to permit of communicating signals by lighting fires at night or by raising and lowering beams by day. Behind the wall was a moat, in front a waste stretch of land which Germans might only cross when escorted by Roman soldiers.
Meanwhile, within the precincts of the Roman Empire itself, numerous Germans had been allowed to settle; whole tribes at last were given tracts of land, receiving the official title of fœderati, or allies, and engaging to fight the battles of their adopted country. Their influence made itself felt in every direction; many individuals rose to honor and distinction in the state service, and allied themselves in marriage with the noblest families of the capital. The Romans, for their own part, found pleasure in the general appearance and cast of countenance of the foreigners; it became the fashion to imitate them, and the Roman ladies took to wearing blond wigs, or to smearing their own hair with the reddish oil which the German warriors used when they decked themselves for battle. Of such moment did the Emperor Honorius consider the matter, that he issued an edict against the practice. Even with the Germans who remained at home the Romans maintained a certain amount of intercourse and commerce. German traders, indeed, were subject to stern restrictions, and were only allowed to approach the Limes at stated points, but the Roman merchants penetrated into the very heart of Germany. Essentially Roman products, such as statues of Jupiter, not to speak of numberless imperial coins, have been found in Freienwalde and in the Lausitz – as far north, indeed, as modern Sweden. The Emperor Tiberius is known to have looked upon the German turnip as a delicacy, while the grain of which the Schwarzbrod is made is referred to in a decree of the year 301. About the same time, too, we hear of German smoked meats, beyond a doubt the famous Westphalian hams. Other staples were furs, goose feathers, sausages, antlers, human hair, and pomatum.
Roman culture, to some extent at least, penetrated in the wake of the traders, while Roman Christianity, in the form of the Arianism just then in vogue in the Eastern Empire, found its way to the tribe of the Goths. Toward the end of the third century the latter had made an inroad into the empire and had carried away captive two Greeks from Cappadocia. To these exiles there was born in 311 A.D. a son named Ulfila or Wulfila, a gifted boy who made himself equally familiar with the Greek, the Gothic, and the Latin languages. As he grew up and regained his liberty he embraced that form of the Christian religion in favor at Constantinople, was consecrated bishop at Antioch, and returned as missionary to the scenes of his youth. Here, after making a number of converts, he incurred the enmity of Athanarich, king of the Visigoths, and was obliged to flee to Roman soil, where he founded a haven of rest in Mœsia. He labored and taught for many years, occasionally journeying to Constantinople, where we find his name in the records of a council in 360 A.D., as one of the subscribers to the Arian creed. When, twenty-one years later, he died, his loss was widely felt, and no less a person than the Emperor Theodosius walked in his funeral procession.
Of all Wulfila’s services to his people and to posterity, one of the greatest was the translation of the Bible into the Gothic tongue, a large fragment of which work, including nearly the whole New Testament, is known as the Silver Codex and is preserved in the library of the university at Upsala, a treasure beyond price, the oldest existing monument of German learning and letters. To us, indeed, it has a value that is more than philological and literary, for from it we glean historically almost all that we know of the culture of the Germans during the whole fourth century. There are native words for many a Biblical term that show a fair degree of civilization: “smiths” are distinguished from “carpenters,” “buildings” from “tents.” Jars and kettles, dishes, chests, and baskets seem to have been in common use, as also threshing-flails and millstones. Gardeners cultivated their gardens, deeds were drawn up and sealed. Yet the written language of the Goths must have been very imperfect, for we know that Wulfila was obliged to extend the alphabet, supplying the deficiencies from the Greek and Latin. Fondly and faithfully the old bishop labored over his task; but in the midst of his work the thought came to him that the warlike doings in the Book of Kings might not edify his rude hearers, so he quietly left it out.
