Frankish Empire

“ The principal was that, with the exception of Italy, Aquitaine, and Bavaria, to be secured without dispute to their then possessors, the Frankish empire should be divided into three portions, that the arbiters elected to preside over the partition should swear to make it as equal as possible, and that Lothair should have his choice, with the title of emperor. ”

“ The Franks in the early days of the Merovingians, by no means an estimable people, were probably purely Teuton; they separated more and more from their less civilized race-kindred, and by the time the Frankish Empire had reached its zenith its people had absorbed a good deal of other blood, which mixture crystallized into the French nation and soon broke away from any racial relations with the Teutons. ”

“ From one moment to the other they may rise anew, and, what is graver still, menace the very heart of your Empire. As to us, on the contrary, all that we demand is to live free; we never think of going beyond our frontiers."
"Who guarantees to me that, once my troops, are out of your infernal country, you will not forthwith resume your armed excursions and attacks against the Frankish forces that are bivouacked on this side of your borders?"
"The other provinces are Gallic like ourselves. Our duty bids us to provoke them, and to aid them to break the yoke of the Frankish kings. ”

“ They came on horseback, so that the slower Teutons could never gather quickly enough to resist them. The marauding parties, as they learned the wealth and weakness of this new land, grew bigger, until at length they were armies, and defeated the German Franks in pitched battles, and spread desolation through all the country. They returned now every year. Their ravages extended even to the Rhine and to the ancient Gallic land beyond. The Frankish empire seemed doomed to reënact, in a smaller, far more savage way, the fate of Rome. ”

“ The division of 887 parted off from the general mass of the Frankish dominions a distinct Kingdom of the East-Franks, the acknowledged head of the Frankish kingdoms, which, as being distinguished from its fellows as the Regnum Teutonicum, may be best spoken of as a Kingdom of Germany. ♦Merging of the Kingdom in the Empire.♦ But the lasting acquisition of the Italian and Imperial crowns by the German kings, and their later acquisition of the kingdom of Burgundy, gradually tended to obscure the notion of a distinct German kingdom. ”

“ The West Frankish realm was 3the prey of the rivalry of the Carolings and the Robertians. The Middle Kingdom was in still worse plight. Italy had fallen away under a line of nominal Italian or Lombard kings, but the south was Greek or Saracen, and the north was in hopeless confusion. The northern parts of the Middle Kingdom, to which alone the name Lotharingia clung, were tending towards their ultimate destiny of becoming a fifth national duchy of the German realm, though their loyalty for the Carolingian house brought them more than once back to the West Frankish kingdom. ”

“ Of the old provinces of the Western Empire, Britain, Africa, and all Spain save one corner, remained foreign to the new Roman Empire of the Franks. But, on the other hand, the Empire now took in all the lands in Germany and beyond Germany over which the Frankish power now reached, but which had never formed part of the elder Empire. ♦Conquest of Saxony. 772-804.♦ The long wars of Charles with the Saxons led to their final conquest, to the incorporation of Saxony with the Frankish kingdom, and, after the Imperial coronation of the Frankish king, to its incorporation with the Western Empire. ”

“ The Germanic tribes had settled down on Italian soil and were becoming civilised. Nevertheless, Italy had still to pass through a string of revolutions and years of ill fortune. At the dissolution of the Empire of the Franks, certain counts and marquises, especially the latter, who, by the union of several counties, had gained the power of dukes, were found asserting extravagant pretensions, even endeavouring to form independent states, and often with success. To this day, in fact, there are reigning families descended from Frankish marquises and counts. ”

“ Lastly, the early date of the Salic laws bringing the Frankish and Roman provincial rule into such close proximity, irresistibly raises the question363 whether there may not have been an actual continuity, first between the Roman and Frankish villa, and secondly, between the Roman system of management of the imperial provincial domains during the later empire, and the Frankish system of manorial management of the 'terra regis' or 'villæ fiscales' after the Frankish conquest. ”

“ We begin in a time of gloom and sorrow. The Carolingian Empire, which had united the vigour of the barbarians with the civilisation of the Roman world, had broken up. The sacred name of Emperor had been assumed so constantly by weaklings that it had ceased to have much hold upon the minds of men. The great kingdoms, into which the Carolingian Empire had resolved itself, seemed destined to undergo the process that had destroyed the parent state. The East Frankish realm—the later Germany—was breaking up into its four national duchies of Saxony, Franconia, Bavaria, and Swabia. ”

“ At another, isolated individuals, such and such warriors of German race, put themselves at the command of the emperors, and became of importance. At the middle of the third century, the Emperor Valerian, on committing a command to Aurelian, wrote, “Thou wilt have with thee Hartmund, Haldegast, Hildmund, and Carioviscus.” Some Frankish tribes allied themselves more or less fleetingly with the Imperial government, at the same time that they preserved their independence; others pursued, throughout the Empire, their life of incursion and adventure. ”

“ Even when Germany was still the chief political centre of the west, the fame of the French warrior had extended over all Europe. The alliance with the Church did 92much, the prevalence of the Cluniac idea did more to bring this about. The wanderings of the Normans first spread abroad the terror of the Frankish name. The Crusades became an essentially Frankish movement, and made the Frankish knight the type of the feudal warrior. But the concentration of France into a great state followed very slowly on the growth of the reputation of the individual Frenchman. ”

“ Northern Gaul remains to be considered. It was here that the Frankish monarchy developed; and we deal last with the Franks because they were destined to harvest the chief fruits of barbarian conquest and colonisation. By the close of the eighth century Africa, Spain, and Britain were the only western provinces of the Empire in which they had failed to establish themselves as the sole or the dominant power; and moreover they had penetrated by that time farther into Central Europe than any Roman statesman, since Tiberius, had extended his schemes of conquest. ”

