Part 10

I have, however, already observed that Charlemagne had other rules or habits of conduct which were the indigenous growth of his own mind. It was only in a mind of surpassing depth and fertility that such maxims could have been nurtured and made to yield their appropriate fruits; for, first, he firmly believed that the power of his house could have no secure basis except in the religious, moral, intellectual, and social improvement of his subjects; and, secondly, he was no less firmly persuaded that in order to effect that improvement it was necessary to consolidate all temporal authority in Europe by the reconstruction of the Cæsarian empire--that empire beneath the shelter of which religion, law, and learning had so long and so widely flourished throughout the dominions of imperial Rome.

Gibbon has remarked, that of all the heroes to whom the title of “the Great” had been given, Charlemagne alone has retained it as a permanent addition to his name. The reason may, perhaps, be that in no other man were ever united in so large a measure, and in such perfect harmony, the qualities which, in their combination, constitute the heroic character, such as energy, or the love of action; ambition, or the love of power; curiosity, or the love of knowledge; and sensibility, or the love of pleasure--not, indeed, the love of forbidden, of unhallowed, or of enervating pleasure, but the keen relish for those blameless delights by which the burdened mind and jaded spirits recruit and renovate their powers--delights of which none are susceptible in the highest degree but those whose more serious pursuits are sustained by the highest motives and directed toward the highest ends; for the charms of social intercourse, the play of buoyant fancy, the exhilaration of honest mirth, and even the refreshment of athletic exercises, require, for their perfect enjoyment, that robust and absolute health of body and of mind, which none but the noblest natures possess and in the possession of which Charlemagne exceeded all other men.

His lofty stature, his open countenance, his large and brilliant eyes, and the dome-like structure of his head imparted, as we learn from Eginhard, to all his attitudes the dignity which becomes a king, relieved by the graceful activity of a practiced warrior. He was still a stranger to every form of bodily disease when he entered his seventieth year; and although he was thenceforward constrained to pay the usual tribute to sickness and to pain, he maintained to the last a contempt for the whole _materia medica_, and for the dispensers of it, which Molière himself, in his gayest mood, might have envied. In defiance of the gout, he still followed the chase, and still provoked his comrades to emulate his feats in swimming, as though the iron frame which had endured nearly threescore campaigns had been incapable of lassitude and exempt from decay.

In the monastery of St. Gall, near the Lake of Constance, there was living in the ninth century a monk who relieved the tedium of his monotonous life and got the better, as he tells us, of much constitutional laziness by collecting anecdotes of the mighty monarch, with whose departed glories the world was at that time ringing. In this amusing legend Charlemagne, the conqueror, the legislator, the patron of learning, and the restorer of the empire, makes way for Charlemagne, the joyous companion, amusing himself with the comedy or rather with the farce of life, and contributing to it not a few practical jokes, which stand in most whimsical contrast with the imperial dignity of the jester. Thus, when he commands a whole levy of his blandest courtiers, plumed and furred and silken as they stood, to follow him in the chase through sleet and tempest, mud and brambles; or constrains an unhappy chorister, who had forgotten his responses, to imitate the other members of the choir by a long series of mute grimaces; or concerts with a Jew peddler a scheme for palming off, at an enormous price, on an Episcopal virtuoso, an embalmed rat, as an animal till then unknown to any naturalist--these, and many similar facetiæ, which in any other hands might have seemed mere childish frivolities, reveal to us, in the illustrious author of them, that native alacrity of spirit and child-like glee, which neither age nor cares nor toil could subdue, and which not even the oppressive pomps of royalty were able to suffocate.

Nor was the heart which bounded thus lightly after whim or merriment less apt to yearn with tenderness over the interior circle of his home. While yet a child, he had been borne on men’s shoulders, in a buckler for his cradle, to accompany his father in his wars; and in later life, he had many a strange tale to tell of his father’s achievements. With his mother, Bertha, the long-footed, he lived in affectionate and reverend intimacy, which never knew a pause except on one occasion, which may perhaps apologize for some breach even of filial reverence, for Bertha had insisted on giving him a wife against his own consent. His own parental affections were indulged too fondly and too long, and were fatal both to the immediate objects of them and to his own tranquillity. But with Eginhard and Alcuin and the other associates of his severer labors, he maintained that grave and enduring friendship, which can be created only on the basis of the most profound esteem, and which can be developed only by that free interchange of thought and feeling which implies the temporary forgetfulness of all the conventional distinctions of rank and dignity.

