Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/497

Rh Bavaria. [‘hc mperial The clergy. CHARLES THE GRE.‘LT.] perate energy to drive them from the country. The execu- tion of 4500 prisoners by Charles—an act which even then was looked upon as barbarous—only deepened their resolve never to yield to his authority. At last, however, their strength was exhausted, and they had no alternative but to submit. Charles introduced among them the political institutions which were established throughout the kingdom; and they were compelled to exchange their heathenism for the Christian faith. Thus one of the greatest dangers which threatened the stability of the Frankish kingdom was overcome, and all Germany was for the ﬁrst ti1ne brought under a single ruler. The part of Germany which, next to Saxony, had retained 1nost independence was Bavaria. Its duke, Thassilo, had been on ill terms with Pippin, and, had he allied himself with the Saxons during their great conﬂict, he might have baﬂled even Charles. But he did not become troublesome until they were too weak to be of service to him. Repeated acts of treachery gave Charles a pretext for depriving him of his oﬁce, and after him no duke was placed over the country. As the dukes of the Alemanni and the Thuringians had also been displaced, Germany became, more directly than it had ever before been, subject to the Frankish sove- reign. Not content with completing the conquest of the German people, he made war on the tribes which harassed their eastern frontier. The Avars, who held the greater part of What is now Hungary, were thoroughly beaten; and the Slavs, including the Czechs of Bohemia and Moravia, and the Slavonic tribes to the north of them, as far as the Baltic, were also more or less effectually forced into submission. The great step taken by Charles on Christmas Day 800, when at St Peter’s in Rome he was crowned Roman emperor, intensiﬁed the allegiance of his German as :of his other subjects ; but it could not produce so powerful an impres- sion in Germany as in Gaul. Ultimately, however, it was in Germany that the signiﬁcance of the step was fully revealed; for, in becoming emperor, Charles created so splendid a prize, that later German kings could not resist the tempta- tion to grasp at it, and its possession proved their ruin. All the advantages which attended the rule of Charles throughout his vast empire were shared by the Germans. The border countries he formed into “ marches,” over which he appointed margraves, whose duty was to administer justice in his name, to collect tribute, and to extend his conquests. Germany itself was placed under counts, who did not merely, like the counts of an earlier time, execute the sentences of the royal tribunals, but themselves de- cided questions of justice in accordance with local laws and the capitularies of Charles. Four times a year the whole country was visited by his Missi Dominici, who reported as to the state of their districts, investigated grievances, and proclaimed the imperial decrees. Although he could not write, Charles was a man of true culture, and en- couraged education by causing schools to be established in connexion with cathedrals and monasteries. These schools were modelled on the famous school of the palace over which Alcuin presided, and in which the emperor himself passed some of his happiest hours. By his magniﬁcent basilica in Aachen (Aix—la—Chapelle), his favourite capital, and by the palaces he built there and in Ingelheim and Nrmeguen, he fostered a love of art among the more ad- vanced of his German subjects. in Germany, as in Gaul, Charles treated the clergy in the sp1r1t 1n which he treated the papacy; he set up and put down archbishops, bishops, and abbots, as if he were the supreme lord of the church,—which indeed, in theory as well as in practice, he claimed to be. But the church never had a truer friend. As emperor, he believed that his chief duty was to protect and to encourage it, and he was stimu- GERMANY 479 lated to the performance of his supposed duty by the con- 800-817, viction that a strong spiritual power would be one of the soundest pillars of his secular authority. Hence he not only founded bishoprics and monasteries in Germany, and enriched them with magniﬁcent gifts of land, b11t invested the prelates with some of the functions which properly belonged to the counts. Criminal cases they did not yet decide; but they were allowed to settle all civil disputes between the inhabitants of their territories. This policy may have been beneﬁcial at the time, but it caused much disaster to his German successors; for the church became one of the most vigorous and obstinate powers with which they had to contend in maintaining their lawful functions. Although in many respects one of the greatest of states- The men, Charles was of thoroughly despotic temper; more than people. any previous Frankish king he set himself against popular liberties. Hitherto all Germans had had the right of at- tending national assemblies or diets ; the common freemen were now excluded, and only the great nobles, spiritual and secular, were summoned. Even they had but slight inﬂu- ence. They had the right of advising, but Charles himself originated and decided; and he would not brook opposition, although, indeed, so commanding was his presence, and so high the moral authority conferred by his great deeds, very little opposition was ever offered. Popular assemblies of all kinds he discouraged, transferring their functions to the counts. Not only were the rights of freemen limited, but severe hardships were imposed upon them by Charles’s incessant warlike expeditions. At any moment they were liable to be dragged from their homes to some distant corner of the empire; and while they were away, their ﬁelds lay neglected, and their families suffered grind- ing poverty. What made this evil most galling was the fact that its pressure was very unequally felt. 'Vell-off freemen knew how to purchase exemption from the counts, part of whose business was to see that the ranks of the army should be properly ﬁlled. It is true that Charles treated severely offences of this kind ; but in such an empire as his, it was impossible even for his Missi Dominiei to ﬁnd out every case of injustice. Thus the burden of his many wars fell to the largest extent on the poorer class of freemen, who had but a sorry recompense in the glory their sacriﬁces reflected on their lord. Not content with the general allegiance due to him as 1reuaa1- king and emperor, Charles compelled many great land- ism. owners to take the oath of vassals ; he imposed a like con- dition on his prelates and counts. A man might be his vassal without possessing land; but no land was granted by Charles except to those who were willing to assume this intimate personal relation. As his conquests put vast quantities of land at his disposal, especially in Saxony and on the frontiers, many freemen gladly swore to be his “men ” in the hope that he would reward them for their services with extensive beneﬁces. On the other hand, large numbers of poor freemen became the vassals of their stronger neigh- bours, as there was a chance that the military demands made upon them would thus be made rather less exorbitant. By these changes, due either directly or indirectly to him, Charles helped to build up that system of feudal tenures, the foundations of which had been laid by the ﬁrst Mero- vingian kings. As in giving great temporal power to the church, so in establishing feudalism, he imagined that he was providing for the monarchy a steady support ; but in the latter case, even more than in the former, he prepared weakness and humiliation for those who came after him. After the death of Charles Germany remained for some time, in common with the other countries which composed the Frankish empire, under the direct rule of his son, Louis (Hludwig or Ludwig) the Pious. On the division of the monarchy, effected by the emperor in 817, in order
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