CHARLEMAGNE
611
CHARLEMAGNE
father in several campaigns. This early experience
is worth noting chiefly because it developed in the
boy those military virtues which, joined with his
extraordinary physical strength and intense national-
ism, made him a popular hero of the Franks long
before he became their rightful ruler. At length, in
September, 768, Pepin the Short, foreseeing his end,
made a partition of his dominions between his two
sons. Not many days later the old king passed
away.
To better comprehend the effect, of the act of parti- tion under which Charles and Carloman inherited their father's dominions, as well as the whole subsequent history of Charles' reign, it is to be ob- served that those dominions comprised: first, Frankland (Frankreich) proper; secondly, as many as seven more or less self-governing dependencies, peopled by races of various ori- gins and obeying various codes of law. Of these two divisions. the former extended, roughly speaking, from the boundaries of Thuringia, on the east, to what is now the Belgian ami Norman coastline, on the west ; it bordered to the north on Saxony, and included both banks of the Rhine from Colog- ne (the ancient Colonia Agrip- pina) to the North Sea; its southern neighbours were the Bavarians, the Alemanni, and the Burgundians. The depen- dent states were: the funda- mentally Gaulish Neustria (in- cluding within its borders Paris), which was. nevertheless, well leavened with a dominant Prankish element ; to the south- west of Neustria, Brittany, formerly Armorica, with a Brit- ish and Gallo-Roman popu- lation; to the south of Neustria the Duchy of Aquitaine, lying, for the most part, between the Loire and the Garonne, with a decidedly Gallo-Roman popu- lation; and east of Aquitaine. along the valley of the Rhone, the Burgundians, a people of much the same mixed origin as those of Aquitaine, though with a large infusion of Teutonic blood. These States, with per- haps the exception of Brittany, recognized the Theodosian Code as their law. TheGer in hi dependencies of the Frankish kingdom were Thur- ingia, inthcvalleyofthcMain, Bavaria, and Alemannia ■ponding to what was later known as Swabia last, at the time of Pepin's death, had but recently been won to Christianity, mainly through the preaching of St. Boniface (q. v.). The share which fell t" Charles consisted of all Australia the original Frankland). mosl of Neustria, and all Aqui- taine except the south-east corner. In this way the possessions of the elder brother surrounded thi the younger on two sides, but on the other hand the distribution of races undi r their respective rules was surh as to preclude any risk of discord arising out of the national sentiments of their various subjects.
In spite of this provident arrangement, Carloman
contrived to quarrel with his brother. Hunald, formerly Duke of Aquitaine. vanquished by Pepin the Short, broke from the cloister, where he had lived as a
[deal i
monk for twenty years, and stirred up a revolt in the
western part of the duchy. By Prankish custom
Carloman should have aided Charles; the younger
brother himself held part of Aquitaine; but he pre-
tended that, as his dominions in the south-east were
unaffected by this revolt, it was no business of his.
Hunald, however, was vanquished by Charles single-
handed; he was betrayed by a nephew with whom
he had sought refuge, was sent to Rome to answer for
the violation of his monastic vows, and at last, after
once more breaking cloister, was stoned to death by
the Lombards of Pavia. For Charles the true im-
portance of this Aquitainian
episode was in its manifestation
of his brother's unkindly feel-
ing in his regard, and against
this danger he lost no time in
taking precautions, chiefly by
winning over to himself the
friends whom he judged likely
to be most valuable ; first and
foremost of these was his
mother, Bertha, who had striven
both earnestly and prudently
to make peace between her
sons, but who, when it became
necessary to take sides with
one or the other could not
hesitate in her devotion to the
elder. Charles was an affec-
t ionate son; it also appears that,
in general, he was helped to
power by his extraordinary gift
of personal attractiveness.
Carloman died soon after this (4 December, 771), and a certain letter to Charles from " the Monk Cathwulph", quoted by Bouquet (Hecueil. hist., V, 634), in enumerating the spe- cial blessings for which the king was in duty bound to be grateful, says, " Third . . .God has preserved you from the
wiles of your brother
Fifth, and not the least, that God has removed your brother from this earthly kingdom". Carloman may not have been quite so malignant as the enthusiastic partisans of Charles
made him out, bul the division
of Pepin's dominions was in it- self an impediment to the growth of a strong Prankish realm such as Charles needed i ' | , ;),',,. | for the unification of the ( Ihris-
tian Continent. Although Car- loman had left two sons by his wife, Gerberga, the Prankish law of inheritance gave no preference to sons as against brother; left to their own choice, the Prankish lieges, whether from love of Charles or for the fear which his name already inspired, gladly ac- cepted him for their king. ' ierberga and her children fled to the Lombard court <•< Pavia. In the mean while complications had arisen in Charles ' foreign policy which made his newly established supremacy
at home doubly opportune.
Prom his father Charles had inherited the title
" Patricius Romanus" which carried with it a special obligation to protect the temporal rights of the Boly See. The nearest and most menacing neighbour of
St. Peter's Patrimony was Desiderius (Didier), King
of the- Lombards, and it was with this potenate that the dowager Bertha had arranged a matrimonial alli- ance for her elder son. The pope had solid temporal reasons for objecting to this arrangement . Moreover.
