778-793] Roncevalles 605 Basques of Spain were treated as enemies, and the fortifications of Pampeluna were razed. And as the great army passed through the defiles of the Pyrenees in long columns, unable to open out for any military manœuvres, the rearguard was attacked by the hosts of the Basques and destroyed. In later legends the place is called Roncevalles. Even if the reverse was not in itself important, it was regarded as serious that the attack could not be avenged. And certain heroes among Charles' friends had fallen, the Palgrave Anselm, the Seneschal Eggihard, and above all, Hruodland the Praefect of the Britannic March. Legend however seized upon this event of 15 August 778, and wove around the whole Spanish expedition of Charles, but especially this surprise of Roncevalles, the halo of Christian glory. It exalted the defeat into a catastrophe and made the death of Hruodland the martyrdom of the heroic soldier of God. In the eleventh century these legends took their poetic form in the Chanson de Roland, their final form in the pseudoTurpin, and in the Rolandslied of the Pfaffe Conrad of the twelfth century, the most popular form in which they spread over Germany. The expedition of 778 had completely failed, but the project of a conquest in the South was by no means given up. In the first place, it was necessary to settle the position of Aquitania, which though it was finally conquered, yet had not become Frank. In 781 Charles raised this land with Septimania to a kingdom, and had his son Louis (Ludwig), who was born during the expedition of 778, anointed king of it by the Pope. On the border the boy was invested with arms and placed upon a horse, to hold his solemn entry into his kingdom. Charles wished his son to be brought up as an Aquitanian. He rejoiced later on when the seven-yearold boy appeared at the Diet of Paderborn in the dress of Aquitania with his little mantle and padded hose. But it was not intended that the grave Frankish character should be obliterated or the Frankish dominion over Aquitania in any way shaken. The regents whom Charles appointed in 781, and later Louis himself, only had influence so far as Charles liked. He remained the supreme head, and gave orders in all important matters and even in unimportant matters. It was a political system that answered perfectly. The people of Aquitania, proud of their kingdom, willingly complied with the arrangements of the Empire, and even proved themselves the readiest to fight the Arabs. In 785 Gerona placed itself voluntarily under Frankish rule. The coast district was won in addition. In 793 there was another advance on the part of the Arabs. It was at that time that the distant enemies of the Franks combined, and political intrigue stretched from Spain to the land of the Saxons and to the Avars. Hisham I, Emir of Cordova, the son of 'Abd-ar-Raḥmän, arranged an invasion. Gerona was taken, the Pyrenees were crossed, and the Arabian army advanced as far as Narbonne and Carcassonne. A bloody battle was fought against the Margrave William on the river Orbieu, and the Arabs marched back laden with booty. 606 The Spanish March. Bavaria [763-811 Soon however the Franks were in a position to make a victorious advance. From Gerona westwards the territory south of the Pyrenees was gradually won and a series of places fortified. In 795 the Spanish March was established. Dissensions among the Muslims and private undertakings of daring adventurers prepared the way for further conquests. In 801 Barcelona was compelled to surrender, and Louis, the king of Aquitania, was hurriedly summoned at the decisive moment, that he might have the credit of taking the proud city. In 806 Pampeluna and Novara acknowledged the Frankish dominion. Tortosa also, after a long siege, surrendered its keys to Louis in 811, although neither here nor at Saragossa or Huesca was Frankish dominion regularly established. The Spanish March did not reach so far as the Ebro, but only to a line drawn N.N.W. from Barcelona and parallel to the Pyrenees. In 799 the Balearic Islands, which in the spring had been ravaged by the Moors, put themselves under Frankish rule, and from that time enjoyed at any rate occasional protection by the Franks. Bavaria was almost an independent State at the beginning of Charles' reign. After Duke Tassilo had faithlessly deserted the Frankish army in 763, in the middle of the war against Aquitania, the connexion of Bavaria with the Frankish power became looser. It was not that Frankish supremacy was completely renounced. Charles even appears to have exercised influence in the appointment to Bavarian bishoprics. But Tassilo nevertheless acted quite independently, and it is certain that Bavaria did not regularly take part in Charles' warlike undertakings, even if we assume the co-operation of the Bavarian army in the Pyrenean campaign of 778, which is doubtful. When the king and the Pope in 781 demanded that the duke should return to his former allegiance and Tassilo found himself compelled to comply with the demand, his