All this time, while the Goths were being guided toward Christianity and civilization, and while Roman armies and Roman society were growing more and more Germanized, a great and important change was coming over the face of northern Europe. The marvellous prolificness of the Germans, added to their lack of intensive methods of cultivating the soil, precipitated the movement known as the wandering of the nations. Already, in the third century, the fifty or more tribes whose names are mentioned by Tacitus had merged and coalesced into larger associations, which had gradually pressed forward to the very borders of Roman territory. The final impetus came from the rear, when, about 375 A.D., the fierce Asiatic tribe of the Huns crossed the Volga and entered on their career of conquest and intimidation. With the Visigoths, whom they drove before them, was that Alaric who was later to sack Rome. There is no need here to follow in detail the different migrations of the tribes, or to trace the rise and fall of each small monarchy; of the eight Teutonic kingdoms founded on Roman soil in the fifth and sixth centuries, four, those of Odoacer and Theodoric, of the Burgundians, and of the Vandals, were quickly to wane and fall; two, those of the Visigoths in Spain and the Lombards in Italy, were to endure for a few centuries, while only two, that of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain and that of the Franks in Gaul, were to show real and lasting vitality.
It must not be supposed of these wandering German conquerors that, wherever they came, they utterly stamped out the Roman civilization. On the contrary, the two peoples often settled down peacefully side by side, the newcomers merely claiming for themselves a certain fixed share, one-third or two-thirds of each estate. In this there was no great hardship to the Romans, for, according to the same principle, armies of so-called allies had often been quartered on them. For the student of institutions, nothing can be more instructive than to trace the gradual fusion of the two civilizations: the Romans gave language, literature, and law, as well as many of their time-honored customs, to their invaders; the latter brought in new principles of government and a new conception of liberty and personal rights.
The question suggests itself, why Germany was not emptied, and rendered desolate by this constant pouring forth of peoples. In point of fact the migrators rarely constituted the whole of their tribe; remnants, for instance, of Goths who remained behind on the Black Sea while their fellows invaded Italy could still be found in the seventeenth century. It was the surplus population, as a rule, that was anxious to be gone; and their exodus, not infrequently, took place with the solemn sanction of a general assembly. Nor was the break with the parent stock considered final; individuals might still hold land in their old settlements. Long after his conquest of the north coast of Africa, Genseric, the Vandal king, received a deputation from his former home in Silesia, urging that he and his followers should renounce their old possessions. The request was refused on the plea that no one could be secure against a change of fortune.
Far, then, from being depopulated, Germany’s store of warriors seemed to the Romans fairly inexhaustible; “they increase, but we decrease,” wrote Salvianus in the fifth century, while Paul, the son of Warnefried, who outlived the last invasions, contrasts his own desolate land with crowded Germany, and surmises that the ice and snow of the North are more favorable to propagation than the climate of poor, plague-ridden Italy.
The Franks, especially, never lost touch with their own and with kindred German peoples, – an important fact, when we consider the enervating effect of purely Roman influences on Goths and Visigoths, Burgundians and Vandals. These Franks were the founders of a new Germany; and with them our history will concern itself almost exclusively; they had begun their career of expansion about the year 400 A.D., at which time, unlike the Goths, they were still heathen. We hear of them, a little later, in northern Gaul, and in the present Holland and Belgium, roughly divided into two great groups, the Salians and Ripuarians, each group in turn consisting of many different tribes. It was Clovis, a Salian Frank of the family of Meroveus, who, by extensive conquests, and especially by the base murder of all possible rival princes, first consolidated these lands into a strong kingdom. He captured and put to death Syagrius, that enterprising Roman governor who, after the fall of the Western Empire, had continued to administer in his own name a large part of Gaul. He lopped off many of its provinces from the once powerful Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse, and carried off the treasures which Alaric had gathered together in Rome. He defeated the Allemanni in a memorable battle, and their former lands along the Main and the Neckar became known by the name of Franconia, with the principal city of Frankfort, or ford of the Franks. The Burgundians were partially, in the next generation wholly, subdued.
