What, then, was the government of
this empire of which Charlemagne was proud to assume
the old title? How did this German warrior govern
that vast dominion which, thanks to his conquests,
extended from the Elbe to the Ebro, from the North
Sea to the Mediterranean; which comprised nearly all
Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and the north
of Italy and of Spain, and which, sooth to say, was
still, when Charlemagne caused himself to be made
emperor, scarce more than the hunting-ground and the
battle-field of all the swarms of barbarians who tried
to settle on the ruins of the Roman world they had
invaded and broken to pieces? The government
of Charlemagne in the midst of this chaos is the striking,
complicated, and transitory fact which is now to be
passed in review.
A word of warning must be first of
all given touching this word government, with which
it is impossible to dispense. For a long time
past the word has entailed ideas of national unity,
general organization, and regular and efficient power.
There has been no lack of revolutions which have
changed dynasties and the principles and forms of the
supreme power in the State; but they have always left
existing, under different names, the practical machinery
whereby the supreme power makes itself felt and exercises
its various functions over the whole country.
Open the Almanac, whether it be called the Imperial,
the Royal, or the National, and you will find there
always the working system of the government of France;
all the powers and their agents, from the lowest to
the highest, are there indicated and classed according
to their prerogatives and relations. Nor have
we there a mere empty nomenclature, a phantom of theory;
things go on actually as they are described the
book is the reflex of the reality. It were easy
to construct, for the empire of Charlemagne, a similar
list of officers; there might be set down in it dukes,
counts, vicars, centeniers, and sheriffs (seabini),
and they might be distributed, in regular gradation,
over the whole territory; but it would be one huge
lie; for most frequently, in the majority of places,
these magistracies were utterly powerless and themselves
in complete disorder. The efforts of Charlemagne,
either to establish them on a firm footing or to make
them act with regularity, were continual, but unavailing.
In spite of the fixity of his purpose and the energy
of his action, the disorder around him was measureless
and insurmountable. He might check it for a
moment at one point; but the evil existed wherever
his terrible will did not reach, and wherever it did
the evil broke out again so soon as it had been withdrawn.
How could it be otherwise? Charlemagne had
not to grapple with one single nation or with one
single system of institutions; he had to deal with
different nations, without cohesion, and foreign one
to another. The authority belonged, at one and
the same time, to assemblies of free men, to landholders
over the dwellers on their domains, and to the king
over the “leudes” and their following.
These three powers appeared and acted side by side
in every locality as well as in the totality of the
State. Their relations and their prerogatives
were not governed by any generally-recognized principle,
and none of the three was invested with sufficient
might to prevail habitually against the independence
or resistance of its rivals. Force alone, varying
according to circumstances and always uncertain decided
matters between them. Such was France at the
accession of the second line. The co-existence
of and the struggle between the three systems of institutions
and the three powers just alluded to had as yet had
no other result. Out of this chaos Charlemagne
caused to issue a monarchy, strong through him alone
and so long as he was by, but powerless and gone like
a shadow when the man was lost to the institution.
Whoever is astonished either at this
triumph of absolute monarchy through the personal
movement of Charlemagne, or at the speedy fall of the
fabric on the disappearance of the moving spirit,
understands neither what can be done by a great man,
when without him society sees itself given over to
deadly peril, nor how unsubstantial and frail is absolute
power when the great man is no longer by, or when
society has no longer need of him.
It has just been shown how Charlemagne
by his wars, which had for their object and result
permanent and well-secured conquests, had stopped the
fresh incursions of barbarians, that is, had stopped
disorder coming from without. An attempt will
now be made to show by what means he set about suppressing
disorder from within and putting his own rule in the
place of the anarchy that prevailed in the Roman world
which lay in ruins, and in the barbaric world which
was a prey to blind and ill-regulated force.
A distinction must be drawn between
the local and central governments.
Far from the centre of the State,
in what have since been called the provinces, the
power of the emperor was exercised by the medium of
two classes of agents, one local and permanent, the
other despatched from the centre and transitory.
