France of this period dies et ma i med e North of that river we find the Frie & Ame this time pretty considerator Home the true German Frank of Areen Gaul had yielded to Fazen period it is impossible to apt too que com lieve that before the time differ widely from their mo shall see presently that by the mol called French, hai : The Carina Smas ning from the election of But practically it may be armed meg i de series of Austrian myte in first Charies were 28 a the Pippin and the Chane was THE when they mi sarank as m dress, the mater, and que sin que in Under the "kings of the went Neustria were little more t01: monarch. The zenith of the Frat det sowas wie un of Charles the Great Orne og si si tra ventures to do, by nie zano Tension tom we may use a nomenat via vi Charles of history from the Crude of the Romane, was weting år more that i or of Gaul; he was the Gaul, all that was then Germany L conquered different parts of Gaul in widely different senses and degrees. In northern Gaul, to a certain extent, they settled. Orleans, Paris, Soissons, and Metz became the seats of Frank ish kingdoms; but in the southern provinces of Aquitaine and Burgundy they hardly settled at all. There other Teutonie conquerors had been before them. The Visigoth reigned at Toulouse, and the Burgundian had given his name to the land between the Rhone and the Alps. Both were in a certain sense conquered. The orthodox zeal of the newly-convertedMerwing formed a good pretext for expelling the Arian out of Gaul. The Gothic monarchy had to retire beyond the Pyrenees, and the Burgundian kingdom, for a while, "censed to exist." But the conquest was at most a political one. Southern Gaul was brought into a subjection more or less complete to the Frankish kings, but it never really became part of the true Frankish territory. There certainly was no permanent Frankish population south of the Loire, and, as the Merovingian dynasty declined, Aquitaine again became to all intents and purposes an independent state. Under Pippin we find a Duke of Aqui taine who has to be conquered just as much as any prince of Lombardy or Saxony. In truth, to this day Aquitaine and France proper have absolutely nothing in common, except the old Roman element and the results of their political union during the last 400 years. The Teutonic element is different, and, in a large district at least, the aboriginal element is dif ferent also. The Frenchman is formed by the infusion of the Frank upon the Celt, the Gascon by the infusion of the Goth upon the Basque. Both speak tongues derived from that of Rome, but the difference passes the limits of mere dialecti cal diversity. The arrogance of modern Paris talks, indeed, of the "bad French" of Aquitaine and Provence. In its ignorant pride, it can see only a patois of itself in a tongue which is as distinct as that of Spain or Italy, and which was a finished and polished speech, the speech of the refined courts of Poitiers and Toulouse, while northern France had still only an unfinished and unwritten jargon. "France," then, if we are to use the name to express the: dominions of the Kings of the Franks of the house of Clovis, in no way answers either to ancient Gaul or to the modern French Empire. Merovingian France consisted of northern Gaul and central Germany. Southern Gaul was overrun rather than really conquered; and northern Italy was overrun also. For a short period, during the wars of the sixth century, Frankish conquerors appeared south of the Alps on an errand which, for aught we know, may afford a full precedent for the Italian campaigns of Francis I, or for those of either Napoleon. But the real France of this period does not reach southward of the Loire. North of that river we find the Frank of Neustria, probably by this time pretty considerably Romanised, and to the east of him the true German Frank of Austrasia. How far the Franks of Gaul had yielded to Roman influences during the Merovingian period it is impossible to say; but every thing leads us to believe that before the time of Pippin they must have begun to differ widely from their uncorrupted Austrasian brethren. We shall see presently that, by the middle of the ninth century, a Romance speech, no longer Latin, but as yet hardly to be called French, had grown up in Frankish Gaul. Now the influences of the previous century and a half were altogether in a Teutonic direction; a Romance dialect could hardly have lived on through the domination of the Austrasian mayors and kings, unless it had been pretty firmly established before the close of the Merovingian rule. " The Carolingian dynasty of course dates its formal beginning from the election of Pippin as King of the Franks in 752. But practically it may be carried back to the beginning of the series of Austrasian mayors in 681. The first Pippin and the first Charles were as much really sovereigns of the Franks as the Pippin and the Charles who were invested with the royal title. And this transfer of power to the house of Pippin was practically nearly equivalent to a second Teutonic conquest. Whatever the Merwings and their Gaulish subjects may have been, there is no doubt as to the true Teutonic character of the whole dynasty of the Karlings. They were raised to power by the swords of the Teutonic Austrasians; the cradle of their race was the Teutonic Heerstall; their favourite seats of royalty were the Teutonic Ingelheim and Aachen; as Mayors of the Palace, as Kings of the Franks, as Roman Cæsars, nay even when they had shrunk up into the petty kings of the rock of Laon, they firmly adhered, down to their latest days, to the dress, the manners, and the tongue of their Teutonic fathers. Under the "kings of the second race," Aquitaine and even Neustria were little more than subject provinces of a German monarch. The zenith of the Frankish power was attained in the reign of Charles the Great. One longs to call him, as Mr. Godwin ventures to do, by his real Teutonic