General History for Colleges and High Schools Part 38

SPREAD OF THE RELIGION AND LANGUAGE OF THE ARABS.--Just as the Romans Romanized the peoples they conquered, so did the Saracens Saracenize the populations of the countries subjected to their authority. Over a large part of Spain, over North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Babylonia, Persia, Northern India, and portions of Central Asia, were spread--to the more or less perfect exclusion of native customs, speech, and worship--the manners, the language, and the religion of the Arabian conquerors.

[Footnote: Beyond the eastern edge of Mesopotamia, the Arabs failed to impress their language upon the subjected peoples, or in any way, save in the matter of creed, to leave upon them any important permanent trace of their conquests.]

In Arabia no religion was tolerated save the faith of the Koran. But in all the countries beyond the limits of the peninsula, freedom of worship was allowed (save to _idolaters_, who were to be "rooted out"); unbelievers, however, must purchase this liberty by the payment of a moderate tribute. Yet notwithstanding this toleration, the Christian and Zoroastrian religions gradually died out almost everywhere throughout the domains of the Caliphs. [Footnote: The number of Guebers, or fire- worshippers, in Persia at the present time is estimated at from 50,000 to 100,000. About the same number may be counted in India, the descendants of the Guebers who fled from Persia at the time of the Arabian invasion. They are there called Pa.r.s.ees, from the land whence they came.]

THE DEFECTS OF ISLAM.--Civilization certainly owes a large debt to the Saracens. They preserved and transmitted much that was valuable in the science of the Greeks and the Persians (see p. 472). They improved trigonometry and algebra, and from India they borrowed the decimal system of notation and introduced it into the West.

Many of the doctrines of Islam, however, are most unfavorable to human liberty, progress, and improvement. It teaches fatalism, and thus discourages effort and enterprise. It allows polygamy and pelts no restraint upon divorce, and thus destroys the sanct.i.ty of the family life.

It permits slavery and fosters despotism. It inspires a blind and bigoted hatred of race and creed, and thus puts far out of sight the salutary truth of the brotherhood of man. Because of these and other scarcely less prominent defects in its teachings, Islam has proved a blight and curse to almost every race embracing its sterile doctrines.

Mohammedism is vastly superior, however, either to fetichism or idolatry, and consequently, upon peoples very low in the scale of civilization, it has an elevating influence. Thus, upon the negro tribes of Central Africa, where it is to-day spreading rapidly, it is acknowledged to have a civilizing effect.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

CHARLEMAGNE AND THE RESTORATION OF THE EMPIRE IN THE WEST.

GENERAL REMARKS.--In the foregoing chapter we traced the rise and decline of the power of the Saracens. We saw the Semitic East roused for a moment to a life of tremendous energy by the miracle of religious enthusiasm, and then beheld it sinking rapidly again into inaction and weakness, disappointing all its early promises. Manifestly the "Law" is not to go forth from Mecca. The Semitic race is not to lead the civilization of the world.

But returning again to the West, we discover among the Teutonic barbarians indications of such youthful energy and life, that we are at once persuaded that to them has been given the future. The Franks, who, with the aid of their confederates, withstood the advance of the Saracens upon the field of Tours, and saved Europe from subjection to the Koran, are the people that first attract our attention. It is among them that a man appears who makes the first grand attempt to restore the laws, the order, the inst.i.tutions of the ancient Romans. Charlemagne, their king, is the imposing figure that moves amidst all the events of the times; indeed, is the one who makes the events, and renders the period in which he lived an epoch in universal history. The story of this era affords the key to very much of the subsequent history of Europe.

HOW DUKE PEPIN BECAME KING OF THE FRANKS--Charles Martel, whose tremendous blows at Tours earned for him his significant surname (see p. 399), although the real head of the Frankish nation, was nominally only an officer of the Merovingian court. He died without ever having borne the t.i.tle of king, notwithstanding he had exercised all the authority of that office.

But Charles's son Pepin, called _le Bref_ (the Short), on account of his diminutive stature, aspired to the regal t.i.tle and honors. He resolved to depose his t.i.tular master, and to make himself king. Not deeming it wise, however, to do this without the sanction of the Pope, he sent an emba.s.sy to represent to him the state of affairs, and to solicit his advice. Mindful of recent favors that he had received at the hands of Pepin, the Pope gave his approval to the proposed scheme by replying that it seemed altogether reasonable that the one who was king in power should be king also in name. This was sufficient. Chilperic--such was the name of the Merovingian king--was straightway deposed, and placed in a monastery; while Pepin, whose own deeds together with those of his ill.u.s.trious father had done so much for the Frankish nation and for Christendom, was anointed and crowned king of the Franks (752), and thus became the first of the Carolingian line, the name of his ill.u.s.trious son Charlemagne giving name to the house.