In the first class we find:
1st. The dukes, counts, vicars
of counts, centeniers, sheriffs (scabini), officers
or magistrates residing on the spot, nominated by the
emperor himself or by his delegates, and charged with
the duty of acting in his name for the levying of
troops, rendering of justice, maintenance of order,
and receipt of imposts.
2d. The beneficiaries or vassals
of the emperor, who held of him, sometimes as hereditaments,
more often for life, and more often still without
fixed rule or stipulation, lands; domains, throughout
the extent of which they exercised, a little bit in
their own name and a little bit in the name of the
emperor, a certain jurisdiction and nearly all the
rights of sovereignty. There was nothing very
fixed or clear in the position of the beneficiaries
and in the nature of their power; they were at one
and the same time delegates and independent, owners
and enjoyers of usufruct, and the former or the latter
character prevailed amongst them according to circumstances.
But, altogether, they were closely bound to Charlemagne,
who, in a great number of cases, charged them with
the execution of his orders in the lands they occupied.
Above these agents, local and resident,
magistrates or beneficiaries, were the missi dominici,
temporary commissioners, charged to inspect, in the
emperor’s name, the condition of the provinces;
authorized to penetrate into the interior of the free
lands as well as of the domains granted with the title
of bénéfices; having the right to reform certain
abuses, and bound to render an account of all to their
master. The missi dominici were the principal
instruments Charlemagne had, throughout the vast territory
of his empire, of order and administration.
As to the central government, setting
aside for a moment the personal action of Charlemagne
and of his counsellors, the general assemblies, to
judge by appearances and to believe nearly all the
modern historians, occupied a prominent place in it.
They were, in fact, during his reign, numerous and
active; from the year 776 to the year 813 we may count
thirty-five of these national assemblies, March-parades
and May-parades, held at Worms, Valenciennes, Geneva,
Paderborn, Aix-la-Chapelle, Thionville, and several
other towns, the majority situated round about the
two banks of the Rhine. The number and periodical
nature of these great political reunions are undoubtedly
a noticeable fact. What, then, went on in their
midst? What character and weight must be attached
to their intervention in the government of the State?
It is important to sift this matter thoroughly.
There is extant, touching this subject,
a very curious document. A contemporary and
counsellor of Charlemagne, his cousin-german Adalbert,
abbot of Corbic, had written a treatise entitled Of
the Ordering of the Palace (De Ordine Palatii),
and designed to give an insight into the government
of Charlemagne, with especial reference to the national
assemblies. This treatise was lost; but towards
the close of the ninth century, Hincmar, the celebrated
archbishop of Rheims, reproduced it almost in its
entirety, in the form of a letter or of instructions,
written at the request of certain grandees of the kingdom
who had asked counsel of him with respect to the government
of Carloman, one of the sons of Charles the Stutterer.
We read therein,
“It was the custom at this time
to hold two assemblies every year. . . In both,
that they might not seem to have been convoked without
motive, there were submitted to the examination and
deliberation of the grandees . . . and by virtue
of orders from the king, the fragments of law called
capitula, which the king himself had drawn up
under the inspiration of God or the necessity for
which had been made manifest to him in the intervals
between the meetings.”
Two striking facts are to be gathered
from these words: the first, that the majority
of the members composing these assemblies probably
regarded as a burden the necessity for being present
at them, since Charlemagne took care to explain their
convocation by declaring to them the motive for it
and by always giving them something to do; the second,
that the proposal of the capitularies, or, in modern
phrase, the initiative, proceeded from the emperor.
The initiative is naturally exercised by him who
wishes to regulate or reform, and in his time it was
especially Charlemagne who conceived this design.
There is no doubt, however, but that the members
of the assembly might make on their side such proposals
as appeared to them suitable; the constitutional distrusts
and artifices of our times were assuredly unknown
to Charlemagne, who saw in these assemblies a means
of government rather than a barrier to his authority.
To resume the text of Hincmar:
“After having received these
communications, they deliberated on them two or three
days or more, according to the importance of the business.
