Upon the heels of this disaster came the news that the Saxons had again arisen under the lead of Wittekind, destroyed their churches, murdered the priests, and carried fire and sword to the very walls of Cologne and Coblentz. Charlemagne sent his best troops, by forced marches, in advance of his coming, but he was not able to take the field until the following spring. During 779 and a part of 780, after much labor and many battles, he seemed to have subdued the stubborn race, the most of whom accepted Christian baptism for the third time. Charlemagne thereupon went to Italy once more, in order to restore order among the Longobards, whose local chiefs were becoming restless in his absence. His two young sons, Pippin and Ludwig, were crowned by Pope Adrian as kings of Longobardia, or Lombardy (which then embraced the greater part of Northern and Central Italy), and Aquitaine.
783.
After his return to Germany, he convoked a parliament, or popular assembly, at Paderborn, in 782, partly in order to give the Saxons a stronger impression of the power of the Empire. The people seemed quiet, and he was deceived by their bearing; for, after he had left them to return to the Rhine, they rose again, headed by Wittekind, who had been for some years a fugitive in Denmark. Three of Charlemagne's chief officials, who immediately hastened to the scene of trouble with such troops as they could collect, met Wittekind in the Teutoburger Forest, not far from the field where Varus and his legions were destroyed. A similar fate awaited them: the Frank army was so completely cut to pieces that but few escaped to tell the tale.
Charlemagne marched immediately into the Saxon land: the rebels dispersed at his approach and Wittekind again became a fugitive. The Saxon nobles humbly renewed their submission, and tried to throw the whole responsibility of the rebellion upon Wittekind. Charlemagne was not satisfied: he had been mortified in his pride as a monarch, and for once he cast aside his usual moderation and prudence. He demanded that 4,500 Saxons, no doubt the most prominent among the people, should be given up to him, and then ordered them all to be beheaded on the same day. This deed of blood, instead of intimidating the Saxons, provoked them to fury. They arose as one man, and in 783 defeated Charlemagne near Detmold. He retreated to Paderborn, received reinforcements, and was enabled to venture a second battle, in which he was victorious. He remained for two years longer in Thuringia and Saxony, during which time he undertook a winter campaign, for which the people were not prepared. By the summer of 785, the Saxons, finding their homes destroyed and themselves rapidly diminishing in numbers, yielded to the mercy of the conqueror. Wittekind, who, the legend says, had stolen in disguise into Charlemagne's camp, was so impressed by the bearing of the king and the pomp of the religious services, that he also submitted and received baptism. One account states that Charlemagne named him Duke of the Saxons and was thenceforth his friend; another, that he sank into obscurity.
788. SUBJECTION OF BAVARIA.
Charlemagne was now free to make another journey to Italy, where he suppressed some fresh troubles among the Lombards (as we must henceforth style the Longobards), and forced Aragis, the Duke of Benevento, to render his submission. Then, for the first time, he turned his attention to the Bavarians, whose Duke, Tassilo, had preserved an armed neutrality during the previous wars, but was suspected of secretly conspiring with the Lombards, Byzantines, and even the Avars, for help to enable him to throw off the Frank yoke. At a general diet of the whole empire, held in Worms in 787, Tassilo did not appear, and Charlemagne made this a pretext for invading Bavaria.
Three armies, in Italy, Suabia and Thuringia, were set in motion at the same time, and resistance appeared so hopeless that Tassilo surrendered at once. Charlemagne pardoned him at first, under stipulations of stricter dependence, but he was convicted of conspiracy at a diet held the following year, when he and his sons were found guilty and sent into a monastery. His dynasty came to an end, and Bavaria was portioned out among a number of Frank Counts, the people, nevertheless, being allowed to retain their own political institutions.
The incorporation of Bavaria with the Frank empire brought a new task to Charlemagne. The Avars, who had gradually extended their rule across the Alps, nearly to the Adriatic, were strong and dangerous neighbors. In 791 he entered their territory and laid it waste, as far as the river Raab; then, having lost all his horses on the march, he was obliged to return. At home, a new trouble awaited him. His son, Pippin, whom he had installed as king of Lombardy, was discovered to be at the head of a conspiracy to usurp his own throne. Pippin was terribly flogged, and then sent into a monastery for the rest of his days; his fellow-conspirators were executed.
When Charlemagne applied his system of military conscription to the Saxons, to recruit his army before renewing the war with the Avars, they rose once more in rebellion, slew his agents, burned the churches, and drove out the priests, who had made themselves hated by their despotism and by claiming a tenth part of the produce of the land. Charlemagne was thus obliged to subdue them and to fight the Avars, at the same time. The double war lasted until 796, when the residence of the Avar Khan, with the intrenched "ring" or fort, containing all the treasures amassed by the tribe during the raids of two hundred years, was captured. All the country, as far eastward as the rivers Theiss and Raab, was wasted and almost depopulated. The remnant of the Avars acknowledged themselves Frank subjects, but for greater security, Charlemagne established Bavarian colonies in the fertile land along the Danube. The latter formed a province, called the East-Mark, which became the foundation upon which Austria (the East-kingdom) afterwards rose.
799.
The Saxons were subjected—or seemed to be—about the same time. Many of the people retreated into Holstein, which was then called North-Albingia; but Charlemagne allied himself with a branch of the Slavonic Wends, defeated them there, and took possession of their territory. He built fortresses at Halle, Magdeburg, and Büchen, near Hamburg, colonized 10,000 Saxons among the Franks, and replaced them by an equal number of the latter. Then he established Christianity for the fifth time, by ordering that all who failed to present themselves for baptism should be put to death. The indomitable spirit of the people still led to occasional outbreaks, but these became weaker and weaker, and finally ceased as the new faith struck deeper root.
In the year 799, Pope Leo III. suddenly appeared in Charlemagne's camp at Paderborn, a fugitive from a conspiracy of the Roman nobles, by which his life was threatened. He was received with all possible honors, and after some time spent in secret councils, was sent back to Rome with a strong escort. In the autumn of the following year, Charlemagne followed him. A civil and ecclesiastical assembly was held at Rome, and pronounced the Pope free from the charges made against him; then (no doubt according to previous agreement) on Christmas-Day, 800, Leo III. crowned Charlemagne as Roman Emperor, in the Cathedral of St. Peter's. The people greeted him with cries of "Life and victory to Carolo Augusto, crowned by God, the great, the peace-bringing Emperor of the Romans!"
If, by this step, the Pope seemed to forget the aspirations of the Church for temporal power, on the other hand he rendered himself forever independent of his nominal subjection to the Byzantine Emperors. For Charlemagne, the new dignity gave his rule its full and final authority. The people, in whose traditions the grandeur of the old Roman Empire were still kept alive, now beheld it renewed in their ruler and themselves. Charlemagne stood at the head of an Empire which was to include all Christendom, and to imitate, in its civil organization, the spiritual rule of the Church. On the one side were kingdoms, duchies, countships and the communities of the people, all subject to him; on the other side, bishoprics, monasteries and their dependencies, churches and individual souls, subject to the Pope. The latter acknowledged the Emperor as his temporal sovereign: the Emperor acknowledged the Pope as his spiritual sovereign. The idea was grand, and at that time did not seem impossible to fulfil; but the further course of history shows how hostile the two principles may become, when they both grasp at the same power.
800. CHARLEMAGNE'S EMPIRE.
The Greek Emperors at Constantinople were not strong enough to protest against this bestowal of a dignity which they claimed for themselves. A long series of negotiations followed,