It was a retributive justice which left Gibbon to deform, with such revolting obscenities, the pages in which he waged his disingenuous warfare against the one great purifying influence of human society. It may also have been retributive justice which has left the glory of Charlemagne to be overshadowed by the foul and unmerited reproach on which Gibbon dwells with such offensive levity; for the monarch was habitually regardless of that law, at once so strict and so benignant, which has rendered chastity the very bond of domestic love and happiness and peace. In bursting through the restraints of virtue, Charlemagne was probably the willing victim of a transparent sophistry. From a nature so singularly constituted as his, sweet waters or bitter might flow with equal promptitude. That peculiarity of temperament in which his virtues and his vices found their common root probably confounded the distinctions of good and evil in his self-judgments, and induced him to think lightly of the excesses of a disposition so often conducting him to the most noble and magnanimous enterprises; for such was the revelry of his animal life, so inexhaustible his nervous energies, so intense the vibrations of each successive impulse along the chords of his sensitive nature, so insatiable his thirst for activity, and so uncontrollable his impatience of repose, that, whether he was engaged in a frolic or a chase, composed verses or listened to homilies, fought or negotiated, cast down thrones or built them up, studied, conversed, or legislated, it seemed as if he, and he alone, were the one wakeful and really living agent in the midst of an inert, visionary, and somnolent generation.

The rank held by Charlemagne among great commanders was achieved far more by this strange and almost superhuman activity than by any pre-eminent proficiency in the art or science of war. He was seldom engaged in any general action, and never undertook any considerable siege, excepting that of Pavia, which, in fact, was little more than a protracted blockade; but, during forty-six years of almost unintermitted warfare, he swept over the whole surface of Europe, from the Ebro to the Oder, from Bretagne to Hungary, from Denmark to Capua, with such a velocity of movement and such a decision of purpose that no power, civilized or barbarous, ever provoked his resentment without rapidly sinking beneath his prompt and irresistible blows. And though it be true, as Gibbon has observed, that he seldom if ever encountered in the field a really formidable antagonist, it is not less true that, but for his military skill animated by his sleepless energy, the countless assailants by whom he was encompassed must rapidly have become too formidable for resistance; for to Charlemagne is due the introduction into modern warfare of the art by which a general compensates for the numerical inferiority of his own forces to those of his antagonists--the art of moving detached bodies of men along remote but converging lines with such mutual concert as to throw their united forces at the same moment on any meditated point of attack. Neither the Alpine marches of Hannibal nor those of Napoleon were combined with greater foresight or executed with greater precision than the simultaneous passages of Charlemagne and Count Bernard across the same mountain-ranges, and their ultimate union in the vicinity of their Lombard enemies.

But though many generals have eclipsed the fame of Charlemagne as a strategist, no one ever rivaled his inflexible perseverance as a conqueror. The Carlovingian crown may indeed be said to have been worn on the tenure of continual conquests. It was on that condition alone that the family of Pepin of Heristal could vindicate the deposition of the Merovings and the pre-eminence of the Austrasian people; and each member of that family, in his turn, gave an example of obedience to that law, or tradition, of their house. But by none of them was it so well observed as by Charlemagne himself. From his first expedition to his last there intervened forty-six years, no one of which he passed in perfect peace, nor without some military triumph. In six months he reduced into obedience the great province or kingdom of Aquitaine. In less than two years he drove the Lombard king into a monastic exile, placing on his own brows the iron crown, and with it the sovereignty over nearly all the Italian peninsula. During thirty-three successive summers he invaded the great Saxon confederacy, until the deluge of barbarism with which they threaten southern Europe was effectually and forever repressed.

It has been alleged, indeed, that the Saxon wars were waged in the spirit of fanaticism, and that the vicar of Christ placed the sword of Mohammed in the hands of the sovereign of the Franks. It is, I think, an unfounded charge, though sanctioned by Gibbon and by Warburton, and by names of perhaps even greater authority than theirs. That the alternative, “believe or die,” was sometimes proposed by Charlemagne to the Saxons, I shall not, indeed, dispute. But it is not less true that, before these terms were tendered to them, they had again and again rejected his less formidable proposal, “be quiet and live.” In form and in terms, indeed, their election lay between the Gospel and the sword. In substance and in reality, they had to make their choice between submission and destruction. A long and deplorable experience had already shown that the Frankish people had neither peace nor security to expect for a single year, so long as their Saxon neighbors retained their heathen rites and the ferocious barbarism inseparable from them. Fearful as may be the dilemma, “submit or perish,” it is that to which every nation, even in our own

times, endeavors to reduce a host of invading and desolating foes; nor, if we ourselves were now exposed to similar inroads, should we offer to our assailants conditions more gentle or less peremptory.