“ It will not be safe to conclude that the Franks were protectors of civilization in Gaul, and did not lay destroying hands upon it. We shall presently see that it sank to a very darkened state under their rule, though the eclipse may have been less complete than in some other of the barbarized provinces of Rome. Rise of the Carolingians. The division in the Frankish dominion which finally marked itself deeply and became permanent was that which separated the East Kingdom, or Austrasia, from the West Kingdom, or Neustria. ”

“ Now I have great doubts about the superior civilization of the conquerors of Burgundy, Alsatia, and Franche-Comté; but these arise from a view, perhaps, peculiar to myself, of the nature of the Frank confederacies. I believe the word Frank to have distinguished the Germans who were independent of Rome from those who were in allegiance to the empire, and, consequently, that it might be borne by different divisions of the German stock, and by wholly unconnected alliances. ”

“ The Franks had been allies of Rome and in contact with the refinements of Roman Gaul, for a century or two before they became masters in that province. Most of the other nations which transplanted themselves in the fifth century from beyond the Rhine to new homes in the provinces of Rome, had been living for generations on the borders of the Empire, or near; had acquired some acquaintance, at least, with the civilization which they did not share, and conceded to it a certain respect; while some of them had borne arms for the Emperor and taken his pay. ”

“ They were still heathens, cherishing bitter hatred towards the Franks, whom they regarded as the enemies both of their liberties and of their religion; and their hatred found expression, not only in expeditions into Frankish territory, but in help willingly rendered to every German confederation which wished to throw off the Frankish yoke. Hardly any rebellion against the dukes of the Franks, or against King Pippin, took place in Germany without the Saxons coming forward to aid the rebels. ”

“ The Frankish nobility.
A new danger, however, threatened the unity of the Frankish kingdom, namely, the aspirations of the powerful nobles. In the earliest accounts which we have of the Germans there appear to have been certain families who enjoyed a recognized preëminence over their companions. In the course of the various conquests there was a chance for the skillful leader to raise himself in the favor of the king. It was only natural that those upon whom the king relied to control distant parts of the realm should become dangerously ambitious and independent. ”

“ It is no shame to conquer with the aid of the gods; it is thus that our ancestors began and ended many a war.”
Human sacrifices, then, were not yet foreign to Pagan festivals, and probably the blood of more than one Frankish captive on that occasion flowed in the temple of all the gods.
It is the first time the name of Franks appears in history; and it indicated no particular, single people, but a confederation of Germanic peoplets, settled or roving on the right bank of the Rhine, from the Mayn to the ocean. ”

“ The institutions of a people cannot be thoroughly understood without a knowledge of their history. I shall devote this lecture to a view of the establishment of the Frankish monarchy; on a future occasion we will trace its progress under the first and second races of its kings.
I shall not now delay to discuss the somewhat uncertain origin of the Franks; there is reason to believe that, in Germany, they did not constitute a separate and homogeneous nation. They were a confederation of tribes settled in the country between the Rhine, the Maine, the Weser, and the Elbe. ”

“ By these he so nobly enlarged the kingdom of the Franks which he had taken over after his father Pepin, that great and powerful as it already was, he nearly doubled it. For previously those Franks called Eastern inhabited only that part of Gaul which lies between the Rhine and the Loire, the ocean and the Balearic Sea, and that part of Germany situate between Saxony and the Danube, the Rhine and the Saal which latter river divides the Thuringii from the Sorabi. The Alamanni [529] and the Bavarians also belonged to the sovereignty of the Frankish kingdom. ”

“ With regard to political events the 7th century is the most obscure period of Frankish history, for the history of Gregory of Tours comes to an end in 591. Feuds and quarrels as violent as those he depicts continued, and important constitutional changes took place as their result. The vast dominions brought under Frankish rule showed signs of definitely crystallising into Austrasia which included the purely Frankish districts of the north, and Burgundy and Neustria where Gallo-Frankish elements were prevalent. ”

“ Each was to take a leading part in the formation of modern Europe, but they were to be divided in that office, their lots being severally cast with the two great constituent factors of modern civilisation. The one was to lead the Romanesque, the other the Gothic division. The Franks became assimilated to the Romanised Gauls, and formed, with them, one Latin-speaking Church; they raised the standard of orthodoxy against the Arianism of the other barbarian powers, and the Frankish king was decorated with the title of Most Christian ”

“ Two centuries later, the Franks, thanks to the complicity of the Bishop of Rome, had succeeded in conquering Gaul and in reducing her inhabitants to a condition of most cruel slavery; our land thereupon became a prey to our conquerors, and we moistened it with our sweat, our tears and our blood.... During the first years of the Frankish conquest, Karadeuk the Bagaude, the ancestor of both Mazurec and myself, a revolted slave, fought with Neroweg, Count of Auvergne, count by the right of rapine and murder. ”

“ Some historians have said that, in spite of these perpetual dismemberments of the great Frankish dominion, a real unity had always existed in the Frankish monarchy, and regulated the destinies of its constituent peoples. ”

“ The Franks had just the same advantages over their enemies that the barbarians of the north had over the Romans of the Lower Empire. In this terrible conflict, simplicity of manners, the energy of a new people for civilization, the ardour for pillage, and the pride of victory, were sure to prevail over the love of luxury, habits formed amidst corruption, and vanity which attaches importance to the most frivolous things, and only preserves a gaudy resemblance of true grandeur. ”