Читать книгу History of France from the Earliest Times (Vol. 1-6) - Guizot François - Страница 18

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There is a certain amount of sound sense, of intelligent activity and practical efficiency, which even the least civilized and least exacting communities absolutely must look for in their governing body. When this necessary share of ability and influence of a political kind are decidedly wanting in the men who have the titles and the official posts of power, communities seek elsewhere the qualities (and their consequences) which they cannot do without. The sluggard Merovingians drove the Franks, Neustrians, and Austrasians to this imperative necessity. The last of the kings sprung from Clovis acquitted themselves too ill or not at all of their task; and the mayors of the palace were naturally summoned to supply their deficiencies, and to give the populations assurance of more intelligence and energy in the exercise of power. The origin and primitive character of these supplements of royalty were different according to circumstances; at one time, conformably with their title, the mayors of the palace really came into existence in the palace of the Frankish kings, amongst the “leudes,” charged, under the style of antrustions (lieges in the confidence of the king: in truste regia), with the internal management of the royal affairs and household, or amongst the superior chiefs of the army; at another, on the contrary, it was to resist the violence and usurpation of the kings that the “leudes,” landholders or warriors, themselves chose a chief able to defend their interests and their rights against the royal tyranny or incapacity. Thus we meet, at this time, with mayors of the palace of very different political origin and intention, some appointed by the kings to support royalty against the “leudes,” others chosen by the “leudes” against the kings. It was especially between the Neustrian and Austrasian mayors of the palace that this difference became striking. Gallo-Roman feeling was more prevalent in Neustria, Germanic in Austrasia. The majority of the Neustrian mayors supported the interests of royalty, the Austrasian those of the aristocracy of landholders and warriors. The last years of the Merovingian line were full of their struggles; but a cause far more general and more powerful than these differences and conflicts in the very heart of the Frankish dominions determined the definitive fall of that line and the accession of another dynasty. When in 687 the battle fought at Testry, on the banks of the Somme, left Pepin of Heristal, duke and mayor of the palace of Austrasia, victorious over Bertaire, mayor of the palace of Neustria, it was a question of something very different from mere rivalry between the two Frankish dominions and their chiefs.

At their entrance and settlement upon the left bank of the Rhine and in Gaul, the Franks had not abandoned the right bank and Germany; there also they remained settled and incessantly at strife with their neighbors of Germanic race, Thuringians, Bavarians, the confederation of Allemannians, Frisons, and Saxons, people frequently vanquished and subdued to all appearance, but always ready to rise either for the recovery of their independence, or, again, under the pressure of that grand movement which, in the third century, had determined the general invasion by the barbarians of the Roman empire. After the defeat of the Huns at Chalons, and the founding of the Visigothic, Burgundian, and Frankish kingdoms in Gaul, that movement had been, if not arrested, at any rate modified, and for the moment suspended. In the sixth century it received a fresh impulse; new nations, Avars, Tartars, Bulgarians, Slavons, and Lombards thrust one another with mutual pressure from Asia into Europe, from Eastern Europe into Western; from the North to the South, into Italy and into Gaul. Driven by the Ouigour Tartars from Pannonia and Noricum (nowadays Austria), the Lombards threw themselves first upon Italy, crossed before long the Alps, and penetrated into Burgundy and Provence, to the very gates of Avignon. On the Rhine and along the Jura the Franks had to struggle on their own account against the new comers; and they were, further, summoned into Italy by the Emperors of the East, who wanted their aid against the Lombards. Everywhere resistance to the invasion of barbarians became the national attitude of the Franks, and they proudly proclaimed themselves the defenders of that West of which they had but lately been the conquerors.