ALFRED THE GREAT, OF ENGLAND.

BY DAVID HUME.

[Hereditary King of the West Saxons, and Over-king of all England, born in 849 A.D., died 901. Alfred was the true founder of the English monarchy, and one of the greatest monarchs in English history. In his reign the English became essentially one people, and the Danish invaders then settled in England were incorporated with the Saxons. Alfred was not only a great soldier and statesman, but was distinguished for intellectual greatness in the pursuit of arts and letters. Under his patronage the Saxon court became the source of civilizing influences that extended over all Northern and Western Europe.]

The merit of this prince both in private and public life may with advantage be set in opposition to that of any monarch or citizen which the annals of any age or nation can present to us. He seems, indeed, to be the model of that perfect character which, under the denomination of sage or wise man, philosophers have been fond of delineating rather as a fiction of their own imagination than in hopes of seeing it existing, so happily were all his virtues tempered together, so justly were they blended, and so powerfully did each prevent the other from exceeding its proper boundaries. He knew how to reconcile the most enterprising spirit with the coolest moderation, the most obstinate perseverance with the easiest flexibility; the most severe justice with the gentlest lenity; the greatest vigor in commanding with the most perfect affability of deportment; the highest capacity and inclination for science with the most shining talents for action. His civil and his military virtues are almost equally the objects of our admiration, excepting only that the former being more rare among princes as well as more useful seem chiefly to challenge our applause.

Nature, also, as if desirous that so bright a production of her skill should be set in the fairest light, had bestowed on him every bodily accomplishment--vigor of limbs, dignity of air and shape, with a pleasant, engaging, and open countenance. Fortune alone by throwing him into that barbarous age deprived him of historians worthy to transmit his fame to posterity; and we wish to see him delineated in more lively colors, and with more peculiar strokes, that we may at least perceive some of those specks and blemishes from which as a man it is impossible he could be entirely exempted.

The better to guide the magistrates in the administration of justice, Alfred framed a body of laws, which, though now lost, served long as the basis of English jurisprudence, and is generally deemed the origin of what is denominated the Common Law. The similarity of these institutions to the customs of the ancient Germans, to the practice of the other Northern conquerors, and to the Saxon laws during the heptarchy, prevents us from regarding Alfred as the sole author of this plan of government, and leads us rather to think that, like a wise man, he contented himself with reforming, extending, and executing the institutions which he found previously established.

But on the whole such success attended his legislation that everything bore suddenly a new face in England. Robberies and iniquities of all kinds were repressed by the punishment or reformation of criminals; and so exact was the general police that Alfred, it is said, hung up by way of bravado golden bracelets near the highways, and no man dared touch them. Yet, amid these rigors of justice, this great prince preserved the most sacred regard to the liberties of the people; and it is a memorable sentiment preserved in his will that it was just the English should ever remain as free as their own thoughts.

As good morals and knowledge are almost inseparable in every age, though not in every individual, the care of Alfred for the encouragement of learning among his subjects was another useful branch of his legislation, and tended to reclaim the English from their former dissolute and ferocious manners. But the king was guided in this pursuit less by political views than by his natural bent and propensity toward letters.

When he came to the throne he found the nation sunk into the grossest ignorance and barbarism, proceeding from the continued disorders in the government and from the ravages of the Danes. The monasteries were destroyed, the monks butchered or dispersed, their libraries burned, and thus the only seats of erudition in those ages were totally subverted. Alfred himself complains that on his accession he knew not one person south of the Thames who could so much as interpret the Latin service, and very few in the northern parts who had reached even that pitch of erudition. But this prince invited over the most celebrated scholars from all parts of Europe; he established schools everywhere for the instruction of his people; he founded--at least repaired--the University of Oxford, and endowed it with many privileges, revenues, and immunities. He gave preferment both in Church and state to such only as made some proficiency in knowledge.

But the most effectual expedient adopted by Alfred for the encouragement of learning was his own example, and the constant assiduity with which, notwithstanding the multiplicity and urgency of his affairs, he employed himself in the pursuit of knowledge. He usually divided his time into three equal portions--one was employed in sleep, and the refection of his body by diet and exercise; another, in the dispatch of business; a third, in study and devotion. And that he might more exactly measure the hours, he made use of burning tapers of equal length, which he fixed in lanterns--an expedient suited to that rude age, when the geometry of dialing and the mechanism of clocks and watches were entirely unknown. And by such a regular distribution of his time, though he often labored under great bodily infirmities, this martial hero who fought in person fifty-six battles by sea and land, was able, during a life of no extraordinary length, to acquire more knowledge, and even to compose more books, than most studious men, though blessed with greatest leisure and application, have in more fortunate ages made the object of their uninterrupted industry. And he deemed it no wise derogatory from his other great characters of sovereign, legislator, warrior, and politician thus to lead the way to his people in the pursuit of literature.