But Clovis was more than a conqueror, he was also a farseeing statesman; no wiser political move was ever made than when, in 496 A.D., he determined to become a Christian, and to adhere to the form of religion authorized by Rome, as opposed to that spread by the Eastern church. Many writers have, with justice, attributed the fall of the other Germanic kingdoms to mutual hatred of the Arians and the orthodox. Clovis, on the contrary, rallied around him the entire clergy of Gaul, with all their wealth and influence. His biographer, the Bishop of Tours, lauds him to the skies as the champion of the true faith, and even when commenting on a treacherous murder, which the king himself had instigated, declares that thus the Lord laid low his enemies, as a reward for walking in His ways and doing what was pleasing in His sight.
The conversion took place publicly and with dramatic effect. The king had registered a vow that, should he prove successful in the battle of Tolbiacum against the Allemanni, he would yield to the entreaties of his Burgundian wife and accept her God. After the battle, with a number of his followers, he received baptism; and the proud Sigambrian knelt at the feet of Remigius of Rheims, and meekly bowed his head while the bishop bade him burn what he had adored and adore what he had burned. It must not, however, be supposed that this act was the result of any mere sudden impulse. Clovis was well prepared for it, and had well weighed its future consequences. He had always desired to win the support of the church, and had already allowed his infant sons to be baptized. The story has been often told of how at a distribution of booty he had interfered to save a sacred vessel for a Christian bishop; his design had been defeated, for his warriors were far from looking upon him as an absolute despot, but with his own hand he had afterward killed the man who thwarted him. The results of the conversion proved in the end more far- reaching than even Clovis could have foreseen; the way had been opened for a close alliance between the Roman Papacy and the Frankish kingdom. Had the Franks remianed heretics in the eyes of Rome, the imperial crown could never have been placed on the head of Charlemagne. As for Clovis himself, he had found a watchword that legitimatized, as it were, his position: “I cannot endure it,” he said of the Visigoths, “that these Arians should possess a part of Gaul. Let us, with God’s help, set forth and conquer them and add their land to our kingdom!”
The Franks were able in a way to give their own stamp to the Christianity they adopted, and their Christ became the model of a warrior-leader. Clovis regretted that he and his followers had not been present to avenge the Crucifixion, and good Bishop Gregory praises the utterance. The miracles recorded in Merovingian times consist largely of saintly intervention in the midst of battle, and of similar godlike performances. Old heathen rites continued to be performed under the guise of Christian ceremonial; and saints’ images, like idols, were carried round as a protection against fire, illness, and death. It was a change of name, but not of substance; Siegfried’s dragon became the dragon of St. George, while the virtues of the old goddesses were transferred to the Virgin Mary.
For two and a half centuries after the death of Clovis the dynasty of the Merovingians continued to reign over the Franks; but only twice, and for brief spaces of time, were all the different lands united under one hand. The usual law of succession demanded that the father should provide equally for all of his sons; the kingdom accordingly was riven, and sundered, and a premium set on fratricide and intrigue. Two more bloodthirsty women than those guardians of princes, Brunhilda and Fredegunda, would be hard to find in all history.
It is strange to note in these early times how the power of the kings was marked and estimated by purely external tokens, by wealth and display, or even by the length of the royal locks. The gold of the conquered Romans gave a chance for unaccustomed luxury, and monarchs vied with each other in reckless extravagance. King Chilperich had a dinner service of gold and precious stones, while one single dish of the many owned by King Gunthram weighed 470 pounds. Queen Fredegunda’s son, at the age of two, possessed four wagon loads of silks and ornaments, while no less than fifty such accompanied the Princess Raguntha, who in 584 A.D. was sent to the Visigoths in Spain. The scale was often turned in favor of a candidate to the throne by the amount of his treasure, so that the relative who seized a dead king’s belongings increased his chances of succeeding to the throne.
The long wavy hair was a distinguishing feature of this dynasty, and their particular pride and joy. We can see it still on all the coins and seals of the time, and we know from old chroniclers that he who lost his curls was debarred from the throne until they grew again. A distracted mother once chose death for her two sons rather than that they should suffer such indignity.
