6 8 9 4 8 0: ^y r> -^^^^^^ ■> > ■> > ■ ■■■» ■ -, 3^: .^^^A U?-^ I ^^^^^^> 3^ ':^^V^" 5 ■;> ^» *^ ::3r> J^ 3> > ;v -rn; ^^^f^"%m^' !^ ■iO>»j;)y:'>1^3> ani- "^"^j-- 3 -^ > ^^< ::>^> ^J> ^3;c> ^ :2>s> J> >v> .3^" r^:,':y \,._^:--^'' ^Jfc ^ .1^ ^ j):t> a Co ^. BISlvIARCK. Jiemy J Johnson , Publisher , New 'lork . POPULAR HISTORY OF GERMANY, FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE PRESENT DAY. BY f)f{. wiiiMS J J r J 1 ' / , 3 ' 3 i 3 i ■* ' ,' J J J 3 3 1 J 3333333 J J 3 3 3 J Copyright, 1878, by HENRY J. JOHNSON. — — — =- Printed by Electrotyped by _ _ ^, .^-^ D. G. F. CLASS, SMITH & McDOUGAL, „ , ^ 17 Rose St. 82 Beekman St, c c c ^ c c c C ' , <,' TABLE OF CONTENTS. VOLUME SEOOI^D. FEOM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE EEIGN OF CHARLEMAGNE TO THE REIGN OF THE SALIAN EMPER0i:3. CHAPTER I. Charles the Great (Charlemagne)— The Brothers Carloman and Charles— Charles and his first three Marriages— His Mother Bertha and the Lombard King Desiderius— First Campaign against the Saxons— His March across the Alps— Charles King of the Franks and Lombards 437 CHAPTER n. Changes effected by Charles in Lombardy— The L:on Crown— Paul the Son of Warnefried— Conspiracy of Adalgis— Fastrada— Fall of Adalgis 447 CHAPTER m. Fate of the other Members of the Conspiracy— The Thuringian Nobles and Thassilo Duke of Bavaria- Charles's Expedition to the Raab and Conquest of the Land of the Avars 453 CHAPTER IV. Detached Revolts of the Avars— Conspiracy of Pipin the Hump-backed— Conversion of the South Slaves to Christianity— Alcuin—Amo and the Archbishopric of Salzburg— Opening of Commerce with the East— Campaign of Charles against the Moors and the Spanish March— Revival of the Germanic and Christian States in Spain 460 CHAPTER V. The Saxon War— The Country of the Saxons— The Struggle with Widukind and Alf— Alcuin, Privy Councillor of Charles — His Negotiations for Peace in opposition to the Priestly Party in the Council —Violent Removal of Saxons from the North to the Southeast — Oppression of the Wihmuodi-Gau = • 470 CHAPTER ^a. Defeat of the Danes — Charles the Roman Emperor — Relation of the new Empire to the Papacy — The Court, Character, and Family Life of Charles — His Death 498 8783 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. PAGE Decline of the Carlovingian House — Lewis (Ludwig) the Pious — Partition of the Kingdom in 817 — Intrigues of the Papacy — Revolt of the Sons of Lewis — The " Field of Lies " and the Emperor's Penance at Soissons — Lothaire I. — The Fraternal War — Division of the Empire by the Convention of Verdun 511 CHAPTER VIII. Intrigues and Death of Lothaire I. — War between the Kings Lewis and Charles — Dissension between the Sons of Lothaire — The False Decretals — The Dispute about the Marriage of Lothaire II. — The Letters of Submission to the Pope Nicholas I. sent by Lothaire II. and his L'ncle Lewis — Domestic Misfortunes of King Charles. — The compliant Bishops of Lothaire II. — Joui-ney of Lothaire to Rome — Triumph of the Priesthood over Royalty , 535 CHAPTER IX. Convention at Meersen — Charles the Bald Anointed as Emperor — Battle at Andernach — Partition of the Dominions of Lewis the German — Charles the Fat — Attacks of the Northmen and Saracens — Struggles in Moravia — Deposition of Charles the Fat — The Emperor Arnulf — The Magyars — Lewis the Child, the last Male Descendant of Charles the Great in Germany , ,545 CHAPTER X. Primitive Religion of the Germans — Their Conversion to Christianity. 571 CHAPTER XL Poetry and Song — The German Language and Latin Culture down to the Fall of the Carlo- vingians 589 CHAPTER XII. The Family — Laws, Occupations, and Customs — Changes therein effected by Charles the Great — Foun- dation of a pure German Empire 595 CHAPTER XIII. Conrad I., Henry I., and their Time — Beginning of the German Empire 049 CHAPTER XIV. Otto the First — His Love of Pomp — The Archfunctionaries — His Appearance and Character — His Youthful Errors and the Consequences thereof — His Struggle with his Brother Thankmar and the Dukes — Fables of the Clergy respecting the Death of Arnulf — Otto's Struggles with the Slaves, the Magyars, and the King of France 685 CHAPTER XV. Foundation of Bishoprics among the Slaves— Otto's Internal Policy — Union of the Dukedom of Fran- conia to the Crown — Otto's Attempt to Strengthen the Royal Power by Annexing the German Dukedoms to his House — Otto's Character — His Conduct to his Wife Edith and his Mother Matilda — Otto Arbitrator in France — Intervention in Italy — Queen Adelaide — Otto's Expedition to Italy, and its Consequences — Revolt of Liudolf and Conrad — Convention of Mainz — Sympathy of Swabia and Bavaria for Liudolf and Conrad after the Diet at Fritzlar — Otto and the great Invasions of the Magyars — New Rebellions of the Slaves on the Elbe — The Empire Freed from the Magyars by Otto's Victory of the Lechfieid 717 TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER XVI. PAGE Five Tears War against the Slaves — Liudolf's Campaign against King Berengar in Italy, and his Death — Otto's Second Expedition to Rome — His Coronation as Emperor — His Wars in Italy — His Plans for the Conquest of Lower Italy — Marriage of his Son Otto II. with the Daughter of the Greek Emperor — His Death on German Soil after a Residence of Six Years in Italy — His Policy and its Consequences 708 CHAPTER XVn. The Three last Emperors of the Saxon House : Otto II., Otto IH., and Henry II— Continuation of their Romantic Policy, and the Downfall of the Saxon House 791 LARGE ILLUSTRATIONS. VOLUME II. PAGE PLATE I.— Moorish Emirs before Charles ik Paderborn Frontispiece, II.-PRINCE Bismarck Vignette Title. in.— The Baptism of Widukind 486 IV.— Charles the Great Crowned as Emperor 503 v.— MONOiENT to Charlemagne ^08 VI.— Humiliation op Lewis the Pious at Soissons -^30 VII.— The Tre.\ty of Verdun ^^^ VIII.— Normans Plundering '^'-"^ IX.— Charles the Fat and Count Odo ^^^ X.— Arnulf Storms the Trenches of the Normans 563 XL— Walhalla : the Paradise of the Germans 578 XII.— Ancient German Sacrifice 586 XIII. — The Confirmation of the Rights op the Ripuarian Franks 623 XIV.— Charles the Great in the School of the Palace ^'34 XV.— The Aisibassadors of Haroun..\l-Raschid before Charles the Great 640 XVI— Henry the Fowler ^^^ XVII— The Last Tribute to the Magyars XVIII.— King Henry by the Corpse of Adelbert of Babenburg 6 < 6 f)'~8 XIX.— Henry I. Defeats the Hungarians "'^ XX. — Death of Thankmar XXI.— Otto I. at the North Sea • ' XXII.— Otto I. and His Son Liudolf ' 756 XXIII.— King Otto on the Battle-Ground XXIV. — Last Moments of Queen Matilda "" 7*^0 XXV. — Monument to Otto the Great at Magdeburg " 798 XXVI.— Otto II. Escapes from the Greeks XXVII.— The Empress Theophano and Otto II 813 XXVIII.— Otto HI. and the Romans XXIX.— In the Year 1000 ^~" 830 XXX.— Otto III. at the Gra\t: of St. Adelbert SMALL ENGRAVINGS. PAGE 1. Queen Bertha (Vignette) 437 3. Charles the Great Crossing the Alps 441 3. Charles the Great at Kome 444 4. Charles the Great entering Pa via 445 5. Adalberga before Charles the Great 451 6. Charles the Great Enthroned (Vignette). . . 453 7. The Battle of Roncesvalles 466 8. Rohind Dead 469 9. A Heathen Saxon 470 10. Execution of a Saxou 483 11. Charles the Great and Widukind 484 13. Saxons forced to Emigrate 493 13. Charles the Great Crowned Emperor by the Pope 498 14. Leo-is the Pious and the Pope ... 513 15. The Murderers of Bernhard 517 16. Lewis the Pious with his Followers 534 17. Escape of Thietberga 537 18. Lothaire's Oath 543 19. Death of Lothaire 544 30. Cliarles the Bald and Carloman 547 31. Charles the Fat 550 32. Charles the Fat and Duke Arnulf 558 33. King Eudes of France doing Homage to Arnulf 560 34. Arnulf Defeats the Northmen 561 25. Arnulf Assaults Rome 564 3f). Defeat of the Germans by the Magyars. . . . 569 37. All-father and the Fates 574 38. The Choosers of the Slain 578 3D. The Summer Festival 581 30. The Dwarfs 584 31. The German Muse 589 33. A German Settlement 597 33. A German Warrior 598 34. Noble Ladies of the Time of Charles the Great 599 35. Boar Hunt 601 36. A Father Acknowledging his Child 606 37. The Court of a Hundred 614 38. The Ordeal 617 39. Charles's Tribunal 630 40. Charles the Great and Alcuin 633 41. The School of the Palace 634 43. Frisian Traders 635 43. Charles the Great and the Elephant 638 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 53. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 63. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 73. 73. 74. 75. 76. I i, 78. 79. 80. 81. 83. 83. 84. 85. 86. PAGE Knights and Freemen 643 Execution of Erchanger 657 Death of Conrad 1 659 King Henry I. and Archbishop Heriger. . . . 661 Vision of St. Peter to St. Afra 663 King Henry Captures Zoltan 666 Slaughter of the Slaves 675 Signal Fires of the Magyars 679 Rescue of Prisoners from the Magyars 680 Otto I. Anointed King 686 The Death of Arnulf the Bad 693 King Otto and Hagen 700 Gero's Hospitality 704 King Otto and Archbishop Frederick 707 King Otto and his Brother Henry 713 Edith and the Hind 723 King Otto and Edith meet Matilda 734 Adventure of Adelaide 738 Otto and Adelaide 731 Submission of Berengar to Otto 734 Defeat of the Magyars in the Forest 745 The Finding of the Body of Arnulf 749 Liudolf's Submission to Otto 750 Death of the Scoffer 753 Death of Conrad the Red 759 Soldiers Bearing Liudolf's Body over the Alps 766 The Emperor Otto in the Council at Rome. 775 Otto at Heimsheim 778 The Emperor (Allegorical) 780 Otto's Ambassador before Nicephorus 783 Death of Otto the Great 786 The Discovery of the Silver Mines in the Harz 789 Escape of Otto II 800 Destruction of Hamburg 802 The Rejection of Mistiwoi 812 Abbot Nilus and the Archbishop 814 Death of Crescentius 815 Penance of Otto III 822 Otto III. opens the Tomb of Charles the Great 825 The Germans Insult the Idols of the Wends 837 Death of Duke Ernest 1 838 Saint Cunigunde 840 Saint Henry 843 Book II. FROM THE COMJ\£EN'CEJ\IEN'T OF TSF ^FiaJST OF CmL^LFMA.&JSrF TO THF ^FJGJS^ OF THF SJlZjIJLIT' FJfFFRORS. HISTORY OF GERMANY. CHAPTEE I. CHARLES THE GREAT (CHARLEMAGNE)— THE BROTHERS CARLO]VIAN AND CHARLES —CHARLES AND HIS FIRST THREE MARRIAGES— HIS MOTHER BERTHA AND THE LOMBARD KING DESIDERIUS — FIRST CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE SAXONS — HIS MARCH ACROSS THE ALPS— CHARLES KING OF THE FRANKS AND LOMBARDS. IPIN'S \^'ife was the daughter of a Frank noble, Charibert (Heribert), Count of Laon. The family, the biith, and the foiTQ of no Genuan prince, nay, of no prince of the world except the Caliph Haroun Al-raschid, have been the centre of such a rich and varied circle of sagas as Charles the Great. In the popidar traditions of the French, as well as in those of the Germans, the sagas of the Great Charles the Frank, still sui-vive after ten centuries. Early, even during his lifetime, popular poetry had taken possession of the life and deeds of this great emperor of the Gemians ; the poems of the Middle Ages, on both sides of the Ehine, continued the strain of poetry, and ill the nmeteenth centuiy, poets, masters of the song, have celebrated him in poems which are in every mouth. Bertha (Bertrada) was the name of the mother of Charles; but in the legend she does not remain the daughter of the Count of Laon, but is poetically imagined to be a princess of the East, a princess of Hungary, a daughter of King Florence and Queen Blanchefleur, that is, of the red and white rose. She thus 428 POPULAR HISTORY OF GERMANY. [Chap. I, survives in French legend ; in German she is the daughter of King Flower and Queen Whiteflower. But at the same time she sumves in some sagas as a woman of a higher kind and power, as an origuial Swanmaideu. In the faith of our ancestors, Swanmaidens were of human descent by the father's side, but of higher descent by the mother's side 5 and, according to this faith, the Swanmaidens have power to bestow on those whom they loved safety and victory in battle. Even in the tune of Charles the Great, and for centuries thereafter, the Gennans fully believed in the Valkyrier, the choosers of the slain, of whom the heroic legends of the Geniian north sang; in those unsubstantial figures of old heathen religion, with their swan-robes which they always had with them to enable them at any moment to fly away as swans ; in the charmed blessings by which they bestowed victory on their favorites, while, clad in the swan-robe, they hovered, singing, over their heads during the battle. Even at the beginning of this century, in those provinces which had been the seats of the old Alemanni and Swabians, " Frau Bertha " was not merely one of the " choosers of the slain," who bestowed victory, but a spinner, a beneficent domestic spirit, an apparition of kindly nature, and only exhibiting anger when disorder reigned in the house. That this cardinal virtue of old Gennan life, the housewifely art of spinnmg, was no fable, but a noble fact in the case of the mother of Charles, is proved by the great emperor, the son of this Bertha, always wearing garments which his own wife and daughters had spun. The romantic glow and perfume which the poets of the Middle Ages have flung around the name of Bertha, are inferior to the true glory of this noble German matron, who, in contrast to the frivolous lives of the Romanic women in Italy and the Frank kingdom, presented, in her own life, a model of a German housewife — a model of simple, universally active housewifery. Feeling the approach of death, Pipin wished that the kingdom might be divided between his two sons Charles and Carloman ; he complied with the national usages, and procured their election in a general diet of the kingdom. Maternal affection must have been active here, for otherwise the politic father would certainly have retained the kingdom as a unit under one head. Carloman was not satisfied with having half the kingdom ; he had the south, Charles the north, and as Charles's share seemed the larger, he envied his brother. Yet the " hatred and envy " of Carloman which Charles, according to the testimony of Einhard (Eginhard), had to endure, and which he bore with great patience, might have been caused by something else than the unequal division of the kingdom ; it may have arisen in the circumstance that Charles was the favorite of all the Franks. In ambition and strong self-consciousness, Carloman resembled his brother, but was unlike him in intellectual endowments or hero-like force. The government of two brothers of different characters was a bad beginning. The weaknesses of Carloman were misused and misguided by his courtiers after the usual fashion of courts. All far-seeing nobles of the Franks now repented of what they Chap. I.] THE PARTITION OF THE KINGDOM. 429 had done at the last diet to please Pipin, to please then- dying king, especially this partition of the Ivingdoni, these two kingdoms in one. For a mere falsehood is the statement of most histories, and those not merely ultramontane or reactionary, that Charles and his brother became kings by the prin- ciple of legitimacy, by a kind of hereditary succession, and " by the grace of God." All such statements are not merely untrue, but mere fictions ; even under the anointed King Pipin, the relation of tlie king to the people of the Franks was in no wise altered. After, as before, the royal power rested wholly and solely on contract, on election by the diet, or rights which the elected king received, and duties which he undertook. After the Papal anointing, the kingdom remained a legally limited con- stitutional kingdom. The " kingdom by the grace of God " of the Popes and the Byzantines was always something incomprehensible and repugnant to the Franks, as far as this religious ceremony would prejudice their old national right of electing their princes by representatives, and the old national contract between prince and people, and would make an absolute monarch out of their elected king. The con- temporary Eginhard expressly says, " Charles and his brother were elected by the representatives of all the Franks, on certain definite points of contract which the elected had to assent to, and did assent to ; they succeeded their father by the assent (mdu) of God who had caUed him out of this life." This word nutii, some translated freely, some servilely, the latter only in later days, as if Eginhard had said, " They inherited from