The Historians' History of the World 07

But mighty and influential as was the position to which the clerical and civil nobility had attained, the real power of the people still rested in the estate of freemen, which had ever remained the broad foundation of the Germanic political organisation. Only the stubborn force and the simplicity of severe morality that still persisted, especially in the German portions of the Frankish monarchy, had preserved the kingdom of the Merovingians from complete destruction and had made the establishment of royal power possible to the house of Pepin. No one knew better than Charles that the roots of his power lay here and that it would of necessity itself wither and disappear with them. With indefatigable zeal therefore he kept watch that the estate of freemen should neither be diminished nor shorn of its rights. When the magnates were evidently striving to displace the smaller landholders, seize their possessions and thus bring them into a dependent relation, Charles opposed them with the whole force of his authority and strictly forbade all oppression that could be employed to that end. Charles opposed such oppressive drudgery of the free people with unrelenting sternness and regulated by law the services that could be required of the freemen. The poorer men were partially freed from the duty of personal military service, several of them being permitted to combine to equip one of their number. On the outbreak of war, moreover, for the most part only those provinces that were near the scene of the conflict were obliged to furnish their full complement of men.

THE CROWNING OF CHARLEMAGNE AT ROME, 800 A.D.

If, as has been asserted, Charles was the only sovereign of the entire Middle Ages who penetrated to any depth the secrets of political economy, he could not fail to see that the nourishment and support of the state lay in the assured permanence of the middle and lower class landowners. To be sure, at a time when the internal organisation of the state consisted almost exclusively in the administration of justice, Charles could not carry out any great general measures for the elevation of the national welfare; but he could furnish others an example of how to practise agriculture successfully. And he gave this example to the whole empire. He was the best husbandman in it, his estates were model establishments, he saw to everything personally, looked over all accounts himself; and he even required a report of every wolf killed on his property. In other directions also he showed ways and means of increasing the national wealth. He directed his attention to the industries which, at least in the German provinces, were still carried on only by bondmen; and taught on his estates how they could be engaged in with profit.

He safeguarded trade, which was carried on in the German provinces mostly by Italians and Jews, and opened new routes to it. A highway of commerce joining the Mediterranean and the North Sea extended along the Rhine. Another route led from the mouth of the Elbe to the middle Danube and branched there in one direction towards the Black Sea, in the other towards the Adriatic. The development of an extensive industrial activity out of these foundations of Charles was slow and late; for the moment they were no more successful than those legal enactments of the emperor which forbade the freeman all feud and even self-defence, and commanded him to lay down his arms in time of peace. Mighty though the emperor’s arm was, there still existed a remnant of the old personal liberty and impatience of restraint which even he was unable to overcome.

Thus the state of Charlemagne sought to unite in itself all the different elements of political life that had developed in the Christian-Germanic period. In combination they were to supplement and counterbalance, control, and gradually to permeate one another. The clergy and the civil nobility were intended both to support and to watch each other. The officials and the communes extended to one another a helping hand, but at the same time kept each other within bounds. The crown united the whole, but it was none the less actually, if not legally, restricted and bound by the separate elements of the state. A certain balance of powers was established, but its maintenance required great skill and no little expenditure of power. The mighty personality of Charles succeeded in this in good part, but his keen insight did not fail to perceive how strong were the individual interests of the separate estates, and how hard it was for them to adapt themselves to any legally regulated system.