As time went on the Merovingian kings became more and more feeble and enervated; we hear of vicious acts committed in earliest youth. The wonder is that the race did not sooner die out; its scions, at last, had not strength of mind even for the crimes and bloodshed that lend a shuddering interest to the reigns of their ancestors. They became the type for all future ages of rois fainéants, of shadowy, do-nothing kings. All the power had come into the hands of the chief officers of the household, the mayors of the palace, who for years and generations conducted the business of ruling. Einhard, the friend and biographer of Charles the Great, has preserved a most vivid picture of the weakness of the declining dynasty. He tells how the feeble king, content with the royal name, and with the waving hair and long beard, sat on the throne and played the part of ruler; how he received the envoys of foreign powers, and delivered to them, as if on his own authority, the answers which had been dictated to him, and which he might not dare to change.
No wonder that the practice of the Christian religion, which especially needed the fostering care of wise rulers, began to decline. So degenerate did the church become that Columbanus, the Irish missionary who sought these regions at the end of the sixth century, was forced to write home that “the love of mortification was scarcely to be found even in a few places.” What man could do to stem the disorders Columbanus did. A member of that church of St. Patrick which had developed its own teachings in antagonism to Rome, he was a perfectly fearless, nay relentless, reformer. When still a youth he had determined to go forth into the world and preach the gospel, and had sprung over the prostrate form of his mother when she tried to bar his egress, declaring that he never wished to look upon her face again. With twelve comrades he had crossed over to the Continent, where his fiery enthusiasm won him many followers. Even bishops turned to him for guidance and powerful nobles placed their children under his care. His courage was unbending; he braved the heathen in the very act of sacrificing, and once poured on the ground the libation the Allemanni were about to offer to their god. He labored incessantly for fifty years, but at last was expelled from the land on the plea that his method of calculating Easter differed from that of the Gallic clergy!
Columbanus founded three monasteries and drew up a rule for their guidance – so severe, indeed, that the pain of scourging was prescribed for an unguarded cough. More lasting than his own foundations was that of one of his disciples, St. Gall, who, at one of the loveliest points of the lake of Constance, established a settlement where, throughout the darkest of the Dark Ages, learning and art shone forth like a beacon light.
Meanwhile in other fields the spirit of order had been at work among the Frankish people. A form of local government had been established for all the different parts of the kingdom, and a code of laws drawn up, simple yet comprehensive, and readily sufficing for all the ordinary matters of daily life. Just as in modern times we see states divided into counties and townships, so the Merovingian land fell naturally into the canton (civitas or gau) and the hundred. In the latter the people still chose their centenarius or hundred-man, but the chief official in the district was now the king’s count, who took for his maintenance one-third of the revenue drawn from fines and taxes. The count it was who now at regular stated intervals came to the spot on the village green where the hundred court was to be held, ascended the throne that was placed there for him, and hung up his shield on a post or tree to show that the solemn proceedings were about to begin. Those charged with crime and their accusers were brought before him, though very different were the proceedings from those of a modern trial. The merits of the case itself were not gone into; the plaintiff brought the charge, the defendant furnished, not witnesses, but a number of kinsmen and neighbors who were willing to swear that they did not consider him guilty. Or, again, resort might be had to the judgment by ordeal or to trial by combat, the count, apparently assisted by priests, conducting the proceedings. Under the Merovingian and Carolingian rulers a number of ordeals were in vogue, but none was more common than that of forcing the suspected person to seize with his bare hand a stone suspended by a string in a caldron of boiling water. If the water burnt his hand, the voice of God was believed to have spoken against him, and he was handed over to the law to suffer the penalty for his crime.