When the Merovingians were indisputably nothing but sluggard kings, and when Ebroin, the last great mayor of the palace of Neustria, had been assassinated (in 681), and the army of the Neustrians destroyed at the battle of Testry (in 687), the ascendency in the heart of the whole of Frankish Gaul passed to the Franks of Austrasia, already bound by their geographical position to the defence of their nation in its new settlement. There had risen up among them a family, powerful from its vast domains, from its military and political services, and already also from the prestige belonging to the hereditary transmission of name and power. Its first chief known in history had been Pepin of Landen, called The Ancient, one of the foes of Queen Brunehaut, who was so hateful to the Austrasians, and afterwards one of the privy councillors and mayor of the palace of Austrasia, under Dagobert I. and his son Sigebert II. He died in 639, leaving to his family an influence already extensive. His son Grimoald succeeded him as mayor of the palace, ingloriously; but his grandson, by his daughter Bega, Pepin of Heristal, was for twenty-seven years not only virtually, as mayor of the palace, but ostensibly and with the title of duke, the real sovereign of Austrasia and all the Frankish dominion. He did not, however, take the name of king; and four descendants of Clovis, Thierry III., Clovis III., Childebert III., and Dagobert III. continued to bear that title in Neustria and Burgundy, under the preponderating influence of Pepin of Heristal. He did, during his long sway, three things of importance. He struggled without cessation to keep or bring back under the rule of the Franks the Germanic nations on the right bank of the Rhine—Frisons, Saxons, Thuringians, Bavarians, and Allemannians; and thus to make the Frankish dominion a bulwark against the new flood of barbarians who were pressing one another westwards.

He rekindled in Austrasia the national spirit and some political life by beginning again the old March parades of the Franks, which had fallen into desuetude under the last Merovingians. Lastly, and this was, perhaps, his most original merit, he understood of what importance, for the Frankish kingdom, was the conversion to Christianity of the Germanic peoples over the Rhine, and he abetted with all his might the zeal of the popes and missionaries, Irish, Anglo-Saxon, and Gallo-Roman, devoted to this great work. The two apostles of Friesland, St. Willfried and St. Willibrod, especially the latter, had intimate relations with Pepin of Heristal, and received from him effectual support. More than twenty bishoprics, amongst others those of Utrecht, Mayence, Ratisbonne, Worms, and Spire, were founded at this epoch; and one of those ardent pioneers of Christian civilization, the Irish bishop, St. Lievin, martyred in 656 near Ghent, of which he has remained the patron saint, wrote in verse to his friend Herbert, a little before his martyrdom, “I have seen a sun without rays, days without light, and nights without repose. Around me rageth a people impious and clamorous for my blood. O people, what harm have I done thee? ’Tis peace that I bring thee; wherefore declare war against me? But thy barbarism will bring my triumph and give me the palm of martyrdom. I know in whom I trust, and my hope shall not be confounded. Whilst I am pouring forth these verses, there cometh unto me the tired driver of the ass that beareth me the usual provisions: he bringeth that which maketh the delights of the country, even milk and butter and eggs; the cheeses stretch the wicker-work of the far too narrow panniers. Why tarriest thou, good carrier? Quicken thy step; collect thy riches, thou that this morning art so poor. As for me I am no longer what I was, and have lost the gift of joyous verse. How could it be other-wise when I am witness of such cruelties?”

It were difficult to describe with more pious, graceful, and melancholy feeling a holier and a simpler life.

After so many firm and glorious acts of authority abroad, Pepin of Heristal at his death, December 16, 714, did a deed of weakness at home. He had two wives, Plectrude and Alpaide; he had repudiated the former to espouse the latter, and the church, considering the second marriage unlawful, had constantly urged him to take back Plectrude. He had by her a son, Grimoald, who was assassinated on his way to join his father lying ill near Liege. This son left a child, Theodoald, only six years old. This child it was whom Pepin, either from a grandfather’s blind fondness, or through the influence of his wife Plectrude, appointed to succeed him, to the detriment of his two sons by Alpaide, Charles and Childebrand. Charles, at that time twenty-five years of age, had already a name for capacity and valor. On the death of Pepin, his widow Plectrude lost no time in arresting and imprisoning at Cologne this son of her rival Alpaide; but, some months afterwards, in 715, the Austrasians, having risen against Plectrude, took Charles out of prison and set him at their head, proclaiming him Duke of Austrasia. He was destined to become Charles Martel.

