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CHAP.

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under the tutelage of a duke and a bishop. The duke was not Pepin, that Austrasian magnate being kept with the king's court at Clichy. Dagobert was the first and last of the Merovingians who fully asserted and enjoyed regal power over the whole land of France. Gascons and Bretons both acknowledged his sovereignty; and even the Austrasian nobles humbled their pretensions.

But at his death Neustria and Austrasia again fell asunder; and the Merovingian princes showing no spirit, power in each kingdom became concentrated in the Major Domus. The office, in Austrasia, was seized by Grimoald and Pepin, the chief family of the territorial noblesse, whilst in Neustria the long reign of the functionary class allowed them to preserve power with the support of the clergy and the people. The first of these mayors conciliated the nobles by restoring to them or their progeny the lands which Dagobert had claimed and united to his fisc. But in time a fierce and uncompromising representative of popular interests and Roman laws, Ebroin, assumed power in Neustria, and found a natural antagonist in a Pepin, who represented German ideas and traditions, and headed the aristocratic party in Austrasia.

In 680, East and West France, thus antagonistic in tendency and principle, and marshalled against each other, fought a furious battle at Loixi, near Laon, in which the Austrasians were defeated, and after which Martin, the brother of Pepin, was slain by Ebroin. But Ebroin himself perished subsequently, by the hand of an assassin ; and the Austrasians had breathing-time to recover from their defeat. The rival principles were thus strengthened in the two countries. The family of

Pepin and its chief, however wealthy and powerful, took no measure, and promulgated no decree, without summoning the Franks to council, consulting them, and acting in their name. Ebroin, on the contrary, forbade the Neustrian and Burgundian nobles, under heavy

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penalties, from even presenting themselves at the king's CHAP. residence or palace. In 687 the Austrasians, having recovered from their defeat, marched under Pepin to try once more the chance of war with Neustria. The armies met at the villa of Testri, near St. Quentin. The Neustrians, though more numerous, were defeated; and Pepin, pursuing the king, took him captive in Paris.

The reign of the Merovingians here virtually closed, although their names were affixed to charters, and although they themselves were brought in a chariot drawn by oxen to the annual meetings of the Franks. Pepin, the conqueror of Testri, inherited, by his mother Begga, the wealth and renown of the old Austrasian mayors of the first house of Pepin. His father was the son of St. Arnulph, Bishop of Metz, who had been bred in the school of Brunehild, and who had governed several provinces for her. Pepin of Heristal thus inherited the wealth and dignity of the old Austrasian noble, with the wisdom of the educated and functionary class. He was also strongly impressed with religious ideas by his mother, and inspired with that ardent enmity to paganism which distinguished him. Neustria once subdued, the quarter of a century during which Pepin subsequently reigned was spent by him in yearly expeditions over the Rhine, chiefly against the Frisons and the Alemans. Radbod the Frison gave most trouble, and required all Pepin's efforts during a long reign to reduce.

The important result was less, perhaps, the conquest of the regions north of the Rhine, than the training of the eastern Franks to a regular spring meeting in arms, followed by a military expedition. During the reign of Pepin of Heristal, these expeditions were almost exclusively directed beyond the Rhine. For he ruled Neustria with an easy yoke, leaving its churchmen and its Major Domus liberty to govern after their fashion. Beyond the Loire, Pepin never marched. He had not the

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ambition to reconquer the old empire of Clovis; and Aquitaine under Eudes became almost independent at this epoch.

The German principle, and the cause of an aristocracy free and independent, was confined to Austrasia, which had at the same time to defend itself against the Roman and ecclesiastical system prevailing in west and south, and against the other extreme of German barbarism and paganism beyond the Rhine. Yet it was in this narrow, this menaced and semicivilised region of Eastern France, that were then concentrated the hopes of European independence, and the germs of a European future.