BEGINNING OF THE TEMPORAL POWER OF THE POPES.--In the year 754 Pope Stephen II., who was troubled by the Lombards (see p. 374), besought Pepin's aid. Quick to return the favor which the head of the Church had rendered him in the establishment of his power as king, Pepin straightway crossed the Alps with a large army, expelled the Lombards from their recent conquests, and made a donation to the Pope of these captured cities and provinces (755).

This famous gift may be regarded as having laid the basis of the temporal power of the Popes; for though Pepin probably did not intend to convey to the Papal See the absolute sovereignty of the transferred lands, after a time the Popes claimed this, and finally came to exercise within the limits of the donated territory all the rights and powers of independent temporal rulers. So here we have the beginning of the celebrated _Papal States_, and of the story of the Popes as temporal princes.

ACCESSION OF CHARLEMAGNE.--Pepin died in the year 768, and his kingdom pa.s.sed into the hands of his two sons, Carloman and Charles; but within three years the death of Carloman and the free votes of the Franks conferred the entire kingdom upon Charles, better known as Charlemagne, or "Charles the Great."

HIS CAMPAIGNS.--Charlemagne's long reign of nearly half a century--he ruled forty-six years--was filled with military expeditions and conquests, by which he so extended the boundaries of his dominions, that at his death they embraced the larger part of Western Europe. He made fifty-two military campaigns, the chief of which were against the Lombards, the Saracens, and the Saxons. Of these we will speak briefly.

Among Charlemagne's first undertakings was a campaign against the Lombards, whose king, Desiderius, was troubling the Pope. Charlemagne wrested from Desiderius all his possessions, shut up the unfortunate king in a monastery, and placed on his own head the iron crown of the Lombards.

While in Italy he visited Rome, and, in return for the favor of the Pope, confirmed the donation of his father, Pepin (774).

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLEMAGNE. (Head of a bronze equestrian statuette.)]

In the ninth year of his reign Charlemagne gathered his warriors for a crusade against the Saracens in Spain. He crossed the Pyrenees, and succeeded in wresting from the Moslems all the northeastern corner of the peninsula. As he was leading his victorious bands back across the Pyrenees, the rear of his army under the lead of the renowned paladin Roland, while hemmed in by the walls of the Pa.s.s of Roncesvalles, was set upon by the wild mountaineers (the Gascons and Basques), and cut to pieces before Charlemagne could give relief. Of the details of this event no authentic account has been preserved; but long afterwards it formed the favorite theme of the tales and songs of the Troubadours of Southern France.

But by far the greater number of the campaigns of Charlemagne were directed against the pagan Saxons, who almost alone of the German tribes still retained their ancient idolatry. Thirty years and more of his reign were occupied in these wars across the Rhine. Reduced to submission again and again, as often did the Saxons rise in desperate revolt. The heroic Witikind was the "second Arminius" (see p. 308) who encouraged his countrymen to resist to the last the intruders upon their soil. Finally, Charlemagne, angered beyond measure by the obstinacy of the barbarians, caused 4500 prisoners in his hands to be ma.s.sacred in revenge for the contumacy of the nation. The Saxons at length yielded, and accepted Charlemagne as their sovereign, and Christianity as their religion.

RESTORATION OF THE EMPIRE IN THE WEST (800).--An event of seemingly little real moment, yet, in its influence upon succeeding affairs, of the very greatest importance, now claims our attention. Pope Leo III. having called upon Charlemagne for aid against a hostile faction at Rome, the king soon appeared in person at the capital, and punished summarily the disturbers of the peace of the Church. The grat.i.tude of Leo led him at this time to make a most signal return for the many services of the Frankish king. To understand his act a word of explanation is needed.

For a considerable time a variety of circ.u.mstances had been fostering a growing feeling of enmity between the Italians and the emperors at Constantinople. Disputes had arisen between the churches of the East and those of the West, and the Byzantine rulers had endeavored to compel the Italian churches to introduce certain changes and reforms in their worship, which had aroused the most determined opposition of the Roman bishops, who denounced the Eastern emperors as schismatics and heretics.

Furthermore, while persecuting the orthodox churches of the West, these unworthy emperors had allowed the Christian lands of the East to fall a prey to the Arabian infidels.

