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 or THE EOMAN EMPIRE 291 of Rome were subject to Charlemagne, and the deficiency was amply supplied by his command of the inaccessible or invincible nations of Oermany. But in the choice of his enemies we may be reasonably surprised that he so often preferred the pov- erty of the north to the riches of the south.. The three-and-thirty campaigns laboriously consumed in the woods and morasses of Germany woukl have sufficed to assert the amplitude of his title by the expulsion of the Greeks from Italy and the Saracens from Spain, The weakness of the Greeks would have ensured an easy victory ; and the holy crusade against the Saracens would have been prompted by glory and revenge, and loudly justified by religion and policy. Perhaps, in his ex- peditions beyond the Rhine and the Kibe, he aspired to save his monarchy from the fate of the Roman empire, to disarm the enemies of civilised society, and to eradicate the seed of future emigrations. But it has been wisely observed that, in a light of precaution, all conquest must be ineffectual, unless it could be universal ; since the increasing circle must be involved in a larger sphere of hostility. i-- The subjugation of Germany withdrew the veil which had so long concealed the continent or islands of Scandinavia from the knowledge of Europe, and awakened the torpid courage of their barbarous natives. The fiercest of the Saxon idolaters escaped from the Christian tyrant to their brethren of the north ; the ocean and Mediterranean were covered with their piratical fleets ; and Charlemagne be- held with a sigh the destructive progress of the Normans, who, in less than seventy years, precipitated the fall of his race and monarchy. Had the pope and the Romans revived the primitive con- his succss- stitution, the titles of emperor and Augustus were conferred onsw-i^v, in ^ '^ Italy ; Charlemagne for the term of his life ; and his successors, on each suinGer- 1 1111 n ^ njany;987 vacancy, must have ascended the throne by a formal or tacit iiriacce election. But the association of his son Lewis the Pious asserts the independent right of monarchy and conquest, and the em- peror seems on this occasion to have foreseen and prevented the latent claims of the clergy. The royal youth was com- ad. sis manded to take the crown from the altar, and with his own hands to place it on his head, as a gift which he held from God, his father, and the nation. ^--^ The same ceremony was repeated, 122 Gaillfird, torn. ii. p. 361-365, 471-476, 492. I have borrowed his judicious remarks on Charlemagne's plan of conquest, and the judicious distinction of his enemies of the first and the second enceinte (tom. ii. p. 184, 509, &c.). 1-^ Thegan, the biographer of Lewis, relates this coronation ; and Baronius has