The Historians' History of the World 07

While the Saxon War was being ardently and incessantly pursued, garrisons were placed in the most suitable places on the borders, and Charles marched into Spain with the greatest equipment of war that he could command. He crossed the Pyrenees, received the submission of all towns and castles that he approached, and returned with his army safe and sound. It was on his return through that very Pyrenean pass that he happened to encounter a slight show of Gascon treachery. The army was moving in column, in extended formation, as was made necessary by the narrowness of the pass, when the Gascons, who had placed ambuscades on the high ledge of the mountain (for the dense foliage of the place, which is thickly wooded, makes it suitable for the disposal of an ambush), rushed down from their vantage ground, falling upon the extreme section of the baggage and those who manned the baggage train and drove them into the valley below. Here the Gascons fought a pitched battle with them, killed them all to a man, destroyed the baggage, took advantage of the cover of night which was drawing over them, and with the greatest rapidity dispersed in different directions. The Gascons were aided in this feat by the lightness of their arms and the nature of the place in which the engagement was determined; whereas the Franks, on the other hand, were made inferior to the Gascons at every point by the weight of their armour and the ugliness of their situation. In this battle fell Eggihard, the king’s server, Anselm Pfalsgraf, and Roland, count of the Breton march, with many others besides. Nor could the injury be avenged at the time, because when the thing had been perpetrated the enemy dispersed with so much cunning that there remained not even the breath of a rumour as to where in the world they might be hunted out.

THIRD VISIT TO ITALY (787 A.D.)

Charles also subjugated the Bretons who dwell by the coast on the extreme west of Gaul. They were not obedient to the king’s word, so he sent an expedition against them, whereupon they were compelled to grant hostages and make a promise to do what they were told. After this the king himself entered Italy with his army, and making his way through Rome, marched upon Capua, a city of Campania, and when he had pitched his camp there threatened the Beneventines with war unless they surrendered. Arichis, the duke, avoided this by sending his two sons, Romwald and Grimwald, with a large sum of money to meet the king, whom he asked to accept them as hostages, promising to do what he was told, except in the event of one command, which was if he should be forced himself to come face to face with the king. Charles, taking the national welfare into greater consideration than the stubborn character of the duke’s mind, accepted the hostages offered to him, and in return for a large sum of money conceded to him the favour that he should not be compelled to meet him face to face. Only the younger son of Arichis was kept as a hostage, the elder was returned to his father. The ambassadors who had come to exact oaths of allegiance from the Beneventines, and to make an agreement with Arichis for taking them up on their behalf, were now discharged, and the king returned to Rome. He spent a few days there in holy visits to the sacred places of the city and then went back into Gaul.

BAVARIAN WAR WITH TASSILO (787-788 A.D.)

[787-796 A.D.]

Next came the Bavarian War, which suddenly flamed up and swiftly died down. It was aroused at once by the arrogance and by the folly of Duke Tassilo. He had married a daughter of King Desiderius, who thought to avenge her father’s exile by her husband’s agency. Tassilo made an alliance with the Huns, whose boundary touches that of the Bavarians on the east. Not only did he try to win his independence, but also to provoke the king to war. His violence seeming too great for the high-spirited king to brook, he gathered together forces from all sides for an incursion into Bavaria, and straightway advanced to the river Lech himself with a large army. This river divides the Bavarians from the Alamanni. He pitched his camp on the banks before entering the province and determined to ascertain the temper of the duke by means of ambassadors. Tassilo, thinking it neither to his own advantage nor to that of his country to act obstinately, surrendered himself to the king’s mercy, and gave the hostages required, among them being his own son Theodo. In addition to this, he took an oath of allegiance by which he bound himself to be induced by the persuasion of nobody to revolt from the sovereignty of the king.[135] In this way a very swift end was put to a war which had given promise of becoming a great one. Tassilo being summoned soon after to the king was not, however, allowed to return; the province which he had governed was no longer entrusted to a duke but to the charge of counts.