He first of all took care to extend and secure his own authority over all the Franks. At the death of Pepin of Heristal, the Neustrians, vexed at the long domination of the Austrasians, had taken one of themselves, Ragenfried, as mayor of the palace, and had placed at his side a Merovingian sluggard king, Chilperic II., whom they had dragged from a monastery. Charles, at the head of the Austrasians, twice succeeded in beating, first near Cambrai and then near Soissons, the Neustrian king and mayor of the palace, pursued them to Paris, returned to Cologne, got himself accepted by his old enemy Queen Plectrude, and remaining temperate amidst the triumph of his ambition, he, too, took from amongst the surviving Merovingians a sluggard king, whom he installed under the name of Clotaire IV., himself becoming, with the simple title of Duke of Austrasia, master of the Frankish dominion.

Being in tranquillity on the left bank of the Rhine, Charles directed towards the right bank—towards the Frisons and the Saxons—his attention and his efforts. After having experienced, in a first encounter, a somewhat severe check, he took, from 715 to 718, ample revenge upon them, repressed their attempts at invasion of Frankish territory, and pursued them on their own, imposed tribute upon them, and commenced with vigor, against the Saxons in particular, that struggle, at first defensive and afterwards aggressive, which was to hold so prominent a place in the life and glorious but blood-stained annals of his grandson Charlemagne.

In the war against the Neustrians, at the battle of Soissons in 719, Charles had encountered in their ranks Eudes or Eudon, Duke of Aquitania and Vasconia, that beautiful portion of Southern Gaul situated between the Pyrenees, the Ocean, the Garonne, and the Rhone, who had been for a long time trying to shake off the dominion of the barbarians, Visigoths or Franks. At the death of Pepin of Heristal, the Neustrians had drawn into alliance with them, for their war against the Austrasians, this Duke Elides, to whom they gave, as it appears, the title of king. After their common defeat at Soissons, the Aquitanian prince withdrew precipitately into his own country, taking with him the sluggard king of the Neustrians, Chilperic II. Charles pursued him to the Loire, and sent word to him, a few months afterwards, that he would enter into friendship with him if he would deliver up Chilperic and his treasures; otherwise he would invade and ravage Aquitania. Eudes delivered up Chilperic and his treasures; and Charles, satisfied with having in his power this Merovingian phantom, treated him generously, kept up his royal rank, and at his death, which happened soon afterwards, replaced him by another phantom of the same line, Theodoric or Thierry IV.; whom he dragged from the abbey of Chelles, founded by Queen St. Bathilde, wife of Clovis II., and who for seventeen years bore the title of king, whilst Charles Martel was ruling gloriously, and was, perhaps, the savior of the Frankish dominions. When he contracted his alliance with the Duke of Aquitania, Charles Martel did not know against what enemies and perils he would soon have to struggle.

In the earlier years of the eighth century, less than a hundred years from the death of Mahomet, the Mussulman Arabs, after having conquered Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Northern Africa, had passed into Europe, invaded Spain, overthrown the kingdom of the Visigoths, driven back the remnants of the nation and their chief, Pelagius, to the north of the Peninsula, into the Asturias and Galicia, and pushed even beyond the Pyrenees, into old Narbonness, then called Septimania, their limitless incursions. These fiery conquerors did not amount at that time, according to the most probable estimates, to more than fifty thousand; but they were under the influence of religious and warlike enthusiasm at one and the same time; they were fanatics in the cause of Deism and of glory. “The Arab warrior during campaigns was not excused from any one of the essential duties of Islamism; he was bound to pray at least once a day, on rising in the morning, at the blush of dawn. The general of the army was its priest; he it was who, at the head of the ranks, gave the signal for prayer, uttered the words, reminded the troops of the precepts of the Koran, and enjoined upon them forgetfulness of personal quarrels.” One day, on the point of engaging in a decisive battle, Moussaben- Nossair, first governor of Mussulman Africa, was praying, according to usage, at the head of the troops; and he omitted the invocation of the name of the Khalif, a respectful formality indispensable on the occasion. One of his officers, persuaded that it was a mere slip on Moussa’s part, made a point of admonishing him. “Know thou,” said Moussa, “that we are in such a position and at such an hour that no other name must be invoked save that of the most high God.” Moussa was, apparently, the first Arab chief to cross the Pyrenees and march, plundering as he went, into Narbonness. The Arabs had but very confused ideas of Gaul; they called it Frandjas, and gave to all its inhabitants, without distinction, the name of Frandj. The Khalif Abdelmelek, having recalled Moussa, questioned him about the different peoples with which he had been concerned. “And of these Frandj,” said he, “what hast thou to tell me?” “They are a people,” answered Moussa, “very many in number and abundantly provided with everything, brave and impetuous in attack, but spiritless and timid under reverses.” “And how went the war betwixt them and thee?” added Abdelmelek: “was it favorable to thee or the contrary?” “The contrary! Nay, by Allah and the Prophet; never was my army vanquished; never was a battalion beaten; and never did the Mussulmans hesitate to follow me when I led them forty against fourscore.” (Fauriel, Histoire de la Gaule, &c., t. III., pp. 48, 67.)