Palace-messengers, going and coming, took their questions
and carried back the answers. No stranger came
near the place of their meeting until the result of
their deliberations had been able to be submitted to
the scrutiny of the great prince, who then, with the
wisdom he had received from God, adopted a resolution
which all obeyed.”
The definitive resolution, therefore,
depended upon Charlemagne alone; the assembly contributed
only information and counsel.
Hinemar continues, and supplies details
worthy of reproduction, for they give an insight into
the imperial government and the action of Charlemagne
himself amidst those most ancient of the national assemblies.
“Things went on thus for one
or two capitularies, or a greater number, until, with
God’s help, all the necessities of the occasion
were regulated.
“Whilst these matters were thus
proceeding out of the king’s presence, the prince
himself, in the midst of the multitude, came to the
general assembly, was occupied in receiving the presents,
saluting the men of most note, conversing with those
he saw seldom, showing towards the elders a tender
interest, disporting himself with the youngsters, and
doing the same thing, or something like it, with the
ecclesiastics as well as the seculars.
However, if those who were deliberating about the
matter submitted to their examination showed a desire
for it, the king repaired to them and remained with
them as long as they wished; and then they reported
to him with perfect familiarity what they thought about
all matters, and what were the friendly discussions
that had arisen amongst them. I must not forget
to say that, if the weather were fine, everything
took place in the open air; otherwise, in several distinct
buildings, where those who had to deliberate on the
king’s proposals were separated from the multitude
of persons come to the assembly, and then the men
of greater note were admitted. The places appointed
for the meeting of the lords were divided into two
parts, in such sort that the bishops, the abbots,
and the clerics of high rank might meet without mixture
with the laity. In the same way the counts and
other chiefs of the State underwent separation, in
the morning, until, whether the king was present or
absent, all were gathered together; then the lords
above specified, the clerics on their side, and the
laïcs on theirs, repaired to the hall which had
been assigned to them, and where seats had been with
due honor prepared for them. When the lords laical
and ecclesiastical were thus separated from the multitude,
it remained in their power to sit separately or together,
according to the nature of the business they had to
deal with, ecclesiastical, secular, or mixed.
In the same way, if they wished to send for any one,
either to demand refreshment, or to put any question
and to dismiss him after getting what they wanted,
it was at their option. Thus took place the examination
of affairs proposed to them by the king for deliberation.
“The second business of the
king was to ask of each what there was to report to
him, or enlighten him touching the part of the kingdom
each had come from. Not only was this permitted
to all, but they were strictly enjoined to make inquiries,
during the interval between the assemblies, about
what happened within or without the kingdom; and they
were bound to seek knowledge from foreigners as well
as natives, enemies as well as friends, sometimes
by employing emissaries, and without troubling themselves
much about the manner in which they acquired their
information. The king wished to know whether
in any part, in any corner of the kingdom, the people
were restless, and what was the cause of their restlessness;
or whether there had happened any disturbance to which
it was necessary to draw the attention of the council-general,
and other similar matters. He sought also to
know whether any of the subjugated nations were inclined
to revolt; whether any of those that had revolted
seemed disposed towards submission; and whether those
that were still independent were threatening the kingdom
with any attack. On all these subjects, whenever
there was any manifestation of disorder or danger,
he demanded chiefly what were the motives or occasion
of them.”
There is need of no great reflection
to recognize the true character of these assemblies:
it is clearly imprinted upon the sketch drawn by Hincmar.
The figure of Charlemagne alone fills the picture:
he is the centre-piece of it and the soul of everything.
’Tis he who wills that the national assemblies
should meet and deliberate; ’tis he who inquires
into the state of the country; ’tis he who proposes
and approves of or rejects the laws; with him rest
will and motive, initiative and decision. He
has a mind sufficiently judicious, unshackled, and
elevated to understand that the nation ought not to
be left in darkness about its affairs, and that he
himself has need of communicating with it, of gathering
information from it, and of learning its opinions.
But we have here no exhibition of great political
liberties, no people discussing its interests and
its business, interfering effectually in the adoption
of resolutions, and, in fact, taking in its government
so active and decisive a part as to have a right to
say that it is self-governing, or, in other words,
a free people. It is Charlemagne, and he alone,
who governs; it is absolute government marked by prudence,
ability, and grandeur.
