built the city of Oviedo. But he was as cruel as he was brave, and punishing those with death who had refused to follow him, he stabbed one of his brothers with his own hand. He was himself assassinated soon afterwards. Alphonso, his son, having gained a brilliant victory over the Moors near Burgos, received the crown on the field of battle, 791. This monarch, surnamed the Chaste, again defeated the Arabs at Lugo, fortified Braga, and plundered Lisbon. He founded the celebrated church Compostella, in which the relics of St. James the Great were said to be preserved.

The conquests in Spain of the Moors (so called from Mauritania, whence they embarked for the Peninsula) produced many salutary effects in Europe. The taste for letters rapidly spread from the banks of the Euphrates to the Tagus. The schools of Cordova, in which were cultivated many branches of science unknown to the rest of Europe, became the great resort of the learned Christians of the West. The celebrated Gerbert, afterwards Pope Sylvester II., was one of the first who studied in Spain. Agriculture, navigation, and manufactures are greatly indebted to the Arabs: their carpets, gold and silver embroideries, silks, steel-work, and leather, were brought at an early period to a high degree of perfection; and by their means the arithmetical numerals, cotton-paper, and gunpowder were introduced into Europe.

ITALY.

ORIGIN OF THE PONTIFICAL SOVEREIGNTY.-The earlier part of Luitprand's reign was occupied in reforming the abuses of the Lombard states, and checking the encroachments of the great vassals of the crown; the latter, and far more important part, from its influence on posterity, was passed in religious quarrels, which gave rise to the temporal power of the popes, and entirely destroyed the imperial supremacy in Italy. Rome, like the Greek cities in the peninsula, was governed by dukes subordinate to the Exarch of Ravenna; but the pontiffs, the spiritual masters of the ancient capital, moderated by the influence of their character the despotism of the imperial officers. An edict of Leo the Iconoclast changed this state of affairs, and disturbed the West, as it had already embroiled the East. Gregory II. protested against the decree, and all the Greeks in Italy, participating in his indignation, expelled their dukes. The inhabitants of Ravenna murdered the Exarch Paul and opened their gates to Luitprand, who seized on the Pen tapolis. At the same time, Rome formed itself into a republic, and confided the supreme magistrative authority of the new state to its bishop, whose temporal power extended from Viterbo to Terracina, and from Narni to the mouth of the Tiber. Gregory II., whose fears were excited by the Lombard possession of the exarchate, entered into a secret negotiation with the newly-formed commonwealth of Venice, which lent its fleet to Eutychius, who, after he had expelled the Lom bards from his dominions, formed a treaty with them for the recovery of Rome, 729. Gregory III. ascended the papal chair, 731, without soliciting the permission of the emperor, and issued an anathema against the Iconoclasts. The irritated Leo sent a powerful fleet against him, but it was scattered and destroyed by a tempest in the Adriatic; after which event Rome had nothing more to fear from the Byzantine rulers. The elements of discord, which seemed preparing new misfortunes for Italy, disappeared with the death of the pope and of the eastern monarch, who both descended to the tomb in the same year, 741, whither Luite prand soon followed them.

END OF THE LOmbard Kingdom.-The deposition of Hildebrand, the son of Luitprand, and the abdication of Ratchis who retired to Mount Cassino, raised to the throne Astolphus. He completed the conquest of the exarchate, 752, and summoned Rome to acknowledge him as her lawful sovereign. The citizens hesitated, temporized, and finally implored the assistance of the Franks, 754. Pepin, their king, after having employed his mediation in vain, raised an army and crossed the Alps. The Lombards were defeated, and the conquered exarchate was bestowed upon the pope, Stephen III., Pepin being rewarded with the title of Patrician. For twenty years their kingdom continued sinking, while the prudence and craft of Adrian I., aided by the genius of CHARLEMAGNE, were preparing to overwhelm their expiring monarchy. Desiderius, the last of the Lombard sovereigns, was betrayed into the hands of the Franks, 774, and ended his life in the retirement of the cloister. Charles assumed the Iron Crown and the title of King of the Lombards. Paul Warnefrid, the chancellor of Desiderius, for his frequent conspiracies to restore the independence of his country, was condemned to lose his eyes and hands, when Charlemagne, imitating the generosity of Cæsar, exclaimed, "Where shall we find hands able to write history as these have done!" The authority of the Frank monarch extended as far as the Garigliano; while the country to the south acknowledged the sovereignty of the dukes of Benevento.

FRANCE.