It is difficult to put one’s self in the attitude of these simple, superstitious people; it is all too evident that only fraud on the part of the priest could save the victim from injury. Yet in every case of ordeal the burden of proof lay with the accused; in every case the commonest laws of nature would have had to be reversed before he could be declared innocent. Women as well as men were forced to walk a certain distance with red-hot irons in their hands, or to cross barefoot over glowing ploughshares. In the ordeal by cold water the victim was bound and thrown into a tank, where, if he sank, he was punished; if he floated, he went free. Was the whole system a bit of priestly jugglery, to show their power of working miracles?
The ordeal or the combat over, the man who had succumbed was obliged to submit to the penalty prescribed by the law of his own tribe or province. These laws were early committed to writing – in the Latin language – and are among the most interesting records of the past. They seem to have been drawn up originally in answer to a need of regulating the relations of the conquerors to the subjected Romans. Most famous of all is the Salic Law, which dates from the time of Clovis, and takes us down the whole scale of punishments, from the fine required for the murder of a bishop to that claimed for abusive epithets, like witch, perjurer, spy, fox, or hare. Wounds were rated according to their length, depth, and relative position, and according to the amount of blood that flowed from them; and the sum was increased tenfold, with the fee of a doctor in addition, if the blow had been struck below the waist. It is curious to note that crimes with the Franks were not offences against the state, but purely against the individual and his friends: “If any one shall have dug up and plundered a corpse already buried, and it shall have been proved on him, he shall be outlawed until the day when he comes to an agreement with the relatives of the dead man, and they ask for him that he be allowed to come among men.” And again, “If any one’s father have been killed, the sons shall have half the compounding money (Wergeld); and the other half, the nearest relatives . . . shall divide among themselves.”
Through these old laws, as well as through the oldest legal formulas that have been preserved, there often runs a vein of poetry, while some situations are painted in the most dramatic language. The guilty man, says an old curse, shall be outlawed so far as fire burns and earth grows green, so far as “the hawk flies through the long spring day with the wind resting under his two wings.” According to the Salic Law the offender who has not wherewith to pay his fine is first to renounce all his property, “and he shall afterward go into his house, and shall collect in his hand dust from the four corners of it, and shall afterward stand upon the threshold, looking inward into the house. And then, with his left hand, he shall throw over his shoulders some of that dust on the nearest relative that he has. . . . And after that, in his shirt, without girdle and without shoes, a staff in his hand, he shall spring over the hedge.” A dismal picture of renunciation and ruin! But not more moving than the account in the Frisian Law of the three cases of necessity, in which the mother can lay hands on the heritage of her child: “when the child is captive and in chains in the north over the sea or in the south over the mountains;” when years of scarcity come and fierce hunger stalks over the land and the child would die of starvation;” “when,” finally, “the child is stark naked or homeless, and the misty dark night and the icy cold winter rise over the palings, and all men hasten to house and home, and the wild beast seeks the hollows of the trees and the caves of the mountains, there to eke out his existence; when the child, under age, weeps and bemoans its bare limbs and bewails that it has no roof, and that its father who should protect it against the cold winter and fierce hunger is lying so deep down in the darkness under earth and oaken planks, covered and held fast by four nails: then the mother may alienate and sell her child’s inheritance!”
The alliterative form in many of the old laws shows a joy in sweet sounds, and we know from other evidence that the Germans were already in the habit of singing popular melodies. Tacitus tells how they “filled the valleys and wooded heights with the echoes of gleeful song,” though the Emperor Julian wonders how they can enjoy their own music, which seems to him “not unlike the croaking of violently shrieking birds.” A later, still severer, critic was a certain Deacon John, who inveighs against the German rendering of the noble Gregorian chants: “when they try,” he says, “to sing the mild melody with their own modulations and trills, the barbaric wildness of their thirsty throats emits harsh tones with a certain natural resonance, as if heavy wagons with confused noise of thunder were driving along over logs.” Interesting animadversions, in the youth of their race, on the most musical people the world has known!
IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY WE find three different divisions of the Frankish kingdom: Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy – each with its own petty Merovingian king and its own mayor of the palace. After frequent civil wars the mayor of Neustria, Pepin of Héristal, succeeded at Testry, in 687 A.D., in subduing the mayor of Austrasia, who happened at the time to be administering also the affairs of Burgundy. A significant date this 687, for by this battle unity was restored to the Franks, and the power concentrated in the hands of Pepin and his descendants. Pepin, we are told, “arranged all things and returned to Austrasia,” leaving his own son as major-domus of Neustria.
Strong men were needed if the work of Clovis were not to be undone; but the new rulers proved a warlike race for the next four generations, showing no weak member until after the days of Charles the Great. Each in turn – Pepin of Héristal, Charles Martel, Pepin the Short, and Charles the Great himself – put down with an iron hand revolts of the conquered tribes, finding in time new powers to reckon with, like the dukes of Bavaria, the Lombards and the popes in Italy, the Avars in the present Austria, the Moors in Spain, or the untamed Saxons at home.
Most alarming of all because it threatened the downfall of the whole civilization of the West, was the war-cloud that approached from the South, where the devoted followers of Mohammed, ever since the Hegira, or flight to Mecca, in 622 A.D., had been steadily advancing and conquering everything in their way. Marvellous had been their progress from the sands of Arabia, along the whole northern coast of Africa, across the straits of Gibraltar, which were named after one of their generals, through Spain and Aquitaine, and well into Gaul. In one of the great battles of the world, fought near Poictiers in 732 A.D., Charles Martel – the dealer of heavy, hammer-like blows – drove them back, owing his victory largely to his own skill and bravery, but also to discords in the enemy’s camp and to the ready response with which his call to arms was met in all the heterogeneous parts of the Frankish kingdom. Few details of the battle are known; but contemporaries place the enemy’s losses at wild, extravagant figures, and the victory was in so far decisive that the Mohammedans ceased to assume the offensive and were soon driven out of Aquitaine.
From this war date the beginnings of the great feudal system that prevailed in Europe down into the 19th century, for in order to equip his nobles with horses Charles sequestered large estates of the church and granted out the usufruct. The recipients of these so-called benefices made certain agreements which placed them in the position of vassals. They took an oath of fidelity, and gradually acquired privileges and, especially, immunity from the interference of the royal justices. Their holdings came to be known by the name of feuda, or fiefs, whence the name feudal system. A radical measure, this seizure of ecclesiastical lands, and one that has only been resorted to at great crises in the world’s history. In spite of his great service to Christendom, the church could never forgive Charles’s act of violence, and he died in bad repute, at least with his Gallic clergy. A pious bishop of Orleans, who was said to have descended into hell in the good company of an angel, declared that he had seen him there. The monks of St. Wandrille, in the monastery chronicle, bewail that their good lands have gone for the purchase of spurs and saddles; while a legend relates that once, when Charles’s tomb was opened, diabolical fumes were seen to escape.
Yet this same prince had been the constant friend and protector of the warmest advocate and most zealous servant the church of Rome had ever possessed, the English missionary Winfred, or Boniface, to whom he had given a letter of safe-conduct addressed to all the nobles of his land, and whom he had allowed to map out the whole Frankish territory into ecclesiastical provinces. Boniface founded the monastery of Fulda, became the first archbishop of Mainz, and completely Romanized the German church, so that it conformed in even the most petty observances. He once declared that without this support from Charles he could neither have governed his priests and monks, nor prevented the exercise of pagan and idolatrous rites.
This new and close union with Rome was of vast importance for the future. The eternal city had often been the goal of pious pilgrimages, a hunting ground for sacred relics. But never before had the popes attained to the exercise of any considerable influence within Frankish territory. Gregory the Great had adopted the humblest tones even to the murderess Brunhilda, whom he begged to protect his missionaries on their way to England. Now the German people were to be folded closely in Rome’s embrace, not to be liberated until the time of the Reformation.
