10. The Last Carlovingian Kings
CHAPTER X. The Last Carlovingian Kings (843-987)
Charles, who was known as Charles the Bald, was the first king who ruled over France alone: we saw that the old Merovingian kings were rulers over part only of the country; and Pepin, Charlemagne, and Louis le Débonnaire were rulers over other countries as well.
From the time of Louis le Débonnaire France and Germany have been completely different countries, and have never had the same ruler. Charles had no other country besides France to govern, and there was no other king beside him in France; but yet he ought not to be considered as a French king, for he had not power over the whole country. Three large provinces refused to obey him, the great lords did what they pleased without considering him, and the Normans came into many of the large towns to carry off whatever treasures they might find there. Charles himself was not a Frenchman but a German, as his father, Louis le Débonnaire, and his grandfather, Charlemagne, had been. He could speak Latin, however, and his subjects were quickly losing all the German out of their language, and speaking only what was called Romance, a language made from the mingling of bad, incorrect Latin, such as was talked by the common people, with some remains of the language belonging to the old Gauls before they were invaded by the Romans.
When the Emperor Lothaire died, Charles wished to be made emperor, and was crowned King of Italy by the Pope. He afterwards made war on the sons of his other brother, Louis, King of Germany, but they defeated him and drove him back towards France. On his way across the mountain called the Mont Cenis, he was taken ill, and died in a poor hut.
One of the few remarkable events that happened in his reign was that, in order to please the nobles, and persuade them to go and fight with him against the sons of Louis, Charles made a law that the lands held by his chief nobles should become hereditary, that is, might be passed on from father to son, and not come back, to the king at all. This had for some time been the custom, but it now became the law.
After Charles, his son, Louis the Stammerer, became king, and reigned for two years; he was weak, foolish, and ready to obey the nobles instead of making them obey him. When he died, his kingdom was divided between his two elder sons, who were as weak as himself, and could not even defend the small part of the country which belonged to them. They both died, and the King of Germany, who was emperor, called himself King of France also; but he was a foolish, helpless man, and could not defend the people against the Northmen, who invaded them at this time in great numbers.
The state of France under these weak, foolish kings was miserable. The powerful people in the country were the great nobles and the Northmen. France was divided into many provinces, some of which had the same names that the French provinces have to this day, such as Champagne, Anjou, Brittany, Burgundy. Each of these provinces belonged to a chief or nobleman, called sometimes Duke and sometimes Count. They were the descendants, sons, grandsons, or great-grandsons of the chiefs to whom the first kings had given these pieces of land in reward for their services in battle, or who had conquered them for themselves when they first came into the country. Sometimes the prince of one of these provinces would die( and leave no children), when the king would take the land for himself and either keep it, or, more probably, give it to some other chief whom he wished to please or reward. About this time the chiefs, who had been called lendes began to be known as barons — a name under which much is to be heard of them in the History of England.
The barons, when first their lands were given to them by the king, had promised to do certain things in return for them; to follow him with a fixed number of men when he went to war, and to do other services of different kinds; but their descendants often refused to perform what had been promised, and would hardly allow that the king was in any way greater than they. The great barons gave away part of their lands to other barons, less rich and less strong than they, who were called their vassals, and the great barons were the vassals of the king.
Many of the barons were careless, idle men, who cared more for war and amusement than for work of any peaceful kind. They were fond of fighting, hunting, and feasting, but could not bear to work in the field, to till the ground, or to take care of their flocks. They therefore bought or made prisoners great numbers of slaves, and left them to attend to the lands, while they themselves went to the court of the chief baron in the neighbourhood, and made merry there, feasting and hunting. It may be imagined that the slaves, left to themselves, did not cultivate the lands as well as they might have done if they had been paid for their work and directed by their masters. Large parts of the country had been allowed to grow wild, and forests and sheepwalks covered the ground where cornfields and villages should have stood. In the forests were thieves, who lived upon what they could steal from travellers or from some peaceful household or monastery.
