A Short History of France | Page 9

Syria,
Mesopotamia, Egypt, Northern Africa, and the Spanish Peninsula. Now,
sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, the Mahometan had
crossed the Pyrenees and was in Southern Gaul.
Under the strange magic of this faith the largest religious empire the
world had known had sprung into existence, stretching from the
Chinese Wall to the Atlantic; from the Caspian to the Indian Ocean;
and Jerusalem, the metropolis of Christianity--Jerusalem, the Mecca of
the Christian--was lost! The Crescent floated over the birthplace of our
Lord, and, notwithstanding the temporary successes of the Crusades, it
does to this day.
If the Pyrenees were passed the very existence of Christendom was
threatened. Charles Martel, the grandfather of Charlemagne, averted
this danger when he stayed the infidel flood at the battle of Tours, A.D.
732.
The Merovingian kings, if not devout, were faithful sons of the Church,
and when the pope appealed to the last Merovingian king to protect him
from the Lombards, near the end of the eighth century, Pepin, then
Maire du Palais, but holding supreme power, twice crossed the Alps
with an army, wrested five cities and a large extent of territory from the
enemies of the pope, which, upon parting, he tossed as a gift into the
lap of the Church. And this, known as the Donation of Pepin, was the
beginning of the temporal power of the popes in Italy. So when Pepin
resolved to assume the crown, Pope Zacharias in gratitude sanctioned

the audacious act, by sending his representative to place the symbol of
power upon the head of this faithful son and usurper! (A.D. 751.)
But this was only the stepping-stone for a greater elevation. When Pope
Adrian I. again needed protection from the Lombard, a greater than
Pepin was wearing the crown his father had audaciously snatched.
CHAPTER V.
Against the dark background of European history, and with the broad
level of obscurity stretching over the ages at its feet, there rises one
shining pinnacle. Considered as man or sovereign, Charlemagne is one
of the most impressive figures in history. His seven feet of stature clad
in shining steel, his masterful grasp of the forces of his time, his
splendid intelligence, instinct even then with the modern spirit, all
combine to elevate him in solitary grandeur.
Charlemagne found France in disorder measureless, and apparently
insurmountable. Barbarian invasion without, and anarchy within;
Saxon paganism pressing in upon the north, and Asiatic Islamism upon
the south and west; a host of forces struggling for dominion in a nation
brutish, ignorant, and without cohesion.
It is the attribute of genius to discern opportunity where others see
nothing. Charlemagne saw rising out of this chaos a great resuscitated
Roman Empire, which should be at the same time a spiritual and
Christian empire as well. Saxons, Slavs, Huns, Lombards, Arabs, came
under his compelling grasp; these antagonistic races all held together
by the force of one terrible will, in unnatural combination with France.
No political liberties, no popular assemblies discussing public measures;
it is Charlemagne alone who fills the picture; it is absolutism--marked
by prudence, ability, and grandeur, but still, absolutism.
The pope looked approvingly upon this son of the Church, by whose
order 4,500 pagan heads could be cut off in one day, and a whole army
compelled to baptism in an afternoon. Here was a champion to be
propitiated. Charlemagne, on the other hand, saw in the Church the
most compliant and effective means to empire.

His fertile mind was conceiving a vast design by which he might reign
over a resuscitated Roman Empire. In the dual sovereignty of his dream,
the pope was to be the spiritual and he the temporal head. Mutually
dependent upon each other, the election of the pope would not be valid
without his consent. Nor would the emperor be emperor until crowned
by the pope. The Church might use him as a sword, but he would wear
the Church as a precious jewel in his crown.
It was a splendid dream, splendidly realized; the most imposing of
human successes, and the most impressive of human failures. It seems
designed as a lesson for the human race in the transitory nature of
power applied from without.
A pyramid of such colossal proportions could only be kept from falling
in pieces by another Colossus like himself. The vast fabric resting upon
one human will, passed with its creator; was gone like a shadow when
he was gone.
It will be remembered that the Roman Empire in its decay fell into two
parts, a Western and an Eastern empire. The dying embers of the
Western empire, which had been fanned into a feeble flame in the sixth
century by Justinian, Emperor of the East, were threatened with
complete extinguishment by the Lombards in the eighth; from