When the mind dwells upon the state
of Gallo-Frankish society in the eighth century, there
is nothing astonishing in such a fact. Whether
it be civilized or barbarian, that which every society
needs, that which it seeks and demands first of all
in its government, is a certain degree of good sense
and strong will, of intelligence and innate influence,
so far as the public interests are concerned; qualities,
in fact, which suffice to keep social order maintained
or make it realized, and to promote respect for individual
rights and the progress of the general well-being.
This is the essential aim of every community of men;
and the institutions and guarantees of free government
are the means of attaining it. It is clear that,
in the eighth century, on the ruins of the Roman and
beneath the blows of the barbaric world, the Gallo-Frankish
nation, vast and without cohesion, brutish and ignorant,
was incapable of bringing forth, so to speak, from
its own womb, with the aid of its own wisdom and virtue,
a government of the kind. A host of different
forces, without enlightenment and without restraint,
were everywhere and incessantly struggling for dominion,
or, in other words, were ever troubling and endangering
the social condition. Let there but arise, in
the midst of this chaos of unruly forces and selfish
passions, a great man, one of those elevated minds
and strong characters that can understand the essential
aim of society and then urge it forward, and at the
same time keep it well in hand on the roads that lead
thereto, and such a man will soon seize and exercise
the personal power almost of a despot, and people
will not only make him welcome, but even celebrate
his praises, for they do not quit the substance for
the shadow, or sacrifice the end to the means.
Such was the empire of Charlemagne. Amongst
annalists and historians, some, treating him as a
mere conqueror and despot, have ignored his merits
and his glory; others, that they might admire him
without scruple, have made of him a founder of free
institutions, a constitutional monarch. Both
are equally mistaken. Charlemagne was, indeed,
a conqueror and a despot; but by his conquests and
his personal power he, so long as he was by, that
is, for six and forty years, saved Gallo-Frankish
society from barbaric invasion without and anarchy
within. That is the characteristic of his government
and his title to glory.
What he was in his wars and his general
relations with his nation has just been seen; he shall
now be exhibited in all his administrative activity
and his intellectual life, as a legislator and as a
friend to the human mind. The same man will
be recognized in every ease; he will grow in greatness,
without changing, as he appears under his various
aspects.
There are often joined together, under
the title of Capitularies (capitula, small
chapters, articles) a mass of Acts, very different
in point of dates and objects, which are attributed
indiscriminately to Charlemagne. This is a mistake.
The Capitularies are the laws or legislative measures
of the Frankish kings, Merovingian as well as Carlovingian.
Those of the Merovingians are few in number and of
slight importance, and amongst those of the Carlovingians,
which amount to one hundred and fifty-two, sixty-five
only are due to Charlemagne. When an attempt
is made to classify these last according to their object,
it is impossible not to be struck with their incoherent
variety; and several of them are such as we should
nowadays be surprised to meet with in a code or in
a special law. Amongst Charlemagne’s sixty-five
Capitularies, which contain eleven hundred and fifty-one
articles, may be counted eighty-seven of moral, two
hundred and ninety-three of political, one hundred
and thirty of penal, one hundred and ten of civil,
eighty-five of religious, three hundred and five of
canonical, seventy-three of domestic, and twelve of
incidental legislation. And it must not be supposed
that all these articles are really acts of legislation,
laws properly so called; we find amongst them the
texts of ancient national laws revised and promulgated
afresh; extracts from and additions to these same
ancient laws, Salle, Lombard, and Bavarian; extracts
from acts of councils; instructions given by Charlemagne
to his envoys in the provinces; questions that he
proposed to put to the bishops or counts when they
came to the national assembly; answers given by Charlemagne
to questions addressed to him by the bishops, counts,
or commissioners (missi dominici); judgments,
decrees, royal pardons, and simple notes that Charlemagne
seems to have had written down for himself alone, to
remind him of what he proposed to do; in a word, nearly
all the various acts which could possibly have to
be framed by an earnest, far-sighted and active government.