In 719, under El-Idaur-ben-Abdel-Rhaman, a valiant and able leader, say the Arab writers, but greedy, harsh, and cruel, the Arabs pursued their incursions into Southern Gaul, took Narbonne, dispersed the inhabitants, spread themselves abroad in search of plunder as far as the borders of the Garonne, and went and laid siege to Toulouse. Eudes, Duke of Aquitania, happened to be at Bordeaux, and he hastily summoned all the forces of his towns and all the populations from the Pyrenees to the Loire, and hurried to the relief of his capital. The Arabs, commanded by a new chieftain, El-Samah, more popular amongst them than El-Haur, awaited him beneath the walls of the city determined to give him battle. “Have ye no fear of this multitude,” said El-Samah to his warriors; “if God be with us, who shall be against us? “Elides had taken equally great pains to kindle the pious courage of the Aquitanians; he spread amongst his troops a rumor that he had but lately received as a present from Pope Gregory II. three sponges that had served to wipe down the table at which the sovereign pontiffs were accustomed to celebrate the communion; he had them cut into little strips which he had distributed to all those of the combatants who wished for them, and thereupon gave the sword to sound the charge. The victory of the Aquitanians was complete; the Arab army was cut in pieces; El-Samah was slain, and with him, according to the victors’ accounts, full three hundred and seventy-five thousand of his troops. The most truth-like testimonies and calculations do not put down at more than from fifty to seventy thousand men, in fighting trim, the number of Arabs that entered Spain eight or ten years previously, even with the additions it must have received by means of the emigrations from Africa; and undoubtedly El-Samah could not have led into Aquitania more than from forty to forty-five thousand. However that may be, the defeat of the Arabs before Toulouse was so serious that, four or five centuries afterwards, Ibn-Hayan, the best of their historians, still spoke of it as the object of solemn commemoration, and affirmed that the Arab army had entirely perished there, without the escape of a single man. The spot in the Roman road, between Carcassonne and Toulouse, where the battle was fought, was one heap of dead bodies, and continued to be mentioned in the Arab chronicles under the name of Martyrs’ Causeway. But the Arabs of Spain were then in that unstable social condition and in that heyday of impulsive youthfulness as a people, when men are more apt to be excited and attracted by the prospect of bold adventures than discouraged by reverses. El-Samah, on crossing the Pyrenees to go plundering and conquering in the country of the Frandj, had left as his lieutenant in the Iberian peninsula Anbessa-ben-Sohim, one of the most able, most pious, most just, and most humane chieftains, say the Arab chronicles, that Islamism ever produced in Europe. He, being informed of El-Samah’s death before Toulouse, resolved to resume his enterprise and avenge his defeat. In 725, he entered Gaul with a strong army; took Carcassonne; reduced, either by force or by treaty, the principal towns of Septimania to submission; and even carried the Arab arms, for the first time, beyond the Rhone into Provence. At the news of this fresh invasion Duke Eudes hurried from Aquitania, collecting on his march the forces of the country, and, after having waited some time for a favorable opportunity, gave the Arabs battle in Provence. It was indecisive at first, but ultimately won by the Christians without other result than the retreat of Anbessa, mortally wounded, upon the right bank of the Rhone, where he died without having been able himself to recross the Pyrenees, but leaving the Arabs masters of Septimania, where they established themselves in force, taking Narbonne for capital and a starting-point for their future enterprises.