In Pepin's reign, during the first years of the eighth century, the Saracens, who had overrun Africa, poured over the Straits into Spain. The Romanised Goths were unable to offer any effectual resistance; and the Arab inundation took but a few years, from its inpouring on the south, till it rose like a tide and swept over the Pyrenees. On their first invasion of Gaul, the Saracens received a severe check from Eudes at the head of his Aquitans; but it was manifest that, when the lieutenants of the Khalif came in force, the military organisation of the south, emasculated by civic habits and the prevalence of purely ecclesiastical ideas, could offer no effectual resistance to the Moslem armies.

What Europe and the age required, was a hero and a genius at the head of German France. Both were found in Charles Martel, son of Pepin of Heristal by a pagan mother, but set aside and kept in captivity, as averse to the ecclesiastical tendencies of Pepin. The son whom that great mayor had destined to be his successor was an infant. The Neustrians took advantage of his nonage to overrun Austrasia to the Rhine, the Frisons and Saxons, by agreement, advancing to the opposite bank, and pillaging Cologne. In the confusion young Charles escaped from captivity, rallied the soldiers of his father, first surprised the Neustrians in the Ardennes, depriving

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them of their booty, and at a later period, in 717, fought CHAP. with them a battle at Vincy, near Cambray. Hilperic the Neustrian king, and Ragenfried his mayor, came, says the annalist of Metz, "with an innumerable but mixed and vulgar army, Charles with a more disciplined and veteran force." The Neustrians were defeated. Their king and major domus had recourse for aid to Eudes of Aquitaine; and this duke answered the call in the following year. But when Charles Martel appeared, the Aquitans fled, and were pursued by him to Orleans. He did not then find it necessary to pass the Loire, Eudes making submission and giving up the Neustrian king.

Charles Martel profited by his victory to extend, to the countries on the Seine and the Loire, that system of land-tenure and military service which had grown up towards the Rhine. The condition and habits of the Franks had much changed from what they had been two hundred years previous, under Clovis. Every Frank was then a soldier, combating on foot, needing no followers, and scorning Gallic or Roman auxiliaries. But in two hundred years an aristocracy had grown up, consisting of landed proprietors, who came to council and proceeded to war on horseback, each with a certain retinue. This aristocracy, as it rose, was always at strife with the sovereigns of Roman pretensions, from Brunehild to Dagobert. They ended by remaining masters, and finding the active pretensions of royalty incompatible with their dignity and rights, they maintained a major domus at the head of affairs, whom they treated and considered as the first of their class. Austrasia came to form a kind of aristocratic republic. Its dukes, or majores domus, however, realised in their own families those hereditary rights which the Austrasian aristocracy claimed as their property, and by intermarriage, as well as by the appropriation of crown and church lands, becoming immediate lords of vast domains,

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CHAP. let them out in benefices to such valiant soldiers, as flocked to them especially from beyond the Rhine. These beneficiaries formed the army of the first Austrasian mayors; and to swell it to a national or a provincial army they courted the aristocracy, called them to council, and from the council field marched with them to war. These circumstances soon made princes of the Pepins and the Charles; Teutonic, however, not Roman princes, ruling with the consent of the nobles and the support of the people, not maintaining their individual power by exciting the antagonism of both.

In Neustria the social condition was different. Civic organisation and supremacy there prevailed. The count, of regal nomination, was the chief local authority. And he summoned, not yearly, but only upon great occasions, the beneficiaries or holders of fisc lands, together with the civic population, to arms. Hence the Neustrian forces are styled a rabble, whilst the Austrasians already assume the aspect of a body of knights. The victories of Charles Martel placed at his disposal large tracts of crown, as well as confiscated land. To these he unscrupulously added the greater portion of the church property, which he divided amongst his German followers, as military fiefs. Thus did Charles Martel form and feed that great cavalry army, with which a few years later, in 732, he marched to the encounter of the Saracens at Poictiers, and with which he rode down their light squadrons, freeing France gallantly and effectually from the dangers of Mussulman conquest.

Aquitaine and the south of France thus passed under Frank domination, and by the best of titles, its inability to defend itself, whilst the Frank proved equal to the task. The cities and priesthood of the south, however, did not like the supremacy of Charles Martel. Some of them would have even preferred the Arabs. They opposed their walls, and in some instances their fortifications, to the Austrasian cavalry. Charles avenged

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