For the literary culture of Germany Boniface also did his part. Fulda became a home of letters, and many of the monks and nuns who at his bidding came from England were in turn the founders of new monasteries and thus of new intellectual centres. Boniface himself wrote a grammar and a number of poems, and could not refrain from interspersing verses even in his letters to the Pope. Not merely in spiritual matters was he applied to, but also in those relating to pure diction. The account of a vision that he has left us in one of his letters does as much credit to his poetic imagination and his powers of expression as to his sanctity.
All this while the position of the mayors of the palace, although they had assumed the rank and title of dukes, was, to say the least, anomalous; yet the people had sanctioned it and had wished for no change of dynasty. They still set store by their feeble kings, and once when Grimoald, Charles Martel’s great-uncle, had tried to place his own son on the throne, he had forced a revolt that cost him his life. But by the time of Pepin, Charles’s son, the complexion of affairs was altered, and nobles, clergy, and people alike were desirous of a change. Pepin, eager for a sanction that would command respect, sent to the Pope, in 752 A.D., and propounded the riddle on which the fate of nations rested, “With regard to the kings of the Frankish kingdom, who possessed no more royal power, was this right or no?” And Pope Zacharias answered in similar oracular terms, “Rather should he have the name of king who has the power than he to whom no royal power remains.”
Then Pepin allowed himself to be chosen and done homage to by the people, and to be consecrated by the primate Boniface. Mindful of this religious side to his elevation, he signed himself henceforth as “king by the grace of God,” and when the next Pope, Stephen IV., announced his intention of coming over the Alps, he dutifully went to meet him at St. Maurice, taking with him his little boy of twelve, the future Charlemagne. Afterward, in St. Denis, Stephen solemnly anointed the new king and his two sons, and placed a diadem on the head of the queen. “What was done for none of your ancestors has been done for you,” he later wrote, “. . . through our humility the Lord has anointed you king.” By solemn papal fiat the crown was declared hereditary, and a curse pronounced on whoever should presume to choose a king from any other line. The two potentates then concluded an alliance which was to last “until the consummation of the ages.”
Through his friendly union with the Roman pontiff, a great field of activity had been opened up for the newly made king. As champion of the church, he descended upon Italy, where the Lombards were threatening the power of the papal see. Wresting whole districts from their hands, notably the Pentapolis and the Ravenna exarebate, he handed them over to the Pope, and this gift, known as the “donation of Pepin,” laid the foundation for the temporal greatness of the Roman see.
Never have two men better supplemented each other’s work than in the case of Pepin and Charlemagne. What the one began the other carried to completion, until, by perfectly natural steps, the crown of the Frankish kingdom merged into that of the Holy Roman Empire. For posterity, indeed, Pepin has remained far in the background, whereas Charlemagne has been the hero of all the ages. Whenever antiquity has been found desirable for a law or for an institution, it has been dated back to his reign; innumerable writings are spiced with anecdotes about him. The image of his banner-bearer, Roland, became the accepted emblem of civic jurisdiction; the greatest emperors paid their reverence at his tomb. It was his coffin that Napoleon carried off to Paris, as the token of a whole dead empire; his crown, and his alone, that the Corsican coveted.
It is more as a lawgiver and administrator than as a conqueror that Charles has lived in the memory of the people, and it is with that side of his activity and with his dominating personality that we are here most concerned. We shall, therefore, follow him not too closely on his military career, as he rode along on his charger from one confine of his domains to the other, adding mile on mile until twelve thousand ultimately stood to his credit. In his forty-six years of rule he engaged in some sixty warlike expeditions, and the wonder is that he found time and inclination for his many works of peace. At the end of his reign he could look around on magnificent results. The Lombard kingdom in Italy, after a checkered life of two centuries, had been brought to an end, and the iron crown rested on his own head; the last free German tribes had been drawn within the limits of the Frankish kingdom; the last remnants of heathenism had gone down before the sword and the laws of the determined conqueror. A Bavarian duke had been brought to bay, had been shorn as a monk, and thrust in a cloister, while his land had been parcelled out as a Frankish province.