Читать книгу A Source Book of Mediæval History - Various - Страница 36

When Charlemagne became sole ruler of the Franks, in 771, he found his kingdom pretty well hemmed in by a belt of kindred, though more or less hostile, Germanic peoples. The most important of these were the Visigoths in northern Spain, the Lombards in the Po Valley, the Bavarians in the region of the upper Danube, and the Saxons between the Rhine and the Elbe. The policy of the new king, perhaps only dimly outlined at the beginning of the reign but growing ever more definite as time went on, was to bring all of these neighboring peoples under the Frankish dominion, and so to build up a great state which should include the whole Germanic race of western and northern continental Europe. Most of the king's time during the first thirty years, or two-thirds, of the reign was devoted to this stupendous task. The first great step was taken in the conquest of the Lombards in 774, after which Charlemagne assumed the title of King of the Lombards. In 787 Bavaria was annexed to the Frankish kingdom, the settlement in this case being in the nature of a complete absorption rather than a mere personal union such as followed the Lombard conquest. The next year an expedition across the Pyrenees resulted in the annexation of the Spanish March—a region in which the Visigoths had managed to maintain some degree of independence against the Saracens. In all these directions little fighting was necessary and for one reason or another the sovereignty of the Frankish king was recognized without much delay or resistance.

The problem of reducing the Saxons was, however, a very different one. The Saxons of Charlemagne's day were a people of purest Germanic stock dwelling in the land along the Rhine, Ems, Weser, and Elbe, and inland as far as the low mountains of Hesse and Thuringia—the regions which now bear the names of Hanover, Brunswick, Oldenburg, and Westphalia. The Saxons, influenced as yet scarcely at all by contact with the Romans, retained substantially the manner of life described seven centuries earlier by Tacitus in the Germania. They lived in small villages, had only the loosest sort of government, and clung tenaciously to the warlike mythology of their ancestors. Before Charlemagne's time they had engaged in frequent border wars with the Franks and had shown capacity for making very obstinate resistance. And when Charlemagne himself undertook to subdue them he entered upon a task which kept him busy much of the time for over thirty years, that is, from 772 to 803. In all not fewer than eighteen distinct campaigns were made into the enemy's territory. The ordinary course of events was that Charlemagne would lead his army across the Rhine in the spring, the Saxons would make some little resistance and then disperse or withdraw toward the Baltic, and the Franks would leave a garrison and return home for the winter. As soon as the enemy's back was turned the Saxons would rally, expel or massacre the garrison, and assert their complete independence of Frankish authority. The next year the whole thing would have to be done over again. There were not more than two great battles in the entire contest; the war consisted rather of a monotonous series of "military parades," apparent submissions, revolts, and re-submissions. As Professor Emerton puts it, "From the year 772 to 803, a period of over thirty years, this war was always on the programme of the Frankish policy, now resting for a few years, and now breaking out with increased fury, until finally the Saxon people, worn out with the long struggle against a superior foe, gave it up and became a part of the Frankish Empire."[132]

It is to be regretted that we have no Saxon account of the great contest except the well-meant, but very inadequate, history by Widukind, a monk of Corbie, written about the middle of the tenth century. However, the following passage from Einhard, the secretary and biographer of Charlemagne, doubtless describes with fair accuracy the conditions and character of the struggle. A few of the writer's strongest statements regarding Saxon perfidy should be accepted only with some allowance for Frankish prejudice.

Source—Einhard, Vita Caroli Magni, Chap. 7. Text in Monumenta Germaniæ Historica, Scriptores (Pertz ed.), Vol. II., pp. 446–447. Adapted from translation by Samuel Epes Turner in "Harper's School Classics" (New York, 1880), pp. 26–28.

No war ever undertaken by the Frankish nation was carried on with such persistence and bitterness, or cost so much labor, because the Saxons, like almost all the tribes of Germany, were a fierce people, given to the worship of devils and hostile to our religion, and did not consider it dishonorable to transgress and violate all law, human and divine. Then there were peculiar circumstances that tended to cause a breach of peace every day. Except in a few places, where large forests or mountain-ridges Lack of a natural frontier intervened and made the boundaries certain, the line between ourselves and the Saxons passed almost in its whole extent through an open country, so that there was no end to the murders, thefts, and arsons on both sides. In this way the Franks became so embittered that they at last resolved to make reprisals no longer, but to come to open war with the Saxons.

Accordingly, war was begun against them, and was waged for thirty-three successive years[133] with great fury; more, however, to the disadvantage of the Saxons than of the Franks. It could doubtless have been brought to an end sooner, had it not been for the faithlessness of the Saxons. It is hard to say how often they were conquered, and, humbly submitting to the king, Faithlessness of the Saxons promised to do what was enjoined upon them, gave without hesitation the required hostages, and received the officers sent them from the king. They were sometimes so much weakened and reduced that they promised to renounce the worship of devils and to adopt Christianity; but they were no less ready to violate these terms than prompt to accept them, so that it is impossible to tell which came easier to them to do; scarcely a year passed from the beginning of the war without such changes on their part. But the king did not suffer his high purpose and steadfastness—firm alike in good and evil fortune—to be wearied by any fickleness on their part, or to be turned from the task that he had undertaken; on the contrary, Charlemagne's settlement of Saxons in Gaul and Germany he never allowed their faithless behavior to go unpunished, but either took the field against them in person, or sent his counts with an army to wreak vengeance and exact righteous satisfaction.[134] At last, after conquering and subduing all who had offered resistance, he took ten thousand of those who lived on the banks of the Elbe, and settled them, with their wives and children, in many different bodies here and there in Gaul and Germany. The war that had lasted so many years was at length ended by their acceding to The terms of peace the terms offered by the king; which were renunciation of their national religious customs and the worship of devils, acceptance of the sacraments of the Christian religion,[135] and union with the Franks to form one people.