Often, indeed, these Capitularies have no imperative
or prohibitive character; they are simple counsels,
purely moral precepts. We read therein, for
example,
“Covetousness doth consist in
desiring that which others possess, and in giving
away nought of that which one’s self possesseth;
according to the Apostle it is the root of all evil.”
And,
“Hospitality must be practised.”
The Capitularies which have been classed
under the heads of political, penal, and canonical
legislation are the most numerous, and are those which
bear most decidedly an imperative or prohibitive stamp;
amongst them a prominent place is held by measures
of political economy, administration, and police;
you will find therein an attempt to put a fixed price
on provisions, a real trial of a maximum for cereals,
and a prohibition of mendicity, with the following
clause:
“If such mendicants be met with,
and they labor not with their hands, let none take
thought about giving unto them.”
The interior police of the palace
was regulated thereby, as well as that of the empire:
“We do will and decree that
none of those who serve in our palace shall take leave
to receive therein any man who seeketh refuge there
and cometh to hide there, by reason of theft, homicide,
adultery, or any other crime. That if any free
man do break through our interdicts, and hide such
malefactor in our palace, he shall be bound to carry
him on his shoulders to the public quarter, and be
there tied to the same stake as the malefactor.”
Certain Capitularies have been termed
religious legislation in contradistinction to canonical
legislation, because they are really admonitions,
religious exhortations, addressed not to ecclesiastics
alone, but to the faithful, the Christian people in
general, and notably characterized by good sense,
and, one might almost say, freedom of thought.
For example,
“Beware of venerating the names
of martyrs falsely so called, and the memory of dubious
saints.”
“Let none suppose that prayer
cannot be made to God save in three tongues [probably
Latin, Greek, and Germanic, or perhaps the vulgar tongue;
for the last was really beginning to take form], for
God is adored in all tongues, and man is heard if
he do but ask for the things that be right.”
These details are put forward that
a proper idea may be obtained of Charlemagne as a
legislator, and of what are called his laws.
We have here, it will be seen, no ordinary legislator
and no ordinary laws: we see the work, with infinite
variations and in disconnected form, of a prodigiously
energetic and watchful master, who had to think and
provide for everything, who had to be everywhere the
moving and the regulating spirit. This universal
and untiring energy is the grand characteristic of
Charlemagne’s government, and was, perhaps, what
made his superiority most incontestable and his power
most efficient.
It is noticeable that the majority
of Charlemagne’s Capitularies belong to that
epoch of his reign when he was Emperor of the West,
when he was invested with all the splendor of sovereign
power. Of the sixty-five Capitularies classed
under different heads, thirteen only are previous to
the 25th of December, 800, the date of his coronation
as emperor at Rome; fifty-two are comprised between
the years 801 and 804.
The energy of Charlemagne as a warrior
and a politician having thus been exhibited, it remains
to say a few words about his intellectual energy.
For that is by no means the least original or least
grand feature of his character and his influence.
Modern times and civilized society
have more than once seen despotic sovereigns filled
with distrust towards scholars of exalted intellect,
especially such as cultivated the moral and political
sciences, and little inclined to admit them to their
favor or to public office. There is no knowing
whether, in our days, with our freedom of thought and
of the press, Charlemagne would have been a stranger
to this feeling of antipathy; but what is certain
is, that in his day, in the midst of a barbaric society,
there was no inducement to it, and that, by nature,
he was not disposed to it. His power was not
in any respect questioned; distinguished intellects
were very rare; Charlemagne had too much need of their
services to fear their criticisms, and they, on their
part, were more anxious to second his efforts than
to show towards him anything like exaction or independence.
He gave rein, therefore, without any embarrassment
or misgiving, to his spontaneous inclination towards
them, their studies, their labors, and their influence.
He drew them into the management of affairs.