Another misfortune which happened to the people was that their country was attacked by the Northmen or Normans, who lived in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. They were fierce heathens, poor, brave, and active, who were always leaving their own barren land to look for some rich country from which they might steal food, goods, money — anything that came in their way. They could go to any place that could be reached by water. They sailed along the coast of France and up all the rivers, burning, stealing, and destroying as they went; some of them went to England, some to Russia, others to Spain, Italy, Iceland, Greenland, and America.
In England they were bravely resisted by King Alfred, who drove them out of the country many times, and at last allowed some of them to come and settle there on condition of their becoming Christians. The French kings and nobles were not so brave, they could do nothing but give the Northmen money to persuade them to go away, which of course made them come back again all the sooner.
At last the Northmen made themselves masters of several cities in the north of France, and stayed there instead of going back to their own country. They had a leader named Rolf or Rollo, under whom they lived, and the country which they had taken for theirs soon showed an example of peace and prosperity to all the country round.
The king and the clergy thought it would he well to have these powerful neighbours for friends rather than for enemies, and as they could not be driven out of the country, the king sent to Rollo, offering him his daughter for a wife, and the country in which he had settled for himself and his sons for ever, on condition of his acknowledging the French king as his lord, becoming a Christian, and living in peace with the rest of the kingdom. Rollo agreed, became a Christian, married Gisela the French princess, built towns and fine buildings, and ruled his country so well, that in twenty years' time, Normandy, the land of the Northmen, was the best governed province in France. The Normans quickly learned the new French language, and by making laws and writing ballads in it, did much to settle it and bring it into common use.
Among the other provinces or divisions of the country was one named France, which was gradually giving its name to the whole. Paris was the capital of this province, which was not at that time considered as in any way more important than the other provinces. It had a duke named Odo, one of the few men who had bravely resisted the Danes, and after the death of the son of Louis the Stammerer, when the only remaining Carlovingian prince was a child of five years old, the nobles chose Odo of Paris to be their king.
His kingdom was a small one; he had no power beyond the duchy of France, and even in his own duchy the nobles were gaining more and more power, building strong castles, keeping bodies of soldiers, doing justice themselves, and defending from all enemies their servants and the poor people who lived in their villages. By degrees a village gathered round each castle, and every noble became like a king of a very small kingdom. This was a bad thing for the power of the kings, but it was good for the poor, who in this way were protected from every one except their own master, who often used them badly enough. They were called serfs, and were something between slaves and servants, but more like slaves, as they were paid for their work only by the houses and food which were given to them, and could never leave the estate of one lord to go away to another; but if the estate were sold they were sold with it, as if they had been mere instruments or tools for work.
Odo had been king for about six years when he was attacked by the Carlovingtan prince, Charles the Simple, who was now growing up to be a man. Some of Odo's subjects took the side of Charles, others were faithful to Odo. After some fighting it was agreed that Odo should be king while he lived, and Charles after him. This was done; Odo died, Charles became king, and Robert, Odo's brother, was made duke of the duchy of France. Charles reigned for twenty-four years. He is called Charles the Simple out of politeness; his nickname, Le Sot, really means the Fool, and as he seems to have done nothing all the twenty-four years of his reign, he probably deserved the name. The one important thing that happened in his reign was the settlement of the Normans in France. Even in that matter Charles did only what he was advised to do by the clergy.
The settlement of the Normans is a very important event, and makes the reign of Charles the Simple worth remembering. From that time the French had before them an example of good government and of a prosperous country, of courage, activity, and liberty; and it was important for England also in a different way.
At last Charles's nobles rose up against him and drove him from the country. He returned with an army, and tried to make himself king once more, but was taken prisoner by one of his barons, and kept so till he died seven years afterwards.
His son Louis, who had been brought up in England, was then made king. He was a brave, spirited young man, and defended himself for some years against the German Emperor, who tried to become master of France; and the King of Denmark, who attacked his country and at one time made him prisoner. Louis died from a fall out hunting; his son and grandson succeeded him, reigning, one for thirty-two years, the other for one year. The grandson had no children, and thus the family of the Carlovingians, the descendants of Charlemagne, came to an end.