their father the kingdom by the grace of God." Even the partition of the kingdom was not carried out by King Pipm, but by the representatives of the Franks in diet assembled on the 3d of October, 76S, eleven days after Pipin's death. There the election, there the contract was made, there tliey both, according to old German use and wont, formally, by express testmiony, were " raised on the shield and placed on the throne." The national assembly did not wish to divide the country, but only the administration of the kingdom. The results of the partition soon apj)eared when Wolf (Lupus), Waisar's successor in the southwestern frontier dukedom, revolted, and, in 769, made his country again independent. Carlo- man refused to assist in the subjugation of this prince. But Charles marched alone against the revolters, defeated them, and returned with such an opinion of his brother as must have produced a civil war, if their mother, the widowed Queen Bertha, who had great influence over Charles, had not allayed his wTath, and if death had not soon after intervened, and, on the 4th of December, 771, removed Carloman from the world, at Samoucy, near Laon. Carloman left two sons a few years old, and a young widow, Gilberga. Imme- diately after his death, almost aU the nobles, spiritual and temporal dignitaries of the court, and the counts who had served her husband, passed over to Charles, and the Queen Gilberga was so deserted that she saw but few Uegemen near her. The national assembly of aU the Franks declared Charles sole king of the whole kingdom. The assembly wished to ensure the unity of the kingdom. The experience of the last three years and a half had taught them how unsafe a division of the kingdom was, 430 POPULAR HISTORY OF GERMANY. [Chap. I. and recommended a return to the rule of one king ; since it had been proved to be s delusion that a kingdom could maintain its unity with two governors of its territories. All, gentle and smiple, had felt the disadvantage of two administrations, and likewise saw the difference between having Charles for king or his weak brother Carloman. When the widow of the latter, Gilberga, heard that the national assembly of the Franks had decided m favor of Charles, and for the good of the whole people — tliat there was to be one kingdom mider one king, and had left no prospect even of one of Carloman's sons succeeding him on his throne, she took her two sons and hev daughter and fled to Desiderius, king of the Lombards. Few nobles and a small following accompanied her over the Alps to Italy. Among them, Ottker (Autcharis) was the most illustrious, one of the heroes of the Frank army. No injustice had been done either to Gilberga or her children. Even with the best wishes in the world, the Franks could not have given to one of her sons an election to the throne of their father, because, according to Frank law, sons in their nonage, that is, not fifteen years old, were incapable of succeeding, and no election could do anythmg for them. She was not a daughter of King Desiderius, as men thought — she only wished to escape from the Franks ; a young inexperienced woman, she had ever in her eyes the murders of princes in the Merovingian and Burgundian bouses, as related in their terrible legends and lays. She erroneously dreaded, from the rude, wild strength of her brother-in-law Charles, a like fate for herself, vengeance on her for the hostile attitude and envy which Carloman her husband had openly displayed before his death. The recollection, too, of what Pipin had done to his brother rose up m her memory. With Charles the Great there begins a new chapter of European history, not merely of the history of the German nations. Charles was a wonderful, higlily-gifted character of colossal magnitude ; none like him has, down to to-day, sat on a Chris- tian throne, great at once as emperor and as man, as general and as statesman. But as king, as man in aU the parts of his miusually long reign, especially in his youth and age, he had dark shadows, shadows such that he had need of the imperial mantle that these shadows might not prejudice his greatness, unique in its way. In his first youth Charles retained still much of the violent nature of the old Norse ^'Recken"; and it is probable that the Church took care not to develop, by means of Romanic culture, the extraordinary endowments which soon appeared in the boy, and thus render him too dangerous to the Papal See. Extraordinary abilities in princes have never been cultivated by the Papal See ; and German history knows only one example to the contrary, the careful training which the amiable and accomplished Innocent III. bestowed on his tenderly-loved ward, the Emperor Frederick II. of Hohenstaufen, the oi*phan son of the Norman princess Constantia. The first and greatest emperor of the German nation was left to grow up at his father's court, without any intellectual training — without even the first rudiments of reading or writing. Charles the Great learnt to write, with great efforts, when he was srrowing old. Chap. I.] THE BIRTHPLACE OF CHARLES. 431 Darkness lies on the childhood and early years of the youth of Charles, and poetical legends have taken possession of them. The imagination of the German Middle Afes especially the trouhadours, half German, half Romanic, in southern France, and, later, the poets of pure German hlood, have invented in j)oetic play motley legends of all kinds about " Emperor Charles and liis Paladins," without any historical foundation ; and we may therefore assume that the legends of the birth of Charles, especially those in a manuscript of the thirteenth century, are purely poetical fancies. In the ancient abbey of Saint Stephen, near Freisiugen in Bavaria, the oldest "legend of the birth and youth of Charles the Great " is found ; according to it, and to a second legend from the same neighborhood, Charles was the pledge of generous but secret love, and grew to boyhood, not at a royal court, but abroad in a distant country in unrestrained freedom in a lonely vale. Distinguished historical investigators look on these two legends as at least not miprobable, and Eginhard, the favorite of Charles, in his biography in which he glorifies his imperial benefactor, has left to us the remarkable expression : " Of the birth and childhood of Charles, and of his boyhood, nothing documentary exists, and I found among the survivors no one who could give me any information respecting it. I have, therefore, passed over a period when the truth was no longer to be obtamed." These words point to the fact that immediately after the death of Charles, legends and tales respecting the mother, the birth, the childhood of the great emperor were current at the court and among the people, tales in which it was mipossible to discover how much truth lay buried. Not even the place where the emperor was born is known. In the present century the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences offered a prize for the determination of his birthplace. But the essay, although crowned by the Academy, and other treatises down to the present day, only prove that nothing is known for certain of the birth- place of Charles. A series of places claim tlie glory of being the cradle of the greatest of aU emperors. According to some, his birthplace was Paris, or a castle near to Paris; according to others. Gross- Varghel on the Unstrutt in Thuringia; according to others, even Brabant. The Dutch writer Van Beek claims the honor for Jupil, near Liege. The castle of Carlsberg, on the Wurmsee in Bavaria, the so-caUed Ricemill near the Abbey of Holy Stephen, also claims the honor ; as do Worms on the Rhine, Ingelheim on the Rhine, and the old city of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle). It has been lately assumed that very probably the district of Liege was the land of his birth, although the spot remains unascertained. Charles often kept the feast of Easter in Jupil, near Liege, far from his usual favorite dwellings ; and his birthday, that is, the most probable day for his birth, falls in the season of Easter. He perhaps visited Jupil at the time of his birthday, because it was his birthplace. In favor of