The Historians' History of the World 07

In the last years of his life Charles was less occupied with military enterprises than in the earlier period. He turned over military glory to his sons, Charles, Pepin, and Louis, with whom he associated capable generals as advisers. Pepin, in Italy, had to conduct many a campaign against the armies of the Grecian emperor, Nicephorus, who had dethroned Irene; it was not until 812 that the court of Byzantium recognised Charles as emperor and the boundaries of the Eastern and Western empires were settled. At about the same time, too, the principality of Benevento finally submitted; it remained under Lombard princes, but they had to pay tribute to Charles. In the Alps and the valley of the Danube affairs were more easily and quickly settled after Pepin had destroyed the kingdom of the Avars. The frontier next the Avars, the marks of Corinthia and Friane, gained a firm outline, and the Slavs living within and along these boundaries recognised the sovereignty of the Franks. In 806, Charles, the emperor’s oldest son, also made war upon the Bohemians and the Sorbs; they were humbled, and for supervision of them the Frankish mark on the upper Main and the Thuringian mark on the Saale, Gera and Unstrut, were established.

[793-814 A.D.]

More stubborn and dangerous were the wars against the Arabs in the southwest of the empire. The earlier conquests of Charles had been lost again, and in 793 the Arabs had even crossed the Pyrenees and attacked the Frankish dominions. But in 797 a Frankish army, under the command of Louis, again succeeded in penetrating far into Spain, and four years later Barcelona fell. The foundation was laid for the Spanish mark and its extent was gradually increased by a series of successful campaigns. At the same time the small Christian states that had been formed in the northern mountains of the land arose to manful defence against the infidels. The kingdom of Asturia now for the first time gained an assurance of permanency under the brave king Alfonso II. Oviedo was built as a royal city and Compostela arose over the grave of the holy apostle James whose bones had just been miraculously discovered there. The veneration of St. Iago di Compostela and the courage of the chivalrous Alfonso then inflamed the Spanish Christians to further successful undertakings. The deeds of Charles gave the first inspiration for their victories, and Alfonso, who called himself a servant of the emperor, laid his choicest booty at Charles’ feet. At the same time the Basques, Pamplona, and all Navarre cut loose from the alliance with the Arabs by making temporary submission to the Franks; and along the Balearic Isles, and on the coasts of Corsica and Sardinia, Frankish fleets were already fighting Arab pirates with some degree of success.

Unquestionably the Frankish arms had proved themselves far superior to the once feared prowess of the Arabs. But the empire was now attacked by new enemies who stormed upon the northern marks with fearful might and wild violence, seeming to gain an access of renewed strength in the heat of battle. These enemies were the Danes. In earlier times they had appeared as friendly and closely related brothers of the German peoples; but Christianity and the compact union of the Frankish kingdom formed a strong dividing wall between the German and the Scandinavian peoples and turned the blood and racial friendship into the bitterest enmity. Unquenchable love of freedom, daring, and heroic courage, inexhaustible natural vigour, wild lust of booty—all that had once made the Germans so fatal to the Roman Empire was turned now with these sons of the northland against the Roman-German sovereignty of Charles and threatened it with all the greater danger since the Danes were skilled in naval as well as land warfare; while the Franks, who had for a long period fought only on land, must first learn to do battle on the unstable element of the waves. With the help of the seafaring Frisians Charles fitted out his first fleets, and as Frankish seamen were already fighting in the Mediterranean to protect the shores of Italy and Gaul from the Arabs, so too Frankish ships were soon seeking to defend the coasts of the North Sea from the attacks of the Norse enemies; but the Franks never became thoroughly familiar with naval warfare.