The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

It must not be supposed that the moment a Teuton accepted baptism he became filled with a pure Christian spirit of meekness and of love. On the contrary, he probably remained much the same drunken, roistering heathen as before. But he was brought in contact with noble examples in the lives of some of the Christian bishops around him; great truths began to touch his mobile nature; he was impressed, softened; he began to think and feel.

Given a couple of centuries of this, we really begin to see some very encouraging results. We realize that for once we are being allowed to study a civilization in its earlier stages, to be present almost at its birth, to watch the methods of the Master-builder in the making of a race. Gazing at similar developments in the days of Egypt and Babylon, we guessed vaguely that they must have been of slowest growth. Here at last one takes place under our eyes, and it does not need so many ages after all. There is no study more fascinating than to trace the slow changes stamping themselves ineradicably upon the Teutonic mind and soul during these misty far-off centuries of turmoil.

On the whole, of course, the sixth, seventh, and even the eighth centuries form a period of strife. The Teutons had spent too many ages warring against one another in petty strife to abandon the pleasure in a single generation. Men fought because they liked fighting, much as they play football to-day. Then, too, there came another great outburst of Semite religious enthusiasm. Mahomet[9] started the Arabs on their remarkable career of conquest.

THE MAHOMETAN OUTBURST

Mahomet himself died (632) before he had fully established his influence even over Arabia: his successors had practically to reconquer it. Yet within five years of his death the Arabs had mastered Syria.[10] They spread like some sudden, unexpected, immeasurable whirlwind. Ancient Persia went down before them. By 640 they had trampled Egypt under foot, and destroyed the celebrated Alexandrian library.[11] They swept over all Africa, completely obliterating every trace of Vandal or of Roman. Their dominion reached farther east than that of Alexander. They wrested most of its Asiatic possessions from the pretentious Empire at Constantinople, and reduced that exhausted State to a condition of weakness from which it never arose. Then, passing on through their African possessions, they entered Spain and overthrew the kingdom of the Visigoths.[12] It was a storm whose end no man could measure, whose coming none could have foreseen. And then, just a century after Mahomet's death, the Arabs, pressing on through Spain, encountered the Franks on the plains of France.

A thousand years had passed since Semitic Carthage had fallen before Aryan Rome. Now once again the Semites, far more dangerous because in the full tide of the religious frenzy of their race, threatened to engulf the Aryan world. They were repulsed by the still sturdy Franks under their great leader, Charles Martel, at Tours. The battle of Tours[13] was only less momentous to the human race than that of Châlons. What the Arab domination of Europe would have meant we can partly guess by looking at the lax and lawless states of Northern Africa to-day. These fair lands, under both Roman and Vandal, had long been sharing the lot of Aryan Europe; they seemed destined to follow in its growth and fortune. But the Arab conquest restored them to Semitism, made Asia the seat from which they were to have their training, attached them to the chariot of sloth instead of that of effort. What they are to-day, all Europe might have been.

Yet with the picture of these fifth and sixth and seventh centuries of battle full before us, we are not tempted to glory overmuch even in such victories as Tours and Châlons. We see war for what it has ever been—the curse of man, the hugest hinderance to our civilization. While men fight they have small time for thought or art or any soft or kindly sentiment. The survivors may with good luck develop into a stronger breed; they are inevitably more brutal.

We thus begin to recognize just how necessary for human progress was the work Rome had been engaged in. By holding the world at peace, she had given humankind at least the opportunity to grow. The moment her restraining hand was shaken off, war sprang up everywhere. Not only do we find the inheritors of her territory fighting among themselves, they are exposed to the savagery of Attila, the fury of the Arabs. New bands of more distant Teutons come, ever pushing in amid their half-settled brethren, overthrowing them in turn. The Lombards capture Northern Italy, only Venice remaining safe amid her marshes.[14] The East-Franks—that is, the semi-barbarians still remaining in the wilderness—master the more cultured West-Franks, who hold Gaul. No sooner does civilization start up than it is trodden on.

THE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE

At length there arose among the Franks a series of stalwart rulers, keen-eyed, penetrating somewhat at least into the meaning of their world, determined to have peace if they must fight for it. Charles Martel was one of these. Then came his son Pépin,[15] who held out his hand to the bishops of Rome, acknowledged their vast civilizing influence, saved them from the Lombards, and joined church and state once more in harmony. After Pépin came his son, Charlemagne, whose reign marks an epoch of the world. The peace his fathers had striven for, he won at last, though only, as they had done, by constant fighting. He attacked the Arabs and reduced them to permanent feebleness in Spain. He turned backward the Teutonic movement, marching his Franks into the German forests, and in campaign after campaign defeating the wild tribes that still remained there. The strongest of them, the Saxons, accepted an enforced Christianity. Even the vague races beyond the German borders were so harried, so weakened, that they ceased to be a serious menace.