BATTLE OF TOUrs, a. d. 732.-CHARLES MARTEL (the Hammer), son of Pepin, was mayor of the palace in Ostrasia, having succeeded his father in 714. This great man restored and supported the dignity of the throne, successively crushed by his warlike activity the German and Gallic rebels, and saved Europe from the hands of the Saracens. These enthusiasts having conquered Africa, and crossed the Straits, had overrun Spain, and were already threatening the destruction of France, when they were opposed by Martel, between Tours and Poitiers, 732. The conflict is reported to have lasted seven days, and the Arabs fled, leaving 300,000 of their number dead on the field. "The victory of Charles," says Hallam, "has immortalized his name, and may justly be reckoned among those few battles of which a contrary event would have essentially varied the drama of the world in all its subsequent scenes-with Marathon, Arbela, the Metaurus, Chalons, and Leipsic." The victor endeavoured to complete his triumph by driving the Saracens beyond the Pyrenees, and was so far successful that they were able to retain only the towns of Narbonne, Agde, Maguelone, and Beziers. At the death of Thierry IV. in 737, the throne was left vacant, but Charles, under the title of Duke of the Franks, continued for the remainder of his life to exercise all the functions of sovereignty.

CARLOVINGIANS.-On the death of Charles Martel in 741, the Frank dominions were divided amongst his sons. Pepin had Neustria, Burgundy, and Provence; Carloman received Ostrasia; while Grypho, the third son, obtaining only a trifling share in this partition, conspired with some of the turbulent dukes-to repress whom the title and authority of a king was found to be necessary. Childeric III. was placed on the throne in 742: Ostrasia, however, recognised no superior but Carloman,

who governed as an independent chief. It was this prince who summoned the council of Liptines in 743, when the Christian era was introduced into France. In 746, he retired into a monastery at Cassino, leaving to Pepin his portion of the paternal heritage. Grypho, again irritated at his exclusion, raised the German provinces in his behalf, but was defeated by his eldest brother, who remained sole master of the empire. When the suffrages of the nation, imperfectly represented by the acclamations of the Camp de Mars, had conferred the regal authority on Pepin, it was confirmed by the authority of the church, in the person of Pope Zachary, 752. A grand revolution was now completed, which reunited into one system all the fragments of the Germanic nation dispersed over the continent of Europe, and allied indissolubly the conquering race with the Roman population. The last descendant of Clovis, Childeric III., was deposed, and the Merovingian dynasty was brought to an end after existing 270 years.*

PEPIN, the first king of the Carlovingian dynasty, A. D. 752, taught by experience and by the faults of his predecessors, had learnt the necessity of strengthening the kingly power, and of elevating by every means this safeguard of public tranquillity. He began by causing his person to be consecrated by Boniface of Mentz, and completed his designs by the entire conquest of Gaul. Septimania was reduced in 759, and Aquitaine in 768. The country now regaining tranquillity, the national assemblies were regularly held, and no endeavours were spared to remedy the grievances of the preceding reigns. Desirous of preserving the crown in his family, and procuring the favour of the church, he readily agreed to the prayer of Stephen III., and not only rescued him from his Lombard enemies, but added the conquered exarchate of Ravenna and Pentapolis to the patrimony of St. Peter.

CHARLEMAGNE, A. D. 768.—In a general assembly of the chiefs of the nation, the inheritance of Pepin was divided between his two sons: Charles had Neustria and Aquitaine; Carloman, Ostrasia and Burgundy. The two brothers, from the very first, regarded each other with jealousy; but the death of the latter in 771 prevented the consummation of a rivalry that would have weakened both kingdoms. The entire Frank monarchy was now seized upon by the survivor, to the prejudice of his nephews, who, with their widowed mother, took refuge at the court of Desiderius the Lombard, whose generous reception of Queen Geberge was one cause of the Italian war.

"Charlemagne," says Sismondi, "claimed as a saint by the Church; by the French as their greatest king; by the Germans as a fellowcountryman; by the Italians as their emperor; is placed, in a measure, at the head of all modern histories." When the death of his brother had re-established the unity of the Franks, Charles found himself in possession of a power superior to that of any of his predecessors. He began a series of expeditions which had for their object the protection of his kingdom against the invasions of the German tribes on the north, and of the Saracens on the south. He subjugated the Lombard kingdom, 774, and next carried his victorious arms against the Saxons, who,

*The family of Clovis descended to a private station, and it is conjectured that the posterity of the founder of the French monarchy is represented by the noble house of Montesquieu.

often vanquished by the Franks but always restless under their yoke, had promised Pepin to receive missionaries into their country. The imprudent menaces of St. Libwin having irritated them against Christianity, they burnt the church of Deventer in Holland, which act of violence served as the pretext for hostilities that, with only some interruptions, endured thirty years. This war is divided into three periods, namely, from 772 to 777; from 778 to 785, terminated by the peace of Horxheim; and from 792 to 803. The ascendency was at length achieved by means which shock every feeling of humanity.* At Verden, in 782, he caused 4500 prisoners to be massacred in cold blood. Witikind, the second Arminius of Germany, the chief of the warlike Saxons, embraced the gospel, and acknowledged the sovereignty of Charlemagne, after which his name disappears from history.