The struggle had now begun in earnest, from the Rhone to the Garonne and the Ocean, between the Christians of Southern Gaul and the Mussulmans of Spain. Duke Eudes saw with profound anxiety his enemies settled in Septimania, and ever on the point of invading and devastating Aquitania. He had been informed that the Khalif Hashem had just appointed to the governor-generalship of Spain Abdel-Rhaman (the Abderame of the Christian chronicles), regarded as the most valiant of the Spanish Arabs, and that this chieftain was making great preparations for resuming their course of invasion. Another peril at the same time pressed heavily on Duke Eudes: his northern neighbor, Charles, sovereign duke of the Franks, the conqueror, beyond the Rhine, of the Frisons and Saxons, was directing glances full of regret towards those beautiful countries of Southern Gaul, which in former days Clovis had won from the Visigoths, and which had been separated, little by little, from the Frankish empire. Either justly or by way of ruse Charles accused Duke Eudes of not faithfully observing the treaty of peace they had concluded in 720; and on this pretext he crossed the Loire, and twice in the same year, 731, carried fear and rapine into the possession of the Duke of Aquitania on the left bank of that river. Eudes went, not unsuccessfully, to the rescue of his domains; but he was soon recalled to the Pyrenees by the news he received of the movements of Abdel-Rhaman and by the hope he had conceived of finding, in Spain itself and under the sway of the Arabs, an ally against their invasion of his dominions. The military command of the Spanish frontier of the Pyrenees and of the Mussulman forces there encamped had been intrusted to Othman-ben-Abi-Nessa, a chieftain of renown, but no Arab, either in origin or at heart, although a Mussulman. He belonged to the race of Berbers, whom the Romans called Moors, a people of the north-west of Africa, conquered and subjugated by the Arabs, but impatient under the yoke. The greater part of Abi- Nessa’s troops were likewise Berbers and devoted to their chiefs. Abi- Nessa, ambitious and audacious, conceived the project of seizing the government of the Peninsula, or at the least of making himself independent master of the districts he governed; and he entered into negotiations with the Duke of Aquitania to secure his support. In spite of religious differences their interests were too similar not to make an understanding easy; and the secret alliance was soon concluded and confirmed by a precious pledge. Duke Eudes had a daughter of rare beauty, named Lampagie, and he gave her in marriage to Abi-Nessa, who, say the chronicles, became desperately enamoured of her.

But whilst Eudes, trusting to this alliance, was putting himself in motion towards the Loire to protect his possessions against a fresh attack from the Duke of the Franks, the governor-general of Spain, Abdel- Rhaman, informed of Abi-Nessa’s plot, was arriving with large forces at the foot of the Pyrenees, to stamp out the rebellion. Its repression was easy. “At the approach of Abdel-Rhaman,” say the chroniclers, “Abi-Nessa hastened to shut himself up in Livia [the ancient capital of Cerdagne, on the ruins of which Puycerda was built], flattering himself that he could sustain a siege and there await succor from his father-in-law, Eudes; but the advance-guard of Abdel-Rhaman followed him so closely and with such ardor that it left him no leisure to make the least preparation for defence. Abi-Nessa, had scarcely time to fly from the town and gain the neighboring mountains with a few servants and his well-beloved Lampagie. Already he had penetrated into an out-of-the-way and lonely pass, where it seemed to him he ran no more risk of being discovered. He halted, therefore, to rest himself and quench the thirst which was tormenting his lovely companion and himself, beside a waterfall which gushed from a mass of lofty rocks upon a piece of fresh, green turf. They were surrendering themselves to the delightful feeling of being saved, when, all at once, they hear a loud sound of steps and voices; they listen; they glance in the direction of the sound, and perceive a detachment of armed men, one of those that were out in search of them. The servants take to flight; but Lampagie, too weary, cannot follow them, nor can Abi-Nessa abandon Lampagie. In the twinkling of an eye they are surrounded by foes. The chronicler Isidore of Bdja says that Abi-Nessa, in order not to fall alive into their hands, flung himself from top to bottom of the rocks; and an Arab historian relates that he took sword in hand, and fell pierced with twenty lance-thrusts whilst fighting in defence of her he loved. They cut off his head, which was forthwith carried to Abdel- Rhaman, to whom they led away prisoner the hapless daughter of Eudes. She was so lovely in the eyes of Abdel-Rhaman, that he thought it his duty to send her to Damascus, to the commander of the faithful, esteeming no other mortal worthy of her.” (Fauriel, Historie de la Gaulle, &c., t. III., p. 115.)