independence was assured, and it was not till his personal safety had been guaranteed by hostages that he appeared at the Mayfield of Worms in 781, to renew the oaths and promises he had formerly made to Pepin, giving twelve nobles as hostages. This did not bring about good relations. There was soon friction. After 784 there were manifest differences concerning rights in the Etsch districts, but most serious were the different conceptions of the conditions of dependency. Charles deduced from the oath of fidelity an obligation of obedience and services such as the provincial officials of his kingdom. were accustomed to render. Tassilo on the other hand understood the subordination as more indefinite, and thought he was not bound to surrender his independence. In 787 the Bavarian duke sought the intervention of the Pope with a view to the restoration of peace with King Charles. Negotiations were opened but came to nothing, because views differed as to the degree of obligations involved in the oaths of fidelity. The Pope, who was entirely the tool of the powerful king, 787-794] Deposition of Tassilo 607 threatened anathemas in case Tassilo did not fulfil Charles' demands. As these were not satisfied, the Franks invaded Bavaria from three sides with an overwhelming force. Tassilo dared not venture a battle. He met the king (3 Oct.) on the plain of the Lech, acknowledged himself vassal, and placed the duchy in the hand of the king to receive it back from Charles as a Frankish fief. The Bavarian people were obliged to take an oath of allegiance, and Tassilo had to give as hostages twelve nobles and his own son. Why the end came nevertheless the next year is not rightly understood. Our information is drawn entirely from Frankish sources. What is reported in the official Annals is not conclusive without confirmation. From them we learn that Tassilo afterwards confessed that he had incited the Avars to make war against the Franks, that he had attempted the lives of the king's vassals in Bavaria, that he had recommended his own people to make secret reservations in taking the oath of allegiance to the king, and had even said that he would rather lose ten sons if he had them than hold to the treaties, that he would rather die than live under them. The decision came at the Meeting of the Empire which was held at Ingelheim in the summer of 788. Tassilo, who had been invited like other nobles of the Empire, had appeared. He seems to have had no suspicion of what threatened him, and this unsuspecting appearance certainly does not look like guilt. He was immediately arrested, while royal messengers departed for Bavaria to seize the wife, the children, the treasures, and the household of the duke. Then Bavarians appeared as accusers and proved Tassilo's disloyalty. But the charges could not have been very serious, for they had to go back to the Herisliz of 763an incident which must have been regarded as long previously pardoned by the royal declarations of grace in 781 and 787. The meeting, however, so it is reported, unanimously pronounced sentence of death on Tassilo, and only the intervention of Charles procured a mitigation of the sentence. Tassilo was shorn and sent into a monastery as a monk, he and his two sons. His wife also was compelled to take the veil, and they were all immured in different cloisters. But the ceremony of deposition was not yet completed. Six years later, at the Synod of Frankfort of 794, the deposed duke was made to appear, to acknowledge his guilt publicly in the assembly, and to renounce all rights for himself and his successors, in order to obtain the king's pardon and to be received back into his favour and protection. Of this event a report was made in three copies, one for the Palace, one for Tassilo, and one for the Court Chapel. When we consider all the steps of Tassilo's fall, we easily recognise that he was sacrificed to the policy of the great king of the Franks. They were not acts of justice, they were acts of violence, which were only in appearance connected with any definite process of law. 608 Bavaria. The Avars [763-794 Suspicious is the use made of the Herisliz of 763, which legally must have long been regarded as done with, and even more so is the solemn renunciation before the Synod of 794. Any breach of faith by Tassilo after his homage at the Lech cannot have been very serious. But even if in his treatment of Tassilo Charles appears to us less as a just judge than as a strong statesman - the part which the last independent duke of Bavaria played in this drama remains pitiful. His deceit and bad faith are only known to us from the official history, but his weakness and political incapacity are shewn by the facts themselves. He did not understand the tasks of his age. During his long rule he favoured and enriched the churches like any Christian prince. But while he furthered the monasteries, he shewed but little understanding for the episcopal organisation with which lay the future. It was precisely this circumstance that immediately sent the