Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/567

THE EARLY CAEOL1NGIAN3.] FRANCE 531 wherewith to resist the onslaught of the German Franks. Led by Pippin of Heristal, they burst into the valley of the Seine, and at Testry in the Vennandois, the long struggle of the two Frankish powers came at last to an end (G87). There the Neustrians under Berthar, mayor of the palace to Theodoric III., were entirely defeated, and henceforth, though the line of Merwing kings lasts till 752, they be come insignificant and powerless. We turn our eyes with pleasure towards the rising splendour of the Caroling house. France finds herself on the skirts of a new Roman empire, of which the seat is in Germany, and which in. its main features belongs to German not to French history. To no small extent the Neustrian Franks had lost their old Germanic vigour before this time; perhaps among the chief symptoms of change is the fact that many Frankish names may be read among the upper clergy of the time. In the absence of sufficient evidence it is impossible to say how far they had condescended to learn the " rustic Latin" which the older inhabitants all spoke, the parent of the modem French language ; still, there can be no doubt that they must have spoken it to some extent, if not as their sole speech. Now, however, the Austrasian conquerors began to bring things back to a German form. The ancient " Fields of March " are held again ; thither come the warriors in arms as of old ; German conceptions as to justice seem again to prevail over the more orderly Roman law. The new-comers are above all things an army ; and it is the fortune of the Austrasians, not only that they have soldiers and love fighting, but that they have great captains at their head. From Testry (687) to the end of his life in 714, Pippin of Heristal was unquestioned master of all Franks, the kings under him being utterly insignificant. While he kept his Neustrian subjects submissive, he applied the enthusiasms of the sword and the cross to the wild Germans on his eastern border. Under him began the heroic labours of those English monks whose is the high honour of having first introduced the Christian faith among the pagan Teutons. On Pippin s death things seemed likely to fall back into confusion; tho Neustrians shook off the yoke of their German lords, and Austrasia was threatened at once from every side ; Frisians and Saxons, as well as Neustrian Franks, overran the country, vainly opposed by Pippin s widow, Plectrude, who ruled in the name of her grandson, a child. Austrasia, however, was saved by the energy of Pippin s natural son Charles, whom Plectrude had thrown into prison, and who now emerged as a strong leader of the nobles. He defeated the Neustrians at Vincy, near Cambrai, in 717, repelled the Saxons from the Rhine, re duced Plectrude, who had taken refuge at Cologne, and became undoubted head of the Franks, as his father had been before him. His father s rise had been the work of the lay and spiritual nobility; the power of Charles was based on the sword alone ; he was regarded by the church men as their foe; he took of their lands to reward his soldiers, punishing the noble bishops while he encouraged the more popular monks. Though the clergy treated his memory with vindictive anger, the lay lords were firm on his side, and enabled him to found the great dynasty of the Carolings. For it was their ready sword which won him the victory of Poitiers (or Tours), in which Europe set a limit to the advance of Asia, in 732. The Arabs, pos sessors of almost the whole of Spain, had for several years poured over the Pyrenees into southern Gaul; held in check awhile by the vigorous Odo (or Eudes) king of Aquitaine, they proved at last too strong for him, and he appealed to Charles to rescue him. The Franks responded nobly to the call, and in a few years Charles had driven the Saracens out of all their points of vantage north of the Pyrenees. It is said that to the battle of Poitiers Charles owes his name of " Martel," the Hammer, for the vigour 732-771. with which he smote the Mussulmans. Other accounts have been given of this soubriquet; on the whole the common explanation of it is the most probable and the best sup ported. All the rest of his life this great duke of the Franks struggled against the pertinacious foes who attacked his frontiers. His power may be said to have been limited by the Rhino to the north and east, and by the Loire to the south. Just before his death he divided his dukedom between his sons Carlomau and Pippin the Short. As usual, the elder had the Germanic share, but under the influence of Boniface, the English monk and missionary, whom he made archbishop of Mainz, he, after six years of success ful rule, laid down the burden of power and became a Benedictine monk. His ducal rights he handed over to his brother Pippin, who had become sole duke of Franks. His Pippin father and brother had opposed the power of the bishops l ] ie by the help of the monks ; it remained for Pippin to go a shortt step farther, and linking together the monks with the papacy, to win for himself the name of king. The monks had been the papal militia for the conversion of Germans ; the converted Germans in their turn became firm friends of the Frankish dukes. The head of the whole movement was St Boniface, the founder of the church in Germany ; he it was who, acting under command of Pope Zachary, crowned Pippin king of Franks in the cathedral at Soissons. Pippin thereby became lord by a new title of the eastern and western Francia, or Frank-land, ruling over a large part of modern Germany and of modern France north of the Loire at least. The last of the Merwing shadow-kings, Hilderik III., was deposed, and thrust into the convent of St Omer, where he shortly after died, and the race be came extinct. On three sides Pippin was called to combat three powers, foes of his new royalty, foes also of the Church of Rome. The pagan Saxons did not detain him long : in one campaign he extorted from them the right to send his monks among them as missionaries ; the rest he left to time. The Lombards, under their king Haistulf (Adolphus). had seized Ravenna, and threatened Rome her self, and Pope Stephen fled to Pippin for help. The Frank king crossed the Alps, and compelled Haistulf to give tip to the Church of Rome the town of Ravenna, the Emilia, the Pentapolis, and the duchy of Rcme itself. This is the famous " Donation of Pippin," the foundation of that temporal power of the papacy the end of which we have seen with our own eyes. The papacy raised up tho Franks as their champions and defenders ; they were set as a counterpoise to the grand claims of the empire at Constanti nople, and as antagonists to enemies in Italy. No wonder if before long the papacy saw its advantage in the restora tion of an empire of the West under new auspices, and if Germany in return willingly interfered in the affairs of Italy. The political life of modern Europe now beginn. The rest of Pippin s reign was chiefly occupied with the re sistance he found in southern Gaul. In 758 he took Narbonne, the capital of the Arabs, and drove the Mahometans out; he attacked tho Aquitanians, who, after their wont, made tenacious resistance. On the death of their duke Waiffer, he overran their whole country, though he never occupied it permanently. Centuries imist elapso before northern and southern Gaul could become one France. In 768 Pippin died at Paris, leaving his dominions to Charles his two sons Charles and Carloman. In 771 Carloman tj ie also died, and Charles became sole king of Franks. The reign of " Charlemagne " is begun, tho great German lord who in fact and legend filled all the world. The seat of his father s power lay, on tho whole, in Neustria, and his chief struggles had been for dominion over Aquitaine; the Great.