In Guizot’s History of Civilization in France
there is a list of the names and works of twenty-three
men of the eighth and ninth centuries who have escaped
oblivion, and they are all found grouped about Charlemagne
as his own habitual advisers, or assigned by him as
advisers to his sons Pepin and Louis in Italy and Aquitania,
or sent by him to all points of his empire as his
commissioners (missi dominici), or charged
in his name with important negotiations. And
those whom he did not employ at a distance formed,
in his immediate neighborhood, a learned and industrious
society, a school of the palace, according to some
modern commentators, but an academy, and not a school,
according to others, devoted rather to conversation
than to teaching. It probably fulfilled both
missions; it attended Charlemagne at his various residences,
at one time working for him at questions he invited
them to deal with, at another giving to the regular
components of his court, to his children and to himself,
lessons in the different sciences called liberal,
grammar, rhetoric, logic, astronomy, geometry, and
even theology and the great religious problems it
was beginning to discuss.
Two men, Alcuin and Eginhard, have
remained justly celebrated in the literary history
of the age. Alcuin was the principal director
of the school of the palace, and the favorite, the
confidant, the learned adviser of Charlemagne.
“If your zeal were imitated,” said he
one day to the emperor, “perchance one might
see arise in France a new Athens, far more glorious
than the ancient the Athens of Christ.”
Eginhard, who was younger, received his scientific
education in the school of the palace, and was head
of the public works to Charlemagne, before becoming
his biographer, and, at a later period, the intimate
adviser of his son Louis the Debonnair. Other
scholars of the school of the palace, Angilbert, Leidrade,
Adalhard, Agobard, Theodulph, were abbots of St. Riquier
or Corbie, archbishops of Lyons, and bishops of Orleans.
They had all assumed, in the school itself, names
illustrious in pagan antiquity; Alcuin called himself
Flaeens; Angilbert, Homer; Theodulph, Pindar.
Charlemagne himself had been pleased to take, in their
society, a great name of old, but he had borrowed
from the history of the Hebrews he called
himself David; and Eginhard, animated, no doubt, by
the same sentiments, was Bezaleel, that nephew of
Moses to whom God had granted the gift of knowing
how to work skilfully in wood and all the materials
which served for the construction of the ark and the
tabernacle. Either in the lifetime of their
royal patron, or after his death, all these scholars
became great dignitaries of the Church, or ended their
lives in monasteries of note; but, so long as they
lived, they served Charlemagne or his sons not only
with the devotion of faithful advisers, but also as
followers proud of the master who had known how to
do them honor by making use of them.
It was without effort and by natural
sympathy that Charlemagne had inspired them with such
sentiments; for he, too, really loved sciences, literature,
and such studies as were then possible, and he cultivated
them on his own account and for his own pleasure, as
a sort of conquest. It has been doubted whether
he could write, and an expression of Eginhard’s
might authorize such a doubt; but, according to other
evidence and even according to the passage in Eginhard,
one is inclined to believe merely that Charlemagne
strove painfully, and without much success, to write
a good hand. He had learned Latin, and he understood
Greek. He caused to be commenced, and, perhaps,
himself commenced the drawing up of the first Germanic
grammar. He ordered that the old barbaric poems,
in which the deeds and wars of the ancient kings were
celebrated, should be collected for posterity.
He gave Germanic names to the twelve months of the
year. He distinguished the winds by twelve special
terms, whereas before his time they had but four designations.
He paid great attention to astronomy. Being
troubled one day at no longer seeing in the firmament
one of the known planets, he wrote to Alcuin, “What
thinkest thou of this Mars, which, last year, being
concealed in the sign of Cancer, was intercepted from
the sight of men by the light of the sun? Is
it the regular course of his revolution? Is it
the influence of the sun? Is it a miracle?
Could he have been two years about performing the
course of a single one?” In theological studies
and discussions he exhibited a particular and grave
interest. “It is to him,” say M.M.
Ampere and Haureau, “that we must refer the honor
of the decision taken in 794 by the Council of Frankfort
in the great dispute about images; a temperate decision
which is as far removed from the infatuation of the
image-worshippers as from the frenzy of the image-breakers.”
