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The Historians' History of the World 07 [The History of the Later Roman Empire]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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The whole power of the three kingdoms was thus suddenly thrown into the hands of Pepin, who showed in his subsequent career that he was equal to the far more difficult task of keeping, by his wisdom and moderation, what he had gained by the vigour of his intellect and his undaunted valour. He, too, was happily free from the little vanity which takes more delight in the pomp than in the realities of power, and, provided he possessed the substantial authority, was contented to leave the royal name to others. He must have felt himself strong enough to do what his uncle Grimwald had vainly attempted, and his grandson happily accomplished; but he saw that by grasping at the shadow he might lose the substance. He was surrounded by proud and suspicious seigneurs, whose jealousy would have been more excited by his taking the title than by his exercising the powers of a king; and, strange though it may seem, the reverence for the ancient race, and the notion of their exclusive and inalienable rights, were far from being extinguished in the breasts of the common people. By keeping Thierry upon the throne and ruling in his name, he united both reason and prejudice in support of his government. Yet some approach was made, though probably not by his own desire, towards acknowledged sovereignty in the case of Pepin. He was called dux et princeps Francorum, and the years of his office were reckoned, as well as those of the king, in all public documents.
Having fixed the seat of his government in Austrasia, as the more German and warlike portion of his dominions, he named dependents of his own, and subsequently his two sons, Drogo and Grimwald, to rule as mayors in the two other divisions of the empire. He gave the greatest proof of his power and popularity by restoring the assemblies of the Campus Martius, a purely German institution, which under the romanising Merovingian monarchs had gradually declined. At these annual meetings, which were held on the 1st of March, the whole nation assembled for the purpose of discussing measures for the ensuing year. None but a ruler who was conscious of his own strength, and of an honest desire for the welfare of his people, would have voluntarily submitted himself and his actions to the chances of such an ordeal.
As soon as he had firmly fixed himself in his seat, and secured the submission of the envious seigneurs, and the love of the people, who looked to him as the only man who could save them from the evils of anarchy, he turned his attention to the re-establishment of the Frankish Empire in its full extent. The neighbouring tribes, which had with difficulty, and for the most part imperfectly, been subdued by Clovis and his successors, were ready to seize upon every favourable occasion of ridding themselves of the hated yoke. Nor were the poor imbecile boys who bore the name of kings, nor the turbulent mayors and seigneurs who were wholly occupied with plotting and counterplotting, railing and fighting against one another, at all in a position to call the subject states to account, or to excite in them the desire of being incorporated with an empire harassed and torn by intestine dissensions. The Frankish Empire was in process of dissolution, and all the more distant tribes, as the Bavarians, the Alamanni, Frisians, Bretons, and Gascons, had virtually recovered their independence. But this partial decline of the Frankish power was simply the result of misgovernment, and the domestic feuds which absorbed the martial vigour of the nation; and by no means indicated the decline of a military spirit in the Frankish people. They only needed a centre of union and a leader worthy of them, both of which they found in Pepin, to give them once more the hegemony over all the German tribes, and prepare them for the conquest of Europe. The Frisians were subdued, or rather repressed for a time, in 697 A.D., after a gallant resistance under their king Ratbod; and about twelve years afterwards we find the son of Pepin, Grimwald, forming a matrimonial alliance with Theudelinda, daughter of the Frisian monarch; a fact which plainly implies that Pepin desired to cultivate the friendship of his warlike neighbours. The Swabians, or Alamanni, were also attacked and defeated by Pepin on their own territories; but their final subjection was completed by his son Charles Martel.