Just at this time, moreover, by the crime of the Empress Irene, who had deposed her son Constantine VI., and put out his eyes, that she might have his place, the Byzantine throne was vacant, in the estimation of the Italians, who contended that the crown of the Caesars could not be worn by a woman. Confessedly it was time that the Pope should exercise the power reposing in him as Head of the Church, and take away from the heretical and effeminate Greeks the Imperial crown, and bestow it upon some strong, orthodox, and worthy prince in the West.

Now, among all the Teutonic chiefs of Western Christendom, there was none who could dispute the claims to the honor with the king of the Franks, the representative of a most ill.u.s.trious house, and the strongest champion of the young Christianity of the West against her pagan foes. Accordingly, as Charlemagne was partic.i.p.ating in the festivities of Christmas Day in the Cathedral of St. Peter at Rome, the Pope approached the kneeling king,-- who declared afterwards that he was wholly ignorant of the designs of his friend,--and placing a crown of gold upon his head, proclaimed him emperor of the Romans, and the rightful and consecrated successor of Caesar Augustus and Constantine (800).

The intention of Pope Leo was, by a sort of reversal of the act of Constantine, to bring back from the East the seat of the Imperial court; but what he really accomplished was a restoration of the line of emperors in the West, which 324 years before had been ended by Odoacer, when he dethroned Romulus Augustus and sent the royal vestments to Constantinople (see p. 348). We say this was what he actually effected; for the Greeks of the East, disregarding wholly what the Roman people and the Pope had done, maintained their line of emperors just as though nothing had occurred in Italy. So now from this time on for centuries there were two emperors, one in the East, and another in the West, each claiming to be the rightful successor of Caesar Augustus. [Footnote: From this time on it will be proper for us to use the terms _Western_ Empire and _Eastern_ Empire.

These names should not, however, be employed before this time, for the two parts of the old Roman Empire were simply administrative divisions of a single empire; we may though, properly enough, speak of the Roman empire _in_ the West, and the Roman empire _in_ the East, or of the Western and Eastern emperors. See Bryce's _Holy Roman Empire_. The Eastern Empire was destroyed by the Turks in 1453; the line of Western Teutonic emperors was maintained until the present century, when it was ended by the act of Napoleon in the dismemberment of Germany (1806).]

CHARLEMAGNE'S DEATH; HIS WORK.--Charlemagne enjoyed the Imperial dignity only fourteen years, dying in 814. Within the cathedral at Aachen, in a tomb which he himself had built, the dead monarch was placed upon a throne, with his royal robes around him, his good sword by his side, and the Bible open on his lap. It seemed as though men could not believe that his reign was over; and it was not.

By the almost universal verdict of students of the mediaeval period, Charles the Great has been p.r.o.nounced the most imposing personage that appears between the fall of Rome and the fifteenth century. His greatness has erected an enduring monument for itself in his name, the one by which he is best known--Charlemagne.

Charlemagne must not be regarded as a warrior merely. His most noteworthy work was that which he effected as a reformer and statesman. He founded schools, reformed the laws, collected libraries, and extended to the Church a patronage worthy of a Constantine. In a word, he laid "the foundation of all that is n.o.ble and beautiful and useful in the history of the Middle Ages."

DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE; TREATY OF VERDUN (843).--Like the kingdom of Alexander, the mighty empire of Charlemagne fell to pieces soon after his death. "His sceptre was the bow of Ulysses which could not be drawn by any weaker hand." After a troublous period of dissension arid war, the empire was divided, by the important Treaty of Verdun, among Charlemagne's three grandchildren,--Charles, Lewis, and Lothair. To Charles was given France; to Lewis, Germany; and to Lothair, Italy and the valley of the Rhone, together with a narrow strip of land extending from Switzerland to the mouth of the Rhine. With these possessions of Lothair went also the Imperial t.i.tle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WESTERN EMPIRE As Divided at Verdun (843)]

This treaty is celebrated, not only because it was the first great treaty among the European states, but also on account of its marking the divergence from one another, and in some sense the origin, of three of the great nations of modern Europe,--of France, Germany, and Italy.

CONCLUSION.--After this dismemberment of the dominions of Charlemagne, the annals of the different branches of the Carolingian family become intricate, wearisome, and uninstructive. A fate as dark and woeful as that which, according to Grecian story, overhung the royal house of Thebes, seemed to brood over the house of Charlemagne. In all its different lines a strange and adverse destiny awaited the lineage of the great king. The tenth century witnessed the extinction of the family.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

THE NORTHMEN.