And at the same time that he thus took part in the
great ecclesiastical questions, Charlemagne paid zealous
attention to the instruction of the clergy, whose
ignorance he deplored. “Ah,” said
he one day, “if only I had about me a dozen
clerics learned in all the sciences, as Jerome and
Augustin were!” With all his puissance it was
not in his power to make Jeromes and Augustins;
but he laid the foundation, in the cathedral churches
and the great monasteries, of episcopal and cloistral
schools for the education of ecclesiastics, and carrying
his solicitude still farther, he recommended to the
bishops and abbots that, in those schools, “they
should take care to make no difference between the
sons of serfs and of free men, so that they might
come and sit on the same benches to study grammar,
music, and arithmetic.” (Capitularies
of 789, ar.) Thus, in the eighth century, he
foreshadowed the extension which, in the nineteenth,
was to be accorded to primary instruction, to the advantage
and honor not only of the clergy, but also of the whole
people.
After so much of war and toil at a
distance, Charlemagne was now at Aix-la-Chapelle,
finding rest in this work of peaceful civilization.
He was embellishing the capital which he had founded,
and which was called the king’s court.
He had built there a grand basilica, magnificently
adorned. He was completing his own palace there.
He fetched from Italy clerics skilled in church music,
a pious joyance to which he was much devoted, and
which he recommended to the bishops of his empire.
In the outskirts of Aix-la-Chapelle “he gave
full scope,” said Eginhard, “to his delight
in riding and hunting. Baths of naturally-tepid
water gave him great pleasure. Being passionately
fond of swimming, he became so dexterous that none
could be compared with him. He invited not only
his sons, but also his friends, the grandees of his
court, and sometimes even the soldiers of his guard,
to bathe with him, insomuch that there were often
a hundred and more persons bathing at a time.
When age arrived he made no alteration in his bodily
habits; but, at the same time, instead of putting
away from him the thought of death, he was much taken
up with it, and prepared himself for it with stern
severity. He drew up, modified, and completed
his will several times over. Three years before
his death he made out the distribution of his treasures,
his money, his wardrobe, and all his furniture, in
the presence of his friends and his officers, in order
that their voice might insure, after his death, the
execution of this partition, and he set down his intentions
in this respect in a written summary, in which he
massed all his riches in three grand lots. The
first two were divided into twenty-one portions, which
were to be distributed amongst the twenty-one metropolitan
churches of his empire. After having put these
first two lots under seal, he willed to preserve to
himself his usual enjoyment of the third so long as
he lived. But after his death or voluntary renunciation
of the things of this world, this same lot was to
be subdivided into four portions. His intention
was, that the first should be added to the twenty-one
portions which were to go to the metropolitan churches;
the second set aside for his sons and daughters, and
for the sons and daughters of his sons, and redivided
amongst them in a just and proportionate manner; the
third dedicated, according to the usage of Christians,
to the necessities of the poor; and, lastly, the fourth
distributed in the same way, under the name of alms,
amongst the servants, of both sexes, of the palace
for their lifetime. . . . As for the books,
of which he had amassed a large number in his library,
he decided that those who wished to have them might
buy them at their proper value, and that the money
which they produced should be distributed amongst
the poor.”
Having thus carefully regulated his
own private affairs and bounty, he, two years later,
in 813, took the measures necessary for the regulation,
after his death, of public affairs. He had lost,
in 811, his eldest son Charles, who had been his constant
companion in his wars, and, in 810, his second son
Pepin, whom he had made king of Italy; and he summoned
to his side his third son Louis, king of Aquitaine,
who was destined to succeed him. He ordered
the convocation of five local councils which were
to assemble at Mayence, Rheims, Chalons, Tours, and
Arles, for the purpose of bringing about, subject
to the king’s ratification, the reforms necessary
in the Church. Passing from the affairs of the
Church to those of the State, he convoked at Aix-la-Chapelle
a general assembly of bishops, abbots, counts, laic
grandees, and of the entire people, and, holding council
in his palace with the chief amongst them, “he
invited them to make his son Louis king-emperor; whereto
all assented, saying that it was very expedient, and
pleasing, also, to the people. On Sunday in
the next month, August 813, Charlemagne repaired, crown
on head, with his son Louis, to the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle,
laid upon the altar another crown, and, after praying,
addressed to his son a solemn exhortation respecting
all his duties as king towards God and the Church,
towards his family and his people, asked him if he
were fully resolved to fulfil them, and, at the answer
that he was, bade him take the crown that lay upon
the altar, and place it with his own hands upon his
head, which Louis did amidst the acclamations
of all present, who cried, ’Long live the emperor
Louis!’ Charlemagne then declared his son emperor
jointly with him, and ended the solemnity with these
words: ’Blessed be Thou, O Lord God, who
hast granted me grace to see with mine own eyes my
son seated on my throne!’” And Louis
set out again immediately for Aquitaine.