Ingelheim as his birthplace, we have the tradition transmitted for centuries by the lips of the people. Charles loved exceedingly Ingelheim, ^nd, when emperor, he built, on the soft slopes above the glassy Rhine, a fair palace, where he loved to dwell, often and long. This palace was styled the Pfalz of Kaisar Karl dovi-n to the seventeenth century, an object of reverence to the people on both sides 432 POPULAE HISTORY OF GERMANY. [Chap. I. of the Rhine. In the year 16S9, the bastard descendants of the old Franks came with fire and sword, and what even the rudest times of the Middle Ages had spared as a holy spot, was destroyed under the banners of the bigoted libertine Louis XIV., who wished to be deemed the most cultivated and refined prince of his age. A few frag- ments of pillars still stand lonely, apparently without support ; but the winds and the modern spirit show them more respect than those foreigners. Ingelheim, two miles from Mainz, lies opposite Johannisberg ; and, if Charles was not born here, he at aU events, by certain testimony, spent much of his early life here. But of all cities, Charles dearly loved Aachen, or Aix-la-ChapeUe, and thither he returned after his journeyings through his wide empire. Possibly Aix was his cradle — undoubtedly he chose it for the resting-place of his bones. The year, the month, the day of his birth are as much subjects of dispute as the place ; as far as we can ascertain, Charles the Great was born on the 2d of April, 742. We know on good authority that Charles, in his eleventh year, was sent to wel- come the Pope on the frontier ; that in his twelfth year he was anointed as future king by the same Pope ; that in his nineteenth year he distinguished himself in the field, and that his father early introduced him to the business of government. Charles grew up, like other noble Franks, in the exercise of aU his physical powers, in hunting and the practice of arms, but without higher instruction. To nourish and extend the religious feelings, the formal piety of the boy, the clergy of his father's court had shown a lively interest ; but at the same time, as such churchmen deal witli young princes, they gave unrestrained liberty to the lusts of the flesh, which were strong in him. Hence, in his early manhood and in his later domestic life arose dark clouds, which overshadowed his glory and his kingdom. The influence of his mother. Bertha, was not good when he came to the throne. She was a woman full of ambitious plans, who sacrificed to policy, that is, to her fancy of what was the common weal, everything, the plighted word of her son, the commands of religion, the moral conscience of the Frank nation. The misfortune of Charles was that he loved his mother too dearly, and in his youth followed her advice, at first, indeed, only in affairs of the house or the heart (which, however, were of great political importance) ; and what Bertha span in these matters turned out very m^llucky for her and others. The dissensions between Charles and his brother Carloman had some roots in the domestic relations of Charles to his two first wives. It was at Seltz, in Alsace, where Bertha brought the two brothers to a conference, and, with great trouble, made peace between them. From Seltz she went to Bavaria to her nephew Thassilo, then through Bavaria to Italy. She wished to be a peace-maker everywhere, but without regarding God's commands ; and from her actions arose sorrow and anguish, war and ruin for those whom she labored to benefit. Her journey to Italy had no other object than the divorce of her son Charles from bis lawful wife, and his union with a daughter of the Lombard king Desiderius. Charles had, in early life, been married to a noble Frank lady. His first love was Chap. L] MARRIAGE OF CHARLES AND ADALBERGA. 433 named Himiltrude. A son was born from this marriage, named Pipin, after his grand- father — afterwards, to distinguish them, called the himchbacked. Himiltrude had borne this sou before the religious ceremony of marriage. The new king of the Lombards, Desiderius, sought a family connection with the great royal house of the Franks ; he hoped by this means to live in friendship with the Franks, and to deprive the Papal See of their support. Pope Stephen III. soon heard the plan of the Lombard, and that Bertha had been gained over to it. Bertha conceived the idea of uniting by love the kingdom of the Franks and the Lombards; she fancied, as many queens still do, that intermarriage was a cement which would bind together conflicting interests. The Pope saw clearly that if such an alliance between the Frank and Lombard courts took place, the Papal See would be still more exposed to the attacks of the Lombards, from whom he had suffered enough afready. But Bertha had not merely one marriage in view when she went from Seltz through Bavaria to the Italian court, was magnificently entertained, and learnt to know Adalgis, the son of the king. Charles had a beautiful and talented sister, Gisela, who was more inclined to the peace of the convent, in which she had been brought up, than to the life of royal courts. Under the name of Itisberga, she is still honored as a saint by the Church of Rome. The emperor of Constantinople had first sought her hand for his son Leo IV. ; but the queen-mother was enthusiastic for a double marriage of Charles with a Lombard princess, of Gisela with a Lombard prince. Charles must marry the daughter, Gisela the son of the Lombard king. Adalgis was a noble-spirited youth, an actual hero in the eyes of Franks as well as Lombards. Gisela was the only sister of her beloved brother Charles, who as yet had done nothing to displease her, the only daughter of her mother Bertha ; the others, Rothraud and Adelaide, were dead. Adalgis himself was anxious to marry Gisela. Pope Stephen was almost beside himself at the news that this double marriage w^as planned. In terror at the dangers which this scheme concealed for the Holy See, Pope Stephen, a Roman, a despiser of the Germans, whose hands and swords he dreaded, wrote to the two kings of the Franks a letter which still dishonors his memory — a letter ridiculousy base and vulgar. To prevent the double mamage, the Pope, in this letter, in 770, calls the noble descendants of the old Suevian stock, the Lombards, " the most stmking folk of the world — a horde who ought not to be reckoned among the nations; leprosy was endemic among them ; the race of lepers came from them." Cultivation, politeness, high tone were on this occasion to be found among the Lombards, not with the Pope and his monks. Stephen declared such thoughtless loosing and binding of the marriage tie were sins agamst the Church ; he threatened them with excommunication. But twinges of conscience had less power over Charles than love for his mother and perhaps satiety with the channs of Himiltrude; he divorced her, and Bertha hun-ied on his marriage with the Lombard princess Adal- berga, but not that of Gisela with Adalgis (Adelchis). 