THE PEOPLE.--Northmen, Nors.e.m.e.n, Scandinavians, are different names applied in a general way to the early inhabitants of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. These people formed the northern branch of the Teutonic family. We cannot be certain when they took possession of the northern peninsulas, but it is probable that they had entered those countries long before Caesar invaded Gaul.

THE NORTHMEN AS PIRATES AND COLONIZERS.--For the first eight centuries of our era the Nors.e.m.e.n are hidden from our view in their remote northern home; but with the opening of the ninth century their black piratical crafts are to be seen creeping along all the coasts of Germany, Gaul, and the British Isles, and even venturing far up their inlets and creeks.

Every summer these dreaded sea-rovers made swift descents upon the exposed sh.o.r.es of these countries, plundering, burning, murdering; then upon the approach of the stormy season, they returned to winter in the sheltered fiords of the Scandinavian peninsula. After a time the bold corsairs began to winter in the lands they had harried during the summer; and soon all the sh.o.r.es of the countries visited were dotted with their stations or settlements.

These marauding expeditions and colonizing enterprises of the Northmen did not cease until the eleventh century was far advanced. The consequences of this wonderful outpouring of the Scandinavian peoples were so important and lasting that the movement has well been compared to the great migration of their German kinsmen in the fifth and sixth centuries. Europe is a second time inundated by the Teutonic barbarians.

The most noteworthy characteristic of these Northmen was the readiness with which they laid aside their own manners, habits, ideas, and inst.i.tutions, and adopted those of the country in which they established themselves. "In Russia they became Russians; in France, Frenchmen; in England, Englishmen."

COLONIZATION OF ICELAND AND GREENLAND.--Iceland was settled by the Northmen in the ninth century, [Footnote: Iceland became the literary centre of the Scandinavian world. There grew up here a cla.s.s of scalds, or bards, who, before the introduction of writing, preserved and transmitted orally the sagas, or legends, of the Northern races. About the twelfth century these poems and legends were gathered into collections known as the Elder, or poetic, Edda, and the Younger, or prose, Edda. These are among the most interesting and important of the literary memorials that we possess of the early Teutonic peoples. They reflect faithfully the beliefs, manners, and customs of the Nors.e.m.e.n, and the wild, adventurous spirit of their Sea-Kings.] and about a century later Greenland was discovered and colonized. In 1874 the Icelanders celebrated the thousandth anniversary of the settlement of their island, an event very like our Centennial of 1876.

America was reached by the Northmen as early as the beginning of the eleventh century: the Vineland of their traditions was possibly some part of the New England coast. It is believed that these first visitors to the continent made settlements in this new land; but no certain remains of these exist.

THE NORs.e.m.e.n IN RUSSIA.--While the Norwegians were sailing boldly out into the Atlantic and taking possession of the isles and coasts of the western seas, the Swedes were pushing their crafts across the Baltic and troubling the Slavonian tribes that dwelt upon the eastern sh.o.r.e of that sea. Either by right of conquest or through the invitation of the contentious Slavonian clans, the renowned Scandinavian chieftain Ruric acquired, in the year 862, kingly dignity, and became the founder of the first royal line of Russia, the successive kings of which family gradually consolidated the monarchy which was destined to become one of the foremost powers of Europe.

THE DANISH CONQUEST OF ENGLAND.--The Danes began to make descents upon the English coast about the beginning of the ninth century. These sea-rovers spread the greatest terror through the island; for they were not content with plunder, but being pagans, they took special delight in burning the churches and monasteries of the now Christian Anglo-Saxons, or English, as we shall hereafter call them. After a time the Danes began to make permanent settlements in the land. The wretched English were subjected to exactly the same treatment that they had inflicted upon the Celts. Much need had they to pray the pet.i.tion of the Litany of those days, "From the fury of the Northmen, Good Lord, deliver us." Just when it began to look as though they would be entirely annihilated or driven from the island by the barbarous intruders, the ill.u.s.trious Alfred (871-901) came to the throne of Wess.e.x.

For six years the youthful king fought heroically at the head of his brave thanes; but each succeeding year the possessions of the English grew smaller, and finally Alfred and his few remaining followers were driven to take refuge in the woods and mora.s.ses.

After a time, however, the affairs of the English began to brighten. The Danes were overpowered, and though allowed to hold the northeastern half of the land, still they were forced nominally to acknowledge the authority of the English king.