He was never to see his father again.
Charlemagne, after his son’s departure, went
out hunting, according to his custom, in the forest
of Ardenne, and continued during the whole autumn
his usual mode of life. “But in January,
814, he was taken ill,” says Eginhard, “of
a violent fever, which kept him to his bed.
Recurring forthwith to the remedy he ordinarily employed
against fever, he abstained from all nourishment,
persuaded that this diet would suffice to drive away
or at the least assuage the malady; but added to the
fever came that pain in the side which the Greeks
call pleurisy; nevertheless the emperor persisted in
his abstinence, supporting his body only by drinks
taken at long intervals; and on the seventh day after
that he had taken to his bed, having received the
holy communion,” he expired about nine A.M.,
on Saturday, the 28th of January, 814, in his seventy-first
year.
“After performance of ablutions
and funeral duties, the corpse was carried away and
buried, amidst the profound mourning of all the people,
in the church he himself had built; and above his tomb
there was put up a gilded arcade with his image and
this superscription: ’In this tomb reposeth
the body of Charles, great and orthodox emperor, who
did gloriously extend the kingdom of the Franks, and
did govern it happily for forty-seven years.
He died at the age of seventy years, in the year
of the Lord 814, in the seventh year of the Indiction,
on the 5th of the Kalends of February.’”
If we sum up his designs and his achievements,
we find an admirably sound idea and a vain dream,
a great success and a great failure.
Charlemagne took in hand the work
of placing upon a solid foundation the Frankish-Christian
dominion by stopping, in the north and south, the
flood of barbarians and Arabs Paganism and
Islamism. In that he succeeded: the inundations
of Asiatic populations spent their force in vain against
the Gallic frontier. Western and Christian Europe
was placed, territorially, beyond reach of attacks
from the foreigner and infidel. No sovereign,
no human being, perhaps, ever rendered greater service
to the civilization of the world.
Charlemagne formed another conception
and made another attempt. Like more than one
great barbaric warrior, he admired the Roman empire
that had fallen, its vastness all in one, and its
powerful organization under the hand of a single master.
He thought he could resuscitate it, durably, through
the victory of a new people and a new faith, by the
hand of Franks and Christians. With this view
he labored to conquer, convert, and govern.
He tried to be, at one and the same time, Caesar, Augustus,
and Constantine. And for a moment he appeared
to have succeeded; but the appearance passed away
with himself. The unity of the empire and the
absolute power of the emperor were buried in his grave.
The Christian religion and human liberty set to work
to prepare for Europe other governments and other
destinies.
Great men do great things which would
not get done without them; they set their mark plainly
upon history, which realizes a portion of their ideas
and wishes; but they are far from doing all they meditate,
and they know not all they do. They are at one
and the same time instruments and free agents in a
general design which is infinitely above their ken,
and which, even if a glimpse of it be caught, remains
inscrutable to them the design of God
towards mankind. When great men understand that
such is their position and accept it, they show sense,
and they work to some purpose. When they do
not recognize the limits of their free agency, and
the veil which hides from their eyes the future they
are laboring for, they become the dupes, and frequently
the victims, of a blind pride, which events, in the
long run, always end by exposing and punishing.
Amongst men of his rank, Charlemagne
has had this singular good fortune, that his error,
his misguided attempt at imperialism, perished with
him, whilst his salutary achievement, the territorial
security of Christian Europe, has been durable, to
the great honor, as well as great profit, of European
civilization.