Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/568

 532 F K A N C E [HISTORY. 771-814. seat of the power of Charles himself lay on or near the llhinc ; his three chief palaces were at Engelenheim, Aix- la-Chapelle, and Nimwegen. His whole temper, history, relations, were strictly German ; the part played in his life by Neustria and Aquitaine was, by comparison, insignificant, for Charles the Great belongs to world s history, not to the history of France. His first task after his father s death was to complete the reduction of Aquitaine; for here war had broken out again when Pippin s death seemed to the southerners to give them their opportunity. Charles beat the old Duke Hunold in the field, and drove him to take refuge with the Lombards, where some time later he fell, helping to defend Verona against his and their hereditary foe. The struggle in Aquitaine, hopeless if vexatious, lingered on, until at last the wise king, as imperial ideas grew stronger in him, saw that his one hope of success Avith them lay in giving them an independent life of their own, under due restrictions. He therefore set over them his little son HlodoAvig as king, and appointed William Courtnez, count of Toulouse, as his tutor. The child was established at Toulouse, and brought up as an Aquitanian. The south retained its distinctive characteristics, and was saved from the degradation of having to fall back to the lower level in art and civilization which prevailed among the Franks. The kingdom of Aquitaine had for its southern frontier the river Ebro in Spain, and crossing the mountains reached the open sea just below Bayonne ; the northern frontier at first was less well- defined ; before the end of the 8th century it was pushed on as far as to the Loire. And just as Hlodowig was established in Aquitaine, so in 776 Charles set his second son Pippin over the Lombards, thereby securing his permanent influence over the see of Home. The papacy throughout leant on him for support, and was even content to recognize his supremacy. For a quarter of a century Charles s life was spent in ceaseless wars on every side, in which he slowly though surely beat down the resistance of heathen Saxons, of Huns, of Lom bards, of Saracens. Within the limits of modern France, after the pacification of Aquitaine, the only war was that against the Armoricans, inhabitants of Brittany, a slow stubborn contest, which lasted till near the end of his life. For a short time Brittany became a portion of the empire, without, however, in the least losing any part of its inde pendent character. Charles By 796 Charles had secured his ascendency throughout crowned Europe, so that when in 799 Pope Leo III. was ejected ^ rom R me by the citizens, he fled to him for refuge and help ; and Charles in the autumn of 800 replaced him on the pontifical throne, receiving in return, on Christmas day, the solemn titles of Emperor of the Romans, Augustus ; and certainly, if ever the great echoes of the past were to be awakened, they could not have been aroused for a worthier prince. &quot;A Latin priest gave to a German soldier the name of that which, had ceased to exist, &quot; says La Valle&quot;e. None the less was Charles a real emperor, rul ing over subject princes ; the Germans and the Romance peoples alike accepted his sway ; and for fourteen years, with less of fighting and more of organization, Charles the Great proved that he was worthy of his high title and re vived office of Emperor of the West. In 806 at Thionville he settled the succession to his empire ; but as death bereft him of his eldest son Charles and his second son Pippin, he was obliged in 813 to make a fresh arrangement. He made Hlodowig, the one surviving son of his second wife Hilde- gond, his heir and successor, crowned him, and saw him saluted emperor. After this, he lingered a few months, and died early in 814 at Aix-la-Chapellc. It was doubted whether he should be buried there or at St Denis, where his parents bones had been laid. Austrasia, however, prevailed over Ncustria, the Germans over the Frenchmen, and he lies at rest these thousand years past in the church he himself had built in the city he loved so well. The state of what is now France under his care was this. The land was cut asunder at the Loire ; to the north of that river was Francia Occidentalis, the earlier Neustria and Burgundy; to the south of the Loire lay Hlodowig s king- dom of Aquitaine, governed by Roman law, and home of precious remains of Roman culture. In Francia Occiden talis were Frankish nobles, the clergy, the free Franks, the inhabitants of cities, and the slaves, the last in ever-growing numbers. The first and second of these classes soon began to secure their position as great feudal lords, half independ ent. They laid the foundations of that system of feudal noblesse which became almost omnipotent under the weaker Carolingian princes, which brought about the revolution placing Hugh Capet on the throne, which resisted the centralizing tendencies of the monarchy under Louis XI. and Louis XIII., which became the devout servants of the Great Monarch, and finally ended with the monarchy at the Revolution. The reign of Charles the Great is the time at which these nobles began to see that their strength was based on the land ; their position grew more territorial, their allegiance and honours less personal. Charles endea voured to resist this tendency, but his hand could not be everywhere, and the nobles on the whole held their own, though so long as he lived they still bent before his power. The administration of Gaul at this time was in appear ance fairly complete, though it doubtless often failed in its practical application. Handed down from former days, in the larger towns there were always two chief personages, the count and the bishop, of whom the former officer was of Frankish origin, the latter of Roman. To a considerable extent, as was the case throughout all early Christendom, the functions and jurisdiction of the bishops originally answered very closely to those of the lay power, the church-organi zation being copied from the organization of the empire. Now each of these greater officers had his own jurisdiction and court ; each administered therein law, the bishop ac cording to the Roman order, the count according to Frankish usage; and, though their functions might some times clash, on the whole they joined in preserving peace and quiet within the walls. The counts also attended to the war-force and collected the taxes ; while the bishops, on their side, were charged with the teaching and the moral life of their flocks. Between them they preserved a con siderable amount of municipal life and character in the ancient cities. Under the counts we find local officers whose business it is to hold lesser courts in the bourgs and villages round about. These were the centeniers, or hundred-men ; there were also here and there traces, as in England, of a lower division into clecurics or tythings; the counts had also their &quot; vigueurs, &quot; their &quot; viscounts,&quot; as they were afterwards called, who represented them, and they also appointed (if the work were not done by the Missi Dominicijthe imperial commisssioners) officers called scabini (echevins, or in German Schoffen), local judges who held lesser courts in country places. In addition to these courts, each chief and each considerable churchman held his own pleas ; by these the condition of the free Franks, of the slaves, and of such persons as were still just above the servile state, was decided, all questions between them and those above them adjudged, with no very happy results in the main. The emperor, honestly desiring, so far as he could, to arrest the downward progress of the feeble free Franks and of the still more wretched slaves, sent forth the above named Missi Dominici to travel through the different dis tricts of the empire, and to see with their own eyes the state of the people. Usually, they went out in pair?, a 814 Fran in hi reigr