He invited from all quarters industrious foreigners to repeople his country, which had been desolated by the ravages of the Danes. He introduced and encouraged manufactures of all kinds, and no inventor or improver of any ingenious art did he suffer to go unrewarded. He prompted men of activity to betake themselves to navigation, to push commerce into the most remote countries, and to acquire riches by propagating industry among their fellow-citizens. He set apart a seventh portion of his own revenue for maintaining a number of workmen, whom he constantly employed in rebuilding the ruined cities, castles, palaces, and monasteries. Even the elegancies of life were brought to him from the Mediterranean and the Indies; and his subjects, by seeing those productions of the peaceful arts, were taught to respect the virtues of justice and industry, from which alone they could rise. Both living and dead Alfred was regarded by foreigners, no less than by his own subjects, as the greatest prince after Charlemagne that appeared in Europe during several ages, and as one of the wisest and best that had ever adorned the annals of any nation.

OLAF TRYGGVESON, KING OF NORWAY.

BY THOMAS CARLYLE.

[Earliest of the Norwegian kings who succeeded in implanting Christianity in the soil of Norse paganism. Exact date of birth unknown; died 1000 A.D. Son of Tryggve, a former under-king, or jarl, of Norway, slain by Hakon Jarl, who had usurped the supreme power about 975. Olaf spent his early years as a sea-rover, and became the most celebrated viking of his age. He conquered and slew Hakon in 995, and became king. During his reign of five years he revolutionized his kingdom. He lost his life in a great sea-battle with the combined fleets of Denmark and Norway. The facts of his career are mostly drawn from the saga of Snorro Sturleson.]

Tryggveson made a stout and, in effect, victorious and glorious struggle for himself as king. Daily and hourly vigilant to do so, often enough by soft and even merry methods--for he was a witty, jocund man, and had a fine ringing laugh in him, and clear, pregnant words ever ready--or, if soft methods would not serve, then by hard and even hardest he put down a great deal of miscellaneous anarchy in Norway, was especially busy against heathenism (devil-worship and its rites); this, indeed, may be called the focus and heart of all his royal endeavor in Norway, and of all the troubles he now had with his people there. For this was a serious, vital, all-comprehending matter; devil-worship, a thing not to be tolerated one moment longer than you could by any method help! Olaf’s success was intermittent, of varying complexion, but his effort, swift or slow, was strong and continual, and, on the whole, he did succeed. Take a sample of that wonderful conversion process:

Once, in beginning a parliamentary address, so soon as he came to touch upon Christianity the Bonders rose in murmurs, in vociferations and jingling of arms, which quite drowned the royal voice; declared they had taken arms against King Hakon the Good to compel him to desist from his Christian proposals, and they did not think King Olaf a higher man than him (Hakon the Good). The king then said, “He purposed coming to them next Yule to their great sacrificial feast to see for himself what their customs were,” which pacified the Bonders for this time. The appointed place of meeting was again a Hakon-Jarl Temple, not yet done to ruin, chief shrine in those Trondhjem parts, I believe; there should Tryggveson appear at Yule. Well, but before Yule came, Tryggveson made a great banquet in his palace at Trondhjem, and invited far and wide all manner of important persons out of the district as guests there. Banquet hardly done, Tryggveson gave some slight signal, upon which armed men strode in, seized eleven of these principal persons, and the king said: “Since he himself was to become a heathen again and do sacrifice, it was his purpose to do it in the highest form, namely, that of human sacrifice, and this time not of slaves and malefactors, but of the best men in the country!” In which stringent circumstances the eleven seized persons and company at large gave unanimous consent to baptism, straightway received the same, and abjured their idols, but were not permitted to go home till they had left, in sons, brothers, and other precious relatives, sufficient hostages in the king’s hands.

By unwearied industry of this and better kinds, Tryggveson had trampled down idolatry so far as form went--how far in substance may be greatly doubted. But it is to be remembered withal that always on the back of these compulsory adventures there followed English bishops, priests, and preachers, whereby to the open-minded conviction, to all degrees of it, was attainable, while silence and passivity became the duty or necessity of the unconvinced party. In about two years Norway was all gone over with a rough harrow of conversion. Heathenism, at least, constrained to be silent and outwardly conformable.