55 434 POPULAR HISTORY OF GERMANY. [Chap. L Although Adalgis was brave and strong, a hero who rode into battle with an iron bar, who had slain so many enemies that Frank and Lombard all sung his praises, and although he was already regent with his father, yet Gisela could not be induced to be the future queen of the Lombards, any moro than previously could she be induced to become the Greek empress, and possess the gardens of Constantinople. Her heart was given to Heaven — ^if not to the external practices of religion ; to the quiet work of love which tends the sick and needy, and — to books. There are many letters to her extant from the noble and learned Anglo-Saxon Alcuin, the trusted friend of her brother. Instead of mounting a throne, the maid of fourteen entered the convent of Chelles on the Marne, four miles from Paris, and took the veil. Scarcely had the marriage-knot been tied between Charles and Adalberga than it was again dissolved, without any fault on her side. He left her after the priests, among whom the physicians of the day were to be found, had declared her "dead"; they had represented to him that she would neither conceive nor bear children. Eginhard shows how innocent Adalberga was : " It is not known why he parted from her." Egmhard passed over, from regard to the memory of his friend, whatever Charles himself would have wished obliterated from the recollection of mankind. Charles had thoughtlessly, to please his mother, and hurriedly, without seeing her,, taken Adalberga as his wife. The Lombard princess did not satisfy either his eyo, wide open to female beauty, or his heart, thirsting for female love. Adalberga was a highly educated, noble-hearted lady, but too cold for the fiery Charles ; a lady of worth, and certainly without the defect imagined by the clergy, as she proved in her second marriage. Charles himself, in later years, in the time of his matrimonial felicity with another, studied zealously to show the world publicly that he esteemed the divorced Adalberga. In the misfortunes which befell the kingdom of the Lom- bards, he treated well all who stood in near connection with Adalberga when they fell into his power in the war ; ijnd exhibited remarkable kindness to Arighis, duke of Benevento, whose wife Adalberga had become after her divorce, and to Grunoald her son. Adalberga, repudiated by Charles, returned to her father, and Charles married, soon afterwards in the same year, a daughter of Swabia, Hildegard. The Papal court had set everything in motion to tear asunder the family aUiance between the kingly houses of the Franks and the Lombards. Yet it was not the threat of excommunication by the Papal See on account of the marriage of the Lom- bard princess ; it was not policy telling him he needed the Pope to aid him in his- progress on the path of his father ; it was not the opinion of the clerical physicians which determined Charles to part from his Lombard spouse. What determined him was that he was consumed with an ardent passion for Hildegard, the proud and noble Swabian maiden who rejected his love unless she became his wife by the ordinances of the Chm'ch. Hildegard was, as her name signifies, " a garden of loveliness." Like Charles, she survives in the sagas of the Middle Ages, in Church legends, on the lips of the people^ Chap. I.] CHARLES AND HILDEGARD. 435 in the romantic poetry of subsequent centuries. She was not a Frank, but Swabian by blood and birth, the sister of a hero iu the army of Pipiu and Charles, the sister of Gerold, count of Bussen, to whom, alter the abolition of the ducal dignity in Alemannia, tlie government of this country had been entrusted. Isolated, seen from afar, two thousand five hundred feet above the level of the sea, there rises from the wide plain in Upper Swabia a conical hill, which is still called Bussen. The road winds slowly and gradually upwards, and, to one close to it, Bussen seems only a wooded hill with an unspeakably beautiful view over all Upper Swabia, and over the chain of the Vorarlberg, the Tyrolese and Swiss Alps, away to the Oberland of Berne. This Alpine world, in full grandeur and majesty, almost at the spectator's feet, is spread out before the eyes from Bussen. Close by, the Federsee glitters, now almost drained and cultivated ; at no great distance, the rolling columns of smoke from the steam-vessels show the bed of the great internal sea, which in the Middle Ages was called the Swabian Sea, and also, as it is still called, the Bodensee, Buotan's, that is, Wuotan's or Woden's Sea. (The Lake of Constance.) The moun- tain still exlnbits, together with its pilgrim-church, dull ruins of two castles with front and rear keeps, and the lips of the people still repeat reminiscences and tales connected with Kaisar Karl, the *tair Hildegard, and her gallant brother Gerold. These sagas retain more life, because Hildegard passed also into legend, or the religious saga, that pecuhar kind of mediaeval poetry which treats persons and objects of the Christian faith with the coloring of miracle. Here, on this rounded hill, was the original seat of an ancient Suevian race, of the extensive race of the counts of Folkholz-Baar and Berthold's-Baar, from which, too, the counts of Bohringen and Nellenburg, perhaps too the comits of Zahringen, have proceeded. This was the cradle of HUdegard. Her mother was Emma, great-grand- daughter of Gottfried, duke of the united Swabians and Alemanns. Her and Gerold's father was the count of Bussen, of the oldest and noblest Swabian stock ; noble as was this third wife, virtuous and lovely, although the Church was pleased with the union, yet it was displeasing to Queen Bertha, the mother of Charles. She, the mother whom Charles had hitherto honored like a child, now fell out with her son about the repudiation of the Lombard princess, whose marriage with Charles had been arranged by Bertha. But passion was stronger than the mother, especially as his passion was backed by the Church and the Pope. But not merelv did his mother fall out with the son who had hitherto been docile to her, but was now in the fangs of the Papacy ; these bindings and loosings of tlie matrimonial ties touched the moral susceptibilities of the Germans. While divorces were easy and usual among the Romanic Franks, it was very different among the German Franks. Among the latter, whether heathen or Chris- tian, the view of marriage was one which regarded marriage as holy. Those of the Austrasian or East Franks who clung to the Arian confession, were strict about the dissolution of wedlock according to the Gospel. To them it was a shameful thing that the bishops and the Pope wantonly, and from reasons of expediency, dissolved 436 POPULAR HISTORY OF GERMANY. [Chap. I. marriages for nobles, grandees, and princes, while, at the same time, they declared them indissoluble, and refused to dissolve them in case of ordinary Christians. The heathens of the Franks deemed it monstrous that, in secret, without a decision of the commons, or vote of the representatives, the resolution of the clergy and Church could dissolve a union, to dissolve which seemed in their heathen eyes to be forbidden alike by natural religion and maidy honor. Even in his nearest surroundings, in his own court, Charles had to bear disappro- Ijation. Many a noble heart among the Franks took it ill that Hildegard became his wife at the instant when he had put away Adalberga. Hitherto Adalard, a cousin of Charles, had been especially devoted to him, and brought up with him at the court. This youth of tv^^enty years, whom Charles had made the count of the palace (Pfalz- graf, Count Palatine), could not be induced to pay any honor to the new queen Hildegard. In his view, this new marriage of his king was one forbidden by Christi- anity and the old law of the Franks ; he condemned it, because, in the repudiation of Adalberga, in her innocence, he saw a violation of a man's sacred word, a perjuiy, an outrage to female worth. As he could not hinder what he must, as a moral and religious man, disapprove, he determined at least not to suffer anything further. He left the court and entered the abbey of Corvey."* There he remained and died as abbot, counted by the Church among the saints. In the same year, in the year of the divorce and the third marriage, Carloman, the brother of Charles, died ; he, too, con- demned the wantonness of his brother. If then the Franks, in spite of this shadow, were unanimous in Charles's favor, they must have been attracted by the splendor which shone around him, and by which these shadows were ovei-powered. The appearance of Charles announced an extraordinary man ; nature had done much for him. He had a mighty form — tall and stately, he measured full seven feet — and this mighty frame was so sound in everj'" limb, that, in spite of the enor- mous exertions of his long and disturbed reign, he was never sick till the last four years of his life. His countenance and w^hole appearance bore the stamp of beauty and of the extra-ordinary. His brow was high-arched, and, deeply set beneath it, his eyes gleamed large and fiery ; a bold, aquiline nose of more than middle size ; a broad, deep chest ; on his head beautiful hair streaming thickly down ; his step fimi ; his whole bearing full of dignity and manliness ; in his looks cheerfulness and happiness ; and yet the whole aspect w^as fidl of majesty, whether sitting or standing. Such was the exterior of Charles. He had only one defect ; the sound of his voice was clear, but not loud enough — too thin in proportion to his huge bodily frame. Thus externally fashioned was King Charles in his youth, the first German emperor, the ruler of the Franks in the days when the various Gennan tribes brought by him into a unity, the Germans formed by him by his struggles and battles into a united nation where every member was conscious of mutual connection, became conscious of their national adolescence. Charles, too, was favored with various intellectual advantages. Although he had Chap. L] CHARACTER OF CHARLES. 