Germany and the Germans | Page 9

king by virtue of ability, swept all Europe under his sway
by reason of his transcendent powers as a warrior and administrator. He
did for the first time for Europe what Akbar did in his day for India. In
forty-five years he headed fifty-three campaigns against all sorts of
enemies. He fought the Saxons, the Danes, the Slays, the Arabs, the
Greeks, and the Bretons. What is now France, Germany, Belgium,
Holland, Switzerland, Spain, and most of Italy were under his kingship.
He was a student, an architect, a bridge-builder, though he could

neither read nor write, and even began a canal which was to connect the
Danube and the Rhine, and thus the German Ocean, with the Black Sea.
He is one of many monuments to the futility of technical education and
mere book-learning.
The Pope, roughly handled, because negligently protected, by the
Roman emperors, turns to Charlemagne, and on Christmas Day (800)
places a crown upon his head, and proclaims him "Caesar Augustus"
and "Christianissimus Rex." The empire of Rome is to be born again
with this virile German warrior at its head. Just a thousand years later,
another insists that he has succeeded to the title by right of conquest,
and gives his baby son the title of "King of Rome," and just a thousand
years after the death of Charlemagne, in 814, Napoleon retires to Elba.
There is a witchery about Rome even to-day, and an emperor still sits
imprisoned there, claiming for himself the right to rule the spiritual and
intellectual world: "sedet, eternumque sedebit Infelix Theseus."
Louis, called "the Pious," because the latter part of his life was spent in
mourning his outrageous betrayal, mutilation, and murder of his own
nephew, whose rivalry he feared, succeeded his father, Charlemagne.
He was succeeded again by his three sons, Lothair, Pepin, and Louis by
his first wife, and Charles, who was his favorite son, by his second wife.
He had already divided the great heritage left him by Charlemagne
between his three sons Lothair, Pepin, and Louis; but now he wished to
make another division into four parts, to make room for, and to give a
kingdom to, his son Charles by his second wife. The three elder sons
revolt against their father, and his last years are spent in vain attempts
to reconcile his quarrelsome children. At his death war breaks out.
Pepin dies, leaving, however, a son Pepin to inherit his kingdom of
Aquitaine. Louis and Charles attempt to take his kingdom from him,
his uncle Lothair defends him, and at the great battle of Fontenay (841)
Louis and Charles defeat Lothair. Lothair gains the adherence of the
Saxons, and Charles and Louis at the head of their armies confirm their
alliance, and at Strasburg the two armies take the oath of allegiance: the
followers of Louis took the oath in German, the followers of Charles in
French, and this oath, the words of which are still preserved, is the
earliest specimen of the French language in existence.

In 843 another treaty signed at Verdun, between the two brothers
Lothair and Louis and their half-brother Charles, separated for the first
time the Netherlands, the Rhine country, Burgundy, and Italy, which
became the portion of Lothair; all Germany east of this territory, which
went to Louis; and all the territory to the west of it, which went to
Charles. Germany and France, therefore, by the Treaty of Verdun in
843, became distinct kingdoms, and modern geography in Europe is
born.
From the death of Henry the Fowler, in 936, down to the nomination of
Frederick I of Bavaria, sixth Burgrave of Nuremberg, to be Margrave
of Brandenburg, in 1411, the history of the particular Germany we are
studying is swallowed up in the history of these German tribes of
central Europe and of the Holy Roman Empire. It is in these years of
the seven Crusades, from 1095 to the last in 1248; of Frederick
Barbarossa; of the centuries-long quarrel between the Welfs, or
Guelphs, and the Waiblingers, or Ghibellines, which were for years in
Italy, and are still in Germany, political parties; of the Hanseatic
League of the cities to protect commerce from the piracies of a
disordered and unruled country; of the Dane and the Norman descents
upon the coasts of France, Germany, and England, and of their burning,
killing, and carrying into captivity; of the Saracens scouring the
Mediterranean coasts and sacking Rome itself; of the Wends and
Czechs, Hungarian bands who dashed in upon the eastern frontiers of
the now helpless and amorphous empire of Charlemagne, all the way
from the Baltic to the Danube; of the quarrel between Henry IV and
that Jupiter Ecclesiasticus, Hildebrand, or Gregory VII, who has left us
his biography in the single phrase, "To go to Canossa";