leaders of the Church, the Bavarian bishops, over to the enemy when conflict broke out with the powerful Frank. Brave to fight for his hereditary rights and for the political independence of his race, he did not dare, or rather he was unable, to take a comprehensive view of the political situation, and he went unsuspectingly to Ingelheim to be taken prisoner, to be condemned to death, commuted for the life of a monk. Perhaps the result answered to the man's personal wishes, for his hopes and fears were set upon the other world. Properly speaking, the wide district of Bavaria was not won for the empire of the Franks till 788. After the subjection of the Saxons it was the second great conquest of German territory - a conquest without bloodshed or struggle. This was a fact of immense international importance. It decided that the Bavarian race should share the destinies of the West-German peoples, just as the wars with the Saxons decided those of the North-eastern West-Germans. The borders of the Frankish kingdom extended over the middle Danube district as far as the Enns, and at the same time over a district of the Slavs already conquered by Tassilo, over Carantania (Carinthia). Before long they were extended still further. For the subjection of the Bavarian kingdom was naturally followed by the struggle against the Avars and the Slavs, the Eastern neighbours of the Bavarians. The Avars, confused by the Franks with the Huns, to whom they were related as belonging to the Ural-Altaic family, had for some centuries come in contact with the Byzantines and Franks. About the end of the sixth century, as we have seen,' they held a great dominion: but by the end of the eighth century the period of their greatest power was past. They had never risen above the level of barbarian nomads, and the Slavs of the south-east had long thrown off their yoke, and even their own sense of unity was gone. It was remarkable how this uncivilised people sought to make use of the civilised labour of other 1 Chaps. IX, XIV. 788-811] The Avars 609 peoples. Agriculture, like all other productive labour, was unknown to them. In the plain between the Danube and the Theiss were situated the "Rings" - the strong circular walls round extensive dwelling-places. According to the assertion of a Frankish warrior-quoted by the Monk of St Gall-the Rings extended as far "as from Zurich to Constance' (therefore about 60 kilometres or nearly 38 miles) and embraced several districts. In these Rings, of which, according to the Monk of St Gall, there were nine, the Avars had heaped their plunder of two centuries. In 788 the Avars had advanced westward in two divisions, but had been completely defeated near the Danube and in Friuli. In 791 Charles had taken the offensive, not only to acquire rich treasures or to punish the invaders of 788, but to obtain a natural closed frontier towards the East. The Franks advanced as far as the Raab without making a permanent conquest. Their important task in Saxony for a long time hindered new and decisive action. Political alliances began to be formed among those who were at that time threatened by the Frankish sword. The Saracens, the Saxons, and the Avars knew of each other, and Charles' enemies in the north and south counted especially on a successful advance of the Avars. But the Avars lacked endurance. In the year 795 the Margrave Erich of Friuli, supported by the Slav prince Woinimir, advanced over the Danube and took the principal Ring. Large treasures of gold made their way to the Franks, and even if the opinion is scarcely tenable that great changes in prices in the Frankish Empire were the result, still his success was great. In the following year Charles' son Pepin completed the work of conquest. He destroyed the Ring, subdued the Avars, and opened large districts to the preaching of Christianity. In later years small risings had still to be put down, and Frankish blood still flowed in battle against the barbarians. In 811 a Frankish army was sent against Pannonia. But these were only echoes of the past. The Avars themselves are mentioned for the last time in 822. Even in the last years of the eighth century Christianity and colonisation had been introduced among them. The Christian mission was entrusted to the Dioceses of Aquileia, Salzburg, and Passau. The settlement of the middle Danube district began under Charles, that extension of the Germans, i.e. of the Bavarian, later also of the Frankish race, which finally embraced the present German Austria and the western districts of Hungary. Under Charles the Danube district about as far as the Leitha and the district of the upper Drave and the Save the latter as Carantania were reckoned politically as part of the Empire. The more eastern district, Pannonia, only belonged loosely to the Carlovingian Empire, and in consequence of the long wars it was greatly depopulated. With Charles ambition and religion worked together. Successes in arms were for him at the same time successes for Christianity. C. MED. H. VOL. II. CH. XIX. 39 |