name of Karl; but at least we may use a nomenclature which will distinguish the German Charles of history from the Gallic Charlemagne of romance. Charles, King of the Franks, King of the Lombards, Patrician of the Romans, was something far more than a king of France or of Gaul; he was the lord of Western Christendom. All Gaul, all that was then Germany, were his; Aquitaine, Saxony, Bavaria, Lombardy, were gathered in as conquered provinces the Slave, the Avar, the Northman, became subjects or tributaries; the Commander of the Faithful himself corresponded on equal and friendly terms with the mightiest of the followers of the Cross. At last a dignity fell to the lot of the triumphant Frank to which no barbarian of the West had as yet ventured to aspire. Goths and Herulans had long before made and unmade the Western Cæsars; Gothic chiefs had reigned in Italy with the royal title; but the diadem and the sceptre of Augus tus had as yet been worn by no Teutonic brow and grasped by no Teutonic hand. The Old Rome had stooped to become a provincial dependency of the New; but it had never submitted to the permanent sway of a barbarian. Theodoric had reigned, a Gothic king, indeed, in fact, but an imperial lieutenant in theory; Alboin and Liudprand had appeared as open enemies, but they had never passed the gates of the Eternal City; Charles himself, his father, and his grandfather, had exercised under humbler names the full imperial power: but the Patrician was only the republican magistrate of the Roman commonwealth, or the vicegerent of the Eastern Cæsar. By that Cæsar's regnal years charters still were dated, and his image and superscription were still impressed on a coinage from which no tax or tribute ever reached him. At last the moment came when the Old Rome was again to assert her coequality with her younger sister, and to affirm that she had never forfeited her right to nominate one at least of the masters of the world. Rome once more chose her own Cæsar, but that Cæsar was not of Roman or Italian blood; the golden crown at last rested on the open brow of the lordly German, and the pontiff and people of Rome proclaimed the imperial style of "Charles Augustus, crowned by God, the great and pacific Emperor of the Romans." Not that that Augustus gained thereby an inch or particle of territory or power which had not already belonged to the simple Frankish king. But in the eyes of a large portion of his subjects his rule was thereby at once changed from a dominion of force into a dominion of law; the elected and consecrated Emperor became, in the eyes of all southern Europe, a different being from the mere barbaric conqueror; we might almost say that the world recognised the Teuton as its chosen and natural ruler, when for the first time a man of Teutonic blood was raised to the highest pinnacle of earthly greatness. It shows the true greatness of Charles's mind that his head was not in the least turned by a splendour which might have dazzled the imagination of any mortal. We, who see the imperial title employed at random to decorate alike every decaying tyranny and every successful usurpation, can hardly realise the magic which then, and for centuries after, attached to the names of Cæsar and Augustus. We are familiar with the sham Cæsars of Vienna and St. Petersburg, with the mushroom potentates of France, Brazil, and Hayti, and we do not scruple to extend the imperial name to the barbaric princes of China and Morocco. But to the imagination of the early middle ages, the imperial name was something almost sacred and incommunicable; the Roman Emperor shone side by side with the Roman Pontiff as the sun and moon of the Christian firmament; he was the embodiment of perma nent and written law, and of the whole civilisation of that elder world before whose relics the conquering Teuton still bent in homage. But Charles, though crowned in the Eternal City by the common father of Christendom, still remained, Imperator and Augustus as he was, the same simple hearty German as of old. Even Alexander, on the throne of the Great King, could not wholly endure the trial; he partly exchanged the spirit of the chosen king of Macedon and chief of Greece for the arbitrary rule of a Persian despot. But Charles was in no way spoiled or changed by the almost superhuman glory from which he seems himself to have shrunk. He still retained his German dress, his German speech, his German habits; nor did he ever transfer the pomp, the slavery, the almost idolatrous incense of the court of his Byzantine colleague into the free Teutonic air of Aachen and of Ingelheim. Those were indeed days of glory for the ancient Frank; but it is a glory in which the modern Frenchman can claim no share. Celtic Parisian France had as yet no being. Its language was as yet the unformed patois of a conquered province. Paris was a provincial town which the lord of Rome and Aachen once visited in the course of a long progress amongst a string of its lowly fellows. Gaul, at least its Celtic portions, was but seldom honoured by the presence of its German master, and contributed but little to the strength of his German armies. The native speech of Charles was the old Teutonic; Latin, the literary tongue of the whole West, and still the native speech of many provinces, he spoke fluently as an acquired language; Greek, the other universal and imperial tongue, he understood when spoken, but could not speak it himself with ease. French he could neither speak nor understand; for, alas, as yet no French language could be said to exist; the King of the Franks was about as likely to express himself in the dialect of a Neustrian Celt as the Emperor of the French is now to indite his pam phlets in Basque, Walloon, or Bas-Breton. The valley of the Loire, the chosen home of the Valois, the valley of the Seine, the chosen home of the Bourbon, had little charms for the Austrasian Frank, whose heart, amid Roman pomps and Aquitanian |