Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/569

FRANCE UNDER CHARLES.] FRANCE 533 l layman and an ecclesiastic, so that the secular and church courts and benefices should each be inspected by a man cf the same order as the lord whom they visited. They tra versed the districts assigned to them in circuit four times a year, held courts to which even the counts were bound to come, looked into the details of government, reformed gross abuses, reported to their master on all persons, even the highest, appointed when needed fresh scabini and others, removed unworthy persons, looked to the poor, protecting them as far as possible from want and want s kinsman the oppressor. The great evil of the time was injustice de fended by bribery; the local judges could not resist the powerful or wealthy ill-doer, and so the wrongs of the poor remained unredressed. The Missi, with more or less suc cess, endeavoured to lessen these evils. We may believe that in the main the clergy worked willingly with them : they had closer relations with and warmer sympathies for the poor folk ; they administered a more stable and intelli gent code of laws ; they were the depositories of learning, and de.sired to educate those around them ; even in the worst times the humane morality of the Gospel gleams forth. In the days of Charles the Great all churchmen turned to the emperor and paid willing allegiance to him ; the ancient political coolness between the Carolings and the episcopate entirely disappears. The elements of society in Gaul at this time may be easily summed up. There were great Frankish lords, gradually diminishing in numbers as they grew in power and territorial independence ; there were great bishops, chiefly in the cities, and lordly abbots in country places, who were all by degrees becoming assimilated in condi tion to the Frankish nobles; there was also a rustic clergy, whose state was poor in the extreme ; then there were the free Franks, scarcely above the level of slaves, and ever slipping down into the servile class ; then Gallo-Romans in much the same condition ; and lastly the slaves, who are said to have formed nine-tenths of the population. The picture is one of great wretchedness, oppression, injus tice ; the great Charles himself felt no sure ground under his feet in dealing with the social condition of his subjects. It is clear that society must pass through vast changes be fore anything like an orderly and flourishing community could exist, and that even the splendid climate and soil of Gaul would long do little to better the condition of its inhabitants. The wretched period which comes to Gaul after the death of Charles is the time in which, from the older relations of chief, free Frank, and slave of war, we pass gradually and almost insensibly to the later feudal relation of lord and vassal and serf. The coming time was, as has been said by Hallam, " the age of the bishops ; " but in fact the bishops were only doing in their sphere what the lay chiefs were also achieving in theirs, laying the foundations of a feudal independence which was for ever striving to lapse into feudal anarchy. On the death of Charles the Great, the eyes of all turned hopefully to his only surviving son the gentle Hlodowig, Louis the Pious. His father had summoned him to Aix-la- Chapelle, had made him emperor, and then had sent him again to Aquitaine till his time should come. In him all sweet qualities of piety, morality, culture, seemed to find their home. His Aquitanian rule had brought with it untold blessings to the south ; he, too, had learnt their best lore, had become acquainted with their art, their poetry, above all with the Roman law ; he was a man of thirty-five when he became emperor, vigorous, pure-souled, intelligent. Men thought that his father had done the rough-hewing of his great work, and that the new emperor would be the organizing Augustus following the creative Caesar. His soul was full of high and conscientious aims ; he would make reforms which should regenerate without weakening society; he would restore the clergy to high authority, would give 814-8JO. full powers to the great lords, would save free Franks from slavery, and thus secure harmony and peace throughout his vast dominions. How different was the actual result ! This noble prince, so dignified, earnest, light-minded, of " sound mind in sound body," gentle and simple, had all the dangerous virtues which grow to be calamities in rough times ; his monkish tastes, his Christian forbearance, his want of an unscrupulous will, all pointed towards failure. Even within his house he was not master; and in the broad wild territories of the empire he was destined to a like failure. On the death of his first wife, Hermingond, who had borne him three sons, Hlothar, Pippin, and Hludwig, he married Judith, daughter of Welf the Bavarian, a dangerous and ambitious lady. Her son Charles, after wards styled "theBald," brought the emperor many troubles, for the natural jealousies sprang up between the children of the first bed and the second wife and her son. War soon followed, in which personal ambitions were seconded by the ancient enmity between German and Gallic Franks. Struggle followed struggle, partition led to partition ; there is no drearier piece of history than Nithard s short chronicle of those years. The unlucky Hlodowig was buffeted about, now deposed, then restored again ; now bowing his head before the clergy of Roman France at Compiegne, now recalled to rule, as it seemed, by the unanimous voice of his sons and his subjects. The main result was the separa tion, which then began, of France from Germany. In the midst of it Hlodowig the Pious died in 840, and was buried at Metz. His death was the signal for the final disruption of the empire of Charles the Great. Hlothar, his eldest- born son, took the imperial name, and claimed supremo headship over the Franks. The Bavarian or German Hludwig, and Charles, who represented the Franks in France, both resisted ; the Franks in Italy, Aquitaine, and Gothia, rallied to the emperor. War broke out at once. As soon as ever the Aquitanians had joined his forces Hlothar challenged his brothers to battle, and they at once accepted his wager. On the banks of the Cure, near Troyes, was fought the great battle of Fontanet, which brought the griefs of the age to a point. There the whole Frankisli race struggled for the mastery. From Italy, Austrasia, Aquitaine, Gothia, came the emperor s supporters ; Germany, Neustria, Burgundy, supported Charles and Hludwig. The carnage was terrible; Fontanet is the burial ground of the old Frankish life ; free Franks are heard of no more; "there remained in Gaul only lords and serfs ; all things are made ready for the increasing of feudalism." Hlothar was entirely defeated and fled northwards to Aix-la-Chapelle ; Charles and Bavarian Hludwig were masters of the field. When next year the two brothers found themselves once more menaced by the emperor, they met with all their forces at Strasburg, and took solemn oath each to other, Hludwig swearing in the " Roman" tongue, the earliest French in existence, and Charles the Bald in the " Teudisc " or German ; and the armies standing round them repeated the words, the German Franks in German, the Gallic Franks in French. The text of the oaths is preserved for us in Nithard ; T they are a striking evidence of the way in which Germany and France were asserting each its independent character. The " Romance tongue," the speech of the common people in France, their modification of the Latin they had learnt long before, henceforth took the place of the Latin lan guage on the one side, and of the native Germanic speech of the Franks on the other; henceforth the name of French man may come into use. Nithard, Hist., iii. (cd. Pertz, p. 38, 39).