Abdel-Rhaman, at ease touching the interior of Spain, reassembled the forces he had prepared for his expedition, marched towards the Pyrenees by Pampeluna, crossed the summit become so famous under the name of Port de Roncevaux, and debouched by a single defile and in a single column, say the chroniclers, upon Gallic Vasconia, greater in extent than French Biscay now is. M. Fauriel, after scrupulous examination, according to his custom, estimates the army of Abdel-Rhaman, whether Mussulman adventurers flocking from all parts, or Arabs of Spain, at from sixty-five to seventy thousand fighting men. Duke Eudes made a gallant effort to stop his march and hurl him back towards the mountains; but exhausted, even by certain small successes, and always forced to retire, fight after fight, up to the approaches to Bordeaux, he crossed the Garonne, and halted on the right bank of the river, to cover the city. Abdel-Rhaman who had followed him closely, forced the passage of the river, and a battle was fought, in which the Aquitanians were defeated with immense loss. “God alone,” says Isidore of Beja, “knows the number of those who fell.” The battle gained, Abdel-Rhaman took Bordeaux by assault and delivered it over to his army. The plunder, to believe the historians of the conquerors, surpassed all that had been preconceived of the wealth of the vanquished: “The most insignificant soldier,” say they, “had for his share plenty of topazes, jacinths, and emeralds, to say nothing of gold, a somewhat vulgar article under the circumstances.” What appears certain is that, at their departure from Bordeaux, the Arabs were so laden with booty that their march became less rapid and unimpeded than before.

In the face of this disaster, the Franks and their duke were evidently the only support to which Eudes could have recourse; and he repaired in all haste to Charles and invoked his aid against the common enemy, who, after having crushed the Aquitanians, would soon attack the Franks, and subject them in turn to ravages and outrages. Charles did not require solicitation. He took an oath of the Duke of Aquitania to acknowledge his sovereignty and thenceforth remain faithful to him; and then, summoning all his warriors, Franks, Burgundians, Gallo-Romans, and Germans from beyond the Rhine, he set himself in motion towards the Loire. It was time. The Arabs had spread over the whole country between the Garonne and the Loire; they had even crossed the latter river and penetrated into Burgundy as far as Autun and Sens, ravaging the country, the towns, and the monasteries, and massacring or dispersing the populations. Abdel-Rhaman had heard tell of the city of Tours and its rich abbey, the treasures whereof, it was said, surpassed those of any other city and any other abbey in Gaul. Burning to possess it, he recalled towards this point his scattered forces. On arriving at Poitiers he found the gates closed and the inhabitants resolved to defend themselves; and, after a fruitless attempt at assault, he continued his march towards Tours. He was already beneath the walls of the place when he learned that the Franks were rapidly advancing in vast numbers. He fell back towards Poitiers, collecting the troops that were returning to him from all quarters, embarrassed with the immense booty they were dragging in their wake. He had for a moment, say the historians, an idea of ordering his soldiers to leave or burn their booty, to keep nothing but their arms, and think of nothing but battle: however, he did nothing of the kind, and, to await the Franks, he fixed his camp between the Vienne and the Clain, near Poitiers, not far from the spot where, two hundred and twenty-five years before, Clovis had beaten the Visigoths; or, according to others, nearer Tours, at Mire, in a plain still called the Landes de Charlemagne.