While engaged in the Saxon war, Charles had promised to restore certain Spanish emirs whom the Caliph Abdalrahman had deposed from their governments. Crossing the Pyrenees, he received the doubtful submission of the people of Biscay and Navarre, destroyed Pampeluna, but suffered defeat before Saragossa. Returning into Gaul, a confederate army of Basques, Saracens, and Asturians attacked him in the valley of Roncesvalles, when his rear-guard was cut in pieces to a man. In this fatal day the hero lost his most illustrious companions: Egghiard, his seneschal; Anselm, warden of the palace; and the famous Roland, warden of the frontier of Bretagne, whom the ties of glory even more than those of blood attached to the person of the monarch.t

Charlemagne, having visited Rome in order to quell a tumult which had been excited against Pope Leo III. by the nephews of that pontiff's predecessor, was consecrated Emperor of the Romans by the grateful occupant of the papal chair, A. D. 800. His territorial possessions warranted him in claiming the additional title of Emperor of the West. All France, with the exception of Brittany, acknowledged his power; beyond the Pyrenees, the Spanish march, comprising Rousillon and Catalonia, Navarre and Aragon, was subject to his jurisdiction; while in Germany, a line drawn from the Elbe through Magdeburg and Passau would have marked his eastern frontier. Many other nations were his tributaries: indeed, all that part of Europe which lies between the Ebro and the Elbe, the frontiers of modern Naples and the Eyder, submitted to his sway.

The ceremony, which conferred on Charlemagne the imperial title, raised him in the general opinion far above the kingly power, and invested him with absolute dominion. It broke the last and feeble links which still united Rome and Constantinople, and introduced new relations between the imperial courts. It has been supposed that Leo III. meditated the chimerical design of reuniting the two empires by the

*Among the severities of Charlemagne was the institution of the Secret Tribunal of Westphalia, a sort of inquisition appointed to prevent the apostasy and rebellion of the Saxons. This terrible system of judicial administration lasted till 1650, when the great elector, Frederick William, shocked at its enormities, effected its formal abolition.-See Coxe's Letter on the Secret Tribunal of Westphalia.

†The exploits of Roland, presented to the imagination of the warriors of the middle ages by the military song that bears his name, and which led the Normans to victory at Hastings, were above all rendered popular by the romantic history of Charlemagne and Roland, ascribed to Turpin, archbishop of Rheims, A. D. 773; but which bears internal evidence of having been composed about the time of the First Crusade, in the eleventh century.

The Frank

two churches by the marriage of Charles with the Empress Irene, who had just succeeded her son on the Byzantine throne. monarch expired in 814.

Observations on the Life of Charlemagne.

I. Political life.--Independently of those conquests by which Charlemagne acquired two-thirds of the Roman empire, he is worthy of our notice as a great legislative reformer. Two national assemblies (placita) were held annually, to which all the clergy and laity repaired to enact such laws as the public weal required. His cares extended alike over the most distant as the nearest parts of his vast empire, and by his public acts he endeavoured to promote the happiness of his people. This led him to reform the coinage; to establish the legal divisions of money; to repair old and construct new roads; to found schools; to collect libraries; to build bridges; and to facilitate commerce by uniting the ocean with the Black Sea, by cutting a canal from the Rhine to the Danube. The Capitularies of Charlemagne, first collected in 827, prove that he was not unacquainted with the rights of property, and what was consistent with the liberty of the subject. All weighty matters concerning life or goods were tried before a kind of jury, with an appeal to the sovereign. Special judges (missi regii) were also appointed to hold assizes from place to place, to inquire into the administration of justice, enforce its execution, and expel those who misconducted themselves in their various judicial offices.

II. His literary life.- His acquirements were probably not very great, as, until the age of thirty-two, he was ignorant of the first elements of science. It is doubtful if he could write; and Mabillon says, "he had a mark to himself, like an honest, plain-dealing man." He spoke several languages, and daily received lessons from eminent teachers in the seven liberal arts.* He gathered about him the learned of every country; founded an academy in which he took the name of David, and the accomplished Englishman Alcuin, that of Horace.

III. His private life exhibits the characteristics of a barbarian and a conqueror. He was addicted to the pleasures of the chase, and regardless of human life; but he was affable in conversation, temperate in his repasts, and simple in his dress. A hundred and twenty guards watched every night around his bed, each holding in the one hand a drawn sword, and in the other a burning torch. Mr. Hallam thus sums up his character: "He stands alone like a beacon upon a waste, or a rock in the broad ocean. His reign affords a solitary resting-place between two long periods of turbulence and ignominy, deriving the advantages of contrast both from those of the preceding dynasty, and of a posterity for whom he had formed an empire which they were unworthy and unequal to maintain."

THE WORLD IN THE TIME OF CHARLEMAGNE.

End of the Eighth Century.

WESTERN EMPIRE.

FRANCE. Charlemagne possessed nearly all France, great part of Germany, the half of Italy, part of Spain, and was the arbiter of the remainder of the West. The language of the Franks was still Teutonic, and continued so until the middle of the ninth century.

EASTERN EMPIRE.

Irene, stained with the blood of her son, reigned at Constantinople, and administered justice from the Bosphorus to the Adriatic. Tottering on a throne

* The sciences had long been divided into two parts, the trivium and quadrivium; the first comprehending grammar (i. e philology), logic, and rhetoric; the second, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. Few persons mastered the latter four, and to be perfect in the three former was rare.