CHAPTER II.

CHARLEMAGNE, HIS EARLY LIFE, TIMES, AND CHARACTER.

HARLEMAGNE, the eldest legitimate son of
Pepin-le-bref, mayor of the palace under Childeric

III., one of the Merovingian nominal kings of the Franks, was born April 2, 742 A.D. There is a considerable discordance among historians regarding the precise place of his birth. Aix-la-Chapelle, Ingelheim, Carlstadt, and Salzburg, have each been named as entitled to that honour. There is no sufficing proof of any of these assertions. All that can be regarded as certain is, that he was born somewhere near the banks of the Rhine, whither his mother, Bertha, daughter of Caribert, Count of Laon, had followed her husband, who was at this period in Aquitania, engaged in suppressing a revolt which was headed by the duke of that territory. As the civil contest then waging lasted for some years, Bertha and her young son must have passed a somewhat wandering life. In 744, when his father had gained the victory, they would return to court, and he would doubtlessly be brought up after the manner of the age, in the company of the young people whose parents held office near royalty or under the mayor, in the knowledge and practice of all the military arts, and some of the

elements of civil polity. At this time, however, genius had withered, and learning was at the point of death. The imperial schools in which the scions of the Roman nobility had received that culture which fitted them for the exercise of power, and enabled them to adorn society, were destroyed by the irruptions of the barbarians, and long years of neglect, discouragement, and opposition, had chased learning and literature into obscurity, where it lingered sicklily in grief and prostration. To the youth of Charles the chivalric accomplishments and the notes and exercises of war were well and thoroughly explained; but the grace of letters, the refinement of thought, the means, the taste, the power, or the opportunity of reading, were almost wholly denied.

We can form but an imperfect idea of a life from which the schoolmaster is excluded, or of the dense ignorance of the times when the priests of religion themselves, in too many instances, had sunk into deplorable machines, who uttered a round of uncomprehended worship, and had little or no acquaintance with the language of Roman literature and of Church legislation. Yet we can scarcely express regret that Charlemagne was not brought under the mental discipline to which youth is usually subjected, but that he spent his early years in the pursuits of the chase, of war, and of political intrigue. Had he been exposed to the former, his own mind and will would have been somewhat effeminated; he would have lost the resolute, unresting, practical energy of his nature; the breadth of theoretic thought, which would then have stretched before him, would have stayed his hand when the stroke required to be given; and the widening of the horizon would have weakened the intensity and clearness with which he saw and did the one thing that seemed best in any exigency. Had he been deprived

Early Life and Training.

II

of aught of the latter, he would have lacked the ready skill and the powerful influence which could curb and check, outwit and brave, resist and conquer danger, revolt, or opposition. We do not grieve, then, but rather rejoice, that, in his case, the practical and the real in life were the earliest educative influences amid which he grew up, and that the attractions and pleasures of scholarship were recognised by him as weapons of polity, as well as occasions of true and lasting enjoyment only in the latter part of a life whose first duty was to effect the inauguration of a new empire by the power of the sword, which should be afterwards established by the power of thought--an empire which should unite in itself power and intelligence.

Pepin, Charlemagne's father, was a consummate politician and intriguant, as well as a notable warrior. He inherited the ambitious schemes of Pepin d'Heristal and Charles Martel, his grandfather and father, and doubtlessly educated his son in all the traditions of his house and lineage. They were the parties who introduced the fashion of shadowy and do-nothing royalty, a plan by which, without the nominal. honours of regal state, they exerted its real powers, and yet escaped the odium of their own abuses of those powers. This scheme had at length produced its intended results; the regal power had been totally severed from the regal title, and the attentions and regards of aspiring courtiers were turned from the nominal to the virtual dispensers of place, patronage, and pay. Love, affection, and interest, had been diverted from the king to the mayor, and the time seemed ripe for a bold attempt to seize the nominal, as well as retain the real, sovereignty of the Frankish empire. The Church was greedy of power, and was already corrupted by a love of wealth, splendour, and rule. Pepin saw this, and

by a craftily framed question obtained the papal sanction to the moral legislation, which enacts that "it is better that he who exercises regal power should also possess the regal title." The sanction of the Pope having been gained to this axiom, Pepin speedily placed himself at the head of the disaffected nobility, and by a cunningly-devised and well-worked revolution, dethroned Childeric III., and "reigned in his stead." This happened in 750, when Charlemagne was about nine years of age. He who was but a courtier's son had now become a crown prince, and his mother and sister were ennobled, in fact, by the success of Pepin. Though this was accomplished, however, there is little doubt that great art and care required to be exercised, lest those lately acquired honours should lead to the manufacture of new enemies and new rebellions. Even in childhood, therefore, Charlemagne would be trained to practise a conciliating policy, and to conceal deep-laid and boldly-planned schemes by an artless demeanour and blandness of manner. March 752, Archbishop Boniface, the apostle of Germany, solemnly, in the name and by the authority of the Pope, consecrated and anointed Pepin King of the Franks, at Soissons, the very place where, two hundred and sixty-six years before, Clovis, the first of the Merovingians, by a victory over Syagrius, the Roman provincial governor, established the Frankish sovereignty. Of this pageant Charlemagne and Carloman, with their sister Gisla, would form no unattractive part, and the prince-made youth would observe, with keen tact and evident relish, the potency of ceremonial pomp. A subsequent lesson would teach this even more impressively. The wise courage of Pepin having subdued opposition and silenced discontent,-having consolidated his power and vanquished his foes,-had time left him to be courteous,

In

Early Life and Circumstances.

13

affable, and kingly. The popedom at this period had got enmeshed in great difficulty. Aistulph, King of Lombardy, had invaded and conquered Ravenna, and now sought tribute and submission from the reigning pontiff. Such a humiliation was in nowise compatible with the schemes of the pontificate. Pope Stephen III. bethought him, in this extremity, of the Rome-sanctioned usurper of the dominion of the Franks, and besought his friendly aid. This Pepin granted, on condition that he, the Pope, should re-anoint him king, as well as baptize and consecrate his two sons. Stephen accordingly crossed the Alps in 753, and sojourned at Münster, where, during the winter of that year, Pepin held his court. Here Pepin was re-consecrated; here his children were baptized, and declared to be the only legitimate successors to the throne and dominion of Pepin. On this occasion the Pope lifted the crown prince from the font with his own hands, so specially did he desire to mark his favour to the new dynasty. There can be little doubt that Charlemagne, in the spring of the following year, 754, accompanied his father in his march towards Italy. Pepin, having crossed the Alps with a numerous army, encountered Aistulph, King of Lombardy, near Susa, and overcame him. This done, he compelled him, by treaty, to resign all claim to sovereignty over the see of Rome, to deliver to him the Exarchate of Ravenna, and all the cities he had seized belonging to the Roman dukedom, whose powers the Popes exercised. Aistulph agreed, but, shortly afterwards, infringed the convention; then Pepin returned, severely chastised his duplicity, and made a formal grant of his conquests to the Pope and his successors in the apostolic chair. The Pope having sanctified his usurpation by the forms of religion, he sanctified the Pope's domination by the power of the sword. A fair