The Historians' History of the World 07

[130] [Oelsnerk and others advocate 754 as the date of Pepin’s first Italian campaign, but Abel,l Perry,b and Hodgkin

e agree upon 755.]

[131] [This statement in the Annales Mettensesc alone is somewhat doubtful.]

CHAPTER V

CHARLEMAGNE

[768-814 A.D.]

HIS BIOGRAPHY BY A CONTEMPORARY

[The chief source of our information concerning the personality of Charles the Great, is the biography by Eginhard or Einhard, who was intimately associated with the king and his family, and was highly esteemed and trusted. Soon after the death of his master he wrote the story of his life. The uniqueness of the document, its charm of diction, and its intimacy make it invaluable, while its brevity permits us to translate it from the Latin and present it here entire. The reader must be cautioned that, as a document of history, this account is not always accurate in details. The following discrepancies might be noted: Carloman reigned over three years instead of two; the empire was not divided in the way stated between the two brothers; indecisive battles like the engagement on the Berre are given as decisive; and the names of popes are confounded in places (Ranke). But in spite of these mistakes the general picture of Charles by Einhard stands lifelike and doubtless accurate in the main.]

[751-771 A.D.]

Haying made up my mind to set down in writing the life, the public career, and in some sort the great exploits of my dear lord and benefactor Charles, a king pre-eminent and of most just and glorious fame, I have encompassed the matter with all the brevity at my command. I have taken care that of all that might come to my notice nothing should be omitted, also that I might not offend the most delicate minds by narrating at too great a length each new particular; if indeed it may in any way be contrived that a new and recent essay should not offend those who sniff even at ancient chronicles compiled by authors the most learned and the most lucid. Men there are, I doubt not, in great numbers, servants of ease and disciples of letters, who are of opinion that the state of the present age should not be held of such trifling account that everything which is now happening should be condemned entirely to silence and oblivion as if unworthy of commemoration. Such men wrapt in the love of immortality had rather insert the shining deeds of others in any sort of writing, than rob posterity of the fame of their own name by writing nothing. Yet have I not thought well to refrain from writing of this category, since I was aware that no one could set down more veraciously than myself the things in which I myself took part, and which I knew to be true with the knowledge of an eye-witness as they call it, nor could I clearly know whether or no they would be recorded by another. Therefore I judged it better to transmit in common to posterity records the same as other written works, rather than suffer the most glorious life of a king pre-eminent and the greatest of his age to perish in the shades of oblivion together with victories most splendid and hard to be repeated by men of modern times.

Another course (no light one, I fancy), sufficient in itself to urge me to this composition, lurked in my mind. This was the tender care lavished upon me, and my uninterrupted friendship with himself and his children after I began to pass my life in his palace; for by this he bound me to him with the closest ties, and made me a debtor to him alive or dead. So that I might justly appear and be judged to be ungrateful if, unmindful of all the benefits heaped upon me, I were to pass over in silence the clear and brilliant deeds of one who deserved so well of me, if I were to suffer his life as though he had never lived to remain without the written praise that is its due, the writing and unfolding whereof needs not my poor little wit, which is thin and slender—nay, which is all but the merest nothing—but rather the eloquence of a Tully to the last drop. Here, reader, you have the book containing a memorial of the most eminent and the greatest man, wherein you shall see nothing but the deeds wrought by this man to marvel at, unless it were that I, a foreigner[132] very little versed in the Latin speech, should think myself able to write properly and neatly in Latin, and should have fallen headlong into such immodesty as to imagine that saying of Cicero may be despised wherein, talking of Latin writers in the second book of the Tusculans, he is reported to have said: “For one to commit his meditations to writing who can neither place them orderly or illustrate them clearly, nor entice the reader by any delightful device, is the office of a man who recklessly abuseth both his free time and the profession of letters.”