437 been purposely neglected by the priests of his father as far as concerned the A, B, C of the school, yet the great foculties which he brought into the world with him developed themselves wonderfully, after a short, stormy youth, in the tirst years of his reign, by self-education and self-teaching by eye and ear, through association, eao-erlv sought for, with really learned and educated men. Charles was in the highest decree what we call highly gifted, a man of genius on the throne. Witliout the learned education which the Church had withholden from his youth, he struck the rieht spot by insight, whether in war or peace ; and the creative thoughts bred in his brain, thoughts which transfbnned the German world, were, indeed, not so entu-ely his own ; but he was the man who turned into action what he had been taught and what he had learnt by personal intercourse and written correspondence with men of science. The greatness of his riclily endowed nature is shown, too, in this, that, long after, even on the imperial throne, and with his great gifts, he felt his deficiencies, and remained modest enough to honor whomever he found educated, and to learn from every one, that he might recover the ground he had lost in his education. No Geiman prince down to our days, always excepting Charles Augustus of Weunar, ever honored so highly or placed so highly men of learning. They were his friends in the youth of his kingdom, and Alcuin was as much in his confidence as one intimate friend is in that of another. This tone of friendship between Alcum, the simple Anglo-Saxon, and Charles, the elected emperor, did not change till Charles, urged on and coiTupted by the Papal court and his flatterers, did what Alcuin could not approve, and till the latter, like Adalai'd, went away from the imperial court m order that his presence m the com-t might not give an appearance of approval to actions of Charles which he could not prevent. The rule of Charies in its various parts shows how a prince, highly endowed by natm-e, with a disposition prone to the noble, can be one man in the hands of noble, educated, free-spirited, liberal men, and another in the hands of flatterers and parsons ; and how the same power, energy in will and action, in association with noble, free- souled men, keeps down and for the time overcomes selfishness and ambition ; and how it becomes an evil thing when perverted by tempters in the garb of priests and courtiers, who say, "The prince, the king, the emperor is absolute, unrestramed, responsible to God, otherwise to nobody." In Charies, the faculties wiiich interest our spirits, and the popular qualities which win the heart, united with the simphcity characteristic of all truly great men. In tiie "Iron Charies" there was much human kindness, much romantic feeling, and only when his unswervdng policy, with its far-seeing projects, compelled him to be hard, or when his zeal for the extension of the Christian faith humed him into it, did he show to the worid that he had not overcome all traces of old Germany barbarism. Charies could fight and conquer ; that he showed in the brief campaign in which, deserted by his brother Carioman, he deprived the revolter Wolf of his ducal dignity, and annexed the beautiful districts which are to-day called Gascony and Guyenne, Saintonge, Poitou, the Bourbonnais, and Auvergne, with the east part of Languedoc 438 POPULAR HISTORY OF GERMANY. [Chap. I. about Toulouse and Albi, with their enclaves. Charles had ended, by one blow, the dukedom of Aquitaine, which consisted of these districts. But the duke Wolf (Welf? Lupus), who had staked and lost the recovery of independence on the unequal game of war, fled into Spain, when everything had fallen into the hands of Charles. Desiderius, king of the Lombards, was frantic at the insult offered by Charles to his innocent daughter and himself He thought of nothing but revenge. Every con- sideration of pohcy was flung aside in passionate desire to revenge his much- wronged dauijhter. Althousih the last warlike collisions between Franks and Lombards were still recent, and a warning before his eyes dissuading hostility against the king of the Franks, all was forgotten by Desiderius. With his passion for revenge, his pride and his Lombard self-consciousness swelled up, and he no longer remembered that the Lombards had ceased to be the stout soldiers wlio had marched from the mountains of Austria and Hungary into Italy. In the course of two centuries they had become effeminate under the mild sky and in the abundant luxury of Italy. With Italian education, they had adopted Italian customs. They had brought into Upper Italy sound German bodies and souls, and had strengthened the German element introduced by the Eastgoths. But they had shown themselves less able than the Goths to resist the sky, the soil, the spirit of Italy, the priestly spirit that leads to slavery, the over-refinement w^iich characterizes a civilization about to fall ; the charms and pleasures of Italy had proved too strong for the Lombard " Recken " w^ho, two centuries before, had entered the countiy, simple in life and chaste in conduct. Instead of making Italy German, they allowed the corrupting and weakening mfluence of Italy to sink deeper every decade into the marrow and blood of their German life. They became Romanized ; w^hat was Ger- man in them was Italianized. This transformation was complete in the majority of the Lombards at the time of King Desiderius ; his son Adalgis, with a smaU minority, formed an exception. Althouoh the old Lombardic viijor and strength still survived in its fullness in these valiant few, yet the king and his nobles loved soft couches more than the saddle ; and the rattling of dice and the clink of drinking vessels in the banquet were more often heard than the clash of swords in the fencing-school. In the royal palace and in the houses of the nobles the harp of the minstrel sounded sweeter than of old ; but the songs were no longer the strong and mighty lays from the rich cycle of Eastgothic or Lombardic heroic sagas, such as still echo in the descriptions of Paul, the son of Warnefried, who resolved them into prose in a Latin translation — the lays, now bright, now darksome, of Alboin's youth and chivalry, of Authari's courtship of Theodehnda, of the revenge of Rosamond, of the death of Fertulf. These German lays of the Goths and Lombards had half-died away in the time of Desiderius ; many Lombards had exchanged their own German tongue in their new country for the Romanic tongue of the conquered, and Italian lays and love-songs resounded in the Lombard haUs. Most of the Lombards even bore Italian names, and the king himself was as little a genuine Lombard as his name, Desiderius, was German. €hap. I.] KING DESIDERIUS OF LOMBARDY. 439 It was a noble act for Desiderius to receive hospitably at his court the widow of the Frank king Carloman, the sister-in-law of the powerful Charles, when she, with her childi'en and few followers, took refuge with him ; but it was unwise for him, out of revenge for the insult offered by Charles to his daughter, to acknowledge the children of Carloman as kings of the P^ranks — to come forward as their patron, as the champion of their claims, as he called them, to the " half of the Frank kingdom possessed by their father, and stolen from them by Charles." Nor did Desiderius stop ^t words. He made liis court the resort of discontented Frank nobles, not only of those who adhered to the widow and her sons from loyalty to the dead prince, but of xiU the disaffected; and he believed their assurance respecting the amount of aid he might expect from the discontented party in his war against Charles. He stirred up hostility in Charles's kingdom by means of the fugitives and other malcontents at his court. At the same tune he demanded, in the year 772, that Pope Hadrian I., the successor of Stephen, anoint as kings of France, his proteges the sons of Carloman. He used every effort to draw the Pope away from Charles to his own side. But to all his wishes and exertions Hadrian remained " hard as adamant." He gained to his interests the Pope's chamberlain, Paul. The latter promised to " place the Pope in the king's hand even if he had to tie a rope around his feet." Hadrian learnt what Paul had said, seized him in Rimini, and proceeded to put down by open force the Lombard party in Rome. Desiderius now sought to terrify the Pope into comphance. He invaded with a Lombard army the coast district belonging to the Pope during the deep peace of the harvest time, when men, women, and childi'en were busy with the sickle in the field. He knew that Charles, with all the levies of his kingdom, had taken the field in 772, and was now deeply involved in the Saxon war. The Frank Otker, the loyal liegeman of the dead king Carloman, of his Midow, and of his sons, was, with Adalgis, the leading spirit at the court of Desiderius and in the army. The Lombard host surprised the unsuspecting territories of the Pope, robbed, burnt, and murdered in Urbhio, Sinigaglia, Montefeltro, Agubbio, Otricoti, and Blerana, and took possession of the greatest part of the Papal dominions. The Pope in vain demanded from Desiderius the restoration of these cities ; Desiderius repeated his demand for the anointing of his proteges, otherwise he would besiege Rome. On the Pope's refusal, he marched with a powerful army against Rome. Pope Hadrian shut himself up behind the gates of Rome, and sent couriers to King Charles begging help in his need. The Lombards had, at Otker's advice, seized aU the passes of Italy to prevent such a message. But Peter, one of the envoys of the Pope, found a way by sea from Italy to Marseilles, and then, by land, came without accident to Thionville (Diedenhofen), a place on the Moselle wliere Charles lay. The Pope appHed to the Frank king as the " bound protector of the city of Rome, the Roman territory, and the Roman Church." The title " Patrician of Rome " had been given by Pope Stephen to Pipin the father and to Charles the son by a sound calculation of Papal policy that the titie would one day be of practical value. At the court of the Franks this titie and the distinctions accompanying it, had been 440 POPULAR HISTORY OF GERMANY. [Chap. I. received just as a modern prince receives the insignia of a knightly order from another ; and King Pipin, whose royal powder was new, had been gratified by these distinctions, the more that their external splendor glittered in the eyes of the Franks, and that the gold -embroidered purple robe and the diadem exalted him in their opinion ; as did the recollection that Odoacer, Tlieodorich and Clovis had borne the robe and diadem of a patrician of Rome, that is, of a patron or protector. King Charles had long been wishing to intervene in the affairs of Italy. Charles had now matured his scheme to make an entirely new aiTangement in western Christendom. In this plan of his, the Lombard kingdom in Italy did not fit y still less the hostile position assumed by the Lombard king. While from political reasons Charles had decided that an independent Lombard kingdom could not be united with his idea of the grandeur of a Christian German empire, yet he hesitated — a sisrn of the nobler manhood in him — to hurl from his throne the fiither of the innocent dauohter he had thrust from his bed. Charles at first demanded from Desiderius merely the withdrawal of his forces from the Papal territory, in return for a ransom of 14,000 gold solicU which the Pope would pay to the king. Desiderius rejected the proposal ; the entanglement of Charles in the Saxon war made him too confident. The favorable terms offered were proofs to him that Charles was in distress : he was puffed up by the reports which he received through the Frank fugitives from the kingdom, of an immediate rising en masse of the malcontents there, of the repugnance of many, nobles and commons, towards so laborious a campaign against their own kindred in a foreign land, a repugnance always existing ; he was pufied up by the military arrangements made, at Other's suggestion, in the passes of the Alps to render impossible the entrance of a Frank army into Italy. But all his reckonings were false. While Desiderius, with his son Adalgis and the Frank Otker, were knocking at the gates of Rome, Charles had resolved on a war against the Lombards. Indeed the news from Italy was so inviting, the moment seemed so propitious, that he did not follow up his great success in the country of the Saxons, but discon- tinued the war. The last messenger of the Pope found at Thionville not only Charles but the spiritual and temporal nobles, and the national representatives sum- moned by Charles, all prepared to march for Italy. Even those who previously opposed an expedition across the Alps into Italy on account of its difh'culty, had in the Saxon war got enough to make the south, by comparison, a smiling landscape. Now they were all ready to march to Italy ; in Italy there was other booty and other pleasures to be enjoyed than in Saxony in the primeval forests and morasses of the German North. If Charles marched as an ally of the Pope, as the protector of the city of Rome, the prize of the campaign would be secure, and this prize could be no other than the Iron Crown of Lombardy, and a lucrative position for many illustrious Franks. Charles marched rapidly to the south of his kingdom. At Geneva, in sight of the Alps of Savoy, he held a new council of war, in September, 773. By its advice, he Chap. I.] CHARLES INVADES ITALY. 441 divided his aiiiiy into two ; with one he himself crossed by Mount Cenis, with the other his uncle Benihard penetrated through the passes of Mont Jou. This mountain obtained, from the name of the leader Bernhard, the name of Benihardsberg among the Germans. It is the f;inio:is ]\Tount St. Bernard. The Carthaginian Hannibal and the Roman Caesar had led armies over this mountain ; it had become the Roman military road, and in old times a temple of Jupiter stood where there stands to-day, as it has stood for centuries, the convent of the hospitable monks who have refreshed many a wanderer, and rescued many a human life from death in the snowfields. Charles chose the shortest way, through fog, cloud, and snow, on the narrow path near precipices over summits clad with eternal snow and ice. Leaving the mountains on the Italian side of the passes, the detachments of Charles and his uncle miited again in the wide plain in Lombard territory. 50 442 POPULAR HISTORY OF GERMANY- [Chap. I. Otker and Adalgis, with Desiderius, had not reckoned on the presence of Charles ami his army so soon ; they beUeved him still detained on the Weser in the German north. While Pope Hadrian was concealing all the treasures of the Church in Samt Peter's and in Sant' Angelo, the tomb of Hadrian, while he was collecting all who were true to him in Rome, and throwing up fortifications and defences, while the Lombards without the gates were threatenhig, Charles had crossed the Alps into what is now Lombardy. But Desiderius and Otker had expected him neither so soon nor by this road, although Otker had not omitted carefully to occupy the passes on this point too. Charles, however, found any considerable resistance only on one point, on the slope of the mountain where a knight with a German name, Eberhard, barred the pass. Charles defeated him and destroyed the fortifications in the pass. With this excep- tion, "no spear was raised against him, no shield thrust back, no soldier hurt by hostile weapon," as had been promised by the Pope and the disaffected Romanic and German parties in the Lombard kingdom. Tile arrangements which the experienced Otker had made respecting the Alpine passes were frustrated by Itahan treason, by the measures of the foes of the house of Desiderius, the adherents and members of the previous royal family. The affairs of the Lombard kingdom cannot have been known to the Frank Otker, who had been such a short time in the kingdom; the youthful spirit of Adalgis underestimated the opponents of his house among the laity, and utterly and entirely disregarded the power of clerical influence. Desiderius himself, frivolous and luxu- rious, did not know the ground which supported his throne. At the time when, in proud self-confidence, nay, with contempt, he rejected the offers of Charles, the ground was thoroughly undermined by those who knew how to plot and mine unseen and unheard. The house of the dethroned King Rachis, the families of all the dukes who had once been competitors with Desiderius for the Iron Crown, were still inimical to the new king. The foes of pure German blood united against Desiderius with his enemies of Romanic blood, with his semi-Romanic opponents, with the priests who, obedient to the Papal See, responded to the Pope's wishes. All these various enemies, now united against him, had been entirely overlooked in the calculations of Desiderius. They, however, had sent skilled guides to Charles, who had led the two detachments of his army from Geneva by the safest roads through the moun- tains. The chief of these Alpine guides was a clergyman from Ravenna. Under their guidance the two detachments had avoided the passes occupied by the Lom- bards. Provisions for the Frank army were sent over the mountains from the Italian monastery of Novalese, ample supplies were collected in the convent itself, and on his arrival Charles found superabundance for himself and his army. The chronicle of Novalese says : <•' God showed to King Charles the conquest of Italy in sight "; in ordinary language, one would say, Treachery on the part of the inhabitants of his kingdom delivered the king of the Lombards and his land into the hands of the Franks. Novalese was a convent in the Lombard kingdom. Chai'. I.] CHAKLES'S SUCCESS IN ITALY. 443 Thus guided over the mountains by Italian traitors, and escaped from all danger, Charles and his united forces suddenly appeared in the plain, to the rear of tlie Lombards who held the Alpine passes. We may well believe that even among these troops who guarded the passes, there were traitors; but even if they had been all loyal, what could be done against a superior force of Franks by troops thus taken in the rear ? On the news that Charles was approaching Italy, Desiderius had marclied homeward with all speed, and his son Adalgis, hastening Ijefore him, hoped to lay low with his iron bar many of the Franks as they came through the j)asses ; but the garrisons of the passes fled when they saw the Franks pouring over the plain. To avoid being cut off, they fled from the foot of the Alps to the fortress of Pavia and other cities. When Charles from his Saxon camp had warned Desiderius against his oppres- sion of the Pope, the Lombard king, puffed up with pride, let faU at a banquet the words: "I do not fear the barking of the German dogs; they cannot get out of their kennels." In these few words is depicted the degraded nature of the Lombard king, who despised the stock he came from, who scorned what alone gave him, as compared with the Franks, a right to rule in Italy, the German element, who could no longer value German arms or German hearts. This one saying of itself shows the historical necessity that such kings must cease to rule in Upper Italy, and that if Upper Italy was not to become like Lower Italy, these districts must be subject to a new manage- ment, and the Lombard element submit to a new German crossing. Adalgis made the attempt to offer battle to the Franks in the open field. Desi- derius stiU hoped for victory. Then was seen the fruit of what had been sown and tilled by the disaffected nobles and clergy ; the forces of Adalgis were diminished by the desertion of the nobles who were in the conspiracy. One portion of them fled with their followers at the first attack of the Franks ; another portion went straight over to the Franks. The heroic spirit of Adalgis could no longer delay the dissolution of the army. He fled with the widowed Gilberga and her sons. A camp fuU of booty fell to the Franks. Adakis with the Frank exiles threw himself into Verona. Desi- dcrius concealed himself in the strong fortress of Pavia. The fortification and defence of Pavia were conducted by Otker, and the place defied the Frank attack. But the priests and nobles hostile to Desiderius everywhere worked into the hands of the Frank detachments who blockaded the separate for- tresses in the interior of the kingdom. At the same time the troops of the Pope entered Lombardy from the south. Spoleto and Ravenna revolted from Desiderius and surrendered to the Pope. They swore allegiance to the Papal See, and received Hildebrand as their duke. Femio, Osimo, Ancona, Foligni yielded to the Franks ; soon after Foligni, in Api^, 774, the strong and great city of Verona surrendered. Adalgis succeeded in escaping to Pavia ; but Gilberga and her children were taken prisoners. After the fall of this great stronghold of the Lombards, only Pavia held out alone. While the F,rank and Papal troops were reducing these Lombard cities. i44 POPULAR HISTORY OF GERMANY. [Chap I. King Charles liimself had arrived in Rome at the Easter of 774. The honors were great with which the Protector of Rome was welcomed by Pope and city. Even the beloved Hildegard was with him, as were their two children Charles and Rodtraut ; he had summoned them to Rome, to keep with him the feast of Easter in the metropolis of the world. For the first time Charles saw the " eternal city." What an impression would he receive from its noble edifices, and from the splendor of the Romish ceremonies ! The Pope had prejjared for him a solemn entrance. Thirty miles from Rome all the high dignitaries with the Banner met him. In front of the city, youths and maidens with songs of thanksgiving, aU the schools with palms and olive branches i:i their hands, received him ; even the Holy Cross was borne to greet the Protector of the city. At sight thereof the king and his attendants sprang from their horses, and walked on foot to St. Peter's church. At that period five-and-thirty steps of marble led to the building. On the highest stood the Pope with all his cardinals and prelates in their highest ecclesiastical magnificence, and with the most illustrious citizens of Rome. The music sounded, the songs arose. The Frank Charles, bred in the camp, and yet deeply religious after the fashion of the time, did not walk up to the sanctuary; he chmbed on his knees the five-and-thirty stairs, and kissed each step. Then aU acknowledged that here was the champion of the faith, the hero destined to bear the sword for the protection of Christendom in the w^est against the Saracens, for the conversion of the heathen in the northeast, the Saxons and the Slaves. In the porch, King and Pope embraced. King Charles entered the church on the Pope's i-ight hand. From the lips of aU the people, who, according to Itahan Chap. l.J CHARLES IN ROME. 445 accounts, saw in Charles their dehverer, there swelled forth the hymn, " Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord ! " While the hymn was singing, the King and Pope advanced to the; tomb of tlie Apostle, and knelt together in prayer. After mass, Charles asked permission to enter the city, to perform his devotions in otlier churches too. After a solemn mutual oath of inviolable friendship between King and Pope, Charles entered the city, and visited other churches, not merely to pray, but to gain instruction, especially about architecture. Charles, like all great men, had artistic feeling, and comprehended the importance of art for the moral training of the people. He wished, therefore, to see with his own eyes the ecclesiastical edifices. Hadrian kep't the Frank king and his Franks occupied during the days of the faster festival, between the solemnities of devotion and the joyous festivity of the banquet. On the fourth day, he asked Charles for a confirmation of the lettei' of