A History of the Germanic Empire

S. A. Dunham

• Publisher: Ozymandias Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781531280239
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

With Germany prior to the dissolution of the Roman power, the present compendium has no concern: the history of that period is, or ought to be, familiar to every reader. Our object is to contemplate that celebrated country as an Empire; but as its establishment must be traced to an era considerably anterior, a few pages by way of introduction may properly open the main subject...

CHAPTER I. THE CARLOVINGIAN DYNASTY.

752—910.

CHARLEMAGNE RESTORES THE EMPIRE OF THE WEST.—HIS REIGN AND HIS IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS.—CONVULSIONS OF THE EMPIRE.—CIVIL WARS.—SEPARATION OF THE FRANK AND GERMANIC CROWNS.—GOVERNMENT, LAWS, SOCIETY, AND MANNERS OF THE GERMANS DURING THE DOMINATION OF THIS HOUSE.—LAWS THROWING LIGHT ON THAT SOCIETY.—CODES OF THE FRANKS.—BURGUNDIANS. —SWABIANS.—BAVARIANS.—ANGLES.—SAXONS.—FRISIANS.

The conduct of Pepin was not unworthy of the confidence which had been reposed in him. Like his immediate predecessor, he triumphed over the hostile Frisians and Saxons, and he quelled the insurrections of the Germanic dukes. To the pope he proved that he could be grateful for his elevation to a throne. Being honoured by a personal visit from Stephen III., and informed of the extremity to which the Roman possessions were reduced, he first remonstrated with Astolfus of Lombardy; and when that prince still marched on Rome, he hastened into Italy, and forced him to restore the exarchate of Ravenna, not indeed to the Greek emperor, but to the pope. In his testament, which he took care to see confirmed in a public diet, the year before his death, he left his two sons, Charles and Carloman, joint heirs of his states. To the one he left the West, from Frisia to the Pyrenees; to the other, the Germanic provinces, part of Austrasia, Alsace, Switzerland, Burgundy, and Provence. To us, whom history has presented with a wide field of experience, it often seems surprising that such impolitic measures could be adopted by men distinguished for considerable powers of judgment,—for such, assuredly, were Charles Martel and Pepin. Its ruinous effects were before the eyes of both; yet neither they nor any other sovereign of these ages ever thought of deviating from it. It is indeed probable, that to one of the sons,—generally the eldest,—a superiority was awarded over the others; but it was merely feudal,—consequently nominal. The most obvious cause of this policy must be traced to that natural affection, and to those natural feelings of justice, which lay in the paternal breast; yet a more enlightened affection would have shrunk from placing sons in a position where they must inevitably become hostile to one another,—where troubles must, of necessity, agitate both them and their people. But the equality of rights among the children of the same family, the total absence of primogenital advantages, distinguished all the Teutonic, all the Sclavonic nations; and custom was too powerful to be eradicated by policy, until it was found, by that most effectual, though most melancholy of teachers, experience, that where primogeniture is not adopted, society will be disorganised. In the present instance, indeed, no serious mischief followed the partition. A civil war was preparing by both brothers, when Carloman died, and though he left children, their claims were disregarded by Charles, who seized the whole inheritance.

In estimating the reign and character of Charlemagne, let us not lose sight of the peculiar advantages which at- to tended his accession. 1. He was the undisputed master of France, for the Arabs had, in the late reign, been driven from Septimania. In Germany he had ample possessions, and if he could place little dependence on the attachment of the Bavarians, the Franconians were bound to his government, and the Swabians were not ill affected towards him. His empire, therefore, extended from the Scheldt to the Pyrenees, and from Bohemia to the British Channel. 2. The forces, to the direction of which he also succeeded, had been rendered warlike and confident by the victories of his father and grandfather. 3. He had nothing to fear from the Arabs, whom his great predecessor had taught for ever to respect the territory of the Franks; nor from the Lombards, who could not for a moment contend with him; nor from the Greek empire, which was fast sinking into imbecility. 4. The north had not yet equipped the formidable maritime expeditions which, in another century, were to shake Europe to its foundations. 5. The introduction of Christianity, during the eighth century, into Germany, in some degree, even among the Saxons and the Frisians, opened the way for greater triumphs; since the new converts were taught to pray for the success of the Christian king,—of one who would prostrate the idols of the Pagans, burn the temples so long polluted by bloody rites, and infuse a new spirit, the spirit of harmony, of peace, and happiness, into scenes which had long been disfigured by the tempest of passion and of violence. These were great advantages, the coincidence and concurrence of which nothing short of Omniscience could have foreseen, perhaps which nothing short of Omnipotence could have produced. Yet he had difficulties to remove which would have cooled the ardour of any other prince. The Frisians and Saxons were, in the proportion of nine to ten, pagans, actuated by a fierce hatred of Christianity, and by a quenchless thirst for blood and plunder. These were men to whom war was agreeable as a passtime, and whose predatory incursions had for ages troubled the surrounding tribes. We are astonished to see the territorial progress of the Saxons. At the dissolution of the Western empire, they occupied, as we have before shown, a bounded region near the mouth of the Elbe. Now they bordered on Franconia to the south, westward with the Frisians, and eastward with the Sclavonic tribes, which lay between the Elbe and the Oder. This aggrandisement was the effect, not so much of increase in population,—for barbarous nations do not multiply,—as of conquest. They forced other tribes to amalgamate with them, and their augmented number of warriors enabled them to meditate even greater enterprises than they had yet effected. Again, the Bavarians bore their dependence on the Franks with exceeding impatience; they waited only for a rising in northern Germany, to throw their own swords into the scale of war. Should they and the Saxons combine, it would require all Charlemagne’s power to break their force. From the very commencement of his reign he seems to have meditated the subjugation of both. He began with the Saxons, the most formidable and savage of his enemies; and though his operations were often suspended by his campaigns in Spain, Aquitaine, and Italy, he always returned with augmented vigour to the charge. In 772 war was formally declared against them, in the diet of Worms. The immediate cause was, the massacre of some missionaries whom the monarch had sent to reclaim the people from idolatry, but their frequent irruptions in Franconia had no less effect on the resolution. In a rapid campaign, he prostrated these ferocious people; for what could undisciplined, however brave levies effect, in opposition to a veteran army, led by one of the ablest generals that Europe has ever produced? In this campaign he took the strong fortress of Eresberg (now Statbergen, in the bishopric of Paderborn), containing the temple and idol of Irminsul, (statue of Irmin), the object of their peculiar veneration. This Irmin was the celebrated Arminius (Armin), the Cheruscan (a branch of the Saxons) chief, who, eight centuries before, had cut off the Roman army, with its leader Quintilius Varus. That such a hero should long be venerated as the saviour of his country; that in the progress of centuries he should attain the honour of deification, is exceedingly probable. All the pagan demigods have, at some period, been men, whose fame, magnified through the mist of succeeding ages, has been elevated from human to divine. Such was Hercules, such Odin, such Armin. After this triumph, Charlemagne halted on the banks of the Weser, arid forced the deputies of the Saxon states—the chiefs of the confederation,—to give hostages for their future obedience. In a short time, however, so far from observing the treaty, they poured their wild hordes into Franconia, burnt every church and monastery that fell in their way, and put every creature to the sword. Another campaign reduced the four great tribes, or rather confederation of tribes, of” which they were composed,—the Westphalians, who lay west of the Weser; the Eastphalians, who lay between that river and the Ems; the Angravarians, who bordered the Westphalians; and the Nordalbingians, who dwelt north of the Elbe, the cradle of the Saxon race. As before, however, no sooner was he engaged in a distant war, than they renewed their depredations; and, on his return, were forced to bend before his commanding genius. He soon discovered that these savage people could never be civilised, never be made to forsake their warlike habits, unless they were effectually reclaimed from idolatry. With this view, he dispersed the numerous hostages he received in the cloisters of monasteries, and sent missionaries to labour in the wide field. In 776 Witikind, the most famous chief of the Saxon chiefs, instigated the Westphalians to revolt; and committed ravages which long rendered his name memorable; but the monarch’s approach compelled him to seek shelter with the Danish king. Charles had reason enough to be dissatisfied with his two great feudatories, the dukes of Swabia and Bavaria, who during his absence raised not a lance in defence of the invaded provinces. When, in 778, Witikind returned, duke Tassilo of Bavaria remained inactive: (the troops of Swabia appear to have been absent on the Spanish expedition). In this war Witikind had at first the advantage; but, as in all other cases, it fled on the approach of the king. That Charles should be exasperated at these manifold perfidies, and still more at the wanton outrages which accompanied them,—for the Saxon chief was little short of a demon,—was natural; but the coolness with which he massacred, at Verden, 4500 Saxon prisoners, must cover his name with everlasting infamy. It was as impolitic as it was demoniacal, for it roused the whole nation to arms. But though the king had thus created a new and more formidable obstacle, with him victory and battle were words of the same import. This time he humbled the country so completely, that both Witikind and his brother submitted, and received baptism. The alternative of death or Christianity was held out to thousands of the people, who naturally preferred the latter. He now incorporated the region with his empire, and in his subsequent wars drew off some ferocious natives of this extensive province to distant points of his empire. But that conquest cannot be called complete before 803. He was even compelled to adopt a cruel but successful policy,—that of transplanting 10,000 at a time from the bosom of their forests to colonise various parts of his dominions in France and Italy: it broke the force of their confederation; and, joined to the incorporation of the more turbulent spirits with his armies in Italy or Aquitaine, or on other distant points of his empire, rendered them sufficiently pliant during the remainder of his reign; but the most effectual cause of their submission, was doubtless, their adoption of Christianity. So much had they been humbled by their successive disasters, that they consented to pay tithes to the priesthood located among them, utterly to destroy their temples, and to baptise every child that should be born; nay, in the diet of Wurtzburg, the more aged agreed to receive the regenerating rite. Yet, so stout had been their resistance, that the monarch granted them more favourable terms than they could have expected: he extended to them all the privileges of his own Franks, he exempted them from every species of tribute, other than that of tithes; he admitted their chiefs to the diets of the empire, and he exacted nothing from them beyond the usual oaths of fidelity, and the right of nominating their judges and governors, though both were to be chosen from the Saxons themselves. Thus, after numerous campaigns, and the loss of so many brave defenders, after seeing its myriads drawn away to distant settlements, and their place filled by the Obotrites, or Sclavonic tribe, this proud nation received the yoke. Some thousands, however, preferring expatriation to submission, repaired to the Danes, whom they joined in the piratical expeditions, which in the reign of Charlemagne’s successor began to desolate the maritime provinces of Gaul. Of Witikind we hear no more; he appears to have retired to his ample domains, and to have passed the remainder of his days in tranquillity. He left an illustrious posterity; his immediate descendant, count Walbert, was the root of the ancient counts of Oldenburg, and consequently of the now reigning houses of Denmark and Russia. Long before the termination of this war, duke Tassilo was called to account; perceiving the storm that was ready to burst upon him, he invoked the mediation of the pope, but his object being evidently to gain time, until he could bring the Avars of Bohemia, and even a body of Pannonians into the heart of Germany, negotiations were broken off, Bavaria was invaded, and the duke forced to appear at the diet of Ingelheim; there he was deliberately tried by his peers, was found guilty of violating the fidelity which as a vassal he had sworn to his feudal superior, and was condemned to death. But his relationship with the royal family (he had married one daughter of the Lombard king and Charlemagne another) mitigated his fate, and both he and his consort were allowed to pass their days in religious seclusion. In 794 he solemnly renounced all claim to the sovereignty of Bavaria, which was now divided into feudal governments, according to the system established in every other part of the empire. With Tassilo ended the princely house of the Agiolfingians, who had governed Bavaria during two centuries. But if the duke was thus removed, the ferocious barbarians whom he had invoked soon brought desolation into Bavaria. By the Saxons, the Frisians, and the Bavarians, however, these invaders were signally defeated on the banks of the Danube, and were precipitately driven back into Hungary. In this campaign, the boundary of the empire was carried from the Ens to the Raab, while, north of the Danube, his generals carried it from the Elbe to the Oder. Of these conquests, magnificent as they were, we have few details in the ancient chroniclers. To defend them, he colonised the country between the Drave, the Danube, and the Raab, not only with Germans but with such Avars as embraced Christianity: and he placed this important work under the superintendance of a margrave. For the sake of more easy communication with this distant frontier, he formed the gigantic design of joining, by means of a canal, the Rhine with the Danube; but though considerable progress was made in the work, the mechanical knowledge of the age was unequal to it, and it was reluctantly abandoned. The truth is, Charles was much superior to that age; his comprehensive views often urged him to the adoption of measures for which his contemporaries were wholly unprepared, and in the execution of which he could find no co-operators: that his German successes were not his only ones, has been related in several of the historical works embraced in this collection, the CABINET CYCLOPEDIA. We shall here content ourselves with observing, that he subdued Catalonia, and all Italy as far as the confines of Beneventum; he was consequently lord of as many regions in Europe as Rome had ever possessed. From the Ebro to the mouth of the Elbe, from the British Channel to the Oder and the Raab—such was the empire of this great prince. Much of this was his own work. When he ascended the throne, Franconia and Swabia were the only Germanic provinces which owned his sway: it is strange that he should make no effort to subjugate Bohemia, which was inhabited by Sclavonic pagans, men ever ready to join the Huns in any depredations. Two motives by which he was almost equally actuated, ambition, and the propagation of the Christian faith, would, we might imagine, suffice to move him; yet he made no serious attempt to subjugate that wild country. His generals and sons, indeed, appear to have overrun it in their passage to the Oder, and it may be, that the natives, by acting as his allies, averted his hostilities for the time; but they never recognised him as their sovereign, perhaps they openly defied his power; nor is it unlikely, that with the aids they were able to receive from the neighbouring provinces of Poland, Brandenburg and Hungary, and with the rugged nature of the country, they might feel confident in their powers of resistance. However this be, enough of military glory remains for Charlemagne, more perhaps than had ever fallen to the lot of any conqueror since the days of Julius Caesar. Well did he deserve the imperial crown, which, in the year 800, pope Leo III. placed on his brows in the capital of the Christian world. But military glory is not his only, nor his chief claim to the admiration of posterity: never did conqueror labour like him to introduce civilisation among the conquered. This he effected, not only by sending missionaries among them, by compelling them to receive religious instruction, but by the establishment of monasteries, where youth were taught all the knowledge of the age; by promulgating laws for their observance; by furnishing them with a new system of administration. Of his activity in this respect, as regarded not only the Saxons and the Bavarians, but the Frisians, the Lombards, and the Franks, we have evidence enough in the various Germanic codes, and the number of diets convoked by him; he was, beyond all doubt, the greatest legislator of the middle ages. Of his zeal for the diffusion of religion;, for the maintenance of discipline, for the restoration of learning; of the allurements which he held out to all who to-operated with him in his extensive reforms, this is not the place to speak; suffice it to know, that both to the religious and the intellectual character of his age;, he gave no less an impulse than to the political and civil,—an impulse which long survived him, which even descended to modern times. In every respect his reign was glorious. In Spain he aimed the first effectual blow at the Mohammedan power, which he precipitated beyond the Ebro. In Lombardy he broke the iron yoke of the most tyrannical people that Italy had yet seen. In Germany he did much more: he humbled the Frisians: the lawless barbarians of Saxony, who for ages had been the curse of their neighbours, he not merely subjugated, but conducted into the career of civilisation and of happiness: the Slavonians he taught to respect the public tranquillity: the Avars and Pannonians he confined within barriers, which he defended by an armed force. In fact, this monarch was the father of European civilisation; he not only called it into existence, but protected it by barriers which barbarism afterwards in vain assailed. As the founder of the Germanic empire, he has peculiar claims on the gratitude of all posterity; no genius less commanding than his could have formed the most savage, and the most lawless of men, into a body politic; could have transformed wild beasts into rational and humane beings. That empire has been the bulwark of European knowledge, morals, and freedom. How often it has rolled back the tide of Asiatic invasion,—how often it has withstood the spiritual despotism of the popes, need not be mentioned here. Much of the glory must be attributed to this wonderful man, who, to the Christian philosopher, seems to have been raised by Heaven itself for the accomplishment of its own high purpose. He had, indeed, his defects; he was inordinately ambitious; in the promotion of his schemes he subjected his people to incredible sacrifices; in private life he was incontinent, sometimes cruel; and he often pursued the gratification of his own will at the expense of justice; but it may be replied, a strong hand, even a rod of iron was necessary to rule men, grown licentious by immemorial impunity. To the poor he was always clement, and in the frequency with which he convoked, and the solicitude with which he consulted his diets, he evinced his natural love of justice, and surrounded himself with a host of faithful and affectionate advisers. No wonder that his fame should be so widely diffused, even in his own days. “His name was respected with equal reverence by the Arab of the desert, and by the pirate of the deep. The kings of his time, from the caliphs of Bagdat to the Anglo-Saxon reguli, from the sovereigns of Cordova to those of Scandinavia, were eager to obtain his notice, to be honoured by his friendship or alliance.” To some of his institutions, to such especially as have survived to more recent times, we shall advert before the conclusion of this chapter; while his zeal for learning and religion will often be mentioned in this compendium. His glory cannot suffer from the attacks of malignity; with all due allowances for the favourable circumstances in which he was placed, and for the defects with which he was sullied, he effected more good, and is more entitled to our admiration, than any other monarch in the whole range of history. Alfred the Great, who has been opposed to him, will not for a moment bear comparison with him.

It is unfortunate for mankind that the edifice which Charlemagne erected with so much labour, could not be established by his successors; they were all unworthy of the station to which they were called; some of them did little honour to human nature. In this respect, no prince was ever so unfortunate. For many of the disasters which followed he himself is to he blamed. If ever man could be expected to rise above the evil customs of an age, to appreciate the true interests of nations, it was Charlemagne; yet some years before his death he committed the unpardonable, however common, error of dividing his dominions among his sons. To Charles, the eldest, he gave northern France, the Low Countries, and most of Germany; to Pepin, Italy and Bavaria; to Ludovic, Burgundy, Provence, Aquitaine, and the Spanish March. The two eldest, indeed, preceded him to the tomb, so that Ludovic inherited the whole empire. But the evil example was both perpetuated and sanctioned by this policy; and being imitated by others, it led to all the misfortunes of the following reigns. Louis-le-Debonnaire (814—840) lived to see its ill effects: his very children, being dissatisfied with the portions he assigned them, and rendered proud by the kingdoms bestowed on them during his life, rebelled, and dethroned him; and though he was afterwards restored, his reign was inglorious, and his life was one of bitterness. One part of his dominion was laid waste by the Normans, another by the Danes; while his subjects derided his impotence. Who would have believed that such a sovereign could be son of Charlemagne? We will not enter into the recital of troubles which perpetually agitated this and the following reigns, but we must notice such peculiarities as distinguish them from the rest, or throw light on society. In the diet of Aix-la-Chapelle (held 817), there was a classification of royal abbies, viz. abbies of royal foundation, according to the assistance they were to furnish to the state. The first, or richest class, was rated at a certain number of warriors, and at a certain sum of money, whenever the emperor should go to war; the second was to furnish money only; the third neither money nor troops, but prayers. The empress Judith, being accused of adultery with duke Bernard of Septimania, was permitted to clear herself by the ordeal of red hot ploughshares. In this reign we perceive the first traces of the heritability of fiefs: several domains of the crown were alienated in favour of certain courtiers, and were transmissible to heirs, while hitherto, in Germany, they had been conferred for life only. In France, this heritability, as we have before observed, prevailed, but it had been suspended by Charlemagne. Lother I. (840—855), succeeded to the imperial title, yet not to Germany, which fell by partition to his brother Ludovic; nor to France, which was the portion of another brother, Charles the Bald. Lother’s own portion was Lorraine, Burgundy, Switzerland, and Italy; bat, with the imperial name, he had some superiority over the others, and he laboured to make it more than nominal. They resisted, and the sword of civil strife was again drawn. In the end he received some augmentation; but king Louis retained the whole ‘of Germany, with the provinces on the left bank of the Rhine. In 850, Ludovic vested the ducal title, which had been suppressed by Charlemagne, in the house of Thuringia. Though Lother’s domains occupied merely a third of the empire before his death, he divided that third between his two sons: to Ludovic II. he left the imperial title, with Italy; to Lothaire, his second son, the country situated between the Scheldt and the Saone, the Meuse and the Rhine, which was thence called Lotharii Regnum, and easily corruptible into Lotharingia and Lorraine. Ludovic II. (855—875) being thus confined to Italy, his reign offers few events connected with Germany. The duchy of Saxony was restored; Alsace was ceded by king Lother to Ludovic of Germany; and, on Lothaire’s death, the remaining part of the kingdom, which belonged of right to the emperor, was seized by Charles the Bald, king of France; but it was subsequent...

Table of contents

• BOOK I.THE CROWN HEREDITARY.
• INTRODUCTION: THE MEROVINGIAN PERIOD.
• CHAPTER I. THE CARLOVINGIAN DYNASTY.
• CHAP. II. HOUSES OF SAXONY AND FRANCONIA.
• CHAP. III. HOUSE OF SWABIA OR HOHENSTAUFFEN, ETC.
• CHAP. IV. THE HOUSES OF HAPSBURG, LUXEMBURG, AND BAVARIA.
• SECTION II.
• BOOK II. RELIGIOUS AND INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF THE GERMANIC CHURCH DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.
• CHAPTER I. UNDER THE CARLOVINGIAN DYNASTY.
• CHAP. II. UNDER THE HOUSES OF SAXONY, FRANCONIA, AND HOHENSTAUFFEN.
• CHAP. III. STATE OF THE CHURCH FROM 1271 TO 1437.
• BOOK III. MODERN HISTORY, POLITICAL, CIVIL, AND RELIGIOUS, OF THE GERMANIC EMPIRE.
• CHAPTER I. HOUSE OF AUSTRIA TO THE REIGN OF CHARLES V.
• BOOK III.-continued. MODERN HISTORY, POLITICAL, CIVIL, AND RELIGIOUS, OF THE GERMANIC EMPIRE.
• CHAPTER II. CHARLES V. OR THE REFORMATION
• CHAPTER. III.
• APPENDIX (A). CORONATION OF AN EMPEROR.
• APPENDIX (B). TEUTONIC LEGAL ANTIQUITIES.