The Historians' History of the World 07

This opinion of the noble orator had availed to deter me from my work, had I not a prejudice in my mind in favour of rather suffering the judgment of critics and making venture of my own small wit in writing, than sparing myself and passing over the memory of so great a man.

The family of the Merovingians from which the Franks had been wont to choose their king is said to have ended with the king Childeric, who was dethroned by the command of Stephen the Roman pontiff; his hair was cut off and he was thrust into a monastery. With him the line may seem to have closed, yet for a long while it had lacked all vigour nor had any member shown distinction in himself outside the empty title of king; for the wealth and power of the kingdom had passed into the control of the prefects of the palace who were known as “mayors of the household,” and to whom belonged the supreme initiative; nor was anything left to the king but to enjoy the royal title, the long hair, the drooping beard, to sit back in a chair of state and simulate the air of a supreme ruler, give audience to the ambassadors hailing from all parts of the earth and on their departure to retail to them as if from the depths of his own majesty the answers which he had been taught or told to make.

So that, except for the useless name of king and an uncertain subsidy for living which the prefect of the palace would dole out to him as the mood took him, he possessed no morsel to call his own unless it were one farm and that of extremely slender profit. Here he would keep his house and servants to minister to him the necessaries of life and to display the respectful deference of a thin multitude of retainers.

Wherever he had to go, he travelled in a wagon drawn by a yoke of oxen and with an oxherd for a charioteer in true country fashion. In this way he would ride to his palace, to the public assembly of his people which met every year to further the advantages of the kingdom, in this way he would ride home again. The administration of the kingdom and all domestic and foreign business were conducted by the mayor of the palace.

This was the office filled by Pepin, the father of King Charles, at the time of Childeric’s deposition. It had already in some sort become hereditary. For Pepin’s father Charles had also held it with distinction and it had come down to him from his father Pepin. This Charles had put down throughout all Frankland those tyrants who claimed for themselves an independent sovereignty; also he had beaten the Saracens who aimed at the occupation of Gaul, in two mighty battles, one in Aquitania not far from the city of Poitiers, the other near Narbonne hard by the river Birra—a sore defeat so that he compelled them to return into Spain. Thus the office of mayor was an honour wont to be bestowed by the people on none but those eminent in the nobility of their birth and in the magnitude of their wealth.

When Pepin, the father of King Charles, had held for some years this office which had come down to him and his brother Carloman from sire to grandsire, the two having reigned jointly in most perfect harmony, Carloman, I know not why, yet most likely because he was fired with a passion for a life of contemplation, left the laborious administration of a temporal kingdom and withdrew himself to the peace of Rome, where he changed his habit, became a monk, built a monastery on Mount Soracte touching the church of St. Silvester, and in company with the brothers who had accompanied him thither drew a long and joyous draught of the repose that he had coveted for some years. But as many companies of Frankish noblemen were wont to make pilgrimage to Rome to fulfil their vows and would not leave unvisited one who was their former sovereign, they broke into that retirement which was his chief delight by their frequent salutation and compelled him to change his domicile. For when he saw that company of this sort stood in the light of his fixed intent, he left the mountain, withdrew to the province of Samnium to the holy Benedictine monastery on Mount Cassino, and there completed all that remained of his worldly life in religious exercises.