The wars carried on by Pepin with the above-mentioned nations, to which in this place we can only briefly allude, occupied him nearly twenty years; and were greatly instrumental in preserving peace at home, and consolidating the foundations of the Carlovingian throne. The stubborn resistance he met with from the still heathen Germans, was animated with something of that zeal, against which his great descendant Charlemagne had to contend in his interminable Saxon wars; for the adoption of Christianity, which was hated, not only as being hostile to the superstitions of their forefathers, but on account of the heavy taxes by which it was accompanied, was always made by Pepin the indispensable condition of mercy and peace. But, happily for the cause of Gospel truth, other means were used for the spread of Christianity than the sword and the scourge; and the labours of many a zealous and self-sacrificing missionary from Ireland and England served to convince the rude German tribes that the warrior-priests whom they had met on the battle-field, and the greedy tax-gatherers who infested their homes, were not the true ambassadors of the Prince of peace. And Pepin, who was by no means a mere warrior, was well aware of the value of these peaceful efforts; and afforded zealous aid to all who ventured their lives in the holy cause of human improvement and salvation. The civil governors whom he established in the conquered provinces were directed to do all in their power to promote the spread of Christianity by peaceful means; and, to give effect to his instructions, Pepin warned them that he should hold them responsible for the lives of his pious missionaries.
During these same twenty years, in which Pepin was playing the important and brilliant part assigned to him by providence, the pale and bloodless shadows of four Merovingian kings flit gloomily across the scene. We know little or nothing of them except their names, and the order in which they followed each other. Thierry III died in 691 A.D., and was succeeded by Clovis III, who reigned till 695 A.D. and was followed by Childebert III. On the death of Childebert in 711 A.D., Pepin raised Dagobert III to the nominal throne, where he left him when he himself departed from the scene of his labours and triumphs; and this is really all that we feel called upon to say of the descendants of the conquerors of Gaul and founders of the Western Empire; inclitum et notum olim, nunc tantum auditur!
[714 A.D.]
Clovis III
(From a French print of 1832)
The extraordinary power which Pepin exercised at a period when law was weak, and authority extended no further than the sword could reach; when the struggles of the rising feudal aristocracy for independence had convulsed the empire and brought it to the verge of anarchy, sufficiently attests the ability and courage, the wisdom and moderation, with which he ruled. His triumphs over the ancient dynasty, and the Neustrian faction, were far from being the most difficult of his achievements. He had to control the very class to which he himself belonged; to curb the turbulent spirits of the very men who had raised him to his proud pre-eminence; and to establish regal authority over those by whose aid he had humbled the ancient kings: and all this he succeeded in doing by the extraordinary influence of his personal character. So firmly indeed had he established his government, and subdued the wills of the envious seigneurs by whom he was surrounded, that even when he showed his intention of making his power hereditary in his family, they dared not, at the time, oppose his will. On the death of Norbert, major-domus at the court of Childebert III, Pepin—in all probability without even consulting the seigneurs, in whom the right of election rested—appointed his second son Grimwald to the vacant office. To his eldest son Drogo he had already given the mayoralty of Burgundy, with the title of duke of Campania. But though they dared not make any opposition at the time, it is evident from what followed that the fear of Pepin alone restrained the rage they felt at this open usurpation. In 714 A.D., when Pepin’s life was drawing to a close, and he lay at Jupille near Liège upon a bed of sickness, awaiting patiently his approaching end, the great vassals took heart, and conspired to deprive his descendants of the mayoralty. They employed the usual means for effecting their purpose—treachery and murder. Grimwald was assassinated, while praying in the church of St. Lambert at Jupille, by a Frisian of the name of Rantgar, who relied, no doubt, on the complicity of the seigneurs and the weakness of Pepin for impunity. But the conspirators had miscalculated the waning sands of the old warrior’s life, and little knew the effect which the sight of his son’s blood would have upon him. He suddenly recovered from the sickness to which he seemed to be succumbing. Like another Priam, he once more seized his unaccustomed arms, though, unlike the royal Trojan, he used them with terrible effect. After taking an ample revenge upon the murderers of his son, and quenching the spirit of resistance in the blood of the conspirators, he was so far from giving up his purpose, or manifesting any consciousness of weakness, that he nominated the infant and illegitimate son of Grimwald, as if by hereditary right, to the joint mayoralty of Burgundy and Neustria—an office which the highest persons in the land would have been proud to exercise. By his very last act, therefore, he showed the absolute mastery he had obtained, not only over the “do-nothing” kings, but over the factious seigneurs, who shrank in terror before the wrath of one, who had, as it were, repassed the gates of death, to hurl destruction on their heads. His actual demise took place in